More than 18 months after a new faster payments service was introduced by the UK's banking industry, Nationwide is still allowing only 10% of its customers to use it - and only to send £10 a time.
The £300m faster payments service was developed by 13 UK banks to enable same-day delivery of money transfers worth up to £10,000 to a different bank and was launched in May 2008. It previously took up to four days. Banks made an estimated £30m from interest earned during the delay in 2007.
However, Nationwide said last week it was still testing the system to ensure it was safe for customers to use. It said: "Because we wanted to ensure everything was operating as it should, and effectively we are running a test period, we chose the sort code - 07-02-46 - with the smallest number of customers. Our technology has made it harder than expected to incorporate faster payments but it is something we are working on."
Sunday Times reader Rob Walker was far from impressed when he tried to transfer the value of his Nationwide bond, which matured in September. He asked for the money to be transferred to an account at another bank three weeks before maturity to allow time for processing but was later told Nationwide could not guarantee receipt of a cheque less than four weeks after maturity.
He said: "Add that to the date I called and that's seven weeks' notice."
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In the end, Walker went to a Nationwide branch and was issued with a cheque, which took several days to clear at his own bank.
Nationwide said last week: "Your reader is correct that we only guarantee turnround within four weeks but in reality we use a target of seven days and this has not been missed for years and years.
"We are changing our literature to show that the timescale we guarantee is two to three weeks very soon. Once we are able to roll out the faster payments service to all our current account customers, we will also offer it to savings customers."
The Office of Fair Trading, acting on consumers' complaints, told the banks in 2005 to make the payment system faster.
Bank customers can make one-off payments by telephone or via the internet. In 2007, there were 124m internet and phone payments made at an average value of £303. That number is expected to rise to 300m in 10 years.
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HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Northern Bank allow same-day payments to rival banks of up to £10,000. Lloyds and Bank of Scotland retail customers can send up to £2,500 and Clydesdale allows up to £500. Co-operative and the Santander-owned Alliance & Leicester only allow £250.