The UK Payments Initiative account-to-account payment scheme has moved beyond its launch phase and is now pushing into retail, e-commerce and subscription use cases, according to Richard Koch, the organisation’s managing director. Writing in an industry publication, Koch sets out where the scheme stands today and what it is trying to prove next.
What the UK Payments Initiative account-to-account scheme actually is
UKPI was launched in June this year, backed by regulators and a broad coalition of industry participants. The scheme’s stated purpose is to convert the existing Open Banking standards framework into a commercial, trusted and scalable payment method, turning the policy ambition of the National Payments Vision into something merchants and consumers can use in practice.
The ownership structure is worth noting. Koch says UKPI is owned by 25 shareholders, comprising the nine largest banks in the UK and 16 payment initiation service providers (PISPs). That figure sits in some tension with data published by the Financial Conduct Authority, which records UKPI as having been formed by 31 firms to enable variable recurring payments. The FCA figure may reflect a broader founding group before the shareholding structure was finalised; neither source resolves the difference explicitly.
What is not disputed is the scheme’s historical position. Token.io describes UKPI as the country’s first new payment scheme since Faster Payments launched in 2008, a framing that underscores just how rare this kind of infrastructure-level initiative is in the UK market.
The scheme rulebook and the early use cases
At the centre of UKPI’s structure sits what Koch calls a scheme rulebook: a multi-lateral agreement governing how Open Banking transactions are handled, who communicates with customers and merchants, and where liability lies. The pricing framework attached to that rulebook is designed, Koch says, to give both sides of the market an incentive to invest in Open Banking recurring payments and to give merchants the transparency they need when deciding whether to build relationships with PISPs.
The initial scope was deliberately narrow. UKPI focused on commercial variable recurring payments in sectors with well-understood business-customer relationships: regulated financial services, utilities, rail journeys, government payments and charity donations. Koch’s argument is that starting here allowed the scheme to support participant onboarding, refine technical requirements and demonstrate end-to-end capability before moving into more complex territory. Whether that sequencing will translate into scale in more contested commercial environments is a separate question.
Moving the UK Payments Initiative account-to-account proposition into retail
The next phase is more ambitious. Koch says UKPI is now expanding into retail, e-commerce, subscriptions and, over time, point-of-sale journeys. The shift matters because these environments carry risks the early use cases largely did not: goods and services disputes, fulfilment failures, billing errors, fraud and merchant insolvency.
Koch frames UKPI’s response as building a ‘proportionate model’ to manage these risks, leaning on existing protections provided by merchants and marketplaces rather than constructing an entirely new layer. The organisation says it is engaging directly with merchants, participants and regulators to define purchase protection, dispute resolution and pricing. Those three things, Koch argues, will be the key determinants of whether merchants and consumers actually adopt account-to-account payments at scale.
The commercial case Koch puts forward is straightforward: for businesses reliant on direct debits and card-on-file models for decades, Open Banking payments can reduce friction and create more predictable money flows. For consumers, the proposition is payments within agreed parameters, with more control over who can collect, how much and for how long. For particular situations, such as bill charging that adjusts to personal circumstances, the flexibility could be a genuine differentiator from existing options.
The open questions
Koch is candid about the dependency on collaboration. The UK, he writes, has the opportunity to create a payments market with more competition, innovation and resilience, but only if ‘the industry continues to collaborate with urgency and realism.’ That qualifier matters. UKPI provides what Koch calls a ‘scheme layer’, but adoption depends on whether merchants see a commercially compelling enough product to move away from card rails and direct debit infrastructure that, whatever its limitations, is deeply embedded.
Trust, Koch argues, has to be earned through ‘smooth and resilient user experience’ before brand recognition can follow. That is a credible ordering of priorities, though it places UKPI’s success firmly in the hands of how reliably the underlying technology performs at scale, and whether the dispute and protection framework that emerges from current negotiations with merchants and regulators is strong enough to give consumers genuine confidence. Those negotiations are ongoing; Open Banking Expo has scheduled Koch and his UKPI colleagues to speak across its forthcoming two-day event, where some of those details may become clearer.
