Asima launches: why the Future Entity and UK Payments Initiative make this the right time

Open banking in the UK has grown from compliance exercise to critical infrastructure. 13.3 million people used open banking by March 2025, up around forty per cent on 2024.[^1] Volumes are at record highs and rising.

Now comes the next phase. The FCA has set out the blueprint for a Future Entity to govern standards and performance,[^2] while industry is establishing UK Payments Initiative Ltd to operate a smarter way to collect regular payments. Together with new legislation, this creates the most favourable conditions since 2018 to integrate open banking at the core of your business.

Two developments that change the game

The Future Entity will be the UK’s independent standards body for open banking. It will set and maintain common API standards, certify implementations, monitor performance, and provide directory services. It is expected to be a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee and will sit apart from commercial schemes. The FCA will run industry workshops over summer and autumn 2025 as the entity is established. [^2]

In parallel, industry has funded the creation of an operator, expected to be named UK Payments Initiative, to deliver a smarter way to collect regular payments. Think of these as "Smart Debits" - a modern alternative to Direct Debit and card on file that let businesses collect repeat payments directly from bank accounts within customer-approved limits, with near real-time settlement via Faster Payments and fewer intermediaries. [^12][^6]

Thirty-one organisations have committed initial funding, including Wonderful Payments Ltd, which today announces the launch of its new enterprise division, Asima.[^3] Initial use cases for Smart Debits are planned for the second half of 2025 in selected regulated sectors.[^4]

Legislative certainty is here

The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 is now law, having received Royal Assent on 19 June this year.[^5] It embeds open banking and the wider Smart Data agenda in primary legislation, with commencement in phases. That gives executives the legal certainty to invest, and creates a path to extend open banking principles into areas such as mortgages, pensions, energy and telecoms.

Why this matters for Asima

As the enterprise division of Wonderful, we are launching Asima now to maximise the benefits of this environment for fintechs, platforms, merchants and UK consumers.

Asima's role is to provide the “plumbing”, a robust, developer-friendly, UK-based infrastructure layer that removes the complexity of connecting to multiple banks, while aligning to the latest technical standards.

“This is the most significant moment for open banking since its launch. With the Future Entity raising standards and UK Payments Initiative introducing Smart Debits, we now have the governance, the innovation and the legal certainty to deliver at scale. Asima is built to help businesses take full advantage of that opportunity.” – Kieron James, CEO, Wonderful Payments

For fintechs, Asima offers a reliable foundation for innovation without the distraction of building and maintaining direct bank connections. For merchants, it delivers a way to reduce payment costs, improve settlement speed, and remove friction for customers. For UK consumers, it means faster, more transparent transactions and, with Smart Debits, better control over recurring payments.

“Asima is not just a technical platform. It helps businesses benefit from the efficiency and trust that open banking has earned, while keeping integration simple and costs predictable.” – Carmen James, Head of Operations, Wonderful Payments

What you can expect:

• A competitive price point with predictable, low per-transaction fees that compare favourably with legacy card models.
• Developer-first technology with clean, well-documented APIs built for scale and speed.
• Smart Debits support from day one once the operator goes live, so you can move subscriptions and repeat payments off cards and Direct Debits.
• Tech-for-good heritage and continued support as part of Wonderful, our infrastructure also powers free online donations for UK charities via Wonderful.org.
• UK-based operations aligned to UK regulatory and data protection standards.

How Smart Debits work in practice

For consumers, Smart Debits start with a clear, one-off authorisation. During setup, the customer approves parameterised limits that define what can be collected: for example maximum amount per payment, maximum cumulative amount per period, maximum number of payments, and an expiry date. [^7][^8][^9] These parameters are enforced, so if a biller attempts to collect outside the agreed range, the payment is blocked. [^10] Customers can view active permissions in dashboards and can revoke consent at any time. [^11]

For merchants and service providers, Smart Debits deliver the predictability of recurring payments with the efficiency of account-to-account transfers.

• Lower processing costs in many cases, due to fewer intermediaries and use of Faster Payments. Regulators and industry bodies expect downward pressure on costs as VRP scales. [^6][^13]
• Merchant-initiated, customer-authorised collections within predefined limits, giving a pull-like experience while remaining bank-enforced and consent-based. [^7][^10]
• Near real-time settlement that improves cash flow and reduces reconciliation lag. [^12]
• Lower failure rates because there are no card expiries and fewer stale credentials.
• Clearer liability and protection frameworks being developed alongside the commercial model. [^4]

When Smart Debits are widely available, they should replace Direct Debit and card on file in many scenarios, from subscriptions and memberships to utilities and charitable giving.

Moving to Google Cloud

Wonderful is architecting the future of its platform on Google Cloud to power the next generation of open banking. This strategic move provides elite scalability and security, enabling us to deploy services faster and react to market dynamics in real time.

Our engineering teams is leveraging the full power of the Google Cloud ecosystem. Our services are deployed on Cloud Run, Google's serverless platform, allowing us to scale instantly in response to demand while our engineers focus on building features, not managing infrastructure. For data analytics, BigQuery allows us to analyse our transactional data in seconds, uncovering insights that continuously refine our services.

Our proprietary transaction monitoring and fraud prevention system is a prime example of this synergy. It combines our deep payments expertise with Google's world-class AI platform, Vertex AI. By training our machine learning models on three years of our own rich transaction data, we can identify subtle anomalies and predictive patterns indicative of fraud with incredible accuracy. This allows us to move from reactive alerts to proactive threat mitigation in real time, protecting both merchants and end-users more effectively than ever before.

"We didn't just want to 'lift and shift' our infrastructure; we wanted a partner that could help us build a truly intelligent payments platform. Google Cloud gives us more than just servers; it provides a powerful toolkit of managed services, from BigQuery to Vertex AI. For us, this means we can focus on solving complex financial problems instead of managing infrastructure. For our customers, it means a faster, smarter, and fundamentally more secure service." – John Blackmore, Head of Technology, Wonderful Payments

The opportunity in front of you

For CEOs and leadership teams, the case is straightforward:

• Faster payments with near real-time settlement
• Fewer intermediaries and clearer economics
• Better customer experience without card expiries or chargeback overheads
• A unified national standard that reduces integration risk and improves reliability

With the Future Entity raising the floor on performance and interoperability, UK Payments Initiative bringing Smart Debits to market, and the Data (Use and Access) Act providing legal certainty, this is the right moment to upgrade your payments stack.

Built for the next decade

The early, fragmented years are over. We now have the structure, the technology and the legislation to scale. Asima exists to provide the infrastructure layer that brings those pieces together for the UK market, quickly and cost-effectively.

If you are ready to reduce costs, increase conversion and improve the customer experience, contact asima@wonderful.co.uk.

Footnotes:

[^1]: Open Banking Limited, latest adoption statistics (March 2025). https://www.openbanking.org.uk/about-us/latest-statistics

[^2]: FCA, FS25/4: Design of the Future Entity for UK open banking. https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/feedback-statements/fs25-4-design-future-entity-open-banking

[^3]: Open Banking Limited, 31 organisations fund creation of a new company for commercial recurring payments (2 May 2025). https://www.openbanking.org.uk/news/firms-agree-to-fund-key-activities-to-create-new-company-to-deliver-the-initial-phase-of-work-for-commercial-variable-recurring-payments/

[^4]: UK Finance, Open Banking Payments Wave 2: cVRP Commercial Model – Initial Findings (28 April 2025). https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/policy-and-guidance/reports-and-publications/open-banking-payments-wave-2-cvrp-commercial-model

[^5]: UK legislation, Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, Royal Assent 19 June 2025. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/22/contents/enacted

[^6]: Open Banking Limited, Variable Recurring Payments: what are they and how can they help SMEs? (suggesting VRPs can combine low cost of Direct Debit with speed and flexibility of cards). https://www.openbanking.org.uk/insights/variable-recurring-payments-what-are-they-and-how-can-they-help-smes/

[^7]: Open Banking Standards, VRP proposition – consent parameters (max per payment, cumulative value and frequency caps, expiry). https://standards.openbanking.org.uk/get-started/propositions/p26/

[^8]: Open Banking Knowledge Base, VRP consent parameters (example: max amount per calendar month). https://openbankinguk.github.io/knowledge-base-pub/standards/general/vrp.html

[^9]: UK Finance, Commercial VRP model clauses – Agreeing mandate parameters and clear display to customers. https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/2024-04/UK%20Finance%20-%20Variable%20Recurring%20Payments%20Report.pdf

[^10]: Bird & Bird, Developments in Open Banking: Variable Recurring Payments (parameters agreed with the customer and enforced by the ASPSP). https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2022/global/developments-in-open-banking

[^11]: Open Banking Limited, cVRP Rulebook v1.0 (dashboards for viewing VRP permissions). https://www.openbanking.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/cVRP-Rulebook-v1.0.pdf

[^12]: Open Banking Standards, Customer experience: VRP payments under sweeping access (processed as Single Immediate Payments via Faster Payments). https://standards.openbanking.org.uk/customer-experience-guidelines/payment-initiation-services/vrp-payments-under-sweeping-access/latest/

[^13]: PSR, CP23/12 – Expanding VRP (notes potential for lower costs and FPS fee considerations as the model scales). https://www.psr.org.uk/media/4u1afjt2/cp23-12-vrp-expanding-variable-recurring-payments-december-2023.pdf