market changes and continued innovation in payment technologies both from new fintechs and established players. ultimately, we want to future - proof rtgs to interface with firms and technology that may not exist today. the renewed service will not be built on a distributed ledger technology ( dlt ) but firms who use dlt will be able to connect to the service. we have completed a proof of concept to understand all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches whether our renewed service could be capable of supporting settlement in systems operating on innovative payment technologies. the punchline was that it could. we continue to engage with fintech firms to maintain our understanding of technology developments. while we currently plan to start operating the new service with the existing hours for chaps, the new service will have near 24x7 capability, and so when there is clear demand we expect, in consultation with industry, to extend operating hours. this flexibility means we can respond quickly to changing demands and an increasingly globalised economy. we will also provide application programming interface ( api ) access to users to enable read and write of payments data. the bank has committed to providing an exposed api to allow external participants to develop sophisticated and automated real - time tools for accessing rtgs transactional and liquidity data. we plan to announce in a few months our initial thoughts on the approach and implementation. and with a visionary new system, we want more participants to be able to benefit from it. in 2018 we expanded direct access to non - bank payment service providers, making it possible for a broader set of firms to compete with banks. five non - bank payment service providers currently hold accounts in rtgs and many more firms are exploring the possibility of joining. in addition, the renewed rtgs service will further reduce barriers to entry for new players – for example on - boarding will be quicker and testing will be streamlined making joining speedy and efficient. for chaps, we expect to be able to meet demand from dozens of new participants a year, rather than a handful as currently. there are two clear benefits from expanding access. first, increasing the number and diversity of firms that can directly access central bank money helps to reduce financial stability risk from events such as market wide shocks or a single firm failure. second, it promotes competition and innovation in payments. firms that have direct access to payment systems can benefit from faster transaction times and reduced individual transaction costs. by extending these benefits to a wider range of firms

payments : a platform for innovation speech given by victoria cleland, executive director ; banking, payments & innovation sibos, london tuesday 24 september 2019 with thanks to sara ward and emma playford. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches it is a great pleasure to be speaking today at the ‘ uk payments infrastructure – renewing for growth ’ event at sibos. this year ’ s event is exciting for two reasons. first, it ’ s national inclusion week here in the u. k. 1 and, it ’ s a great coincidence that sibos has fallen during this week : at the heart of its agenda are discussions around how change and diversification in payments could lead to a more inclusive financial system. second, this is the first sibos conference to be held in london – and it is certainly an exciting time for so many global payments experts and innovators to be here. london has a long history at the heart of the global financial system. it continues to build on this expertise and is one of the leading fintech hubs in the world. it is home to an incredible pool of the world ’ s best and brightest talent, with 44, 000 people already working in fintech, more than in silicon valley or new york. 2 investment into the uk ’ s fintech sector continues to grow and reached a record level of $ 2. 9bn in the first half of 2019, which was nearly 85 % of the 2018 total. 3 and we can see that the uk fintech sector is maturing, evidenced by the size of increased investments. payments are vital to any real economy and in total nearly 40 billion payments were made in the uk in 2018. 4 they are also at the heart of the financial system. this makes london the perfect location for a payments conference, which is focused on “ thriving in a hyper - connected world ”. payments are innovating, fast. from the infrastructure and the messages that support each transaction, to new players entering the market and consumers seeking new ways to pay for goods and services. future of finance, future of payments while the core mission for the bank of england is maintaining monetary and financial stability, we also seek to enable innovation and empower competition in the financial system. to support our forward looking and dynamic approach we recently commissioned and responded to the future of finance report. 5 it considered how financial services might evolve over the next decade, and what this could mean for each