The plumbing that moves money between UK bank accounts is being redesigned from the ground up. On 25 June 2026 the Retail Payments Infrastructure Board (RPIB), chaired by the Bank of England, opened a consultation on the design of the UK's next generation retail payments infrastructure, with responses invited until 11 September 2026. That sounds like a document only a payments engineer could love, but the choices being made now will shape how your customers pay, how quickly you receive money and what payment acceptance costs for the next decade and beyond.

What the RPIB is and why this consultation matters

The RPIB was created after the government's National Payments Vision concluded that the UK's core retail rails, the systems behind Faster Payments and Bacs, need replacing rather than patching. The board brings together the Bank of England, Pay.UK, major banks, fintechs and an FCA observer, and its job is to turn strategy into a high-level design, or "blueprint". A new industry-owned Delivery Company will then procure and build the infrastructure itself. The consultation paper asks the wider ecosystem, merchants and end users included, which payment journeys, design choices and priorities the blueprint should serve first.

Two themes stand out. First, the new rails are intended to carry different forms of money side by side: ordinary bank deposits, regulated stablecoins and potentially a digital pound, with conversion handled inside the system. Second, and far more immediately relevant to anyone selling in the UK, the consultation puts account-to-account (A2A) payments at the point of sale firmly on the table as a mainstream alternative to cards, both in store and online.

The merchant angle: account-to-account at the checkout

Account-to-account payments already exist in the UK through open banking and Pay by Bank, and adoption is growing steadily. What has held them back at the till is patchy user experience, limited consumer protection compared with cards, and rails that were never designed for retail checkout volumes. The RPIB consultation is explicitly trying to fix the infrastructure part of that problem. If it succeeds, merchants could eventually accept A2A payments with real-time settlement and acceptance costs that undercut card processing fees, since there is no interchange or scheme fee in the traditional sense.

That prospect deserves healthy scepticism on timing. Blueprints, procurement and a national infrastructure build measure their progress in years, not quarters. Cards remain the default for UK consumers, and card acceptance is not going anywhere. But the direction of travel is clear, and it is the same direction the regulators have been pushing all year: more competition for the card schemes, more choice at the checkout and more pressure on the cost of acceptance.

What UK merchants should do now

Nobody needs to rebuild their checkout this week. There are, however, some sensible, low-effort moves:

  • Respond to the consultation if payments matter to your margins: the Bank has said it wants merchant and end-user views, and responses are open to anyone via the web form until 11 September 2026. Retailers rarely show up in these exercises; the ones that do get heard.
  • Review what your provider already offers beyond cards: Pay by Link, Virtual Terminal and open banking options let you test account-to-account style payments today without touching your core card setup.
  • Check your settlement speed: one promise of the new rails is faster access to funds. If your current provider holds your money for several days, you do not need to wait for 2030-era infrastructure; next-day settlement is available now.
  • Keep your payment mix flexible: avoid long contracts that lock you into a single acceptance method or penalise you for adding new payment types as they mature.

Where Monek stands

Monek is an FCA-regulated UK payment gateway (FRN 920628), and we watch infrastructure changes like this closely because they eventually reach every merchant we serve. Our approach has always been to give businesses the full toolkit rather than a single rail: card processing from 0.99% blended, Virtual Terminal for phone payments, Pay by Link for invoicing, a free WooCommerce payment gateway plugin, native Xero integration and next-day settlement as standard. As account-to-account payments mature on the new national rails, that same toolkit will grow with them. If you would like a plain-English conversation about your payment mix, or a no-obligation rate comparison to see what you are really paying today, our team is happy to help.