The National Payments Vision (NPV) is ambitious, aiming to deliver smarter, safer, and more innovative payments across the UK. Yet behind nearly every one of these ambitions sits a simple but powerful enabler: standards.

From enabling account-to-account (A2A) payments at the point of sale, to scaling Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs), building effective fraud prevention tools, and aligning with global initiatives like ISO 20022, standards are the hidden wiring that makes modern payments work. Without them, the ecosystem becomes fragmented, less resilient, and harder to innovate within. And yet — we risk leaving them as an afterthought.

Standards: the enablers behind the vision

Standards are what allow different players in a complex ecosystem to talk to each other — clearly, securely, and at scale. They underpin interoperability across systems, schemes, and borders. They create the conditions for competition and innovation. And crucially, they build in resilience by enabling consistency and predictability. 

Many in the industry already know this. We’ve seen ISO 20022 being adopted within firms to support better data usage and fraud prevention. We’ve seen Open Banking use standards to drive a new wave of consumer-facing innovation. But that success was built on clear regulatory mandates and strong central coordination — something we’re currently lacking when it comes to delivering on the broader NPV. 

Where progress is stalling

Right now, uncertainty around the governance of NPV delivery — and the ongoing transition between the PSR and FCA — is slowing down momentum on key standardisation efforts.

Take fraud data standards. Despite strong industry consensus that better data sharing could meaningfully reduce fraud, efforts have “run into the sand.” It’s unclear where responsibility sits — is it a lack of coordination? Lack of incentive from individual firms? Or simply other priorities taking precedence? There’s broad agreement that the blockers aren’t insurmountable — in fact, many agree “it can’t be that hard” — but without a clear owner and strategic steer, progress is sluggish. 

Or consider digital identity. It’s not yet consumer-facing, but has the potential to unlock safer, more seamless experiences across the ecosystem but without clear alignment on standards, solutions risk fragmentation before they ever reach scale.