A group of 31 players in the open banking and payments industries has committed to fund efforts to create a new company that will bid to put Variable Recurring Payments on a viable commercial footing in the UK.
Editorial
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VRPs are a form of payments instruction that allows customers to authorise registered payment service providers to initiate payments from their bank account on an ongoing basis, where the timing or the amount might vary, within agreed limits.
Financial regulators have been gradually laying the ground for VRPs, and late last year the government called for industry partners to play their role in supporting the effective and timely delivery of commercial variable payments (cVRPs).
Now a group of 31 fintechs, high street banks, challenger banks and payment providers have agreed to put up initial funding for a new entity that will be wholly owned and run by industry. Barclays, GoCardless, Mastercard, Monzo, Plaid, Revolut and Wise are among the backers.
The proposed initial uses cases for cVRPs will focus on selected regulated industries such as payments to utility and rail companies, regulated financial firms, e-money institutions, government bodies, and charities.
Offering cVRPs in these areas would give Brits better control over regular payments, as well as a frictionless experience when buying goods or services from websites.
Henk Van Hulle, CEO, Open Banking Limited, says: “This is a significant moment for the industry, and I sincerely thank the organisations that have committed to fund efforts to create a company that will carry forward the important work on cVRPs. It is testament to the collaborative nature of our ecosystem that it can be industry-led.”
