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Hong Kong SAR accounts: launch of Faster Payment System for ACH Credit payments is postponed

Last updated: 3 July 2019

Since our last communication sent to you on 15 April 2019 related to the migration of autoPay Out (ACH Credit) payments processing to the Faster Payment System (FPS) in Hong Kong SAR, the industry has received various feedback from the public in the past months, including concerns about payments being rejected by beneficiary banks due to beneficiary name mismatch after the migration.

In view of this, the Hong Kong Association of Banks, together with Hong Kong Interbank Clearing Limited and Hong Kong Monetary Authority, are working on a revised approach to move back the migration timeline to January 2021 or later. The objective is to give you more time to prepare for the change regarding data quality improvement and technical development.

The details on the new approach and timeline will be further communicated in due course. In the meantime, the current clearing system (ECG autocredit) will continue processing your autoPay Out payments until further notice.

What this means for you 

1. The earlier migration date of 15 July 2019 previously communicated to you is no longer applicable.
2. Your ACH Credit payments experience will remain the same as today and will continue to be processed via the existing clearing system (ECG autocredit) until further notice.  
3. Payment file instruction formatting, cut-off times, value dates, processing cycles, reporting, etc. will remain the same. 

What you should do

To get yourself prepared for the migration, we recommend that when you onboard a new payee (e.g. vendor, employee), you make a record of the beneficiary information and verify against the information on the beneficiary’s banking statement. The beneficiary information in your record should be identical to that on the beneficiary’s bank statements.

Update on ACH Debit payment processing under FPS

With a view to improving our payment infrastructure in Hong Kong, the existing autoPay In (also known as Direct Debit) payment infrastructure is planned to be migrated to FPS in 2020. The tentative implementation timeline is scheduled for the second quarter of 2020. To make sure you’re prepared for this migration, we will advise you on the specific updates and changes in the coming months.

Find out more

If you have any questions, please contact your local HSBCnet Support Centre.

 

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