Preparations for a new payments system start-up in UK

APACS, the UK payments association, is providing its customers with necessary information concerning its new Faster Payments Service to be launched in a few days.

Customers of APACS may get a downloadable advice guide, 'How to use the Faster Payments Service', along with an online easy-to-use sort code checker www.canipayfaster.co.uk. By entering any UK sort code users may check if it supports Faster Payments. After the service rollout more sort codes are expected to be released. These materials can be received on the company's site.

Payments in pennies were made last week by participating members of the new Faster Payments Service to test the system. The final testing stage is being conducted after a test in a non-living environment.

"The final part of this enormously complex project has been to test the new system in a live environment. This week hundreds of penny payments have successfully been made between the participating banks. The Service is now ready to start being rolled out to customers next Tuesday. Although the initial rollout will be gradual, and some customers may not be using the new service immediately, we expect that in the coming months this will ramp up to enable large numbers of customers to benefit from it. After such substantial investment by the industry we'd like, in time, to see the new Faster Payments Service being used for all of the UK's internet, phone and standing order payments," Paul Smee, APACS Chief Executive.