Business and payment services

We offer a range of business services to help you manage your business in the UK or abroad.

Accepting and making payments

As a business owner, it's important to reduce costs and save time so you can focus on increasing your sales. Take a look at our Payment Services tab for more information.

Overseas markets

If your business is considering, or actively involved in, overseas markets, we can provide a range of services to enable your business to trade abroad efficiently and securely.

As an importer you will want to make sure that goods or services will be delivered in the form and at the time you specified in the order.

As an exporter it is important that you receive timely payment for the goods or services you supply.

We also offer a range of interest rate products to manage interest rate risk for your borrowing requirements.

Our banking managers will provide you with all the assistance you need to trade efficiently and securely with your trading partners abroad.

We have a number of ways to help you make and receive payments quickly, efficiently and securely—in the UK or internationally.

UK payments

• CHAPS (Clearing House Automated Payments System)—guaranteed payments are transferred between UK banks on the same day.

• Faster Payments Service (FPS)—a new system which speeds up the way electronic payments are made and received in the UK. As a business customer, you can make almost real time payments (usually within two hours but often within seconds) to or from your account via .

Payments in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)

SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) allows you to make payments easily and inexpensively to any other Single Euro Payment Area country.

You can make SEPA Credit Transfers through  from the following accounts:

• Business Current Accounts

• Client Accounts

• Personal Current Accounts of business customers

• Personal Current Account

How to make a SEPA Credit Transfer

To make a SEPA Credit Transfer, simply select the ‘SEPA Credit Transfer’ drop down option from the ‘Payments’ section on .

How to receive a SEPA Credit Transfer

If you wish to receive payments in Euros, you should ensure that you give the remitter your International Bank Account Number (IBAN) and Bank Identifier Code (BIC), as they are mandatory for SEPA payments. This information should be included on any invoices that you issue. You can find your IBAN and BIC on your statement or the ‘Account details’ screen on  .

Countries included in the Single Euro Payment Area

The SEPA Community consists of the 27 countries of the European Union:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom.

As well as:

Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland

SEPA relates to Euro payments only. Payments in other currencies in and outside of the SEPA community are unaffected.

Payments worldwide

SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a high-speed secure international payment system to make payments or receive funds anywhere in the world.

For more information on our range of payment services, call your Business Relationship Manager, or contact our .