Kord launches legal sort code, claims anytime settlement

Kord, a payments and client-onboarding provider for the legal sector, says it has launched a service that lets eligible regulated UK law firms move funds relating to client matters between each other at any time, including weekends, using a dedicated sort code. The service, called Kord Custody, went live around Sunday 4 October 2026, with Kord's announcement published via Finextra on 5 October 2026. Kord describes the sort code, 04-10-26, as the UK's first dedicated to legal transactions.

The pitch is aimed particularly at conveyancers, where payment cut-off times can delay some property completions when funds cannot move outside banking hours. But the claims of instant, round-the-clock settlement and reduced fraud risk come from Kord itself. No independent service-level data, adoption figures or fraud-outcome evidence were available at the time of writing, and the underlying UK payment rails do not all operate continuously. Firms considering the service need to separate what Kord's network does from what the rails beneath it can actually guarantee.

How the service is built

Kord presents Custody as a third-party managed account (TPMA) operated under Kord Pay Limited, aimed at law firms and other regulated businesses. Every account using sort code 04-10-26 belongs, according to Kord, to a regulated firm that has completed Kord's onboarding and verification process. In practice, that is meant to let a solicitor see that a counterparty on the network is a verified regulated firm before sending funds, which Kord positions as a safeguard against impersonation and misdirected payments within that network.

Kord says accounts on 04-10-26 can receive payments through Faster Payments, CHAPS and Bacs, while its wider platform also supports card payments and the Apple Pay and Google Pay digital wallets. Supporting several payment methods is not the same as each of them settling on the same timetable, and that distinction sits at the centre of Kord's "anytime" claim.

What "round the clock" actually covers

Pay.UK, which runs the Faster Payments system, says it is available day and night, 365 days a year, and that a single immediate payment is usually available almost immediately, though it can take up to two hours; separately, Pay.UK says the central infrastructure normally responds to the sending provider within 15 seconds, which is a different measure from the time a recipient actually receives funds. The Faster Payments scheme limit stood at £1m per transaction as at 12 October 2026, though providers can impose lower per-payment or daily limits of their own.

CHAPS works differently. The Bank of England says CHAPS currently operates from 06:00 to 18:00 on working days, that customer payments must reach the system by 17:40, and that individual providers can set earlier deadlines of their own. It has no minimum or maximum scheme payment limit, but it does not run overnight, at weekends or on bank holidays. The Bank of England has separately set out plans to extend CHAPS opening to 01:30 on working days from September 2027 — a future change, not a current one. Kord's public material does not explain which rail, or which internal mechanism, actually carries a Kord-to-Kord transfer outside banking hours.

Kord's claim that firms can transfer funds "at any time, including weekends" is well supported for Faster Payments initiation, but it cannot be read as a blanket statement that every payment route Kord lists settles around the clock.

Conveyancing and fraud: what the claims cover

Kord argues that initiating transfers outside standard hours could ease the particular bottleneck caused by banking cut-offs during a completion. That is a plausible mechanism, but completions are also held up by mortgage lender readiness, searches and chain coordination that have nothing to do with payment-rail hours, and no independent evidence was identified showing that Kord Custody has reduced completion delays or fraud losses in practice. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has said conveyancing presents the greatest inherent money-laundering risk in the legal sector, and that moving money through a UK bank account does not, by itself, establish that funds are legitimate.

Kord also says that combining payment processing, regulated-firm onboarding, counterparty verification and an audit trail reduces opportunities for fraud. Confirming that an account belongs to a regulated, onboarded firm can help address impersonation of a legal practice or payments misdirected to the wrong counterparty within the verified network. It does not establish the source of funds behind a transaction, and it cannot prevent fraud carried out through compromised user credentials or a dishonest insider at a genuinely verified firm. The SRA's own guidance on cybercrime includes a case study in which compromised email instructions led to sale proceeds being paid to a fraudster, and its separate guidance on bogus law firms warns about impersonation and identity theft more broadly. As with the delay-reduction claim, Kord's fraud-reduction proposition has not been independently measured.

Regulatory status and where funds sit

Kord's own terms identify Kord Pay Limited as the TPMA provider and state that it is registered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as a small payment institution under the Payment Services Regulations 2017, with firm reference number 929773. The terms are explicit that Kord Pay is not an authorised payment institution and not an authorised electronic money institution. Kord Pay's terms also say it has applied to the FCA for authorisation as an electronic money institution, and that the application remained undetermined as at 12 October 2026. An application does not amount to authorisation, and the FCA does not generally confirm the status of pending applications publicly. Readers who want to check Kord Pay's current regulatory status should consult the FCA's Financial Services Register directly rather than relying on marketing copy.

Kord's launch announcement and its terms both name ClearBank as providing payment-scheme access and safeguarding for client funds. Kord's Custody product page, however, refers to funds being safeguarded by both ClearBank and Griffin Bank, without explaining how that allocation works or which institution holds funds tied to sort code 04-10-26. That inconsistency was not resolved in the material available and should be clarified by Kord before firms rely on it.

Safeguarding is not the same thing as deposit protection. The FCA has said that money held by non-bank payment providers is not directly protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), and that recovery following a provider's failure can be delayed or reduced once insolvency costs are taken into account. The FCA's strengthened safeguarding rules for payment and e-money firms took effect on 7 May 2026, introducing daily safeguarding checks, monthly regulatory reporting and failure-planning requirements for firms within scope. The SRA's own guidance expects a small payment institution used as a TPMA provider to have voluntarily adopted safeguarding arrangements equivalent to those required of an authorised payment institution. Kord's public terms describe safeguarding arrangements, but independent confirmation of the precise voluntary safeguarding election Kord Pay has made, and how it applies to accounts on 04-10-26, was not located.

What this means for the solicitor's duties

Under the SRA Accounts Rules, a solicitor may only use a TPMA where the arrangement does not result in the firm receiving or holding the client's money, where the client is given specified information about the arrangement, and where the firm obtains regular statements from the provider and checks the transactions on them. These requirements have applied since 25 November 2019.

The SRA has said that money held in a compliant TPMA is not client money under its Accounts Rules, because the solicitor does not receive or hold it — but the firm's wider duty to protect client money and assets continues regardless. Kord's Custody product page describes accounts as being held under the law firm's name, while SRA TPMA guidance expects the money in such an arrangement to be beneficially owned by the third-party provider rather than the firm. Those two descriptions may refer to different things — account labelling against beneficial ownership — but the public wording leaves room for confusion that firms should clarify with Kord before relying on the service.

This guidance and the Accounts Rules apply to firms authorised by the SRA in England and Wales. Kord describes the service as available to eligible regulated law firms across the UK, but the material reviewed did not explain how the service accommodates the separate legal regulators and conveyancing practices in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

What to watch next

Kord has not published a service-level agreement, a median settlement time, transaction or daily limits for conveyancing payments, a pricing schedule, or data on how many firms or how much value has moved through the network since launch. It is also unclear whether a payment can leave the verified Kord network for an unverified account, what happens if a payment is held for compliance review, and who bears a loss if a verified account is later found to be compromised.

Firms weighing up Kord Custody have several things worth checking independently rather than taking from marketing material: Kord Pay's current entry and permissions on the FCA's Financial Services Register, the outcome of its pending electronic money institution application, clarification of which bank safeguards funds tied to sort code 04-10-26, and any published performance or fraud-outcome data once the service has been running for longer. Firms should also satisfy themselves, under SRA Rule 11, that their own client disclosures and statement-checking processes meet the Accounts Rules before routing client funds through any third-party managed account.