The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has set out changes that will give businesses more information on the card payment fees they pay. This follows its market review, which found that Mastercard and Visa don’t face competition due to rising fees and a lack of clarity on how much businesses will have to pay to accept card payments. Card payments play a vital role in “supporting the UK economy, and the PSR is committed to ensuring this market works for everyone—consumers, merchants, and businesses.”
To address these issues, the PSR has developed targeted measures “that will give clear information to acquirers and strengthen its own oversight.”
As a result, the PSR is consulting on the “draft directions that will bring the following two remedies” into effect:
- Information Transparency and Complexity (ITC): Schemes will be required to provide acquirers with clear, actionable pricing information, enabling them to make informed choices and drive competitive outcomes – with resulting benefits for merchants.
- Pricing Governance: The PSR is requiring new standards to ensure pricing decisions are evidence-based, giving the regulator—and the market—greater confidence in how fees are set.
In addition, work is underway on regulatory financial reporting “to ensure the PSR has access to enhanced data, allowing it to monitor and assess the financial performance and profitability of the schemes in the UK.”
A consultation on the detail of this will “be published in spring 2026.”
These remedies will deliver real benefits – giving acquirers and ultimately merchants – the tools they need to better “understand costs and make better decisions, while ensuring the PSR has better information to better monitor the market and foster a more competitive and innovative payments market.”
The PSR’s actions will help ensure that card payments remain “fair, efficient, and accessible for everyone.”
David Geale, Managing Director at the PSR, said:
“We are delivering on our commitment to make the card payments market work better for all. Greater transparency will equip acquirers and merchants with the information and confidence they need to navigate fees and make better decisions. Improved governance will help the PSR gather the information it needs to take decisions that foster a competitive and innovative payments market. These steps mark real progress that will benefit merchants, consumers, businesses, and the wider economy.”
The PSR is now consulting on the draft directions to bring these “remedies into effect. It is also finalising its approach to financial reporting and will publish its draft direction in spring 2026.”
Once it has considered the responses to these consultations, the PSR “will implement the remedies.”
In another update, it was noted that PSR are “satisfied that the Current Account Switch Service (CASS) continues to meet the criteria for designation as an alternative switching scheme.”
This follows a review of information and evidence submitted by Pay.UK, the operator “of CASS, for the purpose of an annual assessment.”
HM Treasury appointed the PSR as the authority to “designate alternative switching schemes, and to ensure such schemes continue to meet the criteria set out under the Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 (PARs).”
These criteria are, that the switching scheme should:
- be clearly in the interests of the consumer;
- not impose upon the consumer any burden additional to those imposed by
- paragraphs 2 to 6 of Schedule 3 of the PARs; and
- ensure that the procedure for switching is completed within 12 working days.
In September 2016 the had first designated the Current Account Switch Service (CASS) as “an alternative switching scheme under the PARs.”
They had reportedly renewed its designation in September 2017, September 2018, September 2019, September 2020, September 2021, September 2022, September 2023 and October 2025 (for 2024).
