Faster, high-tech payments mean little if they lock out millions. With critical decisions underway on the UK’s future retail payments infrastructure, Fair4All Finance CEO Kate Pender writes about the importance of inclusive payments.

Payments are changing quickly. New infrastructure, Open Banking, digital identity, new forms of digital money and AI all have the potential to reshape how we pay.

That creates a real opportunity. But success cannot simply be measured by whether payments become faster, more digital or more technologically sophisticated. The test has to be whether they work better for everyone – including people who are currently underserved, people who need help managing their money, and people who risk being left behind as financial services become increasingly digital.

These are not niche concerns affecting a small group of consumers. Millions of households deal with volatile incomes, millions of people rely on others for help with digital banking, and many people remain digitally excluded. The way payments are designed can therefore have a significant impact on people’s ability to manage everyday financial lives.

That is why Fair4All Finance has joined a broad coalition of consumer and civil society organisations in supporting A Consumer Vision for Payments. It sets out a shared ambition for a payments ecosystem that builds people’s confidence, gives them greater control and ensures they can access the support they need.

From vision to infrastructure

The Government’s National Payments Vision set out an ambition for a trusted, innovative payments ecosystem that gives consumers and businesses greater choice. It also established the Payments Vision Delivery Committee (PVDC) to coordinate delivery across HM Treasury, the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Payment Systems Regulator.

The PVDC’s Strategy for Future Retail Payments Infrastructure translates that ambition into five strategic outcomes, including an ecosystem that is ‘inclusive by design’ and responsive to changing user needs.

The Bank of England’s Retail Payments Infrastructure Board (RPIB) is now taking this forward through its consultation on the next generation retail payments infrastructure. The choices being made now will shape how people pay for years to come. The consultation closes on 11 September.

Designing payments around how people actually live

For most people, payments already work well most of the time. The opportunity is not simply to allow those same people to make the same payments using newer technology. It is to use infrastructure renewal and innovation to tackle some of the problems that remain for people that experience exclusion.

Much of the financial system assumes that income arrives and bills leave in predictable monthly cycles. For millions of people, that is not reality. Households with volatile incomes can have to constantly adjust their finances simply to stay on top of everyday commitments.

Research funded by Fair4All Finance from the Centre for Inclusive Money at Nest followed the financial lives of 51 low to moderate income households in the UK. It found people using frequent transfers between accounts as part of the ‘mental accounting’ needed to manage uncertain finances. One couple were even making on average 70 transfers per month between different accounts – more than two a day – to stay on top of their finances. In a discussion of the wider research, another striking scenario involved a couple having to make 150 transfers in a single month between their current, savings, and credit accounts to try and pay bills on time and avoid penalties.

That is an extraordinary amount of effort simply to make the payments system work around the reality of variable income. It is also a reminder that these behaviours are often signs of careful financial management, not poor money management – people are adapting around products and payment schedules that do not reflect the way their income actually arrives.

Designing new payments infrastructure around the needs of excluded and underserved consumers can help to reduce this burden. Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs), for example, can give consumers greater flexibility over recurring payments while keeping them in control of the authority they have granted. This could be particularly valuable for people whose earnings vary from week to week and who find a fixed Direct Debit date difficult to manage.

We are already seeing evidence of the benefits. Moneyline’s use of VRPs allows borrowers to vary repayments in line with their circumstances rather than relying solely on rigid Direct Debits. Its pilot found that 89% of customers felt more in control of their payments and budgeting, 84% preferred VRPs to Direct Debit and 76% said it reduced stress and worry. That is what inclusive payments innovation should look like – using new technology to remove friction that consumers currently have to manage themselves.

What should inclusive payments look like?

Inclusive payments start with confidence. People need to know that a payment is safe, it has reached the intended recipient and there is a clear route when something goes wrong. That becomes more important, not less, as payments become increasingly immediate, interoperable and automated.

New payment methods also need appropriate consumer protection from the outset. We have seen through the Authorised Push Payment (APP) scam reimbursement regime that consumer protection can do more than compensate people after harm occurs – it can also strengthen incentives across the industry to prevent fraud in the first place. Future payment methods and new forms of money should avoid creating a patchwork where materially similar transactions attract very different levels of protection simply because the underlying technology is different.

People also need control. Digital payments can make transactions almost effortless. But less friction does not always mean better outcomes. People need to understand what money is leaving their account, when it will leave and what authority they have given to someone else.

This is particularly important for people living on low or fluctuating incomes. More flexible recurring payments, clearer payment status and tools that allow consumers to amend or revoke authorities can help people manage money around the reality of their finances, rather than forcing their finances to fit rigid payment schedules.

And people need connection to ensure appropriate support is available if they need it. Research suggests that 11 million adults already help relatives, friends or others with making payments, finding balances and statements or paying in cheques. But formal mechanisms for doing this remain inconsistent, meaning people can resort to sharing PINs, passwords or other risky workarounds. Future payment systems should make it possible for someone to receive help safely while retaining control of their own money.

This is not a niche accessibility issue. Third party support should be capable of working across payment journeys – whether someone is making a one-off transfer, managing a regular payment or dealing with something that has gone wrong.

That is why inclusion has to be designed in from the start. It cannot be delivered solely through a well-designed app or customer interface. Decisions about infrastructure, identity, authentication, data, interoperability, scheme rules and consumer protection all shape what products can ultimately be built and who can use them.

Genuine payment choice means more than just another option

Choice is an important part of an inclusive payments ecosystem. Consumers should have access to different ways of paying that work for their circumstances, preferences and needs. But genuine choice means more than simply increasing the number of buttons or interfaces available. It means having alternatives that are genuinely independent, reliable and usable when people need them.

One of my colleagues saw the importance of this first-hand when his bag was stolen while travelling. His wallet, cash and physical cards were taken, and once those cards were blocked, the tokenised versions in his digital wallet stopped working too. He still had money safely in his bank account, but suddenly several of the ways he would normally have paid disappeared at the same time.

It was an unusual situation, but it exposed a wider weakness in the idea of payment choice. Different payment interfaces can still depend on the same underlying route. A card in a physical wallet and the same card tokenised in a digital wallet may look like separate options, but if both stop working together, the consumer does not really have much resilience.

Account to account (A2A) payments at point of sale could provide a genuinely different route and create stronger competition with cards. But technical capability alone will not create a viable or inclusive proposition. Consumers will still expect the things they already value in retail payments – convenience, reliability, a straightforward user experience and strong protections when something goes wrong. If A2A payments are to become a genuine alternative to cards, they need to meet that standard.

The same focus on control and inclusion should apply to digital identity, programmable payments and AI-enabled payments. These technologies could make payments simpler, more flexible and increase choice but only if consumers retain meaningful control over what they have authorised, can revoke permissions easily and are not excluded because they lack a particular device, credential or level of digital confidence.

There is also a wider coordination challenge. Some of the outcomes consumers need – consistent fraud protection, trusted third-party access, interoperability, common verification and clear redress – will not necessarily emerge through competition alone. They may require common standards, shared infrastructure and clear ownership across government, regulators and industry.

Now is the time to shape what comes next

The UK has an opportunity to do more than just simply replacing ageing payments infrastructure. It can build the foundations for payments that give people greater confidence, greater control and better access to the support they need.

That is why we would encourage consumer organisations, charities, accessibility advocates, financial inclusion organisations and others working directly with communities to respond to the Bank of England’s  RPIB consultation before 11 September 2026.

And before you do, you can read A Consumer Vision for Payments to explore the shared priorities for making the future payments ecosystem more inclusive.