Will You Get Paid On Friday?
Many UK workers will be waking up to a potential nasty surprise on Friday morning with news that there has been a problem with the UK’s BACS system (an abbreviation for Bankers Automated Clearing Services). This is the service which allows wages and other payments to be transferred from third parties, directly into the recipients personal bank account.
The problem is believed to have effected some 400,000 people, due to a glitch with the system, which has been working much slower than usual. People effected by the delay should receive their funds on Monday, but as so many people have direct debits in place now a days, there may be a number of knock on issues.
Even though the banking industry are trying to put emergency procedures in place, many people may either have no funds available for the weekend, and / or not be able to cover regular direct debits from their bank accounts. There is then the problem of overdraft charges, interest charges, etc - which are never as easy to reclaim from financial institutions.
While similar instances have occurred in the past, there have historically been very few issues with the BACS system, which processes millions of payments a week. It does however highlight the fact that we rely more and more upon electronic systems which are very difficult to support if they go wrong.
For many in the UK, this weekend may well be a little longer, and little more uncomfortable than usual!
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