FIS and Vocalink first to supply access to Faster Payments
Craig Tillotson, CEO of Faster Payments
FIS and Vocalink’s PayPort have become the first to gain accreditation to supply access to Faster Payments through its New Access Model.
Both have been awarded the new certificate of technical accreditation “trust mark”, after passing all the required technical tests covering the origination and receipt of payments by a direct participant of Faster Payments.
Faster Payments says FIS and Vocalink are expected to be joined over the coming months by at least four other fintech firms currently in the final stages of testing, all “competing” to offer services to more than a dozen “interested” payment service providers (PSPs).
Faster Payments adds a number of banks are also lined up to connect directly this year – including Raphael’s Bank, Metro Bank and a variety of “small and larger” players, some of which are still going through the process of gaining their banking licence.
Craig Tillotson, chief executive of Faster Payments, says its new technical accreditation service is “another big step forward in levelling the playing field” for access.
The accreditation process was carried out using a newly created cloud-hosted service. Complete end-to-end accreditation tests are done in 15 minutes.
PSR, UK, ASAP
This latest new follows on from earlier this month, when the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) announced it was pushing for more competition in the supply of indirect access to payment systems.
In its interim report the PSR says work to open up access is “generating increasingly positive results” but wants more.
The PSR also says banks should sell their stake in the nation’s payments infrastructure, VocaLink, to “help increase innovation and competition”. The PSR has published its provisional findings of its market review into the ownership and competitiveness of the infrastructure that supports the payments systems; Bacs, Faster Payments System (FPS) and LINK.
If you want more, David Bannister, principal consultant, financial services technology, Ovum, recently discussed this issue in his opinion piece “Payments shake-up in the UK: the baby and the bathwater”.
