LHV UK joins Bacs Payment System

LHV Bank has announced that it has joined Bacs, the bank-to-bank transfer system which enables Bacs Direct Credit and Direct Debit payment services. Bacs Direct Credit is widely used to pay salaries, benefits, dividends and supplier payments directly into consumer and business bank accounts, and Direct Debit automates the collection of regular payments, the preferred payment method for many UK bill payments. LHV is the first Settling Bacs customer to join the system through Form3’s cloud-native processing platform. The Company will implement the Bacs products in multiple stages. Currently, LHV has enabled Bacs Direct Credit receipt, and the expectation of launching the full scope of Bacs Direct Credit and Direct Debit services is in the near future. Bacs is owned and operated by Pay.UK, the leading UK retail payments authority also responsible for managing the Faster Payment System, which enables 24/7 instant GBP payments between accounts in the UK. LHV joined the Faster Payment System in January 2020. Through LHV’s UK branch, the Company provides banking services to over 200 fintech and crypto companies. LHV UK aims to become a one-stop-shop for all banking needs of its fintech customers. In addition to real-time GBP payments, the Company’s clients have access to leading banking services such as safeguarding and multicurrency accounts, Virtual IBANs, FX, agency banking and SEPA and SEPA Instant payments. In addition to offering banking services, following the acquisition of the Small Medium Enterprises ('SME’) lending business of Bank North in October 2022, LHV UK plans to start servicing SME businesses in early 2023, subject to registration as an Annex 1 financial institution with the Financial Conduct Authority. Erki Kilu, CEO of LHV UK, said: “Joining Bacs’ systems puts us one step closer to becoming a one-stop-shop for fintech companies, enabling access to payment infrastructure and banking services all under one roof.” David Piper, Pay.UK’s Head of Service Lines, said: “A core pillar of Pay.UK’s work is to widen access to our payment systems and to give people and businesses more choice in the way they pay, and are paid. Key to this is increasing involvement in payments, so we’re pleased to welcome LHV.”