British Army soldiers and Officers have always been paid for their services; even the Romans had a civilian administrator called the 'questor'. Pay was dealt with by a number of varying civilian and military individuals until in 1797 a special Paymasters commission was instituted. The Paymaster and his appointed clerk were the forerunners of the SPS Branch.

In 1878 the Army Pay Department (APD) was established which included Officers from the Control Department and Regimental Paymasters. These Officers were to provide pay departments at each of the 69 Brigade Depots. In 1893 the Military Clerks who assisted these Officers were were formed into the Army Pay Corps (APC).Although under different names the APD and APC formed one branch of the service.In the Boer War the pay system broke down. This was principally because the regimental Officers simple could not deal with the detailed pay requirements and command their men whilst on active service.

In 1912 the Clayton Committee recommended an imaginative proposal that the pay administration be should be based on a two tier system.

Regimental Officers in units paying their men and Paymasters keeping the permanent accounts in fixed Centre Offices (FCPO's) in the United Kingdom where they would remain.

WORLD WAR 1

Fortunately the Clayton system was firmly in place by WW1. The vast amount of work the war produced meant the strength of the APD (aprox 170) and the APC (aprox 400) was not enough. 

By 1918 the additional staff in the FCPO's included 844 Acting Paymasters, 138 lady Superintendents, 11,000 specially enlisted Clerks and 15,000 civilian Clerks.

In 1920 in view of their performance during the War the APD and the APC were granted the title Royal and were amalgamated into a single Corps, The Royal Army Pay Corps.

WORLD WAR 11

WW2 differed from the first in that from the start there were widely dispersed area of operation. Paymasters and their staff accompanied the Field Army wherever it went.

By far the biggest problem was the lack of suitable clerical labour and where to site the Pay Offices.

Pay offices were established in France, and cashiers were located in the Western Desert, North Africa, India with Field Offices attached to the Formations

Back in the UK, the FCPO's had taken into use Boroughs accounting machines to try to cope with the ever expanding number of accounts and increasingly complex regulations. To try to improve the service an RAPC representative  was introduced at Head Quarters level.   The 'Visiting Paymaster' visited each unit once every six months . This was probably the Corps first direct involvement in Unit duties.

DEVELOPMENTS SINCE THE WAR

Between the Wars the traditional source of both officer and Soldier recruitment had been from other Arms. Towards the end of the war, however, the proportion of direct enlistment had greatly increased. In 1946 the RAPC training centre was formed in Aldershot.

Lessons learn in the Korean war meant that by 1954 it was decided that all pay clerk vacancies on Unit Establishment should be filled by RAPC clerks. A year later a Paymaster was included in each major unit instead of a Regimental Officer.

A radical step was taken in the 1950s to maintain Army Pay accounts on Automatic Data Processing (ADP). Male Soldiers accounts were completed during the early 1960s and those for the women's services and the TA followed. The next step was to introduce computer processing for Officers and Soldiers Records of Service.

The advance of technology and the introduction of the Banking Soldier allowed the number of FCPO sites to be reduced to six by 1979.

The advancement of the Corps in these years was remarkable. The Corps demonstrated its use in many conflicts, most notably the Falkland and the Gulf where as well as providing financial service to all three services RAPC personnel were used in Operations Rooms as Watchkeepers, as casualty clearing station personnel, stretcher bearers and in charge of the documentation and the guarding of enemy prisoners.

On 6 April 1992 the Corps was disbanded and its functions absorbed in to the Adjutant General's Corps.