13 Jan 2026
December brought concrete delivery signals for commercial VRP in the UK, alongside a major shift on contactless limits and renewed focus on safeguarding and insolvency outcomes for payments firms. Here are the stories that matter, with an Asima infrastructure lens.
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23 Dec 2025
Commercial variable recurring payments promise more control than cards on file and more flexibility than Direct Debit. But cVRP is not “just another payment method”. This post explains what Smart Debits really are, why rollout has taken time, and what Asima clients should evaluate before committing.
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16 Dec 2025
The FCA’s latest “Open banking: a year of progress” confirms that open banking is scaling beyond early use-cases, with over 16 million active users, sharp growth in payments, and commercial VRP schemes poised to enter the market.
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11 Dec 2025
When the North Pole’s fulfilment system collapsed days before Christmas, an exhausted elf found salvation not in magic, but in infrastructure. This is the story of how open sleigh banking saved Christmas.
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4 Dec 2025
November brought the first commercial cVRP transaction via Visa A2A, a major BNPL player announcing its own stablecoin, and the FCA setting out how it plans to regulate cryptoassets and stablecoins. Here is Asima’s take on what matters.
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27 Nov 2025
Latest UK open banking metrics show average response times in the 300 ms range, with availability over 99 %. For infrastructure providers like Asima, these numbers matter — because true scale demands performance, resilience and trust baked into every API.
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20 Nov 2025
At the 2025 Open Banking Expo, Open Banking Limited explained how the UK system is moving from mandated rails to open innovation. In this post we unpack the engineering implications for payments and data infrastructure, and what it means for platforms like Asima.
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6 Nov 2025
October brought major developments in open finance testing, regulatory collaboration, and the future of tokenised payments. Asima reviews the highlights, the infrastructure implications, and what clients should prepare for next.
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23 Oct 2025
A new Innovate Finance paper argues the UK risks hobbling challenger banks with “logic-defying” regulation. We examine the claims against current PRA reforms (Strong & Simple, MREL changes, leverage-ratio tweaks) and set out what proportionality should mean in practice.
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16 Oct 2025
As open banking grows, customers face repeated permission requests across multiple screens. Without careful design, this leads to “consent fatigue” - users disengage or accept blindly. We explore what causes this fatigue and how fintechs can design experiences that minimise friction and build trust.
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10 Oct 2025
The FCA is reviewing parts of its flagship Consumer Duty regime, signalling that the regulator may relax certain obligations for firms that do not directly interact with retail customers. Asima looks at what this could mean for fintech innovation, compliance, and consumer trust.
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2 Oct 2025
UK open banking tops 15.16 million users. The EU moves to exclude Big Tech from FiDA. Plaid agrees to JPMorgan’s new data-access fees. Vipps MobilePay rolls out pay-by-bank with Tink in Finland. Tide becomes a unicorn, and Nubank applies for a US bank charter.
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