On 14 July, HM Treasury (HMT) published a consultation paper in relation to modernising payment services regulation.

Background

The government’s National Payments Vision sets out its ambition to ensure the UK has a trusted, world-leading payments ecosystem delivered on next generation technology, where consumers and businesses have a choice of payment methods to meet their needs.

Summary

This consultation sets out HMT’s intentions for the future regulation for payment services and electronic money, in particular it welcomes views on:

  • Approach to updating existing regulatory requirements: HMT is considering whether responsibility for setting certain requirements should be delegated to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). By placing more detailed and technical provisions in regulatory rules, HMT considers that this could support a more agile and outcomes-focused regime, drawing on the FCA’s supervisory expertise and day-to-day engagement with firms. HMT has already committed to commencing the revocation of the payment’s authentication regulations relating to Strong Customer Authentication in the Payment Services Regulations (PSRs) to enable the FCA to make more outcomes-based rules about authentication requirements; however, in order to maintain appropriate certainty HMT expects to retain certain core provisions in legislation such as in relation to the perimeter and provisions where these establish key rights, obligations or protections.
  • Responding to new developments in payment services – HMT is considering its approach to several newer developments:
    • HMT, alongside the FCA, Payment Systems Regulator and the Bank of England, continues to engage with stakeholders around ongoing developments in relation to tokenised deposits, and HMT would welcome views about whether the current regulatory framework presents any barriers for tokenised deposits in retail payments.
    • Stablecoins are not currently regulated for the purposes of payment transactions. Through reforms to the payment services framework, HMT intends to regulate the use of certain stablecoins for payments, which will require considering carefully interactions with the new financial services regulatory regime for cryptoassets. HMT recognises the need to provide clarity and certainty on the interaction between the future payments regime and the cryptoasset regime, including potential overlaps with the new regulated activities of dealing and arranging deals in qualifying cryptoassets.
    • HMT sets out that it wants the UK to be at the forefront of the global development of agentic payments, and alongside the regulators is already taking action to lay the foundations for the development of agentic payments in the UK. This includes upgrading payments infrastructure, supporting digital money, modernising payment regulations, and supporting innovators to safely test and scale new agentic payments products.
  • Unlocking the future of Open Banking: The Rights of Access have played a vital role in enabling Open Banking to date, HMT intends for these Rights of Access to remain in statute, and HMT intends to establish a new right of access in relation to variable recurring payments. More widely, HMT is considering whether adjustments are needed to support new Open Banking payment and data use cases. HMT also wishes to enable an industry-led approach to the development of new Open Banking schemes, operating on a commercial basis and supported by FCA rules that set appropriate guardrails and provide a clear legal foundation for activity.

Next steps

HMT has asked for feedback on this consultation by 6 October 2026.