EY comment on today's PSR’s policy statement

Omar Ali, UK Head of Banking and Capital Markets at EY, comments on the PSR’s policy document published today:

“The industry has been waiting for clarification on the mandate and focus of the new PSR for some time, and so today’s announcement is helpful. Innovation and competition are clearly important, but the payments regulator is going to have to balance that agenda with ensuring the integrity and resilience of the UK payments infrastructure, which clearly has to be its number one priority.”

Imran Gulamhuseinwala, Head of FinTech at EY, adds:

“Payments systems have already attracted a lot of interest from the disruptive FinTech sector, representing around a £10bn market opportunity. The creation of a dedicated regulator for payments will further spur innovation and disruption in this area by levelling the playing field and easing non-bank access into the basic machinery of payments. Nonetheless, whilst we expect to see a lot more consumer choice coming to market, the regulator will need to control the rate of innovation to ensure the public’s trust and the security of the payment infrastructure is maintained.”

Hamish Thomas, Director, Payments Financial Crime Compliance at EY, adds:

“Payments systems are central to people’s daily lives, so it is welcome that ‘the customer’ is one of the PSR’s core themes, and innovation and competition as the other main themes will be essential for driving progress. However, the risks that any changes bring will need to be very carefully managed, as the industry cannot afford further outages or breaks in the flow of funds. The payments ecosystem has experienced significant change in recent years, as well as a raft of new regulatory demands, so consistency and coordination is now essential, both within the UK and across Europe.”