Mansion House: National Payments Vision

HM Treasury has published the National Payments Vision, outlining the government's plans for bolstering the U.K. payments sector. The Vision, which is an integral part of the latest Mansion House reforms, responds to the findings of the independent Future of Payments Review 2023, led by Joe Garner, and takes action to address key issues across the landscape.

The Vision aims to "strengthen the foundations of today" by ensuring that the regulatory framework is clear, predictable and proportionate. To support this, the government has outlined its priorities for U.K. payments through a joint remit letter to the Financial Conduct Authority and the Payments Systems Regulator and welcomes the regulators' commitment to revise their existing memorandum of understanding on cooperation in relation to payments regulation. Another significant objective is ensuring infrastructure is resilient. The government has concluded that the New Payments Architecture program is not sufficiently agile. It is therefore establishing a Payments Vision Delivery Committee which will, through work led by the Bank of England and PSR, clarify the upgrades required to the existing Faster Payments System, assess longer-term requirements and the appropriate funding and governance arrangements needed to deliver this—including proposals to reform Pay.UK.

The government also provides direction on two priority areas: open banking and tackling fraud. The Vision seeks to clarify regulatory responsibilities for Open Banking, transitioning away from current arrangements to the FCA acting as the U.K.'s regulator in the future. The Vision also reaffirms the government's commitment to continue exploring a potential retail central bank digital currency. To further build the effectiveness of payments fraud regulation, the FCA will lead work to manage existing overlaps between itself and the PSR, and the PSR has committed to an independent post implementation review of the authorized push payment fraud reimbursement rules after 12 months.

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