The Changing Landscape of UK Payments

With key UK payments updates coming in the next few years – including changes to the current government payment infrastructure (Direct Debits, BACS, Faster Payments etc) – Kyriba recently had the pleasure of hosting a webinar with Pay.UK to discuss this initiative entitled the New Payments Architecture (NPA). NPA will impact all payment types including treasury payments, vendor payments, salary and expense payments; so all organisational treasury and finance teams will need to be aware of the impact this initiative will bring.

As scheme regulators, the aim of Pay.UK is “to support a vibrant UK economy by delivering best-in-class payment infrastructure and standards for the benefit of consumers and businesses everywhere.” Rory Edwards, responsible for Stakeholder Engagement at Pay.UK, outlined that the project aims “to develop and implement the next generation of clearing and settlement infrastructure for the UK, alongside standards and rules to ensure payments are initiated, routed and processed correctly. In practice, that means we enable more than 8 billion payments annually worth more than 6 trillion pounds. That includes every direct debit, cheque and online bank transfer made in the UK.”

The webinar summarised how the NPA is the model for a new payments platform in the UK, taking over the processing of BACS, Faster Payments and, potentially, cheque payments – creating better payment services by simplifying the rules, standards and processes that banks and others follow to use the systems. Delivered in stages, the core clearing and settlement layer is forecast for implementation after 2021. Customers should also start to see improvements to their payment services through projects like Confirmation of Payee, Request to Pay and Enhanced Data.

Joining the webinar was Paul Simpson, Strategic Payments Director for Kyriba UK, who explained how Kyriba’s payments hub – which helps corporates streamline, standardise and secure their entire payments process – is well placed to support the New Payments Architecture. Kyriba will update to the NPA scheme and any others such as the future SWIFT ISO migration. Kyriba is 100% SaaS, so there is no need for expensive and time consuming upgrades as with on-premise legacy software. “We update our solution twice a year and every customer benefits. Kyriba future-proofs your payments process while reducing costs and ensuring compliance.”

Kyriba Sales Director Rob Crowe commented, “It was great to see many retailers on the webinar. Clearly, the NPA programme is critical to this sector. New technical developments giving rise to new payment services such as Request to Pay, are important developments for these companies.”

For more information on how Kyriba can help with the NPA, contact us today.