Faster banking payment service system introduced in Britain

London: A new service that will speed up the processing of banking payments went live on Tuesday.

The new "faster payments service" will benefit customers by speeding up one-off payments made over the internet or by phone, reducing the current three-day clearing to a matter of hours.

For the first time it will also be possible to make such payments all day every day, and the service will enable same day clearing for standing order payments made on bank working days, again reducing the current three-day clearing period.

Between midnight and 7am on Tuesday, 898 payments with a value of £461,383.43 were processed through the new service, APACS, the UK payments association, said.

Test programme

Over the past week, high street banks have been testing the system by sending and receiving payments in pennies. Paul Smee, chief executive of APACS, said: "The final part of this enormously complex project has been to test the new system in a live environment.

"Hundreds of penny payments have successfully been made between the participating banks."

Barclays, Citi, Clydesdale Bank, Yorkshire Bank, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Northern Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland now send and receive phone and internet payments via the system.