UK payments regulation, open banking, FCA, PSR, scheme governance
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…
In short: Consumer Duty products and services monitoring asks a payment or e-money firm to show, not just assert, that its products give customers good outcomes. The FCA’s review of 10 July 2026 found firms that could describe their processes but could not demonstrate their interventions had worked. CP26/23 may make monitoring more explicitly proportionate…
In short: Finfluencer financial promotions are caught by the restriction in section 21 FSMA where they concern a controlled activity or a controlled investment, which covers consumer credit, qualifying cryptoassets and investments. The authorised firm behind the affiliate is responsible for the post, because section 21(13) treats causing a communication to be made as communicating…
In short: The Mills Review, published by the FCA on 6 July 2026, finds that accountability in retail financial services does not shift as AI takes on more of the work. The Senior Managers Regime still applies, firms remain answerable for AI-driven outcomes, and the report sets out seven recommendations for the FCA Board to…
In short: APP fraud reimbursement, mandatory over Faster Payments since 7 October 2024, cut in-scope scam losses by around 21% (about £73m a year) in its first year, the Payment Systems Regulator’s independent evaluation by Frontier Economics found on 1 July 2026. Reimbursement of losses rose from 54% to 65%. A formal consultation follows in…