The National Payments Vision Committee and Vision Engagement Group

About the group

The National Payments Vision sets out the Government’s ambition for a trusted, world-leading payments ecosystem delivered on next-generation technology, where consumers and businesses have a choice of payment methods to meet their needs. Two key foundations need to be in place to deliver this ambition: a clear, predictable and proportionate regulatory framework, and resilient payments infrastructure that supports innovation. 

The Payments Vision Committee is being established to ensure coordination between the regulators and provide a mechanism to facilitate prioritisation decisions on initiatives. The Committee is also establishing a Vision Engagement Group, to inform and support on its work. This will include representatives from across the sector – including representatives of businesses and users. 

The Vision Engagement Group will comprise of senior representatives of the regulators – the Bank of England (the Bank), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) - and HM Treasury who will be standing members. The group will also include representatives from the sector to ensure that its work is informed by views from, and progressed in partnership with, the sector. 

The design phase of the digital pound will continue alongside the Committee’s work, overseen by the existing joint HM Treasury and Bank of England Digital Pound Task Force, with input from the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Engagement Forum. The chairs of the Taskforce are also members of the Committee, which will ensure coherence across both governance bodies.

Terms of reference for the Payments Vision Delivery Committee 

Membership

The committee has finalised members based on the below criteria:

• Knowledge and experience. Members should be knowledgeable and experienced professionals from the groups listed below (see composition and participation. They should have first-hand professional experience working with retail payments or access to financial services, and/or of shaping and delivering relevant large-scale change programmes.
• Understanding of policy perspective. It is preferable that members can demonstrate understanding of policy issues related to the National Payments Vision.
• Resources. It is important that members can commit sufficient time and resources to the Vision Engagement Group. The required commitment will include attendance at meetings at least four times per year, as well as additional working groups (as required), and preparatory work. Members will also need to contribute to meeting and workshop agendas and papers (potentially at working level from within their organisations).
• Diversity. The Vision Engagement Group should reflect the overall diversity of the UK’s payments landscape, encompassing retail payments made by individuals and businesses (typically high in volume and low in value), as well as wholesale payments between financial institutions. A variety of organisations based on size, geography (reaching all regions of the UK), nature of business, etc. may be selected.

Composition and participation

The Vision Engagement Group consists of a group of members from the public and private sector. Membership is as representative as possible of the UK payments sector, to include (but not limited to):

• banking and financial services
• consumer and civil society representative groups
• fintechs
• merchants
• payment companies
• trade bodies