Why a BACS payment?

This sounds like a reason to use/keep BACS, but really it’s just as much an argument to simply change business processes to do all of that due diligence before requesting the payment.

If the customer is genuine, they always get their payment straight away. If not, you probably catch it in checks before payment. If you need them to repay you, you can recall a faster payment (not that reliable, but possible).

Equally, if every customer is being checked before payments are sent, it’s likely to slow things up. You can still request to “skip the queue” of customers if you are a vulnerable person who really needs the payment quickly; this would just result in your payment being checked and processed first ahead of the backlog at any one time.

There are all sorts of swings and roundabouts, but most people would get their money quicker which would be better overall. The main point would be to only click Pay once you were sure you wanted to pay them - but then they would get it immediately.

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Due to the nature of the work done, it’s not really possible. Working with too many variables, including customers providing the right information. Other agencies systems working correctly etc etc. Majority of payments do go out correctly, however that backup of BACS is there as a layer of protection.

Meant to put this in the other post but must have not clicked it properly :joy:

It wouldn’t speed up payments either as payment dates are a fixed date, so there wouldn’t be any getting it quicker if it went by FP

Interesting, although for any ad hoc payments this would obviously be true which was my point!

In fact, for fixed date payments Faster Payments might actually be slower as you wouldn’t be able to use Monzo’s Get Paid Early or Revolut’s similar feature, like you can with BACS.

I still believe BACS should go and just be replaced with a fixed-date future Faster Payment, though (in that instance all the background checking that goes on could still happen as the payment wouldn’t actually be sent until the specified future date anyway, so difficult to see BACS as an advantage).

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