Payments Council

The Payments Council was an organisation of financial institutions in the United Kingdom, which set strategy for UK payment mechanisms from 2007 until 2015.

In his 2003 Pre-Budget Report, then-Chancellor Gordon Brown announced that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) would lead a new Payments Systems Task Force. The OFT recommended to the Chancellor in 2006 that the Task Force should establish a new body responsible for the integrity and efficiency of co-operative payment systems in the UK. This was set up as the Payments Council in 2007.

By the time of a planned two-year OFT review in 2009, the Payments Council had taken over some activities from the Association for Payment Clearing Services (APACS), which no longer exists. One of the tasks of the Payments Council was to implement the Faster Payments Service, taking clearing times in the UK from among the slowest to among the fastest in the world. Criticisms made in 2009 included delays and shortcomings in delivery, and inability to ensure that Faster Payments members promptly passed on benefits to their customers.

In 2010 it sponsored the Sort Code Validation Accreditation Scheme (SCVAS), which aimed to improve the distribution and validation of bank reference data within the UK payments industry. This was to be achieved via commercial providers offering products and services to verify sort codes used in electronic payment processing.

The Payments Council clashed with the Government in 2011 over plans to abolish cheques. This led to a government consultation on separating the regulatory function from the industry body.

The Payments Council went on to implement the mobile payment system Paym and the Current Account Switch Service (CASS).

In April 2015, the regulatory powers of the Payments Council were transferred to a new body, the Payment Systems Regulator, set up by the Financial Conduct Authority in accordance with section 40 of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013. On 29 June 2015, the Payments Council was then relaunched as the trade association Payments UK.

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