Settlement Glossary
CHAPS
CHAPS is the UK's high-value payment system, operated by the Bank of England, which settles sterling payments individually and irrevocably in central bank money the same day.
CHAPS is the UK’s equivalent of Fedwire: the real-time gross settlement rail where sterling payments settle one at a time, immediately and irrevocably, in central bank money. Unusually among major economies, the central bank runs it directly; the Bank of England has operated CHAPS itself since 2017, treating the system as critical national infrastructure.
The numbers show the wholesale shape. CHAPS settled £93.9 trillion in 2025, averaging £371 billion per business day, but across only about 210,000 daily payments. The average payment is £1.8 million; the median is a few thousand pounds. The gap tells you who uses it: banks settling market obligations and corporates moving treasury balances at one end, and at the other, solicitors completing house purchases, the one CHAPS payment most Britons ever make. Some 94% of CHAPS payments are actually £1 million or less, meaning they could in principle travel on Faster Payments instead; they use CHAPS when the payer wants guaranteed same-day settlement with finality and no scheme limit.
Where it sits in the UK stack
The UK divides its account-to-account payments cleanly. Faster Payments handles the instant, sub-£1 million retail tier around the clock. Bacs handles slow, cheap batch flows like payroll and direct debits. CHAPS takes everything that is too large, too urgent, or too consequential for either: unlimited value, same-day, final. Its constraint is the operating day: CHAPS keeps business hours and closes on weekends, so a Friday-evening obligation waits for Monday, a familiar cut-off problem that continuous rails were built to remove.
The Bank of England’s renewed RTGS platform, RT2, went live in 2025 with ISO 20022 messaging and is designed to extend operating hours and widen access over time, including for non-bank payment firms.
Reach
CHAPS settles only sterling within the UK; the sterling leg of an international payment starts or ends there, with the cross-border journey handled by correspondent banking or an alternative network.
Common questions
- What is a CHAPS payment?
- A CHAPS payment is a same-day sterling transfer settled through the Bank of England's high-value payment system. Each payment settles individually in central bank money with immediate finality, which is why CHAPS is the standard rail for house purchases, corporate treasury moves, and financial market obligations where the money must arrive today and cannot bounce.
- How much value does CHAPS settle?
- CHAPS settled £93.9 trillion in 2025, an average of about £371 billion each business day across roughly 210,000 daily payments, according to Bank of England and Pay.UK statistics. The average payment was £1.8 million, though the median was under £5,000, because the system carries everything from interbank obligations to individual property completions.
- Is there a limit on CHAPS payments?
- No. CHAPS has no upper transaction limit, which distinguishes it from Faster Payments' £1 million ceiling. The trade-offs are cost, since banks typically charge a fee measured in tens of pounds, and hours, since CHAPS operates on business days rather than around the clock.
Related terms
Sources
Last reviewed 2026-07-16