Naturally I went to see what Mike Chambers made of this and he helpfully highlights some of the key initiatives.
Here are the thirty initiatives that feature in the Payments Forward Plan along with the primary objective for each initiative.
Top 8 (in my opinion):
Retail payments infrastructure design and delivery programme (including with Design Authority and Delivery Company). Objective: To design and deliver the next-generation retail payments infrastructure in line with the National Payments Vision and the Payments Vision Delivery Committee’s strategy.
Short-term enhancements to existing retail payments infrastructure. Objective: To proportionately implement short-term enhancements to the current Faster Payment System and the Bacs Payment System to improve resilience and better support innovation, including in account-to-account payments.
RTGS and CHAPS settlement hours. Objective: To improve efficiencies for domestic and cross-border payments, reduce settlement risk and support innovation.
Open Banking. Objective: To establish Open Banking on a commercially sustainable basis, which will allow the CMA order to be revoked and help advance the government’s ambition of making account-to- account payments ubiquitous. This will support delivery of better outcomes for consumers and businesses by enabling secure, simple options for payments e.g. peer- to-peer transfers, flexible bill payments, and point-of-sale payments (including ecommerce).
Contactless payments. Objective: To give greater flexibility to banks and other payment service providers to determine their approach to contactless payments. This additional flexibility could foster innovation and thereby support growth, while still requiring payment service providers to maintain low levels of risk.
Access to cash. Objective: To assess whether the Access to Cash regime has maintained reasonable access to cash in the UK. This will help ensure the rules are working effectively to support financial inclusion.
Wholesale cash. Objective: The Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 established a new statutory oversight regime for wholesale cash distribution by inserting Part 5A into the Banking Act 2009. Under this framework, the Bank of England’s overarching objective is to manage risks to the effectiveness, resilience and sustainability of the wholesale cash distribution industry.
Enhancing cross-border payments. Objective: To support efforts to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper, more transparent and more accessible, including the implementation of practices that enhance safety and security and improve the detection of financial crime.
xxx
Snippings 