From launch to scale: UKPI at Open Banking Expo and Regulator Day

Open Banking Expo’s Regulator Day and Open Banking Expo UK & Europe 2026 created an important moment for UK Payments Initiative to bring the commercial variable recurring payments conversation into the room with regulators, banks, fintechs, platforms, merchants and wider industry stakeholders.

At the Regulator Day, UKPI led a panel, ‘Delivering the National Payments Vision through industry collaboration: The case of commercial VRP’, bringing together Claudio Pollack, independent non-executive chair at UKPI, as moderator, with George Miltiadous, head of Open Banking at HSBC; Charles Damen, chief product officer at Token.io; Briony Krikorian-Slade, head of governance & strategy at UKPI; and Alex Kirykowicz, director at Frontier Economics. Together, the panel reflected the breadth of perspectives needed to make commercial VRP work in practice: bringing banks and fintechs together with well-constructed scheme governance and economic advice to shape the commercial model, refine technical models and scheme rules and improve user experience needed for a successful launch in June 2026.

As chair of the panel, Pollack, UKPI chair, framed the discussion around the importance of collaboration: “UKPI shows how the market can build on shared technical standards and develop a commercial model to move from policy intent to live capability. UKPI already has plans to extend into further products, and we are looking forward to continuing to work with all parts of the ecosystem to achieve this.”

Across the Expo, there was strong engagement on the potential for Wave 1 use cases across sectors including utilities, telecoms, transport, financial services, government and charities. The conversations also reinforced two priorities: building market awareness and communicating a clear value proposition; and delivering a consistent, positive user experience that drives adoption.

The event also provided an opportunity to celebrate UKPI closing its latest subscription period. UKPI now has 26 shareholders, including 10 banks and building societies, providing strong coverage for Open Banking recurring payments alongside fintechs and other organisations committed to creating a trusted, scalable way for account-to-account recurring payments to work better for customers, businesses and the wider market.

‘Test and learn’

UKPI managing director Richard Koch’s fireside chat, ‘Two decades in the making: Building the UK’s new payment scheme’, set out why a new industry-led scheme was needed, how UKPI has moved from concept to launch, and what it takes to bring banks, third-party providers and other stakeholders together behind a shared approach.

He captured UKPI’s approach as a “test and learn journey, proving the model through carefully selected Wave 1 use cases, learning from live implementation and building the confidence needed to scale.” The session also explored how the commercial model is being developed to enable additional future use cases. The discussion compared costs across different payment methods and, while direct debit is often low cost for larger merchants, Koch made the point that it is only cheap when it works; the operational cost of failures, exceptions and customer issues can be significant.

The conversations also looked beyond launch and into scale, including the work needed to build wider market confidence: developing commercial models, risk and fraud controls, liability and dispute handling, and the protections needed for future phases of account-to-account recurring payments to scale safely with customer trust at the centre.

Broader vision

Back at the UKPI stand, the conversations reinforced how much market interest there is in what comes next. Looking ahead, participants are exploring opportunities with larger online merchants next year, with UKPI’s broader vision extending across other Open Banking account-to-account payments, as well as face-to-face and agentic payments. These conversations underline the breadth of opportunity as the market considers where trusted, bank-authorised account-to-account payments could enable new customer journeys, from smart contracts to agent-led commerce.

We welcome continued engagement from across the ecosystem as UKPI moves from launch into scale, tests live use cases and shapes the commercial, operational and customer protections needed for future phases. To find out more, visit www.ukpaymentsinitiative.co.uk.

Further reading: Insight – Building the next chapter of UK payments