There are three methods of connecting to the Faster Payments Service in order to send and receive payments: -

• ISO 8583 gateway
• Files Input Module - future phase
• Direct Corporate Access – future phase

ISO 8583

Banks and Building Societies that are directly connected to the Faster Payments Service will use a private definition of the ISO 8583 message standard to send messages between them.  This message standard is based on the widely used standard that enables the majority of the ATM transactions in the UK as well as credit card transactions.

This standard allows banks and building societies to send and receive individual payments between them via the Faster Payments Service.

File Input Module - Future phase

As well as being able to submit individual payments via the ISO 8583 connection method Members and Agencies can also submit files of payments using the File Input Module.  Some agencies may only submit payments via this method, meaning that they can only send payments into the Faster Payments Service directly and will receive payments via their sponsoring Member.

Direct Corporate Access – Future phase

Businesses who wish to submit files of payments into the Faster Payments Service can take advantage of the Direct Corporate Access method.  This allows businesses to submit files of payments using a very similar methodology to that used by the Bacs service.  Files of payments submitted using this method con only be submitted between 06:00 and 14:30 on normal working days.