Faster Payments: the default for speed
Most UK account-to-account payments now travel this rail: it runs 24/7 including weekends, most payments arrive within seconds, and the scheme allows up to £1 million per payment. Banks and institutions set their own lower limits, which is why the practical ceiling varies by provider.
If a payment is urgent, ordinary-sized and domestic, Faster Payments is almost always the right answer.
Bacs: the default for scheduled volume
Bacs trades speed for cost and predictability: a fixed three-working-day cycle, pennies per payment, and batch files that pay an entire payroll on one known date. Direct Debit collections run on the same system.
The three-day cycle is a feature for scheduled money and a bug for urgent money. Know which kind you are sending.
CHAPS: the default for high value
CHAPS is the Bank of England’s same-day, high-value rail: no upper limit, settlement the same working day if instructed before your bank’s cutoff, and a per-payment fee, often around £20 to £35 at high-street banks. It is the standard rail for property completions, large corporate transfers and anything too big for your Faster Payments limit.
The cutoff matters: miss it and settlement moves to the next working day, which on a completion date is an expensive lesson.
Choosing without thinking about it
The right rail is a function of amount, urgency and date: that is a routing decision, and it automates well. Accounts on this platform route each payment on the rail that fits it, with SWIFT, SEPA and SEPA Instant joining the menu when the payment leaves the UK. SEPA Instant is the euro equivalent of the Faster Payments logic above: seconds rather than the same day, which matters for the same reasons it matters domestically.