If you've had a problem with a payment...
The PSR doesn’t handle queries or complaints from consumers about individual payments. If you’ve had a problem making a payment or suspect fraudulent activity, the best thing to do first is contact your account provider (e.g., your bank). If you feel the situation is still not resolved and want to complain, you can contact the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Our focus is on making sure that payment systems develop and innovate in ways that benefit everyone that uses them - which is all of us. To help ensure this happens, we carry out a number of important pieces of work, including:
🤜 Tackling fraud
- Everyone should be able to make payments safely and with confidence. Authorised Push Payment (APP) scams continue to have a devastating impact on people and more action must be taken by the financial sector, and by those across the digital ecosystem to fight fraud. We’ll be implementing new rules that will let people see how well their bank is protecting them against APP scams, as well as continuing our work to prevent fraud through measures like Confirmation of Payee (CoP) and help more victims get reimbursed.
📱 Unlocking account-to-account payments
- We want people and businesses to have good choice and flexibility in the way they pay. With over 7 million active open banking users in the UK, we are playing a leading role in making sure the full potential of open banking is realised, particularly through our work as co-chair of the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee. This will bring opportunities for new services and allow more convenient and efficient ways to pay.
🔎 Effective enforcement
- Our enforcement work is important in making sure firms are following the rules and that people and businesses are protected. If firms do break the rules, we have the power to impose penalties, which could include issuing fines. During 2022, we concluded investigations which saw a total of £44 million issued in penalties.
💷 Maintaining cash access
- Together with other regulators, authorities and industry, we continue to oversee LINK, the ATM network, making sure people and businesses have access to cash across the UK.
👜 Helping businesses
- We want to make sure the cards market is working well for people and businesses across the UK. Following our market review of card-acquiring services, we issued new rules designed to encourage transparency, engagement and comparison to help promote competition in the card-acquiring market. We’re also examining card fees to ensure businesses and consumers are getting a good deal on card payments.
🔮 Laying foundations for the future
- As the sector develops, we want to make sure that payment systems are safe, reliable and fit for the future. This means shaping the delivery of the UK’s New Payments Architecture (NPA) by Pay.UK, which aims to meet growing demand for digital payments and support increased competition and innovation.
- We’ll also make sure that our regulation of payment systems can adapt as new technologies and business models emerge, including those based on cryptoassets for example.
♟️ Having a strategic and evolving approach
- While we continue to focus on our strategic priorities of protection, competition, unlocking account-to-account payments and providing access and choice, we will evolve our approach so we can be quick to respond to, and influence, emerging trends in payments. We will also boost our effectiveness by broadening our engagement with stakeholders and building a new team to increase our focus on reducing firms’ non-compliance with the rules we enforce.
