Latest news with #NationalPaymentsVision
Finextra
09-07-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Building the Backbone: Future-Proofing Fintech Infrastructure for the Next Decade: By Anjna McGettrick
The UK fintech sector is experiencing a remarkable surge, with investment nearly tripling to $7.3 billion in the first half of 2024, defying a global downturn. However, rapid growth brings challenges including scaling operations, ensuring regulatory compliance and maintaining robust IT infrastructure. For fintech startups, navigating these complexities without in-house expertise can lead to inefficiencies and risks. Choosing Colocation? A Strategic Move for Scalable Growth Constructing and maintaining proprietary data centres is costly and resource intensive. Consequently, many fintech companies, from startups to billion-dollar giants, opt for colocation facilities. These facilities offer flexible, scalable solutions with high availability, security and built-in regulatory compliance, eliminating the burden of managing an entire data centre. For fintechs expanding into multiple regions, colocation can be transformative. Leveraging facilities in key financial hubs enables lower latency, faster transaction speeds, and seamless global expansion while adhering to regional regulations. Even the largest fintech players rely on colocation to scale data operations under strict privacy rules. While some may eventually build their own data centres, colocation remains a practical and agile choice for many, delivering scalability without the constraints of rigid, expensive setups. This approach also mirrors wider national ambitions. The UK government recently outlined its National Payments Vision – plans for a next-generation payments ecosystem, built around open banking and emerging technology. For fintechs, this underlines the importance of infrastructure designed to support rapid innovation and adaptability right now, not just when the roadmap demands it. AI and Edge Computing: How to Power Data-Driven Finance Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionising fintech through real-time fraud detection, automated trading and risk assessment. But these use cases generate vast volumes of data that require near-instantaneous processing. As AI adoption grows, fintechs will depend increasingly on machine learning for hyper-personalised services. Having the right infrastructure in place is paramount. But with demand soaring, data centre operators are under pressure to keep pace. To avoid a looming shortfall, the industry must double the capacity added since 2000 in less than a quarter of the time. Edge data centres offer a compelling solution by decentralising compute power, lowering latency and improving data security. This not only relieves pressure on core cloud systems but allows fintechs to deliver faster and smarter financial services to users wherever they are. To support AI-driven fintech, edge data centres must ensure seamless power, cooling and cabling. High-power AI workloads demand sophisticated cable management, efficient cooling – often liquid-based for high-density setups – and stable, sustainable power delivery. When managed correctly, this infrastructure allows fintech organisations to scale their AI capabilities without bottlenecks or outages. Why Cabling and Connectivity Still Matter Ultra-low latency and high-speed connectivity are non-negotiable in fintech. Real-time payments, algorithmic trading and AI-powered services require networks that operate in milliseconds. Without robust, low-latency infrastructure fintechs face performance bottlenecks that impact profitability and user experience. High-speed fibre connections and structured cabling are the unsung heroes of this system. They ensure that data flows instantly and securely, which is critical for applications processing thousands of transactions per second. Even fintechs using colocation facilities must prioritise quality cabling to reduce downtime and support seamless connectivity. Investing in future-ready networking also helps avoid expensive reworks as operations scale up. Staying Ahead of Regulatory Risk As fintechs lean into AI, they must also navigate a complex and heavily regulated landscape. GDPR, PCI-DSS and financial data protection laws aren't just compliance tick-boxes, they're vital to customer trust and business continuity. That makes a secure, well-structured foundation essential. From January 2025, UK regulators began directly overseeing major tech providers to financial firms –including cloud storage and AI platforms – underscoring the need for fintech infrastructure that's not only high-performing, but fully auditable and compliant. For fintechs expanding into regions like Europe, the challenge is twofold: meeting daunting regional standards like GDPR while adapting to new layers of oversight. The right infrastructure partner can simplify this complexity and keep growing fintechs firmly on the right side of regulation. Managing IT Growth Across Offices As fintechs grow, so do their teams and office footprints. Doubling headcount in a year isn't unusual – but without the right IT infrastructure, this rapid growth can lead to fragmentation and inefficiencies. Whether it's integrating new offices, enabling hybrid work or securing endpoints, office infrastructure must scale alongside the business. Working with a single provider across colocation, networking, cloud and on-site IT makes that possible. Smart office setups – complete with high-speed networking, structured cabling and remote management – help fintechs maintain security and productivity across every site. Getting this foundation right from day one means fewer disruptions and more agility as new opportunities emerge. Future-Proofing the Fintech Foundation The fintech space is evolving fast, and only those with scalable, secure and AI-ready infrastructure will keep up. To do this, Fintechs should partner with experienced infrastructure providers that understand the demands of modern finance. Doing so will help fintechs reduce complexity, mitigate risk and stay focused on what really matters: innovation, speed and customer impact.
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mastercard unveils UK A2A instant payments sandbox
Mastercard is set to provide UK banks and financial institutions with a groundbreaking platform to innovate and test account-to-account (A2A) instant payments technology. Later this year, the company will open access to its fifth-generation A2A instant payments sandbox, designed to foster collaboration and modernise the UK's payment ecosystem. The sandbox environment will enable experimentation with new payment flows, including retail and digital assets, across various use cases. It aims to support the development of advanced services such as the "5-leg credit transfer" with instant payment confirmation, enhancing merchant and consumer payment options. Adhering to the international ISO20022 standards, the sandbox will offer significant improvements in transaction data richness. This advancement is expected to boost fraud detection capabilities and pave the way for future innovations in the payment sector. The UK government's National Payments Vision (NPV), published at the end of last year, sets ambitious goals for the payment sector's contribution to economic growth. Mastercard's A2A sandbox aligns with this vision, providing a platform for banks and fintechs to prepare for the next phase of the UK's payment evolution. An EY report from March 2025 highlighted the potential for a £9bn annual uplift to the UK's GDP through the modernisation of A2A infrastructure. The sandbox represents a critical step in unlocking this growth, serving as a testing ground for new infrastructure capabilities and products. Mastercard's Next Generation A2A Instant Payment platform underpins the sandbox, offering a cloud-ready solution with user-friendly front-end tools and a developer portal, as well as robust back-end functionality with API access for easy integration. Mastercard Real Time Payments executive vice president Peter Reynolds said: 'Account-to-account payments in the UK are already an enormous part of the UK's financial landscape. The Mastercard A2A instant payments Sandbox opens our innovative technology to our partners to develop and test new potential services. Alongside the UK government's National Payments Vision, we're setting out a bold vision of the future in A2A real-time payments.' The sandbox was showcased at UK Finance's Digital Innovation Summit on 24 June, emphasising its role in accelerating retail payments. In September 2024, Mastercard updated its Consumer Fraud Risk (CFR) solution to increase the ways it helps protect consumers from Real Time Payment scams. The AI-powered insights give more UK banks greater visibility into potentially fraudulent transactions so they can stop scams before they take place. "Mastercard unveils UK A2A instant payments sandbox" was originally created and published by Retail Banker International, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Finextra
14-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
How payments modernisation can help the UK retain its fintech crown
In this FinextraTV interview, Helena Forest, EVP, Global Product & Commercial, Real Time Payments, Mastercard gives her opinion on the current state of the payments landscape in the UK. Modernisation, regulatory compliance, collaboration and the governments National Payments Vision all feature as reasons to be optimistic.
Finextra
14-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
How Payments Modernisation Will Sustain UK's Fintech Crown
In this FinextraTV interview, Helena Forest, EVP, Global Product & Commercial, Real Time Payments, Visa gives her opinion on the current state of the payments landscape in the UK. Modernisation, regulatory compliance, collaboration and the governments National Payments Vision all feature as reasons to be optimistic.
Finextra
08-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
FCA appoints David Geale executive director, payments and digital finance
The FCA has appointed David Geale as permanent executive director for payments and digital finance, and managing director of the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR). 0 This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author. In his role David will be responsible for helping to deliver the National Payments Vision and driving the FCA's work on open banking and digital finance. David will also play a key role in the work to consolidate the PSR into the FCA, as announced by the Government in March. He will also be responsible for supervising payments and cryptoasset firms under the recently announced regime. Aidene Walsh, chair of the PSR said: 'David has played a key role in fostering greater alignment and strengthening the relationship between the FCA and the PSR. This will be increasingly important as we move towards consolidation while at the same time continuing to deliver the important work that the PSR does, including on APP fraud and card processing fees.' Nikhil Rathi, Chief Executive of the FCA said: 'David brings a wealth of experience that will be vital as we deliver the National Payments Vision as well as unlocking the potential that open finance and open banking can bring.' David Geale said: 'I'm delighted to be taking on this new role at such an important and exciting time for both organisations, and the payments sector as a whole. I look forward to working with colleagues, consumer groups and the wider industry as we take the next steps in our work.' David was previously director of retail banking at the FCA. He has worked at the FCA and its predecessor, the FSA, for more than 20 years, carrying out a number of roles in policy and supervision. He was involved in leading and delivering policies such as the Retail Distribution Review and policy changes during the UK's exit from the European Union. More recently, David has led the FCA's work on developing a regime for cryptoassets as well as savings rates and reforming the mortgage market as set out in the FCA's letter to the Prime Minister on growth. David has been acting as the managing director of the PSR since June 2024. Following David's appointment, Emad Aladhal has been appointed permanent director of retail banking with Andrea Bowe becoming permanent director, specialist directorate. Both have been carrying out the roles on an interim basis. Background Details of the consolidation of the PSR can be found hereLink is external . Prior to being interim director of retail banking, Emad was director of the FCA's specialist directorate, which included financial crime, Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision (OPBAS), financial resilience, client assets, resolution and insolvency, and technology, resilience and cyber. Emad previously co-led the FCA's strategy commitment on reducing and preventing financial crime, and is now part of the director team on helping consumers. Prior to re-joining the FCA in 2017, Emad was a compliance director at a top-tier investment bank, and has prior extensive experience as a regulatory consultant, where he has advised on various aspects of regulation, which included advising on the UK administration of a failed large investment bank during the last financial crisis. Andrea has spent the last 18 years at the FCA, including 14 years in FCA enforcement and advancing to influential positions, including chief of staff to Nikhil Rathi, Chief Executive. Andrea led Nikhil's transition into the FCA and subsequently co-led the FCA's ambitious transformation programme. During this time, she was also interim director of FCA communications. In her current role as director of the specialist directorate in supervision, policy and competition, she has responsibility for prudential policy, standards and supervision, cyber and operational resilience, client assets, resolution and insolvency and financial crime, fraud and OPBAS. She co-leads the FCA's current 5-year strategy commitment to fighting financial crime, contributing to the UK's national Economic Crime Plan and Fraud Strategy. She is chair of the International Organisation of Securities Commission's (E)MMoU Monitoring Group and Monitoring Steering Committee, responsible for monitoring the operation of, and compliance with, the (E)MMoU, including decision making on disputes and matters of non-compliance.
