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NEWS Powering the digital bullet train
Despite underpinning some of “the most efficient payment systems in the world”, the UK’s infrastructure needs an urgent digital revamp. This was the word spread at the Payments Strategy Forum event, hosted high above Canary Wharf at the Level 39 startup accelerator
Senior Reporter Alex Hamilton
the governance of three major payment system operators, Bacs, Cheque and Credit Clearing Company (C&CCC) and the Faster Payments Service (FPS). All three will be morphed into a single entity responsible for implementing a new architecture that is “simpler, more accessible and more responsive to innovation”.
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There are three key themes that have emerged since work on the new strategy began 12 months ago, according to Ruth Evans, Chair of the Payments Strategy Forum: data privacy and security; governance and the need for more information on costs and benefits. All three are being addressed, and feedback from the community has been “overwhelmingly positive”. The lowest approval rating for the new scheme was 70%, yet most were in the high 90s and even up to 100%.
Now the Forum is going into “full blown transformation mode” so that the momentum keeps going. “We can’t stand still,” Evans stated, as the payments community needs to see constant growth. Unfortunately for her, she was left standing still as a preview video failed to play five times in a row. Hopefully the technology being implemented isn’t as skittish. Hannah Nixon, Managing Director of the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), pictured, took to the stage with the statement that she was “really proud of the work the Forum has done over the last year”.
The PSR founded it in 2015 to “speed up the pace of collaborative innovation in payments”. This despite the fact that the regulator has “possibly the most extensive powers of any economic regulator in Britain.” A lot of people at the
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he Forum’s new initiative aims to consolidate
Hannah Nixon
setting up of the Forum were sceptical over whether it could work. “People thought that the industry wouldn’t make any real changes. We’ve all seen times when self-regulation has turned into no regulation, and many people thought that would happen this time as well and that the Forum would be no more than a talking shop.”
There are two main reasons it has been successful: the collaboration of the UK payments sector and the support of the PSR. “The whole community has been integral in shaping this strategy and the breadth and the energy of its membership has been one of the Forum’s great strengths.” But what happens next? Now that the strategy is out, there needs to be a real focus on making sure that is implemented: “This strategy is game-changing. It has the potential to really open up
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