RPIB consultation response on the design of the future retail payments infrastructure

The Bank of England (BoE) has published the Retail Payments Infrastructure Board (RPIB) response to its June consultation on the design of the UK's future "next generation" retail payments infrastructure. The RPIB welcomed the breadth of feedback received, which it states will be an important factor, alongside wider industry engagement, in developing the blueprint for the new infrastructure.

The RPIB reports broad support for the key elements of the consultation, with differences of view relating more to the next level of detail than to the overall payment journeys or design principles. Respondents identified areas requiring further consideration, including the boundary between the core infrastructure and other services, how interoperability would work in practice with new forms of digital money, fraud and consumer protection challenges, and how to minimise risks in the eventual migration to the future infrastructure. Respondents also favoured a phased approach to migration.

In its response, the RPIB sets out prospective design proposals, which it will continue to refine through industry engagement over the coming months. It proposes a single modular architecture that would provide a common platform for existing and future payment arrangements, with reusable capabilities that could support new products and forms of money over time. It would include common access arrangements and an ISO 20022 messaging approach intended to support interoperability and reduce duplication, alongside an orchestration layer that would validate, route and sequence payments. The core infrastructure would also coordinate clearing and onward settlement in central bank money through the BoE's Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service, with the design intended to allow participants to use liquidity more efficiently across different payment arrangements.

The RPIB will now work with industry and other stakeholders to develop an initial draft of the blueprint through a co-creation phase beginning in November, before handing it to an industry-led Delivery Company in spring 2027 to take forward the detailed design, procurement and implementation.

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