Faster banking payment clearance system goes live

A new service that will speed up the processing of banking payments went live yesterday.

Britain's new "faster payments service" will benefit customers by speeding up one-off payments made over the internet or by phone, reducing the current three-day clearing timescale to a matter of hours.

For the very first time it will also be possible to make such payments all day every day, and the service will enable same day clearing for regular standing order payments made on bank working days, again reducing the current three-day clearing period.