What the UK’s payments vision means for acquirers

The Bank of England’s latest consultation on the future of UK retail payments infrastructure is one acquirers should be watching closely.

This is not just another policy paper. It is one of the clearest signs yet that the UK’s payments strategy is moving from ambition into design. The Retail Payments Infrastructure Board is now consulting on the core clearing and messaging layer that will support the next generation of UK retail payments, with account-to-account payments at the point of sale identified as one of the priority use cases.

That matters because the discussion has moved beyond whether the UK wants more payment choice. That direction was already set by the Future of Payments Review and the National Payments Vision. The Review highlighted growing complexity, fragmented initiatives and the need for clearer long-term strategy. The National Payments Vision then set out the ambition for a trusted, world-leading payments ecosystem, built on next-generation technology, where consumers and businesses have real choice in how they make and receive payments.

For acquirers, the implication is not that card acquiring is about to disappear. That would be the wrong conclusion.

The UK remains a heavily card-based market. As stated in the payments vision in 2023, 29.1 billion payments were made using credit or debit cards, and cards are expected to remain an important part of the UK payments ecosystem.

However, the direction of travel is clear. UK authorities want a broader, more competitive and more resilient payments ecosystem. Account-to-account payments are seen as one way to give consumers and merchants more choice, including the ability to pay digitally in shops and online without using a card. If delivered well, that could also create more innovation and put competitive pressure on the cost of payments.

That is why the Bank of England consultation is important. It starts to translate the policy ambition into the practical design questions that the market will need to solve.

The consultation points to several potential benefits from account-to-account payments at point of sale: more consumer choice, lower and more transparent acceptance costs for merchants, and another retail payment channel that could strengthen operational resilience. But it is also clear about the practical challenge. These payments will only scale if the user experience feels as reliable and seamless as existing payment methods. Merchants will need certainty, speed and near-instant confirmation that a payment has either succeeded or failed.

This is the key point for acquirers

The opportunity is not simply to add another payment option. It is to help merchants manage a more complex acceptance environment with confidence.

Merchants do not only care about cost. They care about conversion, checkout speed, reconciliation, refunds, fraud, dispute handling, reporting and customer experience. A lower-cost payment method will not scale if it creates uncertainty at checkout or adds operational complexity after the transaction.

Three implications stand out

First, acquirers will need to take payment orchestration more seriously. As cards, wallets, Open Banking payments and future account-to-account propositions develop alongside one another, merchants will need help deciding which payment methods to offer, how to route transactions and how to keep the customer experience consistent across online, in-app and physical channels.

Second, transparency will matter more. This is already a regulatory theme. The PSR has reviewed card-acquiring services and introduced remedies designed to improve choice and clarity for businesses. It has also found that Mastercard and Visa increased core scheme and processing fees to acquirers by at least 25% since 2017, adding at least £170 million a year in extra costs for businesses. A lack of clear, easy-to-understand fee information has created friction for both acquirers and merchants.

For acquirers, this creates a strategic challenge. If merchants are encouraged to compare payment options more actively, acquirers will need to explain not just price, but value. That means showing the importance of authorisation performance, settlement, service quality, data, fraud tools, reporting and sector-specific functionality.

Third, value-added services will become more important. If acceptance becomes more multi-rail, the processing layer could become more commoditised. The acquirers most likely to protect the merchant relationship will be those that solve broader acceptance problems, rather than simply providing access to payment rails.

The immediate question is not, “when will account-to-account replace cards?” It is, “what capabilities do acquirers need if merchant acceptance becomes genuinely multi-rail?”

There are three questions worth asking now:

1. Is our technology stack flexible enough to support cards, wallets and account-to-account payments through a single merchant proposition?
2. Can we clearly explain our value to merchants if payment costs become more transparent and more comparable?
3. Are we building the value-added services that make us harder to replace as the acceptance market evolves?

The Bank of England consultation will not transform acquiring overnight. But it does make the direction of travel more tangible. Cards remain important, while the UK is actively designing for a future where account-to-account payments play a larger role at point of sale.

For acquirers, the winners will be those that use this period to decide what they want to become: a card processor, or a broader merchant acceptance partner.