£70bn birthday present for Faster Payments service

One year on from the launch of the Faster Payments service and 180 million transactions - worth more than £70bn - have passed through the system.

The Faster Payments directive, which first went live on 27 May 2008, aims to cut the time it takes UK banking customers to move money from several days to a few hours.

According to figures from payments organisation Apacs, the peak day so far for Faster Payments has been 2 March, when around £1bn-worth of payments were made through the service.

Read this

Cheat Sheet: Faster Payments Services

• Read More

In its first month, £209m was processed through Faster Payments. One year later, that figure is expected to hit £7.7bn.

Despite growth in the use of Faster Payments, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) recently warned that consumers could be losing millions with banks not moving fast enough to take up the service.

On one day in March, only 69 per cent of payments that should be made through FPS were, the OFT found, and it's expected to be June before the figure hits 100 per cent. As a result, consumers have lost between £38m and £82m.

According to research by TNS, awareness of the service's existence also remains low, with only 55 per cent of people in the UK saying they had heard of Faster Payments and only 46 per cent of individuals having made a payment through it.