Acquired.com Joins Initiative to Create Central Operator for Commercial Variable Recurring Payments

Acquired.com joined 30 other organizations in a collective effort to create a new company that will work to establish and serve as a central operator for commercial variable recurring payments in the United Kingdom.

Commercial variable recurring payments are a new payment method that enables customers to authorize third-party providers to initiate payments of varying amounts from their bank accounts to businesses, with rules and limits set by customers, Acquired.com said in a Friday (May 2) press release.

They are a form of variable recurring payments and represent “the next evolution in pay by bank,” the release said.

The industry initiative that Acquired.com joined as a founding member is facilitated by Open Banking Limited (OBL) and includes FinTechs, banks, challenger banks and payment providers, according to the release.

The first phase of the rollout of commercial variable recurring payments will focus on enabling the payment method for utilities, rail, government agencies and regulated financial services, per the release.

“This collaborative approach will accelerate the adoption of innovative, secure and customer-centric payment solutions across the U.K. — and in the sectors that need it most,” Acquired.com CEO Greg Cox said in the release.

In its own press release about the collective effort, Open Banking Limited said Friday that the new entity will be wholly owned and run by industry and that a decision on continuing funding for the entity will be made after the initial phase of work is complete.

“As a collective industry, we will continue to harness the commercial opportunities that lie before us, giving greater choice to our citizens and businesses as well as delivering wider economic growth,” OBL CEO Henk Van Hulle said in the release.

When two U.K. regulators — the Financial Conduct Authority and the Payment Systems Regulator — said in January that Open Banking Limited would play a key role in advancing the effort to launch open banking-powered variable recurring payments, they said this new payment method will allow consumers to take greater control of their regular payments and will give businesses more choice in how they receive payments.

Acquired.com also said Friday that it launched its own proprietary sweeping variable recurring payments solution that can be used by banks to enable the automatic movement of money between a customer’s own accounts to streamline savings optimization, debt repayments, overdraft protection and similar processes.