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One customer will receive their payment today, the other next week. Do you know which is which?
Two years since the introduction of UK Faster Payments, the system designed to make transactions quicker, cheaper and easier has been branded unfair and confusing by the consumer group Which?
''It's unacceptable that, two years on from the introduction of Faster Payments, many customers are still having to wait three to four working days for money to clear." said Phil Jones, personal finance campaigner at Which?*
The problem lies in the fact that, to make a Faster Payment, both sender and receiver have to accept Faster Payments. However not all accounts can be reached by Faster Payments or be processed in real-time and this information is not always made clear before a payment is initiated.
This is a pitfall that you as a corporate organisation can learn from and avoid. Originally accessible only to consumers, since September 2009, business customers now also have the option to directly initiate Faster Payments via Direct Corporate Access (DCA). You can now take advantage of the cost savings, increased efficiency, risk reduction, improved customer service and competitive differential associated with Faster Payments. However, to handle the requirements of near real-time payment processing, you may need to make changes to your business processes.
Confirming that a beneficiary account supports Faster Payments and eliminating transaction errors prior to submission is critical to optimising your payment processes.
By doing so, you are better placed to manage your customers’, staff and suppliers expectations and inform them with confidence, when a payment will reach their bank account. This also has the positive knock-on effect of improving your customer service and differentiating yourself from your competitors.