External links
  | This bank and insurance-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
The Industry Sorting Code Directory (ISCD) is the definitive list of bank branches and sub branches in the United Kingdom. The directory is maintained by VocaLink on behalf of UK Payments Administration (formally APACS).
The ISCD contains the sort code, SWIFT Bank Identifier Code (BIC), payment information, clearing information and contact details for all bank branches and sub-branches involved in the UK payment clearing system.
The ISCD is used by organisations to check the validity of sorting codes, which, combined with modulus checking of the bank account number and sorting code, is essential for successful Direct Debit and BACS Credit transactions.
The information contained within the ISCD is subject to frequent changes. To ensure that organisations have access to accurate information, VocaLink updates the ISCD once a week and makes it available to download. To obtain the ISCD, organisations must register with VocaLink or one of its official ISCD distributors.
The Extended Industry Sorting Code Directory (EISCD) is based upon the ISCD and was introduced to provide reference data to support the UK's Faster Payments service. The EISCD contains all data elements found within the ISCD, with the addition of a new section containing Faster Payments clearing information for each UK bank branch.
The EISCD is updated weekly and is available from VocaLink and authorised distributors.
| | This bank and insurance-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is an internationally agreed system of identifying bank accounts across national borders to facilitate the communication and processing of cross border transactions with a reduced risk of transcription errors. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) and later as an international standard under ISO 13616:1997. The current standard is ISO 13616:2007, which indicates SWIFT as the formal registrar. Initially developed to facilitate payments within the European Union, it has been implemented by most European countries and numerous countries in other parts of the world, mainly in the Middle East and the Caribbean. As of February 2016, 69 countries were using the IBAN numbering system.
Cheque clearing or bank clearance is the process of moving cash from the bank on which a cheque is drawn to the bank in which it was deposited, usually accompanied by the movement of the cheque to the paying bank, either in the traditional physical paper form or digitally under a cheque truncation system. This process is called the clearing cycle and normally results in a credit to the account at the bank of deposit, and an equivalent debit to the account at the bank on which it was drawn, with a corresponding adjustment of accounts of the banks themselves. If there are not enough funds in the account when the cheque arrived at the issuing bank, the cheque would be returned as a dishonoured cheque marked as non-sufficient funds.
In the United States, an ABA routing transit number is a nine-digit code printed on the bottom of checks to identify the financial institution on which it was drawn. The American Bankers Association (ABA) developed the system in 1910 to facilitate the sorting, bundling, and delivering paper checks to the drawer's bank for debit to the drawer's account.
The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act is a United States federal law, Pub.L. 108–100, that was enacted on October 28, 2003 by the 108th U.S. Congress. The Check 21 Act took effect one year later on October 28, 2004. The law allows the recipient of the original paper check to create a digital version of the original check, a process known as check truncation, into an electronic format called a "substitute check", thereby eliminating the need for further handling of the physical document. In essence, the recipient bank no longer returns the paper check, but effectively e-mails an image of both sides of the check to the bank it is drawn upon.
A giro transfer, often shortened to giro ,, is a payment transfer from one bank account to another bank account and initiated by the payer, not the payee. The debit card has a similar model. Giros are primarily a European phenomenon; although electronic payment systems such as the Automated Clearing House exist in the United States and Canada, it is not possible to perform third party transfers with them. In the European Union, there is the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) which allows electronic giro or debit card payments in euros to be executed to any euro bank account in the area.
A cheque, or check, is a document that orders a bank to pay a specific amount of money from a person's account to the person in whose name the cheque has been issued. The person writing the cheque, known as the drawer, has a transaction banking account where their money is held. The drawer writes the various details including the monetary amount, date, and a payee on the cheque, and signs it, ordering their bank, known as the drawee, to pay that person or company the amount of money stated.
Bacs Payment Schemes Limited (Bacs), previously known as Bankers' Automated Clearing System, is the organisation with responsibility for the schemes behind the clearing and settlement of UK automated payment methods Direct Debit and Bacs Direct Credit, as well as the provision of managed services for third parties. Bacs became a subsidiary of Pay.UK on 1 May 2018, and as a result of this, overall responsibility for the operations of Direct Debit, Bacs Direct Credit, the Current Account Switch Service, Cash ISA Transfer Service and the Industry Sort Code Directory was handed over to Pay.UK.
The Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS) is real-time gross settlement payment system used for sterling transactions in the United Kingdom.
A bank code is a code assigned by a central bank, a bank supervisory body or a Bankers Association in a country to all its licensed member banks or financial institutions. The rules vary to a great extent between the countries. Also the name of bank codes varies. In some countries the bank codes can be viewed over the internet, but mostly in the local language.
Sort codes are the domestic bank codes used to route money transfers between financial institutions in the United Kingdom, and historically in the Republic of Ireland. They are six-digit hierarchical numerical addresses that specify clearing banks, clearing systems, regions, large financial institutions, groups of financial institutions and ultimately resolve to individual branches. In the UK they continue to be used to route transactions domestically within clearance organisations and to identify accounts, while in the Republic of Ireland they have been deprecated and replaced by the SEPA systems and infrastructure.
Faster Payments Service (FPS) is a United Kingdom banking initiative to reduce payment times between different banks' customer accounts to typically a few seconds, from the three working days that transfers usually take using the long-established BACS system. CHAPS, which was introduced in 1984, provides a limited faster-than-BACS service for "high value" transactions, while FPS is focused on the much larger number of smaller payments, subject to limits set by the individual banks, with some allowing Faster Payments of up to £250,000. Transfer time, while expected to be short, is not guaranteed, nor is it guaranteed that the receiving institution will immediately credit the payee's account.
The Payments Council was an organisation of financial institutions in the United Kingdom, which set strategy for UK payment mechanisms from 2007 until 2015.
Direct Corporate Access (DCA) is part of the Faster Payments Service which provides a same day clearing payment service to UK member banks. Direct Corporate Access (DCA) will provide Banks' business customers with direct access to the Faster Payments Service (FPS) clearing service in a very similar way that Bacstel-IP provides access to BACS.
Vocalink is a payment systems company headquartered in the United Kingdom, created in 2007 from the merger between Voca and LINK. It designs, builds and operates the UK payments infrastructure, which underpins the provision of the Bacs payment system and the UK ATM LINK switching platform covering 65,000 ATMs and the UK Faster Payments systems.