PSR’s Annual Report Shows a Year of Significant Milestones

The PSR Annual Report shows that the UK has made progress in regulating payments over the past year. The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) says that it has made progress in fighting APP fraud, making faster payments more available, and making card fees more clear. All of these things are meant to build trust, safety, and competition.

The payments industry is highly dynamic and evolves at pace, making it essential that the PSR adopts a strategic approach for everything it does.

The National Payments Vision outlines three pillars designed to guide future activity – innovation, competition and security. These closely align with the PSR’s key areas of focus and the regulator has played a full role to ensure we have the resilient infrastructure to support competition and innovation into the future.

Commenting on the PSR’s progress against its objectives, Aidene Walsh, the PSR’s Chair said: “This year, the consolidation of the PSR primarily into the FCA was announced. It is clear that bringing together the strengths of the PSR and FCA presents an exciting opportunity to deliver a stronger UK payments ecosystem in the future, and we are working hard supporting the Payments Vision Delivery Committee (PVDC) and with stakeholders across the ecosystem in pursuit of this ambition. We have also ensured a strong focus across the PSR on smart and proportionate regulation.

“Looking back over the last year, we are proud of what the PSR has achieved in delivering against our strategy. Our work in tackling fraud – systemically and from multiple angles – has been vital. We have driven forward work to promote competition in payments, and to address harms where we have concerns that competition is ineffective.

The PSR also worked on account switching, access to payment systems, and industry oversight, which all helped make the financial system more open.

“When reviewing our five-year strategy at its midpoint, we clarified the relevance of our key commitments against the latest developments ensuring that we focus on the right areas as the payments sector develops in line with the NPV. These commitments remain valid as we transition and indeed complement the FCA’s 2025-30 strategy – with common core themes around helping consumers and supporting growth, as well as promoting innovation.”

A year of significant delivery:

Over the last year we have sharpened our focus on competition and innovation in payments systems, supporting economic growth. Major milestones have been reached on Confirmation of Payee, Faster Payment transactions, Authorised Push Payment (APP) reimbursement, card fee reviews and potential remedies proposed.

Protecting people now and in the future

On 7 October 2024, the PSR implemented the APP scams reimbursement requirement, which has seen 99% of victims reimbursed. This provides protections for all in-scope consumers while incentivising payment service providers (PSPs) to prevent fraud and requirements have been embedded into Faster Payments and CHAPS.

• The PSR have published fraud statistics to aid transparency and public awareness of the volumes of APP fraud.
• The PSR continued the rollout of Confirmation of Payee requirements across Faster Payments, covering more than 99% of transactions.

Better outcomes through competition and innovation

• The PSR published feedback in collaboration with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on benefits of digital wallets and making the market more competitive.
• The PSR published its final card fee reports on cross-border interchange fees and scheme and processing fees. The regulator also developed potential remedies to address competition concerns.
• Working closer with the FCA to achieve positive change, the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee (JROC) has transitioned to a new joint steering group and tasked Open Banking Limited to oversee Phase 1 of the expansion of variable recurring payments.

The PSR’s annual report includes a full list of achievements, collaboration and progress towards its strategic objectives over the course of 2024/25.

To find out more about the work programme for the year ahead, read 2025/26 Annual Plan.

The PSR Annual Report 2024 shows that the regulator is having a bigger and bigger effect on UK payments by promoting innovation, protecting users, and fair market practices.