The Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) are seeking views on the benefits and risks digital wallets bring to people and businesses.
With Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal being three of the most widely used digital wallets in the UK today, digital wallets have become an increasingly important touchpoint between big tech firms and UK consumers.
The regulators are therefore keen to better understand the impact on consumers and businesses that digital wallets’ increasing popularity creates, including:
- the range of benefits that digital wallets bring for service users
- whether there are any features that mean payments don’t work as well as they could for consumers and/or businesses
- their role in unlocking the potential of account-to-account payments and how they could impact competition between payment systems; and
- whether digital wallets could raise any significant competition, consumer protection or market integrity issues, either now or in the future.
The PSR is particularly interested in understanding how digital wallets impact consumers’ choice of payment options at checkout. It hopes to gain better understanding of the implications of digital wallets’ growing role in payments, and the implications for competition between payment systems including the PSR’s strategic objective of unlocking the potential of account-to-account payments.
The FCA’s regulatory remit gives it a particular interest in issues such as how digital wallets may impact competition in the supply of financial services and the operational resilience and systemic safety of the UK financial services sector.
This call for information is open until 5pm on Friday 13 September.
The regulators are interested in hearing from stakeholders across the payments and wider financial services landscape, including digital wallet and technology providers as well as their service users and other parties with an interest in digital wallets.
The regulators will consider all feedback received and provide an update by Q1 2025.
