Since its launch in 2008, the U.K.’s IP scheme, Faster Payment Service (FPS), has brought tremendous change to the market and paved the way for IP development worldwide. Furthering its global innovation leadership, the U.K. is developing an advanced retail payments infrastructure currently known as New Payments Architecture (NPA). The stated goals of NPA are to increase accessibility and enable new services, encouraging competition to drive these innovations.
The existing scheme, FPS, allows customers to make payments 24/7/365 via online, mobile and telephone banking, as well as at bank branches. It can process four different types of payments with a maximum of £250,000 ($319,005), including direct corporate access which enables bulk transfers such as salary payments.
In general, FPS users will receive a confirmation reply to let them know whether their funds have been accepted or rejected by the receiver’s bank within 15 seconds, but payments can take up to two hours to take effect.