The Bank of England has completed a multi-year overhaul of the UK’s Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service, marking one of the most significant upgrades to the country’s financial plumbing in decades.
The new platform, developed in partnership with Accenture and launched in April, underpins the daily settlement of around £800bn of transactions between banks, building societies and payment firms.
In its first three months of operation, the system processed more than 9.4mn payments worth £35.2tn, according to the bank.
“RTGS sits at the heart of the UK payments system,” said Shaheen Sayed, head of Accenture in the UK, Ireland and Africa. “The new service is a bedrock for resilience, enabling a more modern and secure settlement engine that allows value to flow seamlessly throughout the economy.”
What RTGS is and why it matters
RTGS is the backbone of wholesale payments: it allows financial institutions to move money between each other instantly, in “real time” and on a one-to-one basis, rather than netting off positions later.
This function is critical to financial stability. If RTGS were to fail, high-value payments could not be settled, with knock-on risks across markets from mortgages to government bond trading.
First introduced in 1996, the UK’s RTGS has been upgraded over the years, but Bank officials decided a wholesale rebuild was necessary to handle higher transaction volumes, broaden access to non-bank institutions, and support innovation in payments.
Technology choices
The new system is based on cloud-native architecture and built with modular, API-driven components, designed to improve scalability and interoperability with other financial market infrastructures. End-to-end automation is embedded: more than 40,000 tests are run daily, while “zero data loss” recovery and failover capabilities aim to ensure resilience.
“The platform has been designed to accommodate more participants than before,” Sayed added, pointing to faster onboarding features and APIs that enable external providers to plug into the system more easily.
These choices reflect a wider trend in central banking technology. By moving to modern digital cores, central banks hope to reduce reliance on legacy systems, cut operational risk, and create more flexible platforms that can support new forms of settlement — including potential central bank digital currencies(CBDCs).
A global shift
The Bank of England is not alone in overhauling its wholesale payments infrastructure. The European Central Bank launched its consolidated T2 and T2S platforms in 2023, while the Federal Reserve introduced FedNow, a separate instant payments service, in the same year. Singapore’s MAS has also modernised its MEPS+ system. Each reflects the growing demand for payment rails that are both more resilient and more open to non-traditional participants.
The RTGS renewal programme was commissioned in 2020, before the rise of generative AI in financial services. While AI played little part in the rebuild, industry observers note that the modular design of the new system should make it easier to integrate machine learning for monitoring, fraud detection and operational optimisation in future.
For now, the upgrade provides the UK with a more robust foundation for wholesale payments, with broader access and modernised infrastructure that positions the Bank to adapt to further innovation in digital currency.
