BACS and NPA payment services
Our payment services provide a simple method of paying employees. Currently with our full BACS bureau capabilities, we provide our clients direct access to the secure BACS network to originate and terminate payments. Our BACS service allows you to make and receive payments aligned to your payroll securely, without the use of cheques or other costly services through your bank.
How we process your BACS payments
Payroll Direct Credit works seamlessly with your existing payroll operation. We would run the monthly payroll as normal generating a standard BACs payment file this would then be uploaded to the secure RTI BACS payment system.
Security is paramount and there are two levels before payment is made. Following payroll processing you will receive an acceptance report from us detailing the amounts due to each employee. Once you have approved the report an electronic file with all the details is sent to BACS. On your nominated payment day the amounts are then transferred from your account to those of your employees. A full report of all the requested payments is sent to you by BACS confirming the transfers.
The advantages of this system are:
- Direct payment of staff with no cheques or uploading of data to the bank account.
- Complete certainty that employees are paid on time
- Time and cost efficiency
- All payments are supported with BACS RTI hash signatures that are invaluable for promptly resolving potential disputes with HMRC or employees.
Payments with certainty and security
HMRC’s recent best practice advice to employers underlines the importance of the BACS payment system in supporting Government policy reform. Only Direct BACS directly evidences payments to employees, minimising contact between employees and their employers regarding Universal Credit payments. This is because Direct BACS utilises the hash code, linking FPS submissions to BACS payments.
New Payments Architecture
The way businesses and banks pay and get paid is changing rapidly, the payments industry is going through a period of unprecedented change. The New Payments Architecture (NPA) – ‘a new clearing and settlement infrastructure for all UK retail payments it is being developed by Pay.UK and will change the way that payments are processed. It provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to design the standards and rules used to exchange payments data’.
Over the next few years, the NOA will introduce radical changes and exciting new features to the UK payments landscape. The most significant of these changes will be the end of the Bacs three day clearing cycle. Bacs Direct Credits and Direct Debits, as well as Faster Payments, will all be replaced by a new credit transfer instrument which will clear in real time, 24/7, 365 days a year.
For payroll and Bacs bureaux this will involve more comprehensive and onerous operations than the functions currently performed. As a current provider of Bacs Payments solutions will have plans in place to migrate customers across to the new NPA systems for credit transfers of client’s payroll.