Banks were today accused of dragging their feet over the long-awaited introduction of a same-day cash transfer system, with only eight banks out of a possible 70 putting the plan into action.

Millions of customers are being denied the chance to benefit from the new service, which is intended to enable electronic payments, made via the internet or telephone, to be processed in hours, rather than the four days it has taken.

Consumer groups have accused the banking industry of delaying the process because they make millions of pounds in profits from sitting on this cash - £30m a year, according to estimates by the Office of Fair Trading.

Eddy Weatherill of the Independent Banking Advisory Service, a consumer organisation, said: “By dragging their feet the banks can continue to profit. Today’s launch is nothing but a publicity exercise.”

In theory, customers should be able to make one-off payments up to a maximum value of £10,000 over the telephone or via the internet and the money will leave their account and arrive at its destination on the same day. From June 6 the speeded-up service will be extended to standing orders, with a limit of £100,000.

However, only a fraction of payments will be quicker from day one. By 7am on the first day, 898 payments totalling £461,383 were made successfully under the new scheme.

Most high street banks will not roll out the service fully until later this year. Of the biggest, only customers of Royal Bank of Scotland will be able to transfer £10,000 using the faster system from today.

Lloyds TSB will initially allow only some telephone banking customers to send payments using the new system. By June 6 all personal customers will be able to send money through it.

Barclays is capping the amount customers can send using the system at £1. This will rise to £100 by early June and £10,000 by July 16.

HSBC is also limiting the amount that can be sent to £20, in the first week. From June 3 it will be possible to use the system to move up to £10,000.

Most of the other leading players, including Halifax, Nationwide building society, Alliance & Leicester and Northern Rock will initially only accept payments. Abbey said it will introduce the scheme in the next few months.

Apacs, the UK payments association, says that faster payments are being introduced gradually because it does not want to flood the system, causing it to crash. It expects the service to initially cover just 5 per cent of all payments.

By August, 50 per cent of all internet, telephone and standing-order payments should be covered. By the end of the year, almost all internet and telephone payments will be made using the service.

Paul Smee, chief executive of Apacs, said: "Although the initial roll-out will be gradual and some customers may not be using the new service immediately, we expect that in the coming months this will ramp up to enable large numbers of customers to benefit from it."

There have also been warnings that the Faster Payment Service could put consumers at greater risk of fraudulent payments as banks may have less time to detect suspicious transactions.

Stephen Ley, a risk expert at Deloitte & Touche, said the new system would be a “challenge” for banks.

In 2007, there were 124 million internet and phone payments, with an average value of £303.The number of payments is expected to rise to 300 million in 10 years. Around 347 million standing-order payments were made in 2007, and the total is expected to rise to 422 million in a decade, at an average value of £321.

A website has been set up at www.canipayfaster.co.uk to allow people to check whether their bank is set up to receive faster payments.

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