About Mike Chambers

Mike Chambers is the Chairman of Answer Pay, a first to market Request to Pay service. Request to Pay supports the needs of billers and payers and empowers a new era of modern cash collection services. Mike provides the leadership and strategic direction needed to support the connectivity of Payment Service Providers (PSPs) to the Request to Pay framework and standards using Answer Pay’s platform. Mike Chambers is a recognised authority on retail payments and, as Chief Executive Officer, led Bacs Payment Schemes Limited (Bacs), the UK’s biggest retail payment system, from 2004 until 2018. During this time he successfully steered the company through a record number of payment processing, technological, regulatory, and innovative customer proposition ‘firsts’ including extending Bacs’ product offering to include the ownership, management, and market adoption of the Current Account Switch Service (CASS) and the Cash ISA Transfer Service. During his time at Bacs, Mike also led the UK’s systemically important RTGS payment system (CHAPS) as its CEO and operated the UK’s Faster Payment Scheme as its first Chief Executive creating the Payment System Operator (Faster Payment Scheme Limited). Mike was an integral part of the industry initiative which led to the New Payments Architecture (NPA) vision (including concepts such as Request To Pay and Confirmation of Payee), the regulatory endorsed merger of the UK’s retail payment schemes and the formation of Pay.UK. Having successfully merged Bacs into Pay.UK, Mike has developed a portfolio including roles as chairman, payments advisor, Non Executive Director, ambassador and he publishes a newsletter which provides an informed insight into the UK’s retail payments landscape. After over a decade as the Chief Executive Officer of the UK’s biggest retail payment system and bank account switching service Mike has embarked on a portfolio career. Mike’s portfolio includes chair of a Fintech company, a number of payments advisory engagements and he is an Ambassador for the Emerging Payments Association. Mike also publishes a newsletter that provides independent and informed insight into the UK’s retail payments landscape, including exclusive payment insights, hot topic briefings, and fundamentals unpacked. Read, subscribe and share: northeypoint.substack.com