Bank of England to overhaul RTGS service, issues consultation paper
The Bank of England to overhaul its 20-year old RTGS service
The Bank of England (BoE) has published a consultation paper on the next generation real-time gross settlement (RTGS) service.
“Our proposals are intended to provide broader access, higher resilience, greater interoperability, and a wider range of user functionality compared to the RTGS of today,” the bank states on its website.
On the way out is the bank’s legacy 20-year old platform.
The BoE is calling on the payments industry specialists to get in touch.
“We are seeking views on the future RTGS service from the widest possible range of people with a stake in the future of sterling payments,” it says.
“A timetable for delivery of the new service will be published in 2017, with a provisional aim of completion in 2020.”
The review was initiated in early 2016 by Minouche Shafik, the bank’s deputy governor at the time (he has recently quit to join the London School of Economics).
It highlights the following five key requirements for the new RTGS system:
- It must be capable of responding to the changing structure of the financial system.
- It must recognise that payment system users want simpler and more resilient pathways for their payments.
- It must be capable of interfacing with a range of new technologies being used in the private sector, including distributed ledgers, if/when they achieve critical mass.
- It must remain highly resilient to the increasingly diverse range of threats to continuity of service.
- It must have the capacity to support the future evolution of regulatory and monetary policy tools.
The full consultation paper can be read here.
Responses to the consultation can be submitted here. The deadline is 7th November 2016.
The BoE will also be hosting industry briefings on the consultation paper on 4th and 11th October 2016. Follow this link for the online registration to attend these events.
