Some of the UK’s largest financial services organisations are coordinating efforts to form a payments infrastructure alternative to Mastercard and Visa, according to Sky News.

The publication reported that a new body known as the UK Payments Delivery Company (PDC) is aiming to raise approximately £50 million from banks and other organisations in the industry to establish a domestic payments services company.

If the full £50 million is raised, this will fund the PDC to 2028, Sky News added.

Organisations involved at this stage are believed to include the UK’s “big four” banks Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and NatWest and as well as Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Nationwide, PayPal and Wise.

The PDC is not intended to replace Mastercard and Visa, Sky News said, with both firms having assisted with the formation of the PDC.

Vim Maru, chief executive for Barclays UK, has led the initial setup work for the PDC while the group searches for a permanent chief executive.

More details on the scheme are due to be announced in collaboration with the Bank of England’s Retail Payments Infrastructure Board (RPIB), which has been working on a vision for the next generation of UK payments infrastructure since it was formed in 2025.

In August, the UK government gave the Bank of England a new secondary objective to support innovation payment systems, as well as digital assets including stablecoins.

This followed the publication of the Payments Forward Plan in February, which reasserted the importance of reducing the UK’s reliance on providers such as Mastercard and Visa in favour of sovereign, domestic payments infrastructure.

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