SEPA Instant Payments

Since January 2025, you’ve been receiving payments instantly to your account. This means your balance is updated straight away.

We’ll soon start to roll out payments you can send instantly from your account. These payments will reach whoever you are paying within 10 seconds. We will let you know when these become available through our online services and on our website.

We’re also introducing a new check called ‘Verification of Payee’ from 5 October 2025 for all SEPA payments. This helps protect your money. Verification of Payee will check the name of the account you’re paying with the receiving bank to see if it matches the name you gave us. You can then decide if you still want to go ahead with the payment.

You’ll also be able to set limits on how much money you send through instant payments each day.

If you want more information on SEPA payments or Verification of Payee please visit our Customer Questions and Answers page.

To reflect these changes, we’ve updated our terms and conditions.

We’ve also summarised these changes and you can read the Summary of Changes (PDF, 12 pages, 259KB) for a quick overview.

To accept these changes, you don’t need to do anything. If you don’t want to accept the changes, you have the option, free of charge, to close your account, clearing anything you owe on it first, or let us know you are ending your agreement with us. You can do this by writing to your local branch.

If you have a question, please refer to our Customer Questions and Answers or call us on 0818 664 015 (Monday-Friday 09:00-17:00, excluding bank holidays).

The changes were because of: