The Payments Association, a UK-based trade group representing the payments sector, has released The Payments Manifesto 2027, subtitled ‘A national strategy for trusted, competitive and innovative payments by 2030’. The document’s central call is for payments to be recognised as critical national infrastructure, alongside sectors such as energy, telecommunications, and transport.
The manifesto is addressed to government, regulators, and industry leaders, drawing on the association’s engagement with its membership, and has been reviewed by its Advisory Board. It builds on the UK Government’s National Payments Vision rather than proposing a standalone agenda, and sets out practical priorities intended to support progress towards 2030.
Four national objectives
The manifesto is organised around four interconnected objectives. The first, growth, competitiveness, and resilience, focuses on modernising UK payments infrastructure through interoperability and resilience, while creating the conditions for payments businesses to grow and compete internationally.
The second objective addresses trust, security, and consumer protection. The association calls for fraud to be prevented earlier through intelligence sharing and accountability across the fraud chain, alongside improvements in financial inclusion, capability, and meaningful payment choice.
The third objective covers AI, data, and digital infrastructure, as it seeks trusted rules for secure and accountable agentic payments, supported by internationally interoperable standards for agentic commerce. The fourth, the future of money and payments, calls for coherent, proportionate, and internationally interoperable regulation for next-generation payments, including stablecoins and tokenised money.
Eight policy recommendations
These objectives are translated into eight policy recommendations: they cover the modernisation of UK payments infrastructure, international competitiveness for payments businesses, earlier fraud prevention through actionable intelligence sharing, financial inclusion and meaningful payment choice, trusted rules for agentic payments, internationally interoperable standards for agentic commerce, proportionate regulation for next-generation payments, as well as interoperability between existing and emerging forms of regulated money.
Taken together, the recommendations place emerging areas such as agentic commerce and tokenised money on the same policy agenda as long-standing concerns around fraud, infrastructure resilience, and access to payment services. Interoperability recurs across several priorities, applying both to domestic infrastructure and to the relationship between existing and new forms of regulated money.
Industry role in delivery
Alongside its policy asks, the association has positioned itself as a convener for implementation. Nick Kerigan, Chair of The Payments Association’s Advisory Board and Managing Director, Head of Innovation at Swift, described payments as the invisible infrastructure of the UK economy. According to the official, the manifesto pairs policy recommendations with a commitment to convene expertise, build evidence, and test proposals against real market experience, citing agentic commerce, interoperability, and earlier fraud prevention as areas where industry collaboration could strengthen the sector by 2030.
Emma Banymandhub, CEO of The Payments Association, argued that the assumption that payments can run on autopilot, amid mounting fraud and digital disruption, has to end, noting that even a five-minute halt in the movement of money would have significant consequences. The CEO added that the document is not intended as a wish list, and that members are committing to the accountability, infrastructure, and cross-sector collaboration needed to future-proof the UK economy.
Renuka Rawlins, Director of Policy and Government Relations at The Payments Association, said the challenge now is turning policy ambition into practical progress. The association plans to convene collaboration between industry, government, and regulators, develop the evidence needed to inform decisions, and track progress against the manifesto’s priorities through to 2030.
