UK payments regulation, open banking, FCA, PSR, scheme governance
In short: Frontier Economics’ independent review of the APP fraud reimbursement regime was published on 1 July 2026. It found APP fraud losses down by an estimated £73 million a year and 97% of in-scope claims reimbursed. Mandatory reimbursement under Specific Direction 20 returned £173 million to victims in its first year. The PSR’s policy…
In short: The CCI product summary is the FCA’s new disclosure document for retail investment products, replacing the EU-derived Key Information Document. Under FCA PS25/20, firms can adopt it from 6 April 2026 and must use it from 8 June 2027. Whether to switch early is a Consumer Duty question, not a technical compliance one….
In short: The PSR annual plan 2026/27, published 26 March 2026, sets three priorities for what may be the regulator’s last full year as a standalone body: implementing card fee remedies, publishing the first-year evaluation of mandatory APP fraud reimbursement, and planning the consolidation of PSR functions into the Financial Conduct Authority. Commercial variable recurring…
After a year of testing frontier AI models and legal-specific platforms, the problem was not capability but structure. A law firm cannot be built around a model. It needs a method in which AI operates under controlled, auditable workflows, with the lawyer as the final gate.
Competition Appeal Tribunal [2026] CAT 11 Trial 2 pass-on findings and the Administrative Court ruling in [2026] EWHC 64 (Admin) on the Payment Systems Regulator’s power under section 54 FSBRA 2013 to cap cross-border interchange fees.
HMT’s 22 April 2026 response to the SM&CR reform consultation, with FCA PS26/6 and PRA PS12/26, sets a package aimed at a 50% compliance burden reduction. The scope question comes first: pure APIs and EMIs sit outside SM&CR because the regime attaches to FSMA Part 4A authorised persons. Only dual-regulated firms are in scope.
FCA targeted support went live on 6 April 2026. The FCA/ICO joint statement of 11 December 2025 requires firms to get UK GDPR, PECR and Article 22 compliance in place before they send a single communication.
The FCA opened consultation on CP26/13: Cryptoasset Perimeter Guidance on 15 April 2026 (closes 3 June 2026), completing the FCA side of the UK’s dual-track stablecoin regime. On the Bank of England side, the £20,000 retail cap, £10 million business cap and 60:40 backing split in the November 2025 proposals face sustained industry pushback.
HM Treasury’s July 2026 consultation would keep the payments perimeter in legislation and move the detailed rules for payment services and e-money into the FCA Handbook, so the FCA can supervise them with its ordinary tools.
Quick answer. The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) is the UK regulator for designated payment systems under Part 5 of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013 (FSBRA 2013). HM Treasury has consulted on abolishing the PSR and transferring its functions to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The consultation closed on 20 October 2025. HM Treasury…
In short: The UK’s open banking advantage is an infrastructure advantage, not an interface one. A shared directory, a common dispute management system and a governed API standard, built out under the Retail Banking Market Investigation Order 2017, make the rails usable at volume. That infrastructure is the platform on which successor Smart Data regimes, enabled…
In short: UK payment firms reimbursed £173 million to APP fraud victims in year one of the PSR’s mandatory regime under Specific Direction 20. The payments sector bears all reimbursement costs, but APP fraud originates across telecoms, social media and messaging platforms. The PSR’s independent evaluation by Frontier Economics, published on 1 July 2026, found…