Our Chief Policy and Engagement Officer, Justin Jacobs, recently joined a panel of industry experts at Pay360 to explore what’s next for operational resilience. The session examined how rising complexity, geopolitical tensions and increasingly interconnected supply chains are reshaping expectations across the financial ecosystem.
Speaking alongside Andrew Pym (Monzo), David Birch (Consult Hyperion) and moderator Lisa Lee Lewis (Addleshaw Goddard LLP), Justin provided insight from Pay.UK’s position at the centre of the UK payments infrastructure, outlining how the industry can prepare for the next wave of resilience challenges.
A rapidly expanding risk landscape
The panel discussed the reality that organisations today operate within a fast evolving and expanding risk environment. Geopolitical tensions, macroeconomic shocks and deeper dependencies across cloud providers, telecommunications and third-party infrastructures all require new approaches to resilience.
As highlighted in the session, the impact of disruption to payments is immediate and far-reaching. Any outage can quickly affect individuals, businesses and public services, making operational resilience not just a technical requirement but an economic and societal necessity.
Keeping payments flowing, no matter what
Justin emphasised the importance of maintaining uninterrupted payment flows across the UK. Pay.UK’s systems, including Bacs and the Faster Payment System, process more than 12 billion payments a year. With such high reliance, tolerance for downtime is extremely low.
He highlighted that payments have also become more complex over the last decade, with longer and more intricate supply chains. Third-party providers, cloud platforms and large technology firms increasingly sit within payment journeys, sometimes without realising their criticality. Ensuring every part of the chain understands its role in supporting resilience was a central theme throughout the session.
Planning for more extreme scenarios
The panel reflected on how global events have shifted the boundary between what is “extreme but plausible” and what is now very real. Cyber threats, physical risks and geopolitical instability require boards and senior leaders to reassess how resilience is defined and tested.
Justin emphasised that future resilience will require multiple layers of contingency, including diversified failover arrangements and standing facilities that can activate instantly. This aligns with international examples of building deeper, more flexible backup capabilities to ensure continuity even under severe stress.
Testing that reflects real-world pressures
Another key theme was the value of meaningful scenario testing. Justin highlighted the importance of rehearsing responses in realistic, high-pressure environments where plans are unlikely to play out exactly as written.
At Pay.UK, this includes operating the Payments Industry Resilience Forum, bringing together organisations across the ecosystem to run simulations and share best practice, alongside regular participation in industrywide scenario tests coordinated by the Bank of England. The panel noted that flexibility, clear decision making and effective communication are essential during live incidents.
Building resilience by design
Looking ahead, Justin outlined Pay.UK’s role in supporting the Retail Payments Infrastructure Board to help embed resilience into the next generation of retail payments infrastructure. Priorities include:
- Improving interoperability
- Increasing visibility of third-party dependencies
- Preparing for emerging technologies, including new forms of digital money.
These features will be critical in ensuring the UK continues to operate a secure, adaptive and future-ready payments environment.
A collective responsibility
The session closed with shared best practice advice for organisations strengthening their operational resilience frameworks, which included:
- Building diversity into infrastructure to reduce single points of failure
- Maintaining a clear focus on critical services
- Conducting frequent, meaningful scenario testing
- Adopting layered contingency plans (a back-up for your back-up).
Justin commented: “It was great to contribute to such an important conversation at Pay360, and the strong interest in the session reflected the industry’s shared commitment to safeguarding the reliability of the UK’s payments ecosystem. Operational resilience is not just about surviving the next disruption, it’s about building an industry that can thrive amid uncertainty.”
