With all acronyms flying around, sometimes it looks like the payments industry is lacking in vowels, or it’s written in a secret code! Instead, the title refers to a very accessible update from the Payments Vision Delivery Committee (the PVDC) on their progress on the National Payments Vision retail payments infrastructure. Released at the beginning of November 2025, it sets out the committees progress so far, including their desired strategic outcomes, and next steps. The Strategy is informed by, and builds upon, the three pillars of the National Payments Vision: innovation; competition and security. While these feel obvious, it should be noted that while many will think these are obvious, they haven’t necessarily be publicly stated before, which underlines the need for the NPV in the first place!

It then builds these into 5 outcomes:

1. Consumers and businesses have a greater choice of innovative and cost-effective payment options that meet their needs.
2. Payments operate seamlessly as part of a diverse multi-money ecosystem, with interoperability between new and existing forms of digital money.
3. Consumers and businesses can trust that their payments are protected from fraud and wider financial crime.
4. Participant firms have fair, transparent and non-discriminatory access to the infrastructure – maximising competition and scope for innovation across the payments ecosystem.
5. The payments ecosystem is operationally and financially resilient.

The report makes various statements that are eye-catching and provocative. For example, the very first state ment under priorities is:

The Committee’s priority is for the next generation infrastructure to deliver so-called ‘account-to-account’ functionality at point of sale, to enable greater choice of payment methods. Supporting innovation – including programmable payments, tokenised deposits, and stablecoins – is also crucial to achieve world-leading payments.

As always, us payments geeks want more detail, but there were some tantalising clues. For example: To achieve this outcome the next generation retail payments infrastructure will need to: a. Support delivery of a solution enabling a consumer to pay for goods and services directly from their account to the merchant’s (account to account payments at point of sale), including by supporting Open Banking.

…and…

Reduce barriers for consumers and businesses making crossborder payments, for example through improved international interoperability via standardised messaging formats, and supporting stablecoin payments.

There are a few points worth noting.

There is nothing wrong with creating stretch goals, but at the same time, the new infrastructure will be leading, if not bleeding, edge. That is admirable, and likely necessary for the changes over the next 20 years. The “NewBACS” platform is now more than 20 years old, and Faster Payments, the newest payment type, launched almost 18 years ago. Both were a mix of leading edge (NewBACS at the time was one of the largest Java developments globally) and compromise. Compromise because of many factors – reality, cost, timelines, what can and can’t be controlled, etc.

I raise this as reading the vision it’s easy to forget all the endpoints that might also have to change. More than 150,000 businesses submit payments to Bacs. Roughly half use one of around 700 bureaus to submit payments, with the other half sending direct, many of which use dedicated software. It isn’t just payments, but all the supporting messages - direct debits are set up electronically for example. There are an estimated 3 million PoS devices as well.

We know that this will all be taken into consideration, balancing moving the industry forward versus changing deeply embedded processes to pretty much every business of note in the UK. It’s more to flag that the mammoth task outline in this report is likely only the tip of iceberg should the industry decide to go “all in”.

The second point is how to ensure take-up. Faster Payments was a success – not least because the regulator mandated one specific payment type, with around 600m transactions, migrate to Faster Payments. At the same time, the perceived lack of innovation could be the result of the regulators desire to drive innovation. By not allowing industry wide collaboration, the challenge becomes getting enough critical mass for any innovation to flourish. Celent hopes that the innovation dilemma is revisited.

The third point is that this will take time. The new Bank Of England RTGS system went live five years after the contractor was appointed. It’s likely then that any new platform won’t go live until the mid-2030’s. Key will be the ability to adapt. Just think about what has happened over the last seven years, much of which we couldn’t predict.