Lazy firms forced to revert to paying staff cash

Thousands of UK employers may be forced to pay their staff by cash or cheque after failing to upgrade to a new system for paying direct debits and salaries.

On 1 January, the old Bacs payment system was switched off and replaced with Bacstel-IP, which is designed to cope with more transactions.
Employers have been warned for several years to migrate to the new system, but thousands failed to do so, according to processing company Voca, which maintains the Bacs network.

Most of the 102,000 UK companies using the Bacs payment system upgraded in good time, but around 5,000 firms are thought to have delayed the upgrade until December.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

Email(Required)

OptOut

From time to time, we will send you emails about selected products, events and services from Personnel Today and OHW+ - but you can choose to opt-out at any time. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please tick this box.

Name

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Δ

The move to Bacstel-IP marks the end of a two-and-a-half year overhaul of the Bacs system.

Employers that missed the deadline have been advised to contact their ‘sponsoring’ bank.