Payments UK Launches One-Stop Shop Standards Service

The trade association for the British payments industry, known as Payments UK, said on Tuesday (April 19) that it has debuted a “new one-stop shop” tied to standards that affect the country’s entire payments industry.

Dubbed the Standards Collaboration Framework, the trade association’s new service will make available what it termed a “single, authoritative resource” for standards requirements. The resource will be a repository of documentation for U.K.-based payments infrastructure.

Among the first to trial the service, as noted by the trade association: Faster Payments Scheme Limited — a company tied to payments made across mobile, telecom and Internet that signed on to take advantage of the library that acts to keep stakeholders informed across the company’s own initiatives and map out adherence to future standards.

The initiative, said Payments UK, was developed, in part, with feedback from its members, and its goal is to reduce the time and effort expended on managing standards, with a technological focus on a Web interface.

In a statement, Maurice Cleaves, chief executive officer of Payments UK, said: “We saw an opportunity to simplify standards management in payments and are pleased to make the Standards Collaboration Framework available for the industry.”

“It will reduce the time and cost of managing the standards that are vital to the smooth working of payments. Standards are natural territory for a centralized, shared resource, and the new service will deliver increased efficiency in the management of operational standards.”

In separate commentary, Mike Banyard, development head at Faster Payments, said his firm “is pleased to be the first customer to take advantage of Payments UK’s standards library. This is an important vehicle to ensure that the world-leading functionality of Faster Payments is available to customers across the world via standardization and allows us to be ISO 20022-ready.”