Background

The past 10 years has seen new technology lead to new innovative solutions. This means parts of the industry have moved away from legacy technology to new methods of operating. However, standards remain very important if the industry is to work together.

The benefits of standardisation include:

• lower processing costs
• simplified entry criteria for new participants
• improved resilience and integrity.  

Common standards are important to all parties in the payment chain, not just to payment service providers.

The Payments Council Standards Unit is a recognised centre of expertise in payment and related standards. It is actively engaged in a wide range of forums at national, European and international levels.  

Our key principles

The key principles of the Payments Council standardisation work are:

• Wherever possible, to adopt global, European, or domestic standards, in that order, over proprietary standards
• The UK should seek to play an active role in developing new global/European standards relevant to the banking and payments industry, and where appropriate work with corporate representative bodies
• Standards should be designed to cover the complete end-to-end payment transaction chain, including customer initiation and notification/reconciliation, as well as identification and authentication
• Convergence between different standards organisations should be encouraged as part of a wider consolidation process. Click here for a brief summary of the standard organisations we deal with
• Standard development must result in practical solutions that seek to minimise business impact on the adopters, with due consideration given to legacy migration issues.