Are Faster Payments affected by bank holidays?

[dave559]

Does anyone know if the Faster Payments Service works on Bank Holidays?

I have been quite impressed to notice that Faster Payments seem to take place even at weekends (although I have not yet had reason to check whether payments received at the weekend count as cleared balance at that time or not).

With bank staff (any many of the rest of us) not unreasonably having a number of bank/public holidays coming up over the next couple of weeks, although the back end computer systems (touch wood) continue to operate, of course, does anyone know if Faster Payments will continue to work at any time, or will they be delayed until the next formal "banking day" that the banks are open?

[richfool]

Dave, I realise this doesn't fully answer your question about bank holidays.

Based on past experience my understanding was that the system doesn't work on bank holidays. Also, the fact a payment is sent to the recipient's bank immediately, doesn't mean that it will reflect in the recipient's account with that bank within 2 hours or even on that day. For example, payments I send to my broker do not show up in my dealing account with them until their next working day. If I send them a payment at 4.30pm on a friday, it does not appear on my share dealing account until the monday (assuming it is not a bank holiday monday, in which case it is the tuesday).

As a test I have just tried and made a "Faster Payment", today (sunday), from my bank to a building society savings account. It was sent immediately, though again I am fairly sure it will not show up in my account with the receiving building society until their next working day.

[swill453]

The Faster Payments web site implies it should work fine on bank holidays:

Single immediate payments can be sent 24 hours a day, seven days a week (subject to the service offering of your bank).

http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/about- ... r-payments

Scott.

[staffordian]

Dave, I realise this doesn't fully answer your question about bank holidays.

Based on past experience my understanding was that the system doesn't work on bank holidays. Also, the fact a payment is sent to the recipient's bank immediately, doesn't mean that it will reflect in the recipient's account with that bank within 2 hours or even on that day. For example, payments I send to my broker do not show up in my dealing account with them until their next working day. If I send them a payment at 4.30pm on a friday, it does not appear on my share dealing account until the monday (assuming it is not a bank holiday monday, in which case it is the tuesday).

As a test I have just tried and made a "Faster Payment", today (sunday), from my bank to a building society savings account. It was sent immediately, though again I am fairly sure it will not show up in my account with the receiving building society until their next working day.

I suspect part of the issue here is the two stages needed by brokers, building societies etc.

My assumption is that the payment might well appear in their bank account within the usual timescales, but these organisations then have to run some sort of process to allocate all of these received payments to customer accounts within their own systems. It is this which I'm guessing normally relies on someone being there to kick off the procedures, though no doubt in some organisations this happens automatically whether they are working or not.

[mc2fool]

The Faster Payments web site implies it should work fine on bank holidays:

Single immediate payments can be sent 24 hours a day, seven days a week (subject to the service offering of your bank).

http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/about- ... r-payments

And the Faster Payments site's FAQs, http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/faqs, under "How long do Faster Payments take?" really says, well, it depends...

"Provided the sending and receiving bank/building society are Direct Participants of Faster Payments, payments are usually available almost immediately, although they can sometimes take up to two hours.

These timescales can still apply if either the sending or receiving bank is not a Direct Participant of Faster Payments.

Some payments will take longer, especially outside normal working hours.

You should talk to your bank/building society if the speed of the payment is particularly important.

As a minimum, all financial institutions in the UK must abide by the Payment Services Directive (PSD) - this states that any payments made by mobile, internet or phone banking (including standing orders) must arrive by the end of the following business day at the latest."

[swill453]

In my experience, which is mainly between First Direct and Nationwide Building Society (in both directions), transfers literally happen instantly, any time of day, night or weekend.

By this I mean when the sender account says it's gone, I refresh the page in online banking at the destination and the money is there.

I can't remember offhand if I've actually done one on a bank holiday, but I wouldn't expect it to be any different to, say, 2am on a Sunday morning as there is obviously no human interaction necessary.

Other financial institutions may vary, of course.

Scott.

[mc2fool]

In my experience, which is mainly between First Direct and Nationwide Building Society (in both directions), transfers literally happen instantly, any time of day, night or weekend.

Both of those are Direct Participants (see my post above). What's surprising is the number of familiar names that aren't direct participants (e.g. Tesco Bank, TSB, etc) and the number of unfamiliar names that are. http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/directly-connected-participants

[PinkDalek]

In my experience, which is mainly between First Direct and Nationwide Building Society (in both directions), transfers literally happen instantly, any time of day, night or weekend.

Both of those are Direct Participants (see my post above). What's surprising is the number of familiar names that aren't direct participants (e.g. Tesco Bank, TSB, etc) and the number of unfamiliar names that are. http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/directly-connected-participants

I arranged a Faster Payment this morning, from a Barclays account to a third party (rather than a 1st Party Transfer***) account at Lloyd's. The Barclays account shows the payment made "Today" but clicking on the payment itself it shows up as "3rd Party Payment Monday 24th December, 11:23". The relevance of the 11:23 has yet to be established!

Both Barclays and Lloyds are on the Direct Participants list.

The receipt shows up at Lloyds but not for value until 24 December.

*** I also made a 1st Party Transfer, the details for which both show as paid/received tomorrow, yet both account summaries show it happened today and is part of the "Available Balance" in the receipient account.

How clear is mud?

[Slarti]

I made a payment from my First Direct account to my Tesco account today, to ensure that funds are available for a DD tomorrow and the confirmation message to appeared on the FD site said that the receiving bank indicated that the funds would be allocated on the next working day.

So if you are paying to Tesco, I'm pretty certain bank holidays will get in the way. Even though that is not what they are officially called these days


Slarti

[GoSeigen]

In my experience, which is mainly between First Direct and Nationwide Building Society (in both directions), transfers literally happen instantly, any time of day, night or weekend.

By this I mean when the sender account says it's gone, I refresh the page in online banking at the destination and the money is there.

So quick and efficient -- they must have adopted Bitcoin for their transfers then...




GS

[dave559]

Thanks, all, for your advice (and experimentation). That is also a useful reminder about the Payment Services Directive timescale requirements.

I think I might make a small transfer between my current account and a savings account, on one of the bank holiday dates, just to see whether it does happen same-day or waits until after the bank holiday. Even if it does turn out that there are a few days of the year where transfers are not near-instant/same-day, Faster Payments is still a big improvement!