The U.K. risks falling behind other nations unless it can create an alternative to its Faster Payment Service.
That’s according to a new government-commissioned review on competitiveness in the country’s payment industry, the focus of a Wednesday (Nov. 22) Financial Times (FT) report.
According to the FT, that review calls the Faster Payment Service “clunky” and says the payment sector should use open banking technology to develop new routes between customers’ bank accounts and retailers that would go around card intermediaries and challenge the dominance of the Visa and Mastercard.
“When we talk and listen to merchants and retailers, they say things like, we feel trapped because we have to take card payments,” said former Nationwide CEO Joe Garner, who led the review, adding that offering retailers the ability to charge without using a card network would create a “healthier” market, especially as the use of cash was falling.