The Bank of England and Accenture have rebuilt and modernised a core component of the payments infrastructure in the UK, marking a major milestone of a multi-year transformation programme.
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With the goal of developing a modern, wholesale payments infrastructure in the UK, the Bank of England selected Accenture as the delivery partner of the RTGS renewal programme in 2020.
As part of the programme, Accenture delivered a new core ledger and settlement engine built on cloud-native modern architecture underpinned by end-to-end automation to improve interoperability, speed, and scalability. The platform runs more than 40,000 tests daily and includes zero data loss recovery and ‘failover’ features, that can quickly switch critical operations over to a temporary backup system should any issues arise.
The renewed RTGS core platform went live on 28 April 2025, and in three months since launch, it has successfully processed over 9.4 million transactions valued at £35.2 trillion – with the highest single day processing 295,000 transactions. With faster onboarding features and external APIs to access data more easily, it can accommodate more participants than before, allowing for broader access to more financial entities.
Shaheen Sayed, head of Accenture in the UK, Ireland, and Africa, says: “The new service is a bedrock for resilience by ensuring financial institutions access a more modern and secure settlement engine. The RTGS is at the heart of the UK payments system, and the solution enables the seamless flow of value throughout the economy, empowering the industry to innovate.”