Last updated: 08/05/2025
The New Payments Architecture (NPA) programme is a voluntary industry initiative to renew the UK’s interbank payment infrastructure.
Who is responsible for delivering the NPA?
In 2015, we set up the cross-industry Payments Strategy Forum to identify, prioritise and help to deliver initiatives where it is necessary for the payments industry to work together to promote collaborative innovation.
The Forum published recommendations which included consolidating the operators of Bacs, Cheque and Credit (C&C), and Faster Payments (FPS). In addition, the strategy proposed the creation of a New Payments Architecture (NPA).
We then set up the Payment System Operator Delivery Group (PSODG) with the Bank of England in October 2016 to consider key issues relating to the potential consolidation.
The PSODG published a report in May 2017 setting out its recommendations on the key characteristics of a proposed New Payment System Operator (NPSO), with the NPA as one of its core deliverables.
The NPSO became Pay.UK in October 2018 and operates as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee. It is responsible for delivering the NPA.
What is our role?
The UK led the world on developing the infrastructure to enable faster payments. We now need to go further and upgrade these systems as soon as possible so that we don’t fall behind. We will work with the Bank of England to clarify and refresh the requirements for the UK’s retail infrastructure, including the governance arrangements needed to deliver this.
As the National Payments Vision emphasises, it is essential that the infrastructure of the future supports market innovation and competition. In light of the Vision’s direction on payments infrastructure, we consulted on changing our obligations on Pay.UK to the NPA.
A history of some of the key action we have taken over recent years can be found below.
May
We decided to revoke Specific Direction 3 and 3a, following our consultation in 2024.
- Through the National Payments Vision (NPV), the Government, tasked the PSR and the Bank of England to reassess the requirements for retail payments infrastructure, and strengthen the governance and funding arrangements needed to deliver this. The decision to revoke SD3 provides the necessary space and certainty for that work to progress, with recommendations to the Payments Vision Delivery Committee (PVDC).
- We also published a consultation on revoking Specific Direction 2 and 2a.
December
We published a consultation on making changes to Specific Direction 3. These changes included:
- Removing the current SD3 deadline
- Strengthening oversight
- Enhancing its Regulatory Framework
April
We published our letter to Pay.UK, asking them to to provide us with information that we will use to inform our approach to investment in the current FPS system.
September
In September 2023, the PSR Board agreed that Pay.UK has provided sufficient assurance at this stage to continue with its NPA programme plans.
We published our letter to Pay.UK setting out the result of the latest assurance point.
March
In March 2023, we confirmed our non-objection to Pay.UK’s procurement of ‘additional functionality’ in its NPA Central Infrastructure Services.
We have considered Pay.UK’s proposals and have decided not to object to the inclusion of the additional functionality.
(see our Policy Statement CP21/8, our revised Specific Direction 3)
January
SDs 2a and 3a came into force on 1 January 2022.
December
We set out our decision on the changes we made to SDs 2 and 3 following our consultation and gave SDs 2a and 3a to Pay.UK.
We published our regulatory framework for the NPA CIS which sets out requirements on both Pay.UK and a CIS provider that will address risks to competition and innovation in the NPA ecosystem arising from the behaviour of a provider appointed to deliver CIS. We also published illustrative directions to show how the framework could be implemented.
July
We published a paper setting out our decisions for reducing risks to NPA delivery.
We decided that Pay.UK should phase the development of the NPA by narrowing the scope of the NPA central infrastructure services (CIS) contract. Pay.UK must secure this contract through a competitive tender.
To implement these decisions, we consulted on giving directions – Specific Directions (SDs) 2a and 3a – varying SDs 2 and 3.
February
We published a consultation on delivery and regulation of the NPA setting out:
- options for reducing risks to the successful delivery of the NPA, which we considered to be unacceptably high
- proposals to mitigate risks to competition and innovation relating to when the NPA is operational
January
We issued a call for input asking for stakeholders’ views on issues that could affect competition and innovation in the NPA. This followed our work setting out our expectations and thinking about the development of the NPA, which we summarised in open letters to Pay.UK in 2018 and 2019. These covered risk, competition, innovation, rules and standards, governance and decision-making, and stakeholder engagement.
What will the NPA look like?
The Forum proposed creating a new payments architecture – the NPA – to replace the architecture used for today’s UK retail interbank payment systems (Bacs and Faster Payments).
It is envisaged that clearing and settlement of payments will take place over a single purpose-built central infrastructure rather than the separate infrastructure that is currently used.
This platform will be designed in a way that allows new and existing payment service companies to develop services that benefit consumers and businesses using the system. This will help make the UK’s retail interbank payments ready for the future as payments technology and people’s habits continue to evolve.
We want to see the NPA delivered in a way that drives innovation and competition in payment systems and benefits everyone - from big banks and retailers to local merchants and high-street shoppers. This can be done by boosting competition between existing and new payments services as well as enhancing resilience and security in payments.
What’s next?
We will continue to monitor Pay.UK’s work to deliver the NPA – and use our powers, where appropriate – to assure an outcome that supports our statutory objectives to promote competition, innovation and the interests of service users. As part of this work, we will seek assurances from Pay.UK at specified times about the design, procurement, and implementation of the NPA. We will continue to collaborate closely with the Bank of England, which supervises Bacs and Faster Payments.
We will also monitor Pay.UK’s compliance with SDs 2 as amended by SDs 2a.
In parallel to the NPA CIS procurement process, we plan to engage with Pay.UK and bidders to understand how they intend to comply with our regulatory framework and to make our expectations clear. We intend to publish and consult on draft directions implementing our regulatory framework closer to the go-live date for the NPA before giving them to Pay.UK and any relevant CIS provider.