The Payment Services Regulations 2009 (PSR) is the UK interpretation of European legislation – the Payment Services Directive (PSD). The PSD is a European Union initiative to support the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and to create a single market for payments across Europe. The regulations come into force in the UK on 1st November 2009.

The changes proposed will, broadly speaking, not affect the services we provide or involve greater commitments for you.

The main focus of the new regulations is consumers and business customers whose annual turnover and/or balance sheet does not exceed €2 million (or sterling equivalent) and which employ fewer than 10 people. However, some of the regulations are applicable to customers regardless of their size. Therefore we have updated our terms and conditions for a number of our products and services, which means the existing terms and conditions applying to your account(s) and the services we provide will be amended with effect from 1st November 2009. Please note that, in accordance with the regulations, we have elected not to apply certain provisions that are more appropriate for consumers and small business customers but not for our larger and more sophisticated customers.

In addition to the changes required as a result of the PSR, we have taken the opportunity to make other changes to our terms and conditions to update them, to correct anomalies and to ensure a uniformity of approach across the range of services we provide. In some cases, we have amended the structure of our terms and conditions.

In future, we will continue to notify you of changes at least 30 days in advance unless the change is to your advantage.

In this case, the change will be made immediately and we will notify you within 30 days after it has taken effect. If you are not happy with our changes, you may terminate the contract within the period referred to in your contract without having to incur any additional cost. If we do not hear from you, the service will continue taking into account the changes we have made.

Please be assured that the day-to-day relationship you currently have with us will not be changing.

For further information, please see our Frequently Asked Questions (PDF,194 kB)

We’re here to help, so if you have questions, please contact us.