• Alpa Jotangia, Head of Compliance at Ecommpay


• 13.05.2026 02:15 pm
#FCA #PaymentsIndustry

The FCA’s latest payments priorities should make every merchant look again at how they choose a payment provider.

For years, PSP selection has centred on familiar commercial questions. How much will it cost? Which markets are covered? Can authorisation rates improve? Are the right payment methods available? Will the checkout experience convert?

Those questions still matter. But the FCA’s focus on safeguarding, Consumer Duty, financial crime, operational resilience and governance points to a more fundamental question:

Can this provider be trusted to support growth safely?

That may sound like a compliance question. Increasingly, it is a commercial one.

Payments are now central to revenue, customer experience and market expansion. A strong provider can help merchants optimise performance and unlock growth. A weak one can create issues that quickly move beyond payments: delayed settlement, poor customer outcomes, regulatory disruption, reputational damage or unnecessary barriers when entering new markets.

So yes, merchants will still ask about price and performance. But the stronger buying question is becoming: who do we want to build on?

Trust belongs on the commercial scorecard

Many payment providers already talk about compliance and security as ways to reduce complexity for merchants. That is true. But it is also the standard answer.

The sharper shift is that regulatory maturity is becoming part of commercial differentiation.

The FCA is not simply asking whether payments firms can innovate. It is asking whether they can innovate safely, protect consumers, keep customers’ money safe, fight financial crime and maintain the governance needed to support a growing market.

That matters because merchants do not just need a provider that can process transactions. They need one whose controls, resilience and oversight can stand up as volumes grow, customer expectations rise and regulation becomes more demanding.

Using a payment provider does not transfer a merchant’s own responsibilities. Merchants remain accountable for their own compliance, customer outcomes and oversight of third-party providers. But a strong PSP should support that oversight, making it easier, clearer and more evidence-based.

A weaker provider may still offer competitive pricing or attractive performance claims. But if it cannot evidence robust safeguarding, governance or financial crime controls, those claims become fragile.

Performance without trust is not a payments strategy. It is a risk.

Evidence should come before assurance

The FCA’s priorities are useful because they turn “trust” into practical expectations.

Trust means effective safeguarding, robust financial crime controls, operational resilience, strong governance and clear accountability. It means embedding Consumer Duty into products, processes and decision-making, not treating it as a separate compliance exercise.

For merchants, this should show up in practical questions. Can this provider evidence how customer money is protected? How are incidents handled and reported? How does it monitor third-party dependencies? How is regulatory change tracked and implemented?

These questions used to sit mainly with risk, compliance and legal teams. Increasingly, they belong much earlier in the buying process. Not as a final check once the commercial decision has been made, but as part of the core PSP scorecard.

Merchants already assess cost, coverage, performance and payment methods with rigour. Trust should be assessed with the same seriousness.

That means asking for evidence, not assurances.

Innovation will test the foundations

This matters even more as payments enters its next phase.

Open banking, stablecoins, tokenization and agentic AI payments all create exciting possibilities. But they also raise harder questions around accountability, data, resilience, customer understanding and financial crime risk.

The next wave of payments innovation will test whether providers have built real control or simply better marketing.

The industry increasingly talks about payments as a profit centre. That argument is right. Payments can unlock revenue, reduce waste, improve conversion and support expansion.

But a profit centre is not just something that generates value. It is something that can be managed, measured and trusted.

The best payment provider is not simply the one that promises better performance. It is the one that can support that performance over time, with the controls, governance and resilience to withstand pressure.

Trust in payments is not created by statements. It is created by evidence.

That may not be the loudest claim in the market. But in the next phase of payments, it may become the most important commercial advantage.