Progress of the young Faster Payments Service

Within the first two months following the launch the FPS processed over 4 million payments. For reference CHAPS, the UK's other same-day payments system launched in February 1984 processed 96,000 payments in the same period of time after its launch.

With the use of FPS customers are enabled to make internet banking and telephone transfers between banks in near real-time.

FPS was developed in line with the agreement signed in December 2005 between the Office of Fair Trading and 13 UK banks. Since then the banks have been continuously investing into the rtelevant technologies to support FPS and manage an inevitable increase in attempted fraud.