The recently published Garner Review of the Future of Payments confirmed several key trends in the payment industry such as a shift to card payments away from cash. Worryingly, it also stated that the UK is slipping down the global table of innovators in payments.
These trends are well known to payment industry professionals and regrettably the report has added little to the debate about the way forward for the UK’s payment industry. Calling for a “North Star” to guide the industry is all very well, but with no plan of how to bring the stakeholders together and no certainty that they should go “north”, the report has added little to the challenge of what to do next.
Witstock’s experience of managing change in the payments sector indicates that the only effective way forward for the UK is for retailer and banking stakeholders to come together and define what great looks like for them and their customers. If the sector does not collaborate, it will end up with regulator/government-imposed innovations that satisfy no one and cost a great deal to implement. Collaborating to identify a common set of objectives for payments to create a “shared” vision has happened in the past and must happen now for the sake of the future of payments in the UK.

Witstock has chaired the Future Payments Forum since its inception in 2022. The Forum aims to brings together stakeholders from across the payments industry to discuss the future direction of the sector in a way that encourages better understanding between users, regulators, service providers and all those organisations that rely on mass-payment systems. This review describes the meeting and the discussion held by the group. To join the forum please contact Annabel Cartwright, Smartex Limited, +44 7785 254405 or via annabel@smartex.com.

Witstock has chaired the Future Payments Forum since its inception in 2022. The Forum aims to brings together stakeholders from across the payments industry to discuss the future direction of the sector in a way that encourages better understanding between users, regulators, service providers and all those organisations that rely on mass-payment systems. This review describes the meeting and the discussion held by the group. To join the forum please contact Annabel Cartwright, Smartex Limited, +44 7785 254405 or via annabel@smartex.com.

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