The “new domestic scheme” story
Recent reporting suggests that UK banks are exploring a home-grown alternative to Visa and Mastercard, with discussions framed in terms of “sovereignty” and resilience.¹ This has generated legitimate interest from businesses and commentators alike.
At first glance, it’s easy to interpret this as a wake-up call: the UK needs its own rails because existing ones are foreign-owned and opaque.
But the framing misses a critical point: sovereignty is not created by duplicating what already exists. It is created by how a rail works, who governs it, and how transparent and accountable it is.
That’s where open banking - and specifically Pay by Bank rails built on open standards - already delivers much of what this “new scheme” rhetoric seeks.
The real nature of payments infrastructure
To understand why reinventing the wheel isn’t necessary, it helps to unpack what payments infrastructure actually encompasses:
- Settlement and clearing mechanisms
Domestic systems like Faster Payments and CHAPS already settle funds instantly or on the same day. They are sovereign, resilient and UK-centric. - Authorisation and authentication
Open banking embeds consent and strong customer authentication (SCA) at the bank layer, removing the need for stored credentials and providing an inspectable authorisation trail. - Rules and governance
The real power in a payment rail isn’t in messaging formats, it’s in who sets the rules, how they are enforced, and how costs are shared.
Open banking, particularly as it evolves into commercial use cases like variable recurring payments (cVRP), is already moving towards standardised governance structures that reflect this reality.²³
In other words, the foundational pieces of a “sovereign” payments ecosystem are already in place; what matters now is how they are governed and scaled.
Why open banking already delivers the key elements
If the objective of a domestic scheme is to deliver:
- Sovereign control
Open banking APIs and settlement over UK rails are governed in the UK under the PSRs and FCA regimes. This means you don’t need a new rail to achieve legal and operational sovereignty. - Transparency and accountability
Because open banking consent, authentication and telemetry are inspectable, buyers and regulators can see how transactions work end-to-end - something that card schemes have historically resisted with opaque fee and rule structures. - Competition and interoperability
Open banking is inherently interoperable. Any licenced provider can build on the same APIs and standards, reducing lock-in and enabling competition on features and cost rather than connectivity.
These properties are not incidental; they are design principles of the UK’s open banking architecture.
Reinvention is costly and often unnecessary
Creating a domestic scheme that replicates card rails would involve:
- drafting a full rulebook,
- creating an operator and governance body,
- designing settlement and dispute rails,
- organising participants,
- and building a participation ecosystem.
All of this competes with the very real need to scale what already exists:
- open banking adoption,
- multilateral agreements for cVRP,
- consistency of standards,
- operational observability and reconciliation.
In contrast, evolving open banking leverages:
- existing regulatory infrastructure,
- mature authentication and consent models,
- existing UK settlement systems,
- and an active developer ecosystem.
That’s a pragmatic path to resilience. It’s about maturing governance, rather than reinventing rails.
The Asima view: sovereignty through governance, not duplication
If “sovereignty” is about control, transparency and accountability, then the UK already has the components it needs:
- UK-centric settlement rails under the Bank of England’s oversight,
- open banking’s consent and authentication model,
- evolving schemes like cVRP under industry collaboration,
- and regulators focused on operational outcomes, not nationality of ownership.
What’s missing is not another rail. It’s clear governance, robust operational practices, and predictable rules that all participants - banks, PSPs, fintechs and enterprise buyers - can build to.
That’s why Asima’s focus has always been on:
- scheme alignment over bespoke connections,
- clear pricing and evidence models,
- operational observability,
- and an architecture that works when it’s inspected, not just when it’s happy.
Reinventing a “sovereign Visa” is tempting as headline news. But sovereignty is not about who owns the rail. It’s about who governs it, how it operates, and how transparent it is when things go wrong.
Open banking already gives us that. We just need to use and govern it well.
¹ The Guardian. UK bank bosses plan Visa/Mastercard alternative, 16 Feb 2026. Link
² FCA. Open banking: a year of progress, Dec 2025. Link
³ Open Banking Limited. An industry first – the UK’s new commercial open banking scheme. 2025. Link
