UK Payments Administration

File:UKPA logo.jpg

The UK Payments Administration Ltd (UKPA) (previously APACS, the Association for Payment Clearing Services) is a United Kingdom trade organisation that brings together all payment systems organisations and gives banks, building societies and card issuers a forum where they can work together on non-competitive issues. It covers most forms of payments within the UK including cash, credit cards, debit cards, cheques, and automated payments such as direct debits, salary payments and online/phone transactions.

It has been responsible for the creation of rules regarding customer liability in cases of card and cheque fraud and starting in 2004 oversaw and guided the transition of debit cards to Chip and PIN.

UKPA was created on the July 6, 2009, as a direct successor of the 'Association for Payment Clearing Services' (APACS) to act as a portal company for each of the respective sectors of UK payment services such as BACS, CHAPS, the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company and other businesses.

Standards

The UKPA standards define both procedural and technical practice for:

• Debits (including cheques)
• Standing order mandates
• Coin packaging and banknote wrappers
• Magnetic media interchange
• Interchange data formats
• EFTPOS device communications
• Other services

UKPA members

• Bank of America
• Bank of England
• Bank of Ireland
• Bank of Scotland
• Barclays Bank
• Capital One
• Citigroup
• Co-operative Bank
• Deutsche Bank

• DnB NOR Bank
• Egg
• GE Capital
• HFC Bank
• HSBC
• JPMorgan
• Lloyds TSB
• MBNA
• Morgan Stanley

• NAB
• Nationwide Building Society
• National Westminster Bank
• Northern Rock
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• Royal Mail
• Santander
• Standard Chartered Bank
• Wachovia

Initiatives

In 1994 APACS commissioned BACS Limited to develop and deliver a networked service known as IBDE (Inter-Bank Data Exchange) to facilitate the clearance of cheques between the member banks.

In the late 1990s — in an effort to counter the growing problem of 'skimming' which is fraudulently copying a credit card for criminal purposes — APACS pioneered the development of credit cards containing a computer chip. The early APACS work proved the viability of 'chip cards', and helped in the creation of the common EMV (Europay, Mastercard, VISA) standards for such cards.

In December 2005, the association of banks started the Faster Payments Service initiative to improve the speed of lower value consumer and business transactions, to be used in parallel with the CHAPS and Bacs systems.

As APACS, it managed Card Watch, a UK banking industry initiative that aimed to raise awareness of card fraud prevention, now superseded by Financial Fraud Action UK.

See also

• Payments Council, payments industry body that sets strategy for UK payments

External links

• UKPA official website
• Cheque and Credit Clearing Company - the organisation that manages cheque clearing in the UK
• Financial Fraud Action UK