Payment rails in numbers

Issue 505 | 30 June 2023

Payment rails in numbers

In this sixth round up of retail payments in 2023, for the 12 months to the end of May 2023¹, we continue to see double digit growth in the volume and value of Faster Payments and double digit decline in paper clearing.

The growth in volume and value for the UK’s bulk clearing scheme have fallen slightly to 2% and 5% respectively with growth in the volume and value for the UK’s real time gross settlement system also falling to to 3% and 10% respectively.

---

---

---

Faster Payments

In the 12 months to the end of May 2023 we see that:

• Single Immediate Payment volumes have increased by 17% (12 months to April 18%).

• Total Faster Payment volumes have increased by 13% (12 months to April 14%).

• Single Immediate Payment values have increased by 26% (12 months to April 28%).

• Total Faster Payment values have increased by 22% (12 months to April 24%).

Faster Payments volumes continue to be bolstered by the switch from analogue to digital payments, reinforced due to the pandemic, increase in the Faster Payment transaction limit and also by the growing importance of Open Banking initiated Account to Account (A2A) payments.

Although the trajectory in the increase in the volume of payments has continued to flatten, the overall increase year on year is still significant and looks set to continue for some while to come.

The future is certainly bright for Faster Payments – continued growth from Open Banking A2A payments and payments initiated by overlay services such as Request to Pay and Variable Recurring payments is on the agenda. The growth is also likely to be bolstered through the introduction of new Faster Payment types (or flavours) as part of version 1.0 of the planned New Payments Architecture (NPA) and, perhaps, through a future planned migration of Bacs Direct Credit payments into the NPA.

---

Bacs Direct Debit and Direct Credit

In the 12 months to the end of May 2023 we see that:

• Bacs Direct Credit volumes have increased by 3% (12 months to April increased by 5%)

• Bacs Direct Debit volumes have increased by 2% (12 months to April increased by 2%)

• Total Bacs volumes have increased by 2% (12 months to April increased by 3%)

• Bacs Direct Credit values have increased by 4% (12 months to April increased by 5%)

• Bacs Direct Debit values have increased by 8% (12 months to April increased by 9%)

• Total Bacs values have increased by 5% (12 months to April increased by 6%).