APACS

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APACS, (Association for Payment Clearing Services) the UK payments association is the trade body that gives banks, building societies and card issuers a forum where they can work together on non-competitive issues. They manage the way that businesses and individuals in the UK move their money around – this covers cash, credit and debit cards, cheques and automated payments such as direct debits, salary payments and online/phone transactions. They champion the fight against banking fraud and are the people who have been working to give consumers greater card fraud protection by introducing chip and PIN.


APACS 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


APACS members:


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 1990's - 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.

[edit] References

  • [1] APACS website

[edit] External links

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