Published on Tuesday, March 31, 2009
While the Payments Council received many plaudits for what it had achieved so far, there were a couple of recommendations made in respect of the Faster Payments Scheme. While accepting that this scheme was always seen as a complex and challenging project for the banking industry, the OFT commented that "only 69 per cent of payments that should be made by Faster Payments are being made by Faster Payments, and it is not expected that the figure will reach 100 per cent until at least June 2009. That is more than a year from the introduction of Faster Payments, and 18 months from its planned introduction".
In addition to the Faster Payment vision to speed up payments for consumers, announcements were made 3 years' ago that they would also provide Direct Corporate Access for Faster Payments (basically a means of sending Bacs-type files directly to Bacs for them to turn into immediate same day payments) hopefully by March 2008. The good news is that the IT system to achieve this was installed (on behalf of all 13 Member Banks) into the Faster Payments Central Infrastructure a few days ago. The bad news is that initially only Barclays Bank will be providing this service, which they will be rolling out in the next couple of months. This means that only Barclays' customers will be able to use the Direct Corporate Access service. In the case of Payroll Bureaux not only does the bureau have to be sponsored by Barclays, but it can only send same-day late payroll items on behalf of those clients who also have an account with Barclays.
These delays have no doubt led the OFT to recommend that "the Payments Council should demonstrate enhanced leadership over its members by encouraging those members of the Faster Payments scheme to introduce Faster Payments fully" and also to increase transparency by involving more of the stakeholders by suggesting that "the Faster Payments Scheme should introduce a specific mechanism for taking into account the views of non-member users, such as businesses or consumers. This could be based on the Bacs Affiliates Interest Group, or could take some other form".
Bob Larkham, Head of Payment Industry Relations of Albany Software responded, "We welcome this review. Albany set out 3 years ago to develop the necessary Faster Payments software to meet known customer demand, including the many Payroll Bureaux which currently use our software. We recently launched Albany ePAY, the first Faster Payments software approved by Bacs. Our hope now is that the other Faster Payment Member Banks, particularly those with a large corporate base, will follow Barclays' lead."
