UK takes another step towards redesigning its retail payments infrastructure

The Retail Payments Infrastructure Board has shared the results from its consultation on the design of the UK’s future retail payments infrastructure. The paper explains how consultation feedback will inform the blueprint, a high-level design document that will underpin the more detailed design and procurement of the new infrastructure. The RPIB plans to hand over the blueprint to an industry-run Delivery Company next year. Once built, the infrastructure will form a crucial part of the UK’s payments ecosystem.

In June 2026, the RPIB opened a consultation inviting feedback on the design of the UK’s retail payments infrastructure. According to the response document, there was broad overall support on key elements, with some differences relating to points of detail. For example, while there is a general preference for a “thin” core infrastructure, there are different views on where capabilities such as fraud prevention and data sharing should sit.

The RPIB’s current high-level design proposals, which will be refined and tested with industry, include:

• A single modular architecture providing a common platform for existing and future product-level arrangements,

• A common access foundation allowing participants to connect to the central infrastructure securely through a range of options,

• A common approach to messaging using ISO 20022,

• An orchestration layer to validate, route and sequence payments which allows for a time-limited migration across from legacy messaging standards, and

• A core which will support existing payments and future workloads, including the speed and volumes required for account-to-account point of sale payments and interoperability with regulated new forms of digital money.

The RPIB also envisages that the system will be designed to high levels of operational resilience. Respondents placed strong weight on cyber security in the context of AI and developments in frontier technologies. The RPIB explains that critical components will need boundaries that sustain minimum service provision during severe but plausible disruption.

Next steps

Respondents to the consultation flagged the need to move at pace. The RPIB plans to hand over the blueprint to an industry-led Delivery Company in spring 2027. The Delivery Company will then be responsible for taking forward detailed design elaboration, procurement, build and implementation phases. Respondents to the RPIB’s consultation strongly preferred phased migration, although views differed on how migration should ultimately be sequenced.

The RPIB will engage with industry via a co-creation phase from this month to spring 2027. Firms across the payments ecosystem should use this window to assess the implications of the proposals and identify where they want to contribute to the design of the UK’s next generation payments infrastructure.