The Retail Payments Infrastructure Board has launched a consultation on the future design of the UK’s next-generation retail payments infrastructure, opening a key stage in a long-running effort to modernise the systems that underpin everyday payments. Published on 25 June 2026, the consultation will help shape the blueprint for the new infrastructure, which is intended to provide a secure foundation for innovation, greater choice and smoother payments while supporting both existing and emerging forms of digital money.
The exercise focuses on what the new infrastructure should be able to do. Alongside preserving existing functionality, the proposed design would enable new payment methods, including account-to-account payments at the point of sale as an alternative to card payments, and enhanced cross-border payments — capabilities aimed at giving users more choice and faster, more seamless transactions. The consultation seeks views on the payment journeys the system should support, the key design choices involved, and the priorities that should guide its development, with responses feeding into a high-level design and the next phase of work.
The institutional architecture behind the project is deliberately layered. The Retail Payments Infrastructure Board is a senior industry advisory board chaired by the Bank of England that brings together experts from across the payments ecosystem, and its consultation will inform a blueprint to be delivered by a new, industry-led “Delivery Company.” The work sits under the National Payments Vision and the strategy of the Payments Vision Delivery Committee — a cross-authority body chaired by HM Treasury that draws together the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Payment Systems Regulator. Pay.UK, the operator of the UK’s existing retail interbank payment systems, will continue to maintain the safe and resilient running of current infrastructure as the new design takes shape.
The consultation matters because it concerns the plumbing on which the entire payments system depends. The infrastructure that processes interbank payments such as Faster Payments and Bacs is ageing, and the move to replace it determines what kinds of payments will be possible for years to come. Enabling account-to-account payments at the point of sale, in particular, could over time offer a genuine alternative to the card networks that currently dominate retail transactions, with implications for merchants’ costs and for the competitive balance in payments. The explicit commitment to support emerging forms of digital money also connects the project to the Bank’s wider work on payments, including its recently published framework for systemic stablecoins.
The design choices made now will have long-lasting consequences for the sector. Victoria Cleland, the RPIB’s chair, framed the project as an opportunity to transform the UK’s retail payments infrastructure, describing a vision of a system that remains resilient and trusted while providing a platform for innovation that responds to users’ needs as the landscape evolves. The emphasis on resilience alongside innovation reflects the central tension in the project: the infrastructure must be modern and flexible enough to support new payment types, yet dependable enough to carry the everyday transactions the economy relies on without disruption.
How the industry responds before the 11 September 2026 deadline will shape the blueprint and, in turn, the work of the Delivery Company that follows. The next-generation infrastructure represents one of the more consequential pieces of financial plumbing the UK will build this decade, and its design will influence the cost, speed and competitiveness of payments for businesses and consumers alike. Whether the project delivers the choice and innovation its backers envisage — while preserving the resilience of systems that millions of payments depend on daily — is the balance the consultation is intended to strike, and the responses it draws will indicate how far the industry shares that vision.