Bank of England discusses opportunities in innovating wholesale payments

Victoria Cleland, Executive Director of Payments, Bank of England (BoE) has given a speech on innovating wholesale payments: building a resilient and innovative future. In the speech, Ms Cleland discusses the BoE's innovation work, including on tokenisation, synchronisation of foreign exchange between sterling and euro and developing a wholesale central bank digital currency. Ms Cleland highlights the BoE's work on enhancing access to the RTGS service. Before Easter, the FCA will publish a summary of the key feedback received on its February 2024 discussion paper, an update on work so far and its forward-looking policy work in this area. Market participants can expect in April the publication of an updated guide for non-bank payment service provider (NBPSP) access to UK payment systems. The Bank will also be considering offering safeguarding facilities directly to NBPSPs, so that NBPSPs could securely hold funds overnight and manage their liquidity and payment obligations. It is also working with HM Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority on reforming the regulatory regime for NBPSPs to support their RTGS access. The BoE will also soon be publishing updated information on access to RTGS to give more details on benefits, costs and processes, including for foreign banks. The Bank intends to continue engaging with industry on assessing the appropriateness of the CHAPS direct participation threshold. Additionally, given the value of a consistent adoption of the ISO 20022 global messaging standard, the BoE will mandate the use of ISO 20022 enhanced data for certain CHAPS payments from 1 May, including the use of Legal Entity Identifiers for payments between financial institutions.

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