New Initiative to Ensure Universal Access to Payments

Payments in their many guises are essential to the way we all live our lives, to buy bread and milk, to heat or homes and to do many other things. Around the world the majority of people take payments for granted and are able to choose the payment option that suits their needs for the particular transaction. However, many people don’t have this choice and have to rely on a single payment method, and this is very often cash.

Payments are changing and all countries are at different points on the same journey. The pace may vary, the route may differ, but change is afoot. As we enter the new decade, Currency Research and the payment consultancy Enryo are working together to help smooth the path of that change with a new initiative, Universal Access to Payments (UA2P). The initiative aims to bring stakeholders together in an annual summit, to share information and data, experience and understanding so that countries can develop well-informed transition plans.

Graeme Donald, a former banker and self professed payments enthusiast with 44 years’ experience at The Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Bank, is heading up the new initiative. He spent half his career in payments, with time in both the cash and digital payments industries. Cash & Payment News (CPN) talked to him to get an understanding of UA2P and what it is all about.

Change is happening in the way that individuals and businesses make and receive payments. The global pandemic has brought further change that may become the new norm. Add to this an active debate about if and when a cashless society could happen for some countries. Never has there been a better time for joined up thinking, planning and sharing best practice.

Graeme added that change is not a bad thing so long as the needs of all payment users are considered and great care is taken to maintain a choice of cost effective payment options available for all. Many citizens still rely on cash and would struggle if it is not around or becomes marginalised. Cash has some unique attributes - no need for an account or an internet connection, it’s a store of value as well as a method of payment, it can help with budgeting, it provides privacy and it is, above all payment types, easily understood, classless and accessible. If cash usage falls below a certain level, the cost structure of the cash cycle infrastructure will become difficult.

In many organisations, including central banks, the cash and the payment departments operate in different silos. If you wish to talk about both, you are probably going up to a very senior level to have that conversation. UA2P wants to bring these stakeholders together from across cash and digital payments to share knowledge, information and data, as well as best practice, to help develop effective transition plans to ensure that, as change happens, nobody is left behind.

Graeme was keen to stress that UA2P does not favour digital or analogue (cash and cheques) payments, nor does it seek to promote one payment type over another.

How can UA2P achieve this?

UA2P aims to bring together senior influencers and organisations from both the cash and digital payments arena. Given that all countries are at different points on the same journey, the likelihood is that an issue that one country is grappling with will have been experienced and solved by another. There may also be challenges that are common to all countries where collective leverage and action could help.

An early deliverable is the development of a UA2P index, a series of measures shared by participants about areas such as digital payment enablers, access to cash and the availability of digital payments. The index will allow comparison between UA2P participants, trend analysis, as well as providing individual participants with key indicators to measure the progression of their individual transition plans and to measure the success of UA2P.

The organisers have approached a dozen countries so far across all continents and the response has been positive. The aim is to bring together a group of 15 countries that are willing to work together to a common vision.

Each country will be represented by a maximum of two organisations (central banks, payment system operators, payment associations etc.). These participants will provide the core of UA2P.

There will also be partners from the cash and payments arena. The partners will be the main funders of UA2P and will typically be organisations that provide services to the payments and cash industries. Partners will be categorised as Gold or Silver. An advisory board is also in the process of being established to guide the overall UA2P initiative.

When does it all start?

The engagement of participants, partners and new advisory board members has commenced. The Annual UA2P Summit, held to coincide with the Central Bank Payments Conference and the Currency Conference and first Summit, will meet in the latter half of 2021. It will be made up of sessions with participants, partners and a subset of the advisory board. There will also be exclusive time for the UA2P participants.

The Summit will be supported by a series of virtual workshops and Graeme expects the first virtual workshop to be held in the first half of 2021. These will shape the agenda and material for consideration and debate at the first Summit and will include progressing the UA2P Index.

Graeme expects the emphasis to be very much on action to allow participants to plan and deliver effective transition strategies.

Definition of success

The core purpose of UA2P is ‘to enable debate and to create a global network for information and data sharing’.

The vision and definition of success is ‘access to payments for all’.

Who is behind UA2P?

The UA2P initiative was jointly founded by Currency Research and Enryo. Its founding advisory board comprises David Hensley, former Head of Cash Services UK, an independent member of the UK Access to Cash Panel and Chief Operating Officer of OneBanks, Rick Haycock, Chairman of Currency Research, Gerry Gaetz, former CEO of Payments Canada and central banker, and Graeme Donald. The advisory board will be expanded over the next three months.

In closing I asked Graeme why he was getting behind UA2P.

‘I passionately believe that payments are a basic need for everybody to live their lives every day,’ he said. ‘We all have a responsibility to make sure that nobody gets left behind as the payments landscape changes, particularly as economies around the world rebuild in the aftermath of the pandemic. Change is happening rapidly in the way that individuals and businesses make and receive payments and the cash and payments communities need to get together now to make sure nobody gets left behind and that there is universal access to payments for all. UA2P can help to make this happen.’ 

Contact details

There are still a small number of places available on the UA2P Summit, if you are interested or want more information about UA2P, please contact Jens Seidl at [email protected] or Graeme Donald at [email protected].