What happens when I win a prize?

Winners are notified by email, SMS message, letter or phonecall depending on the prize you won. If you win a Street Prize or get lucky in our weekly £1 Million prize or monthly Postcode Millions, we'll ring or write to you.

With sensitive information like wins and prize payouts, we need our players to take care to ensure the person calling is definitely from People's Postcode Lottery. Likewise, we'll also need to ensure we're definitely talking to the winning player before we can give any win information out.

We would encourage anybody receiving a call to make checks that the caller is definitely from People's Postcode Lottery. When we call you with news of a win, you should verify it's People's Postcode Lottery on the line by asking us to

• confirm your full ticketnumber,
• confirm your player reference number and
• confirm your first draw date.

All of this information is in the email or welcome pack you received when you first signed up to play. We'll be happy to set your mind at ease and prove it's really us!

Before we can discuss your prize wins in a phonecall, we'll also need you to answer two security questions in order to confirm your identity. However, we never ask for any sensitive bank information such as your bank account PIN.

Our £1,000 prize winners are informed by post.

Our £12 prize winners are notified on the Thursday by email or SMS.

For players who have registered bank account details on file, prize money is usually transferred into your bank account within 28 days. However, if you do not pay by Direct Debit, we may need you to contact us to claim your prize money, depending on how much you have won.

Players paying by Direct Debit:
If you pay for your subscription by Direct Debit, your prize money will be transferred into your bank account within 28 days. Please note that, in some cases, for security reasons, we might need to call you to confirm bank account details.

Players paying by other payment methods:
If you pay for your subscription by other payment methods and you have already registered your bank account details with us, your prize money will be transferred within 28 days. If you haven't registered your bank details with us, and you've won more than £12 per subscription, you'll need to register a bank account to receive your prize money. You may be required to provide two forms of identification - a driver's licence or passport - and a recent bank statement dated within the past six months clearly showing your name, address, account number and sort code. Please email scans of the documents to info@postcodelottery.co.uk or post photocopies to People's Postcode Lottery, 28 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, EH2 4ET. On receipt of these, your prize money will be transferred into your bank account within 28 days. Please provide your bank account information within six months of your win to enable us to make this prize payment.

If you have any questions, please call us on freephone number 0808 109 8765 or see Contact Us for other ways to get in touch.

Before we can discuss prize wins and payment arrangements in a phonecall, we'll need you to answer two security questions in order to confirm your identity. We need to be sure we are speaking to the account holder before we reveal any important information like a win.