Increased access to the Bank of England’s payment systems
The Bank of England has widened access to the United Kingdom’s interbank payments system to increase competition by FinTech providers. The Bank announced on 19 July that a new generation of non-bank payment service providers (PSPs) will now be eligible to apply for a settlement account in the Bank’s Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system. The RTGS system has traditionally held the accounts of financial institutions in order to promote inter-bank settlement. Holding their own settlement account at the Bank will enable these non-bank PSPs to apply, for the first time, for direct access to the UK’s sterling payment systems that settle in sterling central bank money, including Faster Payments, Bacs, CHAPS, LINK, Visa, and, once live, the new digital cheque imaging system.