The panel, which will be jointly run by the Bank of England and Pay.UK, is being set up to provide input to the implementation of ISO 20022, a new common global messaging standard that will be adopted across the main UK payment systems, including clearing house automated payment system (CHAPS), and Pay.UK’s New Payments Architecture which will ‘clear and settle all of the UK’s real-time and bulk retail payments in future’.

The panel will comprise a senior group of stakeholders representing the payments industry and is actively seeking diverse representation from payment service providers, end-users such as businesses, and technology firms. Members of the panel will ‘have an opportunity to influence changes across wholesale and retail payments, shaping how benefits for the UK are maximised while ensuring changes are proportionate’.

ISO 20022 is a new standard expected to provide considerable benefits in the processing of payments in the UK In June 2018, the Bank of England, Pay.UK and the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) published a consultation on the adoption of a common global messaging standard, ‘ISO 20022’. This new standard is expected to deliver a wide range of benefits including improved resilience and security, more comprehensive data transference and risk reduction.

Whilst implementation of ISO 20022 in the UK will be a key focus of the panel, it will also cover other new payment standards for the UK, such as for financial application programming interfaces (APIs), which allow for transactional data to be shared securely between computers.

Victoria Cleland, executive director for banking, payments and financial resilience at the Bank of England, said: ‘This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to transformative change for payments. The new messaging standards have the potential to deliver huge benefits for the payments industry, and the households and businesses they serve - including risk reduction, increases in productivity and data to support more informed decision making.’

Paul Horlock, Chief Executive of Pay.UK, said: ‘Once in a generation investment on this scale and the move to new messaging standards has been made possible by the renewal programmes currently underway at the bank for its real time gross settlement system and at Pay.UK for the New Payments Architecture which will clear and settle all of the UK’s real-time and bulk retail payments.

‘The move to new messaging standards, in particular ISO20022, is only possible with industry involvement and support - the panel will be a key part of this strategy, providing advice and support about the industry’s needs and capacity to deliver the required changes.’

The closing date for applications to the panel is Monday 10 December 2018.

Report by James Bunney