A new faster banking system launches today to enable payments to arrive on the day they are made.

Industry body APACS is rolling out its Faster Payments Service, which will allow same-day payments by telephone, online and through standing orders, cutting the processing time from three days to a few hours.

It will also be possible for people to make payments over the phone and internet at any time of the day and on any day of the week.But the launch comes amid reports that experts are concerned the new system could put consumers at greater risk of fraudulent payments as banks may have less time to detect suspicious transactions.

Security analysts are understood to be concerned that fraudsters could complete transactions before banks are able to spot them.

The system will be phased in gradually, with only around 5% of internet and telephone payments being processed by the system from today.

The system will be used to process standing orders from June 6 and it is hoped that at least half of all payments will be processed using it during the summer.

The 13 founding banks, which include the five main current account providers Barclays, Halifax Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland Group, will gradually implement the service for their customers during the coming months.

Two of the banks - Abbey and The Co-operative Bank - will not join the launch tomorrow, but will follow suit within three months. Seven of the banks will allow money to be sent and received from tomorrow, but four will only allow money to be sent, while some are also capping the amount.

HSBC, for example, is limiting the amount of money that can be transferred in the first week to £20.

APACS said the phased in launch will allow it to monitor the system and help police any potential increase in fraud. Sandra Quinn, director of communications for APACS, said: "Fraud has been at the heart of the discussions in designing this system because we have been very conscious over what people think is a greater risk."

She added that the system has capped the payment amount to £10,000, while banks are also stepping up procedures to help combat fraud.
APACS has already said that the introduction of the new system had been a "massively complex project" for everyone involved and was likely to cost the sector several hundreds of millions of pounds.

The system had been due to be introduced by the end of last year, but the launch was postponed when the industry was forced to start from scratch so that all payments would arrive on the day they were made, not just those made early in the day.