UK payments regulation, open banking, FCA, PSR, scheme governance
In short: FCA crypto authorisation applications open at 9am on 30 September 2026 and the application window closes at 11.59pm on 28 February 2027. Handbook Notice 144 fixes the price of applying: one fee where a firm also seeks MLR registration, £11,260 to issue a qualifying stablecoin, and 2028/29 fees and Ombudsman levy set from…
In short: Consumer Duty vulnerable customers obligations apply to a payment service provider or an e-money institution carrying on retail market business under PRIN 3.2.6R, and they apply whether or not the customer is that firm’s own client. The Financial Conduct Authority published good and poor practice findings for payments firms on 17 September 2026….
In short: section 60A Competition Act 1998 obliges a UK court, the CMA and the concurrent regulators to have regard to European Commission statements made before Brexit implementation period (IP) completion day (31 December 2020) and not subsequently withdrawn. At paragraph 246 of its Guidelines of 3 September 2026 the Commission withdrew its prior 2009…
In short: the Bailey Mansion House speech of 14 July 2026 links growth to regulatory design. Andrew Bailey applies that test to bank capital, tokenised money and AI. The Bank’s test for new forms of sterling is whether they preserve nominal value and settlement finality. Two deadlines are now close: the Retail Payments Infrastructure Board…
In short: the FCA high-growth firms review, published on 10 August 2026, covers a pilot with 15 asset management, wealth management and payments firms. Four of its findings repeat the FCA’s 2023 fast-growing firms review. A payment institution’s obligations are unchanged: regulation 6(6) of the Payment Services Regulations 2017 still requires governance proportionate to its…
In short: the Bank of England AI Consortium published minutes of its fourth quarterly meeting on 5 August 2026, covering the meeting held on 3 June 2026. Four workshops reported on explainability, AI-accelerated contagion, concentration risk and AI edge cases. Under its terms of reference the Consortium has no decision-making capacity, so nothing in the…
Specific Direction 17 expires on 1 November 2026. The PSR’s CP26/2 consultation proposes to remove the expiry date and seeks views on directing voluntary CoP providers as a new Group 3.
The PSR gave Specific Directions 22 and 23 to Mastercard and Visa on 30 July 2026. Pricing governance obligations start on 30 November 2026 and the information requirements on 30 July 2027.
The Court of Justice in Betaal Garant (C-51/25) decided the credit transfer question and nothing else. Money remittance, defined more widely in regulation 2(1) of the PSRs 2017, is where a UK analysis now has to go.
In short: The critical third parties regime brought Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL, Google Cloud EMEA Limited, Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited and Oracle Corporation UK Limited under FCA, PRA and Bank of England oversight on 13 July 2026, under SI 2026/777 and Chapter 3C of FSMA 2000. The UK regime binds providers with rules and…
In short: agentic payments liability is largely governed by the Payment Services Regulations 2017. Whether the payer consented under regulation 67 determines whether the provider must refund under regulation 76, and regulation 75 puts the burden of proving authentication on the provider. What the regulations do not settle is the scope of a delegation exercised…
In short: agentic payments are the subject of HM Treasury’s Financial Services AI Adoption Plan and its Modernising Payment Services Regulation consultation, both published on 14 July 2026. Recommendation 10 proposes an agentic payments trust framework and a Know Your Agent standard. The consultation asks whether the PSRs 2017 need to change and closes on…