Before you do either of the two obvious things — ask them to send it again, or ring your bank convinced something has been blocked — read this. Asking for a resend is how people end up chasing two payments instead of one. Ringing the bank while you still have no idea what happened mostly buys you a fright and a wasted afternoon.
A payment that says sent and has not landed is usually sitting behind a limit, and the limit is rarely the one you were told about. Sending caps get published. The conditions on the receiving end get a single line in a help page, if that.
That asymmetry is the whole problem. The buyer can see their own screen and nothing else; you can see your account and nothing else; the cap that actually decided the outcome sits between the two, on a page neither of you opened.
What follows is UK practice only, quoted from the scheme operator and two banks' own public pages, checked 2026-09-20. The exchange side of your limits — how much the platform itself lets you move — is a separate system, covered in withdrawal limits and how to raise them, and not repeated here.
Everything below describes the UK's Faster Payments System and two UK banks' published terms. Payment schemes, caps and consumer protections differ completely from country to country, so don't carry these numbers abroad. The Gate references are for regions where the service is currently allowed and local law permits it; if your region or the relevant product is restricted, don't sign up or use it, and don't work around limits with a VPN or false residency details. General information, not legal or financial advice.
Three caps, and only one of them is famous
The number most people have heard is the scheme number, and it is enormous.
Pay.UK, which runs the system, states on its transaction limits page that "It is now possible to send individual payments of up to £1 million using the Faster Payments System". The sentence that matters more sits right beside it: "those organisations offering the service can set their own limits, depending on how the payment is sent". So the million is a ceiling for the scheme, not an entitlement for anybody using it.
Layer two is what each institution does with that freedom. Nationwide's payment and transfer limits page states that "you can generally make payments of up to £100,000 per transaction, up to a £100,000 overall daily limit", and adds that "The overall daily limit resets every day at midnight UK time". One bank, one tenth of the scheme maximum, plus a clock you need to know about if a payment failed late in the evening.
Layer three is the one that catches sellers, and it is aimed squarely at you. The same Nationwide page limits payments to a new or infrequently paid payee to "£25,000 per day". Read that as the bank's view of the situation you are in: an account it has never sent money to before, receiving a sum from someone who has just met you online. A quarter of the ordinary cap, and it applies precisely on the first trade, which is the trade where nobody has any patience.
Then there is the receiving side, which almost nobody writes about. Barclays' Faster Payments help page explains that arrival depends on the receiving bank also using the service and on the amount falling within limits — a condition, not a promise. Same page, on timing: "When you send a Faster Payment, it'll arrive almost immediately, but sometimes in up to two hours." Almost immediately is the headline everyone remembers; up to two hours is the part that decides whether you should be worried yet.
Three caps and one condition on top of them, every one set by an institution you are not a customer of. You can see none of them from where you are standing.
A cap is not a freeze, and confusing them costs days
This is the easiest wrong turn to take. Money doesn't arrive, the word "blocked" enters someone's head, and the next two days go on phone calls to the wrong department.
The distinction is blunt. A cap stops this payment: too big for a daily allowance or too big for a payee the bank doesn't know, so it doesn't go through and the sender's money stays with the sender. Your account is fine — a smaller amount from the same person would very likely land. A restricted account stops everything: it doesn't matter who sends what, and there is usually a visible state change to go with it.
Which means the test is short. If a small payment gets through and your card still works, you are dealing with a limit. If nothing moves at all, you are on the other road, and that one is mapped in frozen cards: why it happens, how to prevent it, what to do.
There is a third case people fold into the same worry: the money does arrive, and then something goes wrong afterwards. Different question entirely, answered in can money already in your account still be taken back?. Keep the three apart and you will at least ring the right number.
What is actually available to you
Short list, all of it legitimate, none of it requiring a favour from anyone.
- Get the sending bank's current figures from the bank itself. Since each institution sets its own limits, the only figure worth having is the one published by the bank the money is coming from. The buyer can read it in thirty seconds. If they won't, that tells you something on its own.
- Assume the new-payee cap applies until proven otherwise. On a first trade with a first-time payer, size the trade under the smallest plausible cap rather than the headline one. The stronger version of that rule: keep a first trade small enough that no cap can plausibly be in the way, and let the limits reveal themselves on someone else's time.
- Mind the reset clock. If a daily allowance is the obstacle, it clears — Nationwide's page puts its own reset at midnight UK time. Waiting out a clock is a real option, and it is the cheapest one.
- Keep the layers separate. Exchange withdrawal allowances, the merchant's per-order limits and the bank's payment caps are three unrelated systems, and only one of them is stopping you at any given moment. For pacing, there's the arrival time and limits lookup; the full sell-side walkthrough is in cashing out to your bank account.
One thing stays off the list permanently: splitting an amount into pieces to slip under a cap. Limits aren't a puzzle set for you to solve, that pattern is the most recognisable shape in any monitoring system, and you generally don't know whose money you are helping to rearrange. If the sum is genuinely too large, the payer's bank has a published route for that and it is theirs to take.
What this page can't tell you: your own bank's incoming caps, whether a blocked payment comes back in an hour or a week, and what any of this looks like outside the UK. I found no source I'd be willing to quote on those, so they stay unwritten.
FAQ
Is there one maximum for an instant bank transfer?
No. Pay.UK's transaction limits page states that it is now possible to send individual payments of up to £1 million using the Faster Payments System, and in the same breath that the organisations offering the service can set their own limits, depending on how the payment is sent. The scheme number is a ceiling; the number that governs your payment is whatever the sending institution currently publishes. Checked September 2026.
Why would a first payment be capped lower than later ones?
Because several banks treat an unfamiliar payee as a separate, smaller category. Nationwide's payment and transfer limits page states that you can generally make payments of up to £100,000 per transaction, up to a £100,000 overall daily limit, while payments to a new or infrequently paid payee are limited to £25,000 per day. It also states that the overall daily limit resets every day at midnight UK time. Other institutions set their own figures, so check the page of the bank actually sending the money. Checked September 2026.
It says sent and nothing has arrived. How long before that is strange?
Barclays' Faster Payments help page states that when you send a Faster Payment it'll arrive almost immediately, but sometimes in up to two hours. Past that window the question belongs to the sending bank; the person waiting cannot settle it. I found no first-hand source describing how or when a blocked payment is returned, so this page does not guess at it.
Sources checked 2026-09-20. "It is now possible to send individual payments of up to £1 million using the Faster Payments System" and "those organisations offering the service can set their own limits, depending on how the payment is sent" are from Pay.UK's Faster Payment System transaction limits page, which carries no published last-updated date, so it is cited as read in September 2026. "you can generally make payments of up to £100,000 per transaction, up to a £100,000 overall daily limit", "The overall daily limit resets every day at midnight UK time" and the "£25,000 per day" figure for new or infrequently paid payees are from Nationwide's payment and transfer limits page. "When you send a Faster Payment, it'll arrive almost immediately, but sometimes in up to two hours" is from Barclays' Faster Payments help page; the same page's point that arrival depends on the receiving bank using the service and the amount being within limits is paraphrased here rather than quoted. All figures describe the cited pages on the date checked; limits are set by each institution, change without much announcement, and differ entirely outside the UK, so treat the current page of the bank concerned as authoritative. This article was compiled from public official documentation. No bank or exchange account was signed into, no transfer was initiated or received, and no returned or blocked payment was experienced while writing it. The parts touching bank controls and account restrictions are general information, not legal advice.