Bank of England outlines modular UK retail payments design with common ISO 20022 messaging

The Bank of England has published the Retail Payments Infrastructure Board’s (RPIB) response to its June 2026 consultation, outlining a proposed modular core for the UK’s Next Generation retail payments infrastructure. The 121 responses broadly supported the proposed payment journeys and design principles, favoring a relatively thin core that leaves room for competition in products and services. The platform would support existing payments, account-to-account payments at the point of sale and interoperability with emerging regulated forms of digital money. Common access options would combine proportionate connectivity with shared technical, security and resilience standards. A baseline ISO 20022 messaging approach would support interoperability across payment services, while an orchestration layer would validate, route and sequence transactions, potentially accommodating legacy formats temporarily during migration. Settlement would use central bank money through the Bank’s Real Time Gross Settlement service, and most envisaged product arrangements could continue using prefunded net settlement. Subject to further design and analysis, participants would be able to share their own liquidity across the products in which they participate. Critical components would need to maintain minimum service during severe but plausible disruption. The placement of shared services, including fraud prevention, data sharing and aliases, remains open. Consumer protection and liability also require arrangements beyond the core. Respondents favored phased migration and cautioned against retiring existing infrastructure before replacements are sufficiently proven. Joint work with industry to elaborate the design blueprint starts in November 2026, ahead of its planned handover to the Delivery Company in spring 2027. The company will then take forward detailed design, procurement, build and implementation.