National Payments Vision

What are the key next steps needed to secure a future-proof payments sector for the UK? How will the recently published National Payments Vision help?

HM Treasury

A world-leading payments ecosystem is a critical underpinning to this government’s central growth mission, and further technological developments are now on the horizon that offer huge potential for further innovation.

The National Payments Vision sets out our ambitions for a trusted, world-leading payments ecosystem delivered on next generation technology, where consumers and businesses have a choice of payment methods to meet their needs.

To achieve this vision, we’ve taken immediate steps to strengthen the foundations of our payments ecosystem, and enhance regulatory coordination.

We have clarified regulatory responsibilities on key initiatives like open banking, moving away from current arrangements to a world where the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will act as the UK’s regulator. This will support the pace of progress and highlights the vital role for open banking in providing greater choice to consumers and merchants in how they make and receive payments.

We have also established the Payments Vision Delivery Committee to drive forward outputs over the next 9-12 months, with the first meetings set for early in 2025. The Committee’s initial focus will be on enhancing the resilience of our systems, and ensuring that the infrastructure supports the innovation needed for the UK to deliver world-leading payments into the future.

Isabel Pitt

Digital Payments & Cards Director, Nationwide

In 2024, collaborative progress was made between regulators, policymakers, and industry stakeholders, culminating in the publication of the National Payments Vision (NPV). This milestone, supported by the Vision Engagement Committee, provides a framework for achieving consensus on priorities, requirements, and sequencing of key initiatives.

By aligning regulatory agendas and fostering collaboration between industry, government, and regulators, the NPV aims to simplify the complex payments landscape. Delivering change in modular, incremental steps will strengthen infrastructure resilience, expand consumer choice, optimise investments, and drive innovation across the sector.

To future-proof the UK payments sector, the three key priorities that need addressing in 2025 are as follows:

  1. Finalising the future of the Faster Payments infrastructure and modernisation plans.
  2. Establishing robust commercial models and consumer protections for the evolving open banking scope.
  3. Integrating innovations like tokenisation and shared ledger capabilities into the broader payments ecosystem.

Aligning on these priorities at pace will unlock opportunities to combat fraud, enhance resilience through interoperability, and improve financial inclusion for consumers.

Fliss Berridge

Co-founder and Director, Ordo

If I were a record, my new year’s resolution, or rather hope, would be: to get unstuck! The key next steps to future-proof the UK payments sector are unlocking the artificial restriction on VRPs.

In tough economic times, like we’ve had for the past few years, businesses double down on their recurring revenue. Open banking fintechs urgently need to be able to cover this payment method to become the ‘ubiquitous account-to-account’ competitive challenger to cards.

Ordo’s functionality for this is already live and kicking. What’s needed is a commercial model that is sustainable for the open banking service providing fintechs, and an independent and empowered central entity, charged with a 'public good' purpose, to expertly run it.

As the National Payments Vision pretty much says this, it’s great to have backing from today’s Government for the future of UK fintech, helping businesses and consumers manage their finances and data better, and ensuring low-cost secure access to instant payments, for all types of payment, becomes mainstream.

Jana Mackintosh

Managing Director for Payments, Innovation and Resilience, UK Finance

For the past two years, UK Finance has been leading the charge in calling for significant reform to how our payments sector is evolved and regulated. With the new UK government highlighting payments as a subsector of financial services that can turbocharge the economy, it is no surprise that they have endorsed the need for a National Payments Vision (NPV).

At last October's Open Banking Expo, I outlined the key elements UK Finance would like to see as part of an NPV. We now have more direction on how these will evolve:

• Regulatory certainty and one regulatory voice for strategic decision-making. We have much clearer regulatory delineation now with open banking and fraud moving under the FCA’s remit.

• A stronger strategic public private partnership, and greater decision-making role for industry. We have the starting point for this in the Payments Vision Delivery Committee, and now need to ensure industry can contribute to the planning of initiatives for the Future Payments Roadmap.

• Excellent delivery capabilities that can execute on strategic investment decisions needed for the UK, and provide confidence to those that invest in the infrastructure. We will work closely with the Bank of England and the PSR to ensure sufficient reform is made to Pay.UK so we can deliver short-term necessary upgrades to the Faster Payment System; but also deliver future-looking, modular and resilient infrastructure that can serve the UK economy’s needs.

The successful delivery of the next phase of open banking will also be vital for realising the NPV, which includes the 'delivery of seamless account-to-account payments through open banking'. Arguably the most critical element of this is implementing a commercially sustainable model for open banking payments (which includes VRPs).