The phrase "clear payments" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe payments that have been processed and are no longer pending or outstanding. Example: "Please ensure that all outstanding bills are paid in full in order to have clear payments and avoid any late fees."
In December Congress passed sanctions that, among other measures, impose penalties on foreign banks that clear payments for Iranian oil.
America's crime-busters claim the right to go after anyone who uses its banking system (including indirectly, using "correspondent" banks to clear payments) or plans an illegal scheme on its soil.
Ideally, he said, the government would also streamline the payment clearing process so that vendors on various agency Web sites could clear payments electronically through one source, instead of several.
Soon after the law took effect in 2004, banks started scanning checks to simplify tracking and storing them, and they started using images to clear payments with other banks.
"It was a clear payment for nothing," Mr. Meehan said.
The partnership, which follows a similar deal with Visa earlier this year, will make MasterCard a clear payment option within PayPal, increase PayPal's presence at point-of-sale, and will enable Masterpass MasterCardd's digital wallet) as a payment option for PayPal's Braintree merchants.
The Fed is, in effect, the Treasury's bank, accepting deposits and clearing payments on a daily basis.
Indian officials were quoted in Indian news media this month as saying that they were clearing payments for Iranian oil through the Bundesbank.
But when the air transport association, a lobbying group that also clears payments between carriers on tickets not sold in the United States, pronounced a death sentence on paper tickets three years ago, the idea had doubters.
Indicative of the problems was the drama on Saturday at the main state bank that clears payments between businesses, an organization known as the Zavod za Obracun Placanja, or Zop.
It clears payments, supplies point-of-sale terminals to shops and etches personal data onto the cards it issues on behalf of its customers.Running a payments platform requires specialist skills, says Mr Edwards, so banks are content to outsource the job to a trusted third party.
