Bit by Bit: How Data are Enhancing Payments
Posted on Dec 19, 2024 by Victoria Cleland, Executive Director for Payments, Bank of England, with co-authoring from Mark Streather of the Bank of England’s Payments Operational Policy & Standards Team
Enabling Innovation Through Data
In an increasingly interconnected world, extracting insights from the exchange of data is becoming increasingly valuable. Technological advances are transforming the way we consume information, offering new solutions to everyday problems. For the payments community, this presents new opportunities for enhancing the payment experience for users.
As operator of the UK’s Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) infrastructure and High Value Payment System, CHAPS, the Bank of England (‘the Bank’) is seeking to enable payments to evolve in line with this technological progress, while also ensuring confidence in the UK’s payments infrastructure is maintained. A sustainable approach to innovation is necessary to safeguard the reliability of payments infrastructure and to maintain the public’s confidence and ultimately financial stability. Through our RTGS Renewal Programme and Future Roadmap, we are introducing an open platform for sustainable innovation in money and payments.
Richer data will form a key component of that platform for innovation. However, to act as a catalyst for this value creation, data need to be useful and usable. That means a consistent, structured approach to payments data across the UK’s wholesale payment ecosystem and also ensuring these data are as accessible as possible. For instance, widening access to the Bank’s RTGS data is the driver for the Bank’s domestic development of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), as part of the renewal of the UK’s RTGS service. And as we are in a period of rapid international development in the payment space, unlocking the value of cross-border payments requires a global approach.
The Bank’s Data Focus
The Bank is a strong believer in the importance of data-driven policy-making. We regard data as a ‘timeless enabler of the Bank’s mission’ and the Bank’s data and analytics strategy emphasises its importance in achieving its mission of maintaining monetary and financial stability. The strategy focuses on making data accessible and easy to analyse, bridging data gaps, and fostering innovation. Given recent developments, this also includes ...
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