The Bank of England has launched a consultation on the design of the UK’s next-generation retail payments infrastructure, centred on the core clearing and messaging layer that would underpin the National Payments Vision. Through the Retail Payments Infrastructure Board, the Bank is seeking views on the payment journeys the future core should support, the principles that should guide its design, and how it should fit within the wider payments ecosystem. The exercise is intended to inform a high-level design for the future infrastructure that will later be taken forward by an industry-owned Delivery Company. The consultation proposes that the new core should preserve and improve existing journeys such as single immediate, batch, recurring or scheduled and cross-border payments, while also enabling newer use cases including account-to-account payments at physical and online point of sale, instant payments via aliases, advanced delegated and agentic payments, programmability, deferred payments in low-connectivity settings, and interoperability across different forms of digital money. It sets out design principles built around innovation and competition, open access, common utilities and standards, security and resilience, performance and scalability, and protection from fraud and wider financial crime. A technology-agnostic layered architecture is also proposed, with the core focused on essential functions such as messaging, routing, transaction processing, clearing and settlement coordination, while wider questions on services, access, standards, settlement models, digital identity, fraud controls and cross-border interlinking are considered as design choices across the broader ecosystem. Responses are invited until 11 September 2026. After the consultation closes, the Retail Payments Infrastructure Board will publish a summary of responses and use the feedback to refine the high-level design, with DeliveryCo expected to take that work forward later in 2026.
Bank of England2026-06-25
Bank of England launches consultation on next generation retail payments infrastructure, focusing on core clearing and messaging design
The Bank of England has launched a consultation on the UK’s next-generation retail payments infrastructure, focused on the future core clearing and messaging layer. It proposes support for both existing payment flows and new use cases such as account-to-account point-of-sale payments, aliases, programmability and interoperability across digital money, alongside principles on open access, resilience and fraud controls. Feedback will inform a high-level design to be taken forward later in 2026.