The UK growth debate often focuses on tax, regulation, and investment incentives. While incredibly important factors to the economy, they can obscure a more immediate constraints sitting inside many businesses; one of the most significant being the payment systems that determine how quickly businesses can collect, move, and reconcile money.
The CBI has made clear in their 2026 Roadmap to Growth that business leaders want to innovate but are being held back by costs and slow delivery. Payment operations are one of the places where that tension shows up most clearly. A business can have ambitious growth plans, but it cannot deliver on them if moving money still depends on manual workflows, slow approvals, and disconnected systems.
While the business case for improvement is often understood by leaders, execution is a different hurdle. Our research found that 91% of business leaders recognize that a payment system can drive overall business growth, but only 27% of firms currently use a modern payment system, defined as having advanced automation and integration features.
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These inefficient payment processes ultimately hold back productivity across the wider economy. When companies cannot move money with speed and certainty, growth becomes harder to plan and slower to deliver.
The growth gap inside payment operations
Businesses are increasingly operating in an environment where customers, employees, and suppliers expect transactions to happen quickly and accurately. For example, 79% of UK consumers expect to receive disbursements immediately. Processes designed around batch payments, manual approvals, and fragmented reconciliation are no longer good enough. They may still function, but they slow businesses down.
The cost appears in smaller, repeated points of friction. A delayed supplier payment can weaken a commercial relationship. A payroll correction can damage employee confidence. Manual reconciliation consumes finance teams’ time that could be better spent on analysis, forecasting, and control. These issues not only impact operations but can also have a material impact on growth.
Leading organizations increasingly view payment operations as a source of competitive advantage rather than an administrative necessity. Growth depends on the ability to move money accurately, quickly and at scale.
Open finance raises the standard and sets the direction
If payment operations are becoming a competitive advantage, open finance is raising the stakes even further. The FCA’s open finance roadmap sets out a vision for unlocking faster and more personalized financial services, strengthening competition and supporting wider economic growth.
That future will expose the gap between businesses that have modernized their payment operations and those that have not. Better access to financial data is valuable only if the organization can convert that insight into action. A business may be able to assess cash flow more intelligently, understand customer risk earlier or access finance faster, but if its payment processes still rely on manual intervention, the benefit will be limited. Open finance can point the way to better decisions, but modern payment infrastructure is what allows those decisions to translate into faster growth.
The UK has already shown that data-enabled financial services can scale when common standards, trusted infrastructure, and market adoption come together. Open Banking Limited reported that the UK open banking ecosystem had recorded more than one billion open banking payments by July 2026.
These figures are important because they show open banking is no longer a niche innovation layer, it is becoming expected infrastructure that consumers and businesses use to move money and share account data. The challenge now is to turn that personal finance scale into practical value for businesses.
Changing the game in collections: cVRP moves the dial on open banking
Looking towards collections for an example of this practical value: a key next stage of the rollout of open finance is the move from one-off open banking payments into recurring, automated collections. Most open banking payments to date have been single transactions which are useful for a specific purchase, transfer or account-to-account payment, but less suited to the recurring flows that keep many businesses running.
The UK Payments Initiative (UKPI) has recently launched an industry-led scheme that marks a major development for businesses that collect at scale and the experience they can provide their customers. Commercial variable recurring payments (cVRP) allow businesses in specific sectors to collect varying amounts from a customer’s account on a regular basis following a single authorization by the customer, all whilst giving the customer greater flexibility and control.
With cVRP, businesses can receive real-time confirmation through Faster Payments and reduce reconciliation uncertainty. That means better cash visibility, fewer failed collections, and more confidence to grow for UK firms.
The growth opportunity is clear in sectors where collections are frequent, high volume or variable, including utilities, subscriptions, and lending.
Getting payments right is a growth strategy
Payment optimization is not a narrow finance project. It is a practical route to better productivity, stronger relationships and lower operational risk. It helps businesses protect cash flow, reduce errors and free up teams from avoidable administration.
Getting payments right may not be the most visible growth strategy but it can be one of the most immediate wins that also has a significant long-term growth impact for your business.
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Myles Stephenson
