An article relating to this blog post on Finextra:
UK Government moves to enact EU Payment Services Directive
The UK Government has laid before Parliament regulations to implement the EU Payment Services Directive (PSD) into UK legislation.
See article
Just how much impetus does the UK's recent commitment to the PSD give to Faster Payments? If you read between the lines of the PSD there are some definite get out clauses. T+1 funds transfer is certainly the stated objective of the PSD (which basically means
using FPS in the UK) but Banks still have until 2012 to sort themselves out. Or should I say, Sponsoring Banks have longer to sort out how they're going to support their flocks of banks.
Section 43 and Article 73 both tell an interesting story; you should be offering next day funds transfers by the end of next year. However if you're prepared to update your terms & conditions and re-negotiate contracts with your corporates, then that buys you
another 3 years. Does that mean the only people who are going to benefit from this in the short term are the lawyers? And can we expect our doormats to be hit with the sound of reprinted T&C's? I suspect so.
In reality hooking up your systems and getting your operations in place to use Faster Payments isn't something you can do overnight. Sponsoring Banks have a lot of work on their hands to build the operations they'll need to support their indirect Members. Unfortunately
this means the man on the UK street is going to have to wait a little longer before he can get what a lot of Europe already take for granted - same day payments.