The Retail Payments Infrastructure Board launches consultation on the next generation UK payments infrastructure

What Changed

• - The RPIB has opened a consultation to develop a high‑level “blueprint” for the future UK retail payments infrastructure, which will underpin the National Payments Vision and inform the design to be delivered by a new industry‑led Delivery Company.
• The consultation scope explicitly covers payment journeys, key design choices and priorities for the next‑generation infrastructure, rather than setting immediate prescriptive rules for firms.
• The next‑generation infrastructure is intended to support new payment methods, including account‑to‑account payments at the point of sale (in‑store and online) as a complement to card payments, and enhanced cross‑border payments.
• Existing retail interbank payment systems (Faster Payments, Bacs, Image Clearing System) operated by Pay.UK will continue to run safely and resiliently during the transition, implying a multi‑year migration and coexistence period rather than a “big b
• The new infrastructure is being designed to support a multi‑money ecosystem, including existing commercial bank money and emerging forms of digital money (e‑money, tokenised deposits, systemic stablecoins and potentially a digital pound), with an emp
• Governance arrangements will shift to a new industry‑owned and led Delivery Company, which will be responsible for procuring, funding and delivering the core infrastructure, under strategic direction from the Payments Vision Delivery Committee (PVDC)

Suggested Considerations

• Identify internal stakeholders (payments product, technology, operations, legal, compliance, risk) and establish a formal project to coordinate your firm’s response to the RPIB consultation.
• Perform a gap analysis of your firm’s current use of Faster Payments, Bacs and cheque imaging, focusing on account‑to‑account capabilities, cross‑border flows, fraud and financial crime controls, customer authentication and operational resilience.
• Map and document key payment journeys relevant to your firm (e.g. point‑of‑sale account‑to‑account payments, bill payments, peer‑to‑peer transfers, ecommerce, cross‑border transactions) to enable substantive feedback on user needs and design priorities.
• Assess your firm’s strategic interest in account‑to‑account payments at the point of sale and enhanced cross‑border services, and identify functional requirements (APIs, messaging, reconciliation, chargeback‑like protections) that should be reflected in the consultation response.
• Review emerging regulatory publications under the National Payments Vision and Payments Forward Plan to ensure your consultation input aligns with expected regulatory outcomes on access, competition, resilience and innovation.
• Engage with Pay.UK and relevant scheme governance forums to understand potential transition and migration implications for your firm and to ensure alignment between current scheme obligations and future infrastructure design.

Key Dates

Who is Affected