Acquired becomes founding shareholder of UK Payments Initiative as UKPI launches commercial VRPs at Money20/20 Europe

Acquired has joined the UK Payments Initiative (UKPI) as a founding shareholder, with the new industry-led scheme launched at Money20/20 Europe to scale account-to-account payments. For PSPs in high-risk verticals, the interesting part is not the branding; it is the attempt to make commercial Variable Recurring Payments (commercial VRPs) a usable recurring rail alongside Cards and Direct Debit.

1. The launch is aligned with the UK Government’s National Payments Vision and is intended to create a shared framework for commercial VRPs, so consumers can approve recurring payments to businesses and government through their bank with clear parameters on amount, timing, and frequency.
2. Acquired says it is the only founding shareholder supporting a full multi-rail recurring payments stack for UK businesses, covering Cards, Direct Debit and VRPs (Sweeping and Commercial). That gives it what it describes as a view across customer behaviour, operational performance and commercial outcomes across payment methods.
3. Through its Convert, Retain and Recover framework, Acquired plans to use commercial VRPs across the recurring payments lifecycle: onboarding customers at sign-up, running fund availability checks before each collection, and migrating payers away from cards or Direct Debit when there is friction such as mandate cancellation or card expiry.
4. The company frames commercial VRPs as an extension of its existing Pay by Bank product family, which already includes one-off open banking payments and Sweeping VRPs, where customers move money between their own accounts. In other words, this is not Acquired’s first open banking move; it is the same capability applied to a new commercial rail.
5. Greg Cox, CEO of Acquired, said UKPI is “a major moment for the future of account-to-account payments in the UK” and that the scheme is designed to make open banking payments work for recurring use cases at scale. Eline Blomme, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Acquired, said the work builds on efforts that have been underway “since PSD2” to push recurring open banking payments forward.

For PSPs and merchants, the practical question is simple: if UKPI standardises commercial VRPs enough to make them dependable for recurring collections, they become a real alternative to cards and Direct Debit for customer retention, recovery, and lower-friction payment flows in the UK.