On 26 March 2025, the Bank of England (BoE) published a speech on ‘Innovating wholesale payments: building a resilient and innovative future’, delivered by its Executive Director for Payments, Victoria Cleland, at Pay 360.

Key points covered in the speech include:

• As the payment landscape evolves, innovation is needed to enhance the UK’s payment systems so that they keep pace with new demands, meet modern requirements and remain resilient against changing threats, ultimately contributing to economic growth. The BoE has a role in supporting and encouraging competition and innovation in payments.

• Following its 2024 discussion paper (DP) on reviewing access to Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) accounts for settlement, the BoE plans to publish before Easter a summary of the key feedback received, an update on work so far, and its forward-looking policy work.

• The BoE and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have made three changes to their cooperation framework for considering non-bank payment service providers (NBPSPs) seeking access to RTGS: requiring a firm to undertake regulated activities for at least 9 months before a full assessment, undertaking a s166 assessment before the FCA provides an objection or non-objection, and setting an expectation that fast-growing firms will be subject to enhanced supervision when granted RTGS access.

• The BoE is “about to publish” an updated version of a guide for NBPSP access to UK payment systems, providing information on how NBPSPs can access UK payment systems and outlining the requirements and processes involved.

• The content on the BoE’s website will be updated “shortly” to make information about access to RTGS (including more detail on the benefits, costs and processes involved) easier to navigate for industry stakeholders, including foreign banks.

• The BoE has published a revised access policy that introduces a live-proving and mobilisation stage for new and small financial market infrastructures (FMIs), so that firms seeking access to RTGS can test their access to RTGS and grow their business in a controlled way subject to restrictions to mitigate risk.  A new set of RTGS rules has also been published setting out the BoE’s expectations for RTGS participants, including FMIs, in simple language.

• During 2025, the BoE intends to engage further with industry to better understand the benefits and costs, and assess any financial stability implications, of further policy intervention to revise the CHAPS direct participation threshold.

• The BoE is exploring whether and on what terms it could offer safeguarding facilities directly to NBPSPs, with the aim of making direct access to RTGS for NBPSPs more attractive. It is also working with HM Treasury and the FCA to identify and address any barriers to access and developing policies that support the participation of NBPSPs in the payments system.

• Ahead of the 1 May 2025 deadline for using ISO 20022 enhanced data for certain CHAPS payments, the BoE is urging financial institutions to integrate enhanced data into their systems and processes, and actively encourage their customers to do the same. 

• The BoE will publish an update “soon” on its programme of wholesale experiments exploring the use cases, functionalities, and prospective designs of wholesale CBDC and synchronisation, and their relative merits.