When a customer makes a Faster Payment, it will generally work in the following way:

1. Sean wants to pay his friend, John, so phones his bank or logs on to his online banking service and instructs his bank to pay £35 today to John whose account is with another bank.

2. Sean will need to check that he is able to send a Faster Payment from his bank account and whether his bank has any value limits for Faster Payments. He will then need to check that John’s account is able to receive this type of payment. Sean can check whether John's sort code can receive Faster Payments by using the Faster Payments Sort Code Checker.

 Sean’s bank carries out its normal checks to verify that he is the genuine customer. For example, they may ask Sean to provide a password or other security information requested when banking online.

3. Sean provides the name, sort code, account number and any reference details that need to be included to ensure the payment reaches the correct account. It is important Sean ensures that John’s bank details are correct.

4. Before Sean’s bank allows the payment to be made, it will check that Sean’s account has sufficient funds and that the request to make a payment is genuine. In certain cases, delays can occur if the bank needs to undertake further fraud protection checks.

5. The bank submits the transaction through the Faster Payments Service. From this stage onwards, the transaction cannot be cancelled.

6. The service sends the payment on to the receiving bank after checking that all the relevant details are included and properly formatted, and then debits the sending bank.

7. Once the receiving bank has received the transaction, it will check that it’s for a valid account, and will send a message back to the Faster Payments Service that it has accepted the payment. Or indeed, that it has rejected the payment.

8. The Faster Payments Service credits the receiving bank with the funds.

9. The Faster Payments Service tells the sending bank that the transaction has been made successfully.

10. Sean’s bank marks the transaction as complete. Each sending bank will decide how this confirmation will be made available to its own customer. In all cases, once the payment has been made, a confirmation message will always be sent between banks.

11. The receiving bank will credit John’s account with the money received.

John should be able to access funds within a couple of hours of a payment being made but at any stage either the sending or receiving bank may carry out additional checks on transactions, which could delay a small number of payments. 

Banks will also be able to process their customers’ standing orders using the Faster Payments Service. This is expected to start from June. Customers will be able to set up new regular payments, as well as continue to use existing ones, and these will work in the same way as they do today, except that they will be sent and received on the same working day. 

There will be a maximum limit placed on the value of each payment sent through the Faster Payments Service, with the initial maximum value for standing orders set to £100,000 and for all other payment types to £10,000 .  Individual banks may, however, choose to set lower limits, particularly during the first few weeks.