Faster Payments does not meet expectations set

A survey from MPI Europe showed, Faster Payments, which has had a successful start among founding clearing banks, is not meeting the expectations set. The system was designed to provide customers with near real-time transfer of phone, Internet and standing order payment instructions. The phase roll out of the system has been reported to have started in May.

The survey reveals that since its launch 13 main clearing banks have achieved their targets in a base implementation of the system through processing large volumes of payments. Barclays, Citi, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, RBS and A&L are among those banks. Moreover, Apacs has claimed the service has had a huge success, having processed more than 63 million payments, for a total of over £26 billion. Before its roll out in December almost two-thirds of phone and Internet payments were already being processed through Faster Payments.

On the other hand, the above mentioned survey has noted that the adoption among non-clearing banks was not so good.35% of the respondent-banks were still unable to receive Faster Payments. Besides, the research has revealed that Faster Payments was causing such problems as security and fraud. 

John Cant, managing director of MPI Europe commented on the issues by saying, "Some banks have had to put in place temporary measures to address these issues. Addressing them on a more universal and permanent basis is one of the main tasks in this area for 2009."