Payment mechanisms

• Bank of England - Payment & Settlement Systems
• Payments Council
  • Body with responsibility for ensuring that payment services work in the UK
  • Overall responsibility for sort codes, but codes are actually allocated by individual payment schemes (BACS, CHAPS, FasterPayments, Cheque & Credit Clearing)
  • Sort Code Checker
  • IBAN Checker
• PayYourWay - "independent" site about ways for consumers to send/receive money in the UK
• Faster Payments
  • Current members: Barclays, Citibank, Clydesdale, Cooperative, Northern, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, RBS, Santander.
  • Three levels of membership - Member, Direct Agency or Third-party Beneficiary. Becoming a Third-party Beneficiary:
    • Be a customer with an account at a member that is willing to sponsor you
    • Have, or be eligible to hold, at least one unique sort code
    • Be able to comply continuously with Faster Payments’ technical and operational requirements.
    • “Speak to an existing Member about their Agency Services”
  • Fees - no joining fee to join Faster Payments itself, but fees are charged by VocaLink
  • Access to much of the scheme’s documentation is requires signing of an NDA
• Vocalink
  • Provides the infrastructure for the BACS, FasterPayments and LINK services
  • Hosts the UK's database of sorting codes and other essential bank reference data on behalf of the Payments Council's clearing codes management group
  • Extended Industry Sort Code Directory
    • A single source of payments information for every UK bank and building society
• BACS (Bankers’ Automated Clearing Service)
  • Now only really handles Direct Debit and Direct Credit; other electronic transactions now mainly go through FasterPayments - see Using BACS
• CHAPS
  • Fast, high value payments e.g. property purchase - see Using CHAPS
• Direct Debit
• Standing Order?
• SWIFT
• LINK
• Cheque and Credit Clearing Company