The Government intends to add innovation to the Bank of England’s remit, alongside its primary responsibility for financial stability. The change covers the payment systems and newer forms of digital money that fall within the Bank's regulatory scope. That is a positive direction. The payments industry moves quickly, but regulation understandably takes time to develop. The challenge is making sure businesses have enough visibility while new rules are being worked through to make sensible decisions about where to invest, what to build and how new technology can be introduced safely.I would like to see the Bank's new objective encourage an even stronger working relationship between regulators and payment companies as that process develops. HM Treasury's National Payments Vision refers to "significant regulatory congestion" across the current payments landscape, with programmes from government, regulators and industry all moving at once. For payment companies, that means keeping a constant eye on rule changes, often involving different bodies, while still trying to build products and solutions for merchants.Clarity can influence investmentThere is evidence that investors are more willing to back a company when the regulatory position is clearer.A Bank for International Settlements study looked at companies that went through the Financial Conduct Authority's regulatory sandbox and found a 15 per cent increase in capital raised, while the likelihood of raising funding increased by 50 per cent. The researchers linked some of that effect to lower regulatory costs and fewer information gaps.HM Treasury's National Payments Vision says regulation should be "clear, predictable and proportionate". Predictable is the word I would focus on.Payment companies need a decent idea of what they are building towards before too much time and money have been committed. Regulation will evolve as technologies and markets change and businesses should expect that. But there is a significant difference between adapting to a clearly signposted direction and having to rethink a strategy late in the development process.That predictability becomes even more important when companies are investing in infrastructure that needs to work across multiple merchants, markets and regulatory requirements.The industry needs a say before a proposal becomes a ruleUnder its new secondary objective, the Bank must report to Parliament each year on what it has done to support innovation. That annual report could become a useful measure of how the relationship between regulation and industry is working in practice. It should show not just how many consultations or roundtables have taken place, but where industry feedback has materially influenced the development of policy. I would want to see where a proposal moved, or remained unchanged, because businesses raised an operational, commercial or technical consequence that needed to be considered.Consultation should not mean industry gets everything it asks for. Regulators have wider responsibilities, particularly around financial stability and consumer protection. But businesses need the opportunity to explain how proposals will operate once they move from a policy document into a live payment environment. That dialogue is particularly important when the technology itself is evolving quickly.New technology still has to earn its placeMerchants and acquirers are making decisions off the back of all this too, even if they never read a Bank of England consultation themselves. In a busy retail store, payment data can already feed into fraud checks or financial reconciliation. At a high-end hotel, the transaction may be large, but the customer still expects it to go through quickly and discreetly. Any new payment method or technology has to fit into everything already happening around those transactions.Payments used to be judged primarily on whether the transaction went through. That is still fundamental, but the data surrounding a payment has become almost as valuable as processing the transaction itself. It can show a business where customers are dropping out partway through a purchase, where revenue may be going missing, or where an emerging risk deserves closer attention.A merchant still has to decide whether changing its payment setup is worth the cost and disruption. If new technology fixes a problem the business already has, the case is relatively easy to understand. "It's new" is a much harder sell. That is especially true when new technology has to be introduced across existing payment infrastructure. The customer may only see a new terminal, checkout option or payment method, but behind that can sit changes to integration, data flows, reconciliation and operational processes. The aim is for all of that work to remain largely invisible to the customer.Late changes to the rules can make implementation harder. By then, work may already be under way and money committed.Clear rules also mean knowing who is responsibleAs more information moves into the payment layer, the boundary between the payment provider and the merchant becomes increasingly important. In retail, for example, transaction data can help identify patterns that suggest fraud, payment failure or unusual purchasing behaviour. But technology can only surface the information. The merchant still needs to decide what action to take and remain accountable for that decision.Payment technology can therefore give a business better information without changing where responsibility ultimately sits.That boundary needs to remain clear as new payment models develop. A company can build around a demanding rule when it knows where its responsibility starts and stops. Ambiguity becomes much harder to deal with once the technology is already live.The Bank of England's new innovation objective is therefore most useful if it helps create greater visibility earlier in the process. Innovation needs regulation that businesses can understand, plan around and build against with confidence.It is a lot easier to build something new when everyone knows where the lines are.No#PaymentInnovationLaurence BoothGroup CEOTrust Payments13 Oct, 2026