

What are the pros and cons of a sweep account? Instead of channelling money into an investment or savings account, the sweep payment can be sent to pay down debt. When consumers are in danger of falling into overdrawn funds, a sweep payment can automatically transfer money from another account to keep the balance above zero.Ī third potential use of sweep payments is in repaying debt, allowing end users to pay back loans with excess funds.

Apps like Chip and Plum use open banking data to apply this same concept to savings accounts to maximise earnings.Ī bank account sweep facility could be used to prevent overdrafts. When your balance exceeds this amount, the excess will be automatically transferred to a different, higher-interest account.
#Sweep account definition manual#
It provides an automatic way to ensure that your money is earning as much interest as possible, without manual monitoring.įor example, imagine that you set up a sweep account with a minimum amount of £3,000. If a customer opens a sweep account with a brokerage firm, any excess funds are transferred into the account that earns higher interest at the end of each day. There are several ways to take advantage of sweeping, starting with investing. Instead, the customer agrees on a set payment parameter and the transfers are automatically initiated. The CMA’s ruling in favour of open banking means that VRPs can now be used to allow automatic transfer of funds between accounts without the customer needing to authorise every single transaction. With the sweeping payments, customers facilitate this automatic recurring transfer between their own accounts. Also called me-to-me, these types of payments are similar to Direct Debit payments, which allow businesses to automatically collect payments on a recurring basis. Sweeping is the movement of money when it is automatically transferred between two of a customer’s own accounts. But what exactly does this all mean to the average account holder? Here’s a breakdown of the sweeping payments meaning, and what a bank account sweep facility can be used for. This means that the UK’s nine biggest banks can now use VRPs as their mechanism for sweeping payments. In July 2021, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ruled in favour of the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) to authorise Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs).
