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The UK Payments Forward Plan, published in February 2026, is intended to be a clear, coordinated regulatory roadmap for the UK’s payments sector over the next three years. This document offers an assessment of the plan’s strengths, weaknesses and likely impact on the UK payments industry over the coming months and years, as well as the full text of the plan itself.

Stablecoins have evolved into a rapidly expanding financial infrastructure, and regulators globally are striving to keep pace, stressing the need for a clear understanding of their design, risks, and yield mechanisms to inform debate and discussion.

The long-awaited publication of the UK’s Payments Forward Plan underlines the scale of the relevant authorities’ ambitions and of the challenge they have set themselves and the industry in the pursuit of growth and increased competition.

The Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) will operate under a renewed supervisory strategy for 2026 to 2028, centred around delivering effective and risk-based supervision. From 2026, supervisory priorities will place particular emphasis on the operational reliability of digital services and on preparing supervised entities for extreme economic and market phenomena. Alongside these annual priorities, the FSA will continue its ongoing monitoring of solvency, good governance and compliance with codes of business conduct. For 2026, the FSA has planned 35 new inspections and 24 thematic assessments, a slight increase from 2025, when 33 inspections and 18 thematic assessments were conducted. As financial services continue to digitise, the FSA needs deeper, more frequent on-site and thematic reviews to assess operational resilience standards. A modest increase suggests a measure of strengthening supervisory depth rather than a signal of systemic concern.

As US lawmakers continue to contest the legality of stablecoin rewards payouts under the CLARITY Act, a key White House official has expressed confidence that a legislative compromise is imminent.

As the state formalises its bespoke licensing regime, providers will need to review pricing structures and focus on transparency and disclosures to meet consumer protection standards.

The regulator's new opinion clarifies dual authorisation rules for crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), offering interim guidance but reinforcing that long-term regulatory stability will remain elusive until the new framework for payments regulation is introduced.

With less than a year until the Small Domestic Deposit Taker (SDDT) regime takes full effect, smaller UK banks must act now to prepare for simplified capital rules and updated supervisory expectations. While full requirements under the regime will apply from January 1, 2027, certain expectations, including revised ICAAP update frequencies, are already in force, making early alignment of systems, governance, and data essential.

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), Malaysia’s central bank, launched an exposure draft on open finance in November 2025 seeking public feedback on a system which it states will offer consumers a safer and more structured framework for sharing their financial information than existing data-sharing arrangements.

The ninth edition of the UK’s Regulatory Initiatives Grid, published in December 2025, sets out the country’s financial services regulatory agenda for the next two years. In this piece, Vixio examines what the regulators have outlined in the investment sections of the latest grid, explains the likely impact of developments on financial institutions and suggests what the regulators’ stated priorities tell us about the direction of travel in the UK.