Finastra gears up to support UK banks with New Payments Architecture readiness

As the industry awaits an update on the UK’s New Payments Architecture (NPA), Finastra is committed to the timely development and roll-out of the functionality required to support readiness for its customers. Finastra’s cloud-based payments technology and collaboration with new and established bank and technology partners, such as Microsoft, will support banks’ full compliance with the infrastructure changes ahead of the 2024 deadline. The number of banking payments processed via the current Faster Payments Service (FPS) grew by 23 percent from 2020 to 2021, reaching 3.6 billion, and is predicted to continue rising year on year (UK Finance). NPA, the new payment scheme by Pay.UK, the operator of the FPS, will provide the infrastructure to accommodate this growth. However, banks still using legacy systems may experience delayed readiness and ongoing challenges in adapting to future developments, such as the new ISO 20022 messaging standard, a requirement for NPA. As a native ISO 20022 solution, Finastra’s Fusion Payments To Go addresses such challenges, simplifying compliance efforts, enabling rapid NPA readiness and unlocking new opportunities – both for the initial phase of immediate payment support and downstream when BACS is migrated. Integrated with value-added services such as real-time fraud detection and liquidity monitoring via FusionFabric.cloud, it will enable banks to adhere to the new way of managing clearing and settlement of UK interbank payments. The solution, alongside Finastra’s ongoing engagement with Pay.UK, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), and the Bank of England, will ensure banks can seamlessly address both regulatory and business implications. “This is a significant change for the UK payments market, and one of the biggest we’ve seen since 2010 and the introduction of Faster Payments,” said Paul Thomalla, Head of Industry and Regulatory Affairs at Finastra. “In particular, smaller organizations might struggle with the cost and capacity to make the move internally. The temptation to delay could also prove dangerous. Our leading position in the payments space and experience with similar schemes, such as the New Payments Platform (NPP) in Australia and FedNow in collaboration with the US Federal Reserve, ensures we are well placed to support banks with this essential digital transformation journey.” Fusion Payments To Go, powered by Microsoft Azure and integrated with Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud, enables banks to keep pace with rapidly changing regulation and customer demands. It offers pre-integration with existing core banking systems for speedy onboarding and go-live. As a SaaS solution, it helps banks to reduce operational costs and spend more time and resources driving innovation and delivering service excellence. “The UK has had widespread immediate payment capabilities since 2008 and is now renovating its infrastructure to address the challenges presented by the rapid evolution of technology and competition,” said Gilles Ubaghs, Strategic Advisor, Aite-Novarica Group. “Banks and payment providers will find that working with technology partners with cloud-based solutions can provide a more efficient way to meet NPA deadlines and stay ahead of on-going changes to payment infrastructure as it evolves.”