News from the Wire

Payments UK launches as successor to Payments Council

Monday, June 29, 2015 — 11:00:42 (EDT)

London, June 29, 2015 -- Payments UK, a new trade association, is being launched today (Monday 29 June). The new association will provide a single, authoritative voice for the UK payments industry at home, across Europe and the globe.

Payments UK succeeds the Payments Council, which delivered world-leading innovations such as Paym, the Current Account Switch Service and Faster Payments. Payments UK will continue to look to the future, taking an evidence-based approach to deliver the secure, fast and innovative payments that people need but, unlike the Payments Council, has no quasi-regulatory role for strategy setting.

Payments UK will work closely with the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) in its remit to promote competition and innovation across the sector.

Commenting on today’s announcement, made at the Payments Innovation conference in London, Maurice Cleaves, Chief Executive, Payments UK said:

“Payments UK will lead the collaborative drive to ensure that payments in the UK remain world-class, meeting the needs of all those who make or receive them.

“In a matter of years, the sector has been transformed from just a handful of players to many hundreds and the regulatory agenda has changed significantly. Payments UK is set up to enable the industry to navigate through such change.

“Over the coming months Payments UK will report on the industry’s World Class Payments project, which sets out a vision of what payments of tomorrow could look like if they are built on customers’ needs.”

About Payments UK

Payments UK is the trade association launched in June 2015 to support the rapidly evolving payments industry. Payments UK brings its members and wider stakeholders together to make the UK’s payment services better for customers and to ensure UK payment services remain world-class.

New full and associate members have already expressed intent to join Payments UK - with others expected to follow. An announcement will be made in the next few weeks to confirm details.

Payments UK is:

• The payments industry’s representative body: providing an authoritative voice in the UK, Europe and globally, and working with stakeholders to share payments knowledge and expertise.

• A centre for excellence: supporting the UK payments industry to provide world-class payments, building on the experience, thought-leadership and project delivery expertise behind award-winning initiatives such as Paym, the Current Account Switch Service and Faster Payments.

• Delivering collaborative change and innovation: working on behalf of our members to benefit customers and UK plc, ensuring their needs are understood and met, both now and in the future.

Payments UK is set up to work collaboratively on a number of policy areas:

• Continuing work with the payments industry and stakeholders to produce a customer focussed world-class vision for payments in the UK. We will publish a report later this year.

• Exploring ways that ‘richer data’ could help businesses, government and customers better manage their finances and operations.

• Understanding how Application Programme Interfaces (APIs) and banking data can be used to enable new, competitive services for customers.

• Helping to implement the new Payment Services Directive 2 legislation in the UK.

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Source: Company press release.