The UK's largest banks have convened to discuss the development of a national payments network to reduce reliance on Visa and Mastercard.
Following this announcement, the UK's largest banks are in discussions to develop a domestic payments network, with the goal of reducing the country's dependence on US-owned card infrastructure. A meeting involving executives from Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, NatWest, and Santander, among others, is scheduled this week to advance the project, which carries both government and Bank of England backing.
The initiative comes against a backdrop of mounting concern over the concentration of UK payment flows through two US-based networks. According to a report published last year by the UK Payment Systems Regulator, up to 95% of card transactions in the UK run on systems owned by Visa or Mastercard. The meeting is to be chaired by the Barclays UK chief executive, and UK Finance will also participate.
Resilience over replacement
According to the announcement, despite the scale of the proposal, sources familiar with the matter suggest the plans may focus more on upgrading and complementing existing infrastructure than on building an entirely separate payments system from scratch. The framing is primarily about operational resilience — aiming to focus on reducing the risk of disruption to UK payment flows — rather than a direct political response to US geopolitical leverage.
In an exclusive comment for The Paypers, Robin Anderson, Head of Product at Tribe Payments, mentioned that `New reports that UK banks are accelerating plans for a domestic card payments alternative – amid concerns about over-reliance on US-owned networks – highlight a broader issue: concentration risk. The renewed focus on resilience also reflects the ambitions set out in the UK’s National Payments Vision, which has placed infrastructure modernisation firmly on the agenda`, and that `With around 95% of UK card transactions routed through Visa and Mastercard, the system is highly efficient but also highly centralised. The real test will be execution. Any new payment rail must integrate seamlessly with existing card and account-to-account ecosystems, make commercial sense for issuers and acquirers, and avoid introducing additional cost or complexity.`
The Bank of England has been explicit about the rationale. The institution's deputy governor recently noted that a domestically based system could provide additional resilience on the rare occasion of operational disruption to existing rails, citing a challenging and changing cyber and operational risk environment. Moreover, the Treasury also presented plans for a new generation of retail payments infrastructure last year.
Notably, Visa and Mastercard are not excluded from the project. Both networks are reported to have taken a stake in the initiative and remain committed to their presence in the UK market, suggesting the outcome is likely to be a supplementary rail rather than a competitive displacement.
Geopolitical context and European parallels
The UK is not alone in reassessing its payments sovereignty. In Europe, the European Payments Initiative has publicly called for urgent action on cross-border payment independence, with its chief executive stating that `independence is so crucial` amid limited domestic alternatives to US card networks.
The new UK network is expected to be operational by 2030. Funding is set to come from the financial sector, with the Bank of England involved in infrastructure development.
