Further details about CHAPS daily settlement data

CHAPS data definitions

Overview

CHAPS is the UK’s high-value payment system which provides efficient, settlement risk-free and irrevocable payments. It is used to settle high-value wholesale payments as well as time-critical, lower-value payments. Payment obligations between CHAPS Direct Participants are settled individually on a gross basis in RTGS. 

This dataset provides the daily total volume and value of payments settled in CHAPS, broken down by ISO 20022 message type. New data is published each month for the previous month. 

A historic dataset has been published to provide the aggregated monthly total for CHAPS volume and value of payments dating back to 1990.  A series for CHAPS Euro which was in operation between 4 January 1999 and 16 May 2008 has also been published. It provided an RTGS system carrying euro payments between CHAPS Euro members and to institutions addressable across the TARGET infrastructure. Domestic euro payments were those exchanged between members of the CHAPS Euro scheme and settled across accounts at the Bank of England whereas TARGET payments were those cross-border payments settled across the European Central Bank's interlinking system which connected the 19 euro RTGS systems. The value of CHAPS Euro payments are shown as £ sterling equivalent. This series will no longer be published after June 2025.

Definitions of message types 

This dataset is broken down by ISO 20022 message type. ISO 20022 is an established international financial services messaging standard. The definition of each message type is below:

pacs.004 – return payments 

pacs.008 – customer credit transfers 

pacs.009 – financial institution transfer

Please note: pacs.009 payments include RTGS funding and defunding payments. These are payments instructed by RTGS account holders to add or remove funds from their non-CHAPS accounts. 

Further details 

For an introduction to the UK’s Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service please visit Payment and settlement.

For further information on the CHAPS high-value payment system please visit CHAPS.

For payment and settlement statistics please visit  Payment and settlement statistics.

Contact us 

For enquiries about CHAPS statistics: please contact the Bank of England on 020 3461 4878 or by email enquiries@bankofengland.co.uk.

This page was last updated 28 July 2025