Voice of the Industry

How payment specialists can manage complex legislative landscapes

Friday 9 May 2025 12:56 CET | Editor: Irina Ionescu | Voice of the industry

John Pearce, CCO at CloudPay, discusses the complexity of the payments legislative landscape, tackling the main changes in regulations and how payment teams can remain afloat to streamline revenue.


Modern-day finance and pay specialists operate in a highly complex environment. While technology has made the world smaller, the red tape burden that experts must manage is only growing. This trend is unlikely to reverse anytime soon; the increasing digitalisation of society has led to a rise in fraud and cybercrime, and everyone looks to adapt. But what are some of the latest global regulatory shifts that payment specialists need to be aware of?


The UK and the EU legislation

In the UK, the most high-profile recent changes include the proposed Employment Rights Bill and increases to National Insurance Contributions (NICs), along with the introduction of Statutory Neonatal Care Pay, and reforms to Statutory Sick Pay legislation. While most organisations consider these processes to be relatively straightforward to implement and comply with, there are still further regulatory changes to come imminently –  and the regulatory and administrative burden shouldn’t be underestimated.   

The EU has been the subject of several recent and more complex payment-specific legislative updates. Perhaps, the most notable is the Payment Services Directive 3, or PSD3, which improves security and efficiency of salary payments, but may also require changes to organisational processing systems and greater collaboration with finance and IT teams. 

Equally, the Consumer Credit Directive 2 (CCD2), which aims to harmonise consumer protection standards for credit agreements, will impact employers that offer financial benefits such as salary advances or workplace lending schemes. Adhering to the new regulations will require clear communication, stricter affordability assessments, and compliance with enhanced disclosure demands, ultimately increasing the regulatory burden for payroll teams. 

Elsewhere, Visa has updated its Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP), a unified system to manage fraud and chargeback risks globally. This change aims to create a safer payment environment for users, but it also comes with new rules and responsibilities for businesses, such as unified monitoring systems, new risk thresholds, and greater scrutiny on markets, including cryptocurrency and luxury goods.  

Regulation in the Americas

Looking across the pond, the US is likely to see major regulatory changes in its domestic employment market in the coming years because of ongoing political upheaval. However, the current NACHA Operating Rules, which ultimately facilitate the electronic movement of money, including direct deposit of salaries across the country, are unlikely to be affected. While most employers will have adapted already, these rulings allow for faster payments, meaning payment and finance teams must be increasingly agile. They will also need to prepare for facing greater scrutiny on fraud, enhanced controls over data handling, and additional employee training.

Operating in Canada already poses potential challenges due to the varying laws and regulations in place across the country’s ten provinces and three territories. There will be further shifts in this market in the coming months, as Payments Canada announced that, in collaboration with tech firms IBM and CGI, will launch its ‘Real-Time Rail’ system for fast digital payments as soon as 2026. 

This system aims to boost transaction oversight and security for Canadian individuals and businesses by allowing payments to happen in real time. Moreover, according to some commentators, this will also allow Canada to get its payments sphere up to speed with systems in neighbouring countries, as well as align its data standards with international platforms through ISO 20022.

In Latin America, and specifically Brazil, PIX has quickly become a dominant instant payment method since its implementation back in 2020. For payroll professionals, PIX offers the ability to process wages more efficiently and flexibly, including ad-hoc or off-cycle payments. However, payroll systems must be adapted to handle these changes, and employers are required to stay up to date with varying compliance obligations and best practices for data protection.

Global variations

In South Africa, the National Payment System (NPS) Framework opens the door for innovations in employee remuneration, though it may necessitate updates to existing systems and closer coordination with external financial service providers. 

These rulings represent just a selection of the legislation that payment teams must stay abreast of; however, CloudPay’s recently launched In-Country Payroll Guide shows the sheer scale of the challenges facing specialists. It is not necessarily the specifics of individual regulations that present difficulties, but the volume and variety, particularly for those operating across multiple jurisdictions. Put simply, keeping pace with this dizzying array of regulations and red tape is a challenging and risk-heavy task.

Striking the balance

CloudPay’s Tech-Talent-Equilibrium Report showed that modern pay, HR, and finance leaders now favour a balance of tech and people to support continued compliance, wherever they are operating. Modern, unified platforms do this by leveraging what have become collectively known as the ‘three As’ – AI, automation, and APIs, to improve efficiency and output, as well as automate international compliance requirements. This is balanced with the skills of high-performing payroll people who use their irreplaceable human expertise and understanding of in-country specifications to oversee entire processes and provide final approvals. 

This growing adoption of technology is leading to tangible progress and improvements being made in the international pay, payments and payroll markets. The current 2024 Payroll Efficiency Index, for example, reflects an increased adoption of technology and innovation over the past year. This is seemingly giving teams more control and time to pick up on errors immediately, reducing payroll issues, and enabling them to better manage international variations and potentially problematic legislative changes. 

About John Pearce

John Pearce is Chief Customer Officer at CloudPay, where he leads their implementation teams, focusing on successful customer onboarding experiences. He champions the customers’ voice throughout their journeys towards the modern pay experience and supports all customers to drive the maximum potential and value from their CloudPay solutions.

 


About CloudPay

CloudPay is an important player in global pay innovation, delivering industry-leading solutions spanning payroll, payments and on-demand pay. With a proud heritage of 25+ years, the organisation serves over 2,000 companies globally in more than 130 countries, handling USD 24 billion in payments in over 110 currencies. Its unified, end-to-end pay solutions enable payroll teams to pay their global workforce with outstanding accuracy and minimal risk, more efficiently than ever before. 


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Keywords: regulation, regulatory sandbox, VAMP, PSD3, CCD2, payout, online payments, payments , compliance, API, payroll, ISO 20022, PIX, real-time payments, data, chargebacks, risk management, cryptocurrency
Categories: Payments & Commerce
Companies: CloudPay
Countries: World
This article is part of category

Payments & Commerce

CloudPay

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