UK PSR market review: final directions to card schemes on information, transparency and complexity and pricing governance

The UK Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has published policy statement PS26/1 on two final specific directions in relation to: (i) information, transparency and complexity (ITC); and (ii) pricing governance. The directions are a consequence of the PSR's market review of card schemes and processing fees, which found (as set out in the PSR's final report) there to be weak competitive restraints, rising fees, and insufficient transparency around cost and pricing for acquirers and merchants.

In April 2025, the PSR consulted on potential remedies to address these findings, including proposed remedies in respect of (i) ITC, to ensure that acquirers and merchants have sufficient information to understand fees being charged; and (ii) pricing governance, to impose requirements in relation to pricing decisions including three pricing principles. The final directions confirm that certain changes have been made to the draft directions, which were consulted on in December 2025.

Key changes in relation to the ITC direction are:

• The PSR has increased the materiality threshold for certain requirements relating to new and modified fees from GBP100,000 (net revenues) to GBP250,000 (gross revenues).
• The PSR has refined the requirement to provide information for fee reconciliation (and in particular no longer requires transaction-level identifiers).
• Other minor changes.

Key changes in relation to the pricing governance direction are:

• Refinements to the compliance requirements for clarification, practicality and proportionality.
• Increased materiality threshold to exclude acquirer fee decisions in relation to fees expected to generate less than GBP250,000 of total gross annual fee revenue.
• Other minor changes.

In terms of the implementation timeline, the ITC remedy has an implementation period of 12 months meaning schemes will have to comply from July 2027. The pricing governance direction requires schemes to implement the remedy to ensure fee decisions are compliant from November this year.

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