Sending a large sum overseas: limits, source of funds checks and ways to cut costs

When you are moving a large sum, whether a house deposit to a solicitor, money to buy a property abroad, or savings for a move overseas, the ordinary ways of sending money are not always the right ones. CHAPS is the UK's same-day payment system for high-value transfers, such as paying a deposit for a property, and it usually involves a fee¹. High-value transactions are processed through the Bank of England's settlement service via CHAPS, which the Bank describes as a risk-free, instant way of settling big payments such as when you buy a home². It exists for exactly this kind of payment: CHAPS is for high-value transactions such as buying a house³.

If the money needs to arrive in another currency, in an overseas account, a different route is needed. An international money transfer allows people to send funds from a UK account to an account in a different country⁴, and this is where exchange rate margins and fees matter most: a cross-border transfer can take three to five days, with up to 6% chewed up in fees⁵. This page explains both routes, what they cost, what your bank may ask you to prove about where the money came from, and what protection exists if something goes wrong.

Two ways to move a large sum: CHAPS and spot transfers

The first question is what the money needs to do. If it is staying in sterling and moving between UK accounts, CHAPS is the system built for the job. It is a same-day payment system used for high-value transfers, such as paying a deposit for a property, and it often involves a fee¹. The Bank of England explains that high-value transactions are processed in its real-time gross settlement service via CHAPS, settling instantly and finally between banks².

If the money is going abroad, or needs to arrive in a foreign currency, you are making an international money transfer: sending funds from a UK account to an account in a different country⁴. A spot transfer is the simplest form of this, converting and sending at the exchange rate available on the day. The costs sit in two places: the provider's stated fee, and the margin it adds to the exchange rate. A parliamentary report on cross-border payments noted that such a transfer takes three to five days, with up to 6% chewed up in fees⁵. On a large sum, even a small percentage margin adds up to a serious amount of money, so the rate matters more than the headline fee.

For most people the two routes work together: a CHAPS payment to a solicitor for a UK completion, or a spot transfer, often arranged through a specialist provider or broker, for a purchase abroad. The pages on how international payments work, the ways to send money abroad and exchange rates and margins cover each route in more detail.

No upper limit on a CHAPS payment

CHAPS has no upper limit on the amount you can send. That is its purpose: it exists for sums too large for the everyday payment systems. By comparison, each bank and building society sets its own limit on the amount that can be sent using Faster Payments¹⁰, so a very large ordinary transfer may simply not be possible that way. Most banks advise using CHAPS for payments of more than £25,000⁶.

The sums that flow through the system show the scale it is built for. The average value of a retail and commercial CHAPS transaction amounted to £627,298 in 2023¹¹. In 2025 there were 53.3 million CHAPS payments processed, worth a total of £93.9 trillion, yet CHAPS accounted for just 0.1% of the total volume of payments in the UK¹². In other words, it is a small number of very large payments.

Private individuals seldom make CHAPS payments themselves⁷: it is typically a solicitor or licensed conveyancer who sends the completion money. But individuals do initiate them, and one ombudsman case involved a customer asking their bank to send £135,000 to the seller's solicitors' client account¹³. If you are asked to arrange a CHAPS payment yourself, for example for an auction purchase or a private sale, your bank will take the instruction and start the payment on your behalf.

CHAPS fees: usually charged to send, sometimes to receive

CHAPS is not free. You can pay with a CHAPS payment but there will be a charge, so check with your bank⁸. Each bank sets its own fee, and it can differ by how you ask for the payment: in a branch, by phone or online. Because the fee is fixed rather than a percentage, it is a small proportion of a very large payment, but it is worth confirming the exact amount before you instruct.

Receiving banks sometimes charge too, particularly for payments arriving from abroad, and the sender can sometimes choose who pays the intermediary charges. The overall cost of moving money across borders is worth measuring in total: up to 6% of a cross-border transfer can be chewed up in fees⁵. For context on how foreign exchange fees work elsewhere, using a debit card abroad typically attracts a foreign exchange fee of often around 3% of the transaction amount¹⁴, and credit cards typically charge up to 2.99% each time you use one abroad¹⁵. A specialist provider or broker quoting a rate for a large transfer should be able to tell you the total cost in the receiving currency, which is the only figure that lets you compare offers properly. The page on payment limits covers caps on other systems, and banks vs specialist providers compares the two approaches.

How long a CHAPS payment takes: same day, before the cut-off

A CHAPS payment made before the cut-off arrives the same working day. HM Revenue and Customs notes that if you pay by CHAPS or Faster Payments, you can submit your payment on the same or next day¹⁶, and for CHAPS the point is that the money settles the same day it is started. The system opens for business at 6.00am each day and payments usually have to be started by 4.00pm⁷.

The cut-off is not a single national time: it depends on your bank and on how you make the request. The published opening and start times come from the ombudsman's own guidance, which describes CHAPS opening at 6.00am with payments usually started by 4.00pm⁷. If you are cutting it fine on a completion day, ask your bank for its cut-off for the channel you will use, and have the recipient's details checked in advance. The page on how long payments take covers cut-off times and delays more generally.

CHAPS is sterling only: sending in another currency

CHAPS payments are in pounds sterling. It is a sterling settlement system, used for high-value transactions such as buying a house³. If you need to send money in another currency, or to an account outside the UK, you need an international payment instead: the FCA's rules for banks describe the service of initiating a payment in a currency other than a currency of the United Kingdom to a payee outside the United Kingdom²⁰.

This is where the exchange rate becomes the biggest cost on a large sum. The margin a provider adds to the mid-market rate is a percentage, so it scales with the amount: the same margin that costs a few pounds on a holiday transfer costs thousands on a property purchase. Typical foreign exchange fees elsewhere in banking give a sense of the scale: around 3% on debit card spending abroad¹⁴ and up to 2.99% per credit card transaction¹⁵. The pages on exchange rates, Swift payments and fixing a rate with a forward contract explain how quotes and rate guarantees work.

One cost is specific to pension money. If you are moving a UK pension overseas rather than a bank balance, transferring to a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme outside the EEA will trigger a 25% UK overseas transfer charge²¹. The legislation sets the charge at 25% of the transferred value where the overseas transfer charge arises²². Anyone considering this route needs specialist pension advice, because the charge can take a quarter of the sum.

Where your bank may restrict CHAPS payments

Not every institution offers CHAPS on the same terms. The main banks and larger building societies are direct members of CHAPS, and there are also over 400 indirect members, typically smaller banks and building societies, who have access to the system through a direct member¹³. So a small building society can usually send a CHAPS payment, but it does so through another institution, which can mean an earlier cut-off or a different process.

How you can instruct the payment also varies: some banks only allow CHAPS payments to be made in branch or via post⁶. If your only route is a branch visit, the practical deadline is the branch's own cut-off, not the system's. It is worth checking this well before the day you need the money to move.

For large payments, banks also apply security and source of funds checks. A request to move a very large sum, especially to a new payee or abroad, can trigger identity verification and questions about where the money came from. The page on identity and security checks when sending covers what to expect and why payments are sometimes held. Separately, the name-checking service Confirmation of Payee was introduced when the regulator directed the UK's six largest banking groups to introduce it over Faster Payments and CHAPS transactions in 2020²³, which helps catch mistyped or manipulated account details before the money leaves.

A CHAPS payment cannot be reversed

The defining feature of CHAPS is that settlement is final. The Bank of England describes it as a risk-free, instant way of settling big payments such as when you buy a home²: once the payment has settled, the money has moved and the sending bank cannot claw it back. This is precisely what makes it suitable for property completion, where the recipient needs certainty, and precisely why it is a target for fraudsters. £22.5m of bank transfer scam losses in 2021 related to payments made by CHAPS⁶.

Because there is no undo, the checks happen before the payment, not after. That means verifying the recipient's account details directly with them, using a number you have looked up independently, and being suspicious of any last-minute change of bank details, a classic feature of conveyancing fraud. If a payment has gone wrong, the page on tracing, cancelling or recalling a payment explains what may still be possible, and scams involving payments abroad covers the warning signs.

Scams on large payments and the £85,000 refund cap

Since 7 October 2024, banks and other payment providers have had to refund victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud, where a person is tricked into sending money themselves¹. The rules require banks and other payment service providers to reimburse you up to a maximum of £85,000 if you are the victim of a scam, and if they do decide to reimburse you they may deduct an excess of up to £100 for each scam claim⁹. The Bank of England, as the operator of CHAPS, has also set the maximum level for CHAPS APP scams at £85,000 per claim²⁴, and the regulator's consolidated policy statement confirms the CHAPS reimbursement requirement²⁵.

The cap has a history worth knowing. When the mandatory reimbursement level was first set, in December 2023, it was £415,000 per claim²⁶, a figure aligned with the Financial Ombudsman's maximum reimbursement at the time²⁷. It was then reduced from £415,000 to £85,000²⁸, and the regulator confirmed the reduction of the maximum level for Faster Payments APP scams to £85,000 per claim²⁴. The change was contested: the PSR's analysis shows that an £85,000 cap will see around 90% of total APP scams by value reimbursed, whereas 98% of the value of APP scams would have been protected under a £415,000 cap¹¹. The average value of all APP scams over £85,000 was £175,000 in 2023¹¹, which means the largest property-deposit scams fall well above the cap. Someone tricked into sending £200,000 by CHAPS could recover £85,000 at most, and the excess of up to £100 may also be deducted⁹.

The scope limits matter just as much as the cap. The rules cover most transfers between UK bank and other accounts⁹: to be eligible you must have made a transfer as part of a scam on or after 7 October 2024, made the transfer to another UK account, and told the bank or payment service provider no more than 13 months after the last payment⁹. Only UK bank transfers are covered, not payments to foreign accounts or other payment methods such as card payments²⁹. When the rules were first announced, international payments and CHAPS transactions were out of scope of the mandatory requirement³⁰, and the Bank of England subsequently brought CHAPS within an equivalent requirement of its own²⁴. The regulator's work on APP scams centres on the two payment systems consumers use when making push payments, CHAPS and Faster Payments³¹. The FCA confirms that if you are eligible, your payment service provider must refund you up to £85,000³², and the same cap applies to newer routes such as Pay by Bank³³.

Several details of the scheme were consulted on before landing where they have. The original consultation proposed reimbursement on all payments over £100, subject to an excess of no more than £35³⁴; the excess was subsequently set at up to £100 for each scam claim⁹, and the regulator's reimbursement dashboard records claims by reference to the £100 excess and the £85,000 maximum cap³⁵. Independent guidance confirms the maximum amount you can claim back is £85,000³⁶, and the same figure appears in debt charity guidance on dealing with fraud³⁷. The consultations on the excess and maximum reimbursement level for Faster Payments, and on a maximum level for CHAPS on behalf of the Bank of England, set the current position³⁸, alongside the consultation on the consumer standard of caution, which governs when a victim's own behaviour, such as ignoring warnings, can affect a claim³⁹.

When a payment firm fails

If you are using a specialist provider or broker rather than a bank, a different protection applies to the money in transit. Payment firms that are not banks must safeguard customers' funds, keeping them separate from their own money. Should a money transfer company go out of business, there is no limit to the amount you can get back from safeguarded funds, unlike with banks, which are under the FSCS limit⁴⁰. The trade-off is that recovering safeguarded money can take time and depends on the firm's records being in order, whereas FSCS protection for bank deposits pays out quickly up to its limit. The pages on safeguarding and the FSCS and what happens when a payment firm fails explain both regimes.

Where to get help

If a large payment has gone wrong, the first step is to complain to the bank or provider that made the payment, in writing, and keep a record. If it does not refund you or rejects your claim, you can take the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which deals with complaints about scams and payments, including CHAPS and Faster Payments reimbursement decisions⁹. The ombudsman can look at cases the mandatory rules do not cover, and its decisions bind the firm if you accept them.

The Financial Conduct Authority publishes guidance on fraudulent payments and when a provider must refund up to £85,000³², and the Payment Systems Regulator publishes a reimbursement dashboard showing how firms are handling APP scam claims³⁵. For the mechanics of making a complaint, the page on your rights under the Payment Services Regulations sets out the process, and the scams and fraud guide covers the wider warning signs. If the money was part of a pension transfer abroad, the 25% overseas transfer charge and the transfer itself need regulated pension advice before anything is sent²¹.