英国の決済の未来についてのレポートが発表された

The much anticipated Future of UK Payments Review (also known as the Garner report) was published a few weeks ago, and has sparked an awful lot of interest and coverage. There’s a lot to unpack, so this blog sets out some initial thoughts and questions. If there is an enough interest or enough interesting within the report, we’ll likely publish a report.

The review was commissioned by the UK Government, and started in July 2023. The timing is important to note – the intention to undertake the review was announced just before a widely rumoured but unconfirmed date for announcing who had (finally) won the NPA contract.

The review set out at a high level to address three things:

• What are the most important consumer retail payment journeys both today and in the next 5 years?
• For these journeys today, how does the UK consumer experience for individuals and businesses compare vs other leading countries?
• Looking at the in-flight plans and initiatives across the payments landscape, how likely are they to deliver world leading payment journeys for UK consumers?

The report comes back with 10 recommendations under three main themes, with one overarching theme.

This overarching theme is something that Celent has said many times before – the UK (or indeed, any country or bank) needs an over-arching payments strategy. Here we do have much sympathy with the industry as this has been attempted in various forms before, but largely with one-hand tied behind its back. Here we are referring to the contradicting forces of collaborating and competing, and who has what power to do what.

Of the other themes (customer experience; Open Banking and opportunities to exploit more fully; and Improving regulatory oversight and alignment would allow for more efficiency and innovation), there are many things to unpack, and which we can only skim the surface here.

Yet here we also start to question the review. Many are positioned as specific recommendations, rather than areas to review and improve. For example:

• Recommendation 5 is that Open Banking is leveraged to improve the person-to-person bank transfer payments journey. We believe that Open Banking journeys can rival the best in the world – if we focus on them.

First, the report assumes that because the UK has an average number of p2p payments compared to other countries but lags behind India and Brazil, there must be something wrong in the payment mechanisms. Could it not be that the payment choices, banking etc are just different? And what is the benefit to whom of more p2p transactions? The report does not offer up any evidence that the customer feels that this is an area requiring improvement.

Second, that open banking is the answer. To be clear, we’re not saying it isn’t, but there is a presumption that open banking will future proof UK payments and make it a leader globally. It might do, but surely the review is an opportune moment to see what might be on the near and longer term horizon? Rather than recommendations, the report perhaps would have been better to split into desired outcomes and then hypotheses about potential solutions.

There are also a few things that have unsurprisingly caught many people’s attention.

Within open banking, a section on ‘Providing payments choice to retailers and merchants’ caused many in the industry to predict the beginning of the end of card scheme dominance in the UK.

• “While the user experience, consumer protections and pace of innovation is thriving within the cards ecosystem, there is significant dissatisfaction amongst merchants across the UK at perceived high acceptance costs on card transactions. And while the merchant acceptance fees in the UK do not appear materially out of line with international comparisons, the UK stands out as the only country in Europe that doesn’t have a digital alternative to the card schemes.
• “To ensure competition and greater merchant choice, the [Payment Systems Regulator] must continue the review into interchange pricing and the government must accelerate work to solve the consumer protection, user interface and commercial model gaps that are currently hindering open banking adoption.”

The other main thing would seem to be a nail in coffin for NPA, at least in the current guise:

• “NPA attracted more comments from stakeholders than any other single theme, apart from fraud. …...some questioning whether the scope that was initiated in 2016 is now out of date. For example, one contributor queried in their submission whether: “...the design assumptions made in 2017 do not reflect current trends and are less likely to do so in 2026 {the planned deployment date}.” At interview, contributors were more forthright, with verbatims across a wide diversity of stakeholders describing progress in emotive terms. We have not sought to validate the substance of these comments but would observe that confidence in a timely and successful delivery of NPA appears variable at best.”

While stopping short of saying pausing, many have honed in on this section, taken together with the overall sentiment, that there should be a joined up plan of all projects:

• “Additionally, we heard significant concerns relating to NPA delivery, and while we do not see an obvious solution, we would advocate that some work is done to better understand the position. We believe outcomes would be improved if there was a more supportive and collaborative relationship between regulators and industry, and we believe that now is an appropriate time to consider a reset in the relationships and a new approach to working together.”

Perhaps not dead, but it does cast doubt on what happens next.

It's easy to criticise exercises like these, but that's not our intent. Instead, its a call to action to take the tone and themes of the report to see how the industry in it's broadest sense can drive this forward.

The hard work starts here!