Bank of England (UK) launched a public consultation on the design of future retail payments infrastructure, soliciting feedback on core clearing and messaging layers to support programmable payments and interoperability between forms of digital money.

Why it matters

The consultation is shaping the architectural and technical standards for the UK's next-generation payments system. The text explicitly signals openness to 'programmability,' 'interoperability' between 'different forms of digital money' (including new forms of money and CBDC), and account-to-account use cases. These choices—infrastructure standards, messaging protocols, data schemas, interoperability requirements—are typically locked in during design phases and are difficult to change post-deployment. The community can submit evidence on how blockchain-based settlement, programmable transactions, and cross-ledger interoperability work in practice, and help educate the RPIB on technical feasibility and existing standards that could inform the final infrastructure design.