The UK Payments Delivery Company (PDC), the company set up to build Britain’s next retail payments infrastructure, opened a capital raise of about £50 million on September 15, 2026. It is asking for equity from the 19 financial services groups that backed its formation in 2025. Its backers pitch the project as a domestic option for a market where card payments now run over Mastercard and Visa.
The raise moves the effort out of public working groups and into a company with its own capital, a chair designate, and funding through 2028. A PDC spokesperson said the work “will shape the next generation of payments infrastructure and deliver a system that is resilient, innovative and ready for the future.”
The Big Four banks and US players are among the backers
Britain’s four largest retail banks, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, and NatWest, are among the firms being asked to invest, along with Citi, JPMorganChase, Nationwide, PayPal, and Wise. Mastercard and Visa took part in the company’s foundation work, even though it is presented as an alternative to their networks.
Vim Maru, chief executive of Barclays UK, is leading the company as chair designate through the set-up phase. A search for a permanent chief executive is underway. The money covers incorporation and the mobilization phase: hiring staff, writing the rules, and choosing technology vendors.
A Bank of England board will set the scope in early 2027
The effort stems from the National Payments Vision, which HM Treasury published in late 2024 and which called for clear governance of retail payments modernization. The Retail Payments Infrastructure Board, set up under the Bank of England, is due to deliver its first blueprint in the first quarter of 2027. That document will decide which functions the new infrastructure takes on, and in what order.
Card network fees are the backdrop
The immediate trigger is the fees charged by the international card networks, which have been under steady scrutiny in the UK for several years. A domestic infrastructure will not make those fees disappear overnight. It does give banks a fallback: an issuer with a national rail to turn to negotiates from a different position.
Europe shows how long the road can be. The Wero wallet, run by the European Payments Initiative, started with person-to-person transfers, then moved to online checkout and in-store payments, one market at a time. Building a rail is as much about rules, merchant acceptance, and fraud as it is about technology.
Four issues to watch as the company takes shape
- What the Q1 2027 blueprint contains, since it will set the functional scope
- How much of that scope goes to instant payments and account-to-account payments
- The acceptance terms offered to merchants, which will decide whether anyone uses it
- How the company is governed, between the banks that fund it and the public authorities
For payment service providers, the date that matters is not this raise but the 2027 blueprint. It will show whether the UK is building a domestic card network, an account-to-account rail, or a layer of services on top of existing systems.