Payments:Unpacked from Mike Chambers Mike Chambers

From coins in 64BC, Knights Templar in the 1100’s to Reg Varney in 1967 it’s been a long journey for payments. In this episode we look at how a period of 300 years when ‘nothing’ happened in banking and payments was followed by 30 years of analogue innovation and 30 years of digital transformation which has fuelled our current payments age.

Mike Chambers discusses investing in Answer Pay and capitalising on Request to Pay with Peter Cornforth and Ralf Ohlhausen.

Simple, reliable and stress-free

The subject of this special anniversary podcast shares its special day with:


The Mayflower setting sail for America in 1620.


The introduction of First Class stamps by the Royal Mail in 1968.


The UK government suspending Britain’s membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.



All of these events happened on the 16th of September.

The 16th September 2023 is also a special day for me and all banking and payment geeks and to celebrate this special anniversary podcast we are joined by John Dentry from Pay.UK.

If you haven’t already guessed it then in this podcast we are celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the UK’s Current Account Switching Service (CASS). 

With its promise to offer a simple, reliable and stress free switch to a new banking current account provider the UK was the first country in the world to offer a guaranteed seven day bank account switch.

With over 9.5million switches competed, over 140 million payments redirected from an old account to a new account, a 91% user satisfaction rating and (perhaps remarkably for banking and payments) 86% of users happy to recommend the service to a friend I think we can call the UK’s switching service a success!

You might ask why I’m so excited about CASS, well we all remember where we were for certain events - tragic events like 9/11, a certain football match or the birth of a child. 

Well, on the 16 September 2013 I found myself in a “war room” watching the world’s first current account switching service go live – it went so well the “war room” was a very calm and quiet room.

Why was I in that room? At the time I was the CEO of Bacs, CASS’s first operator and was the custodian of the service for the first 5 years - that’s why this podcast feels very personal!

Congratulations on the 10th Anniversary of account switching in the UK to John Dentry and the team at Pay.UK.

CASS holds a special place in my heart and made a significant mark on my career.

Rowenna is sharing her story about how she (nearly) got scammed in the hope that it might help others and to assuage her “total embarrassment by doing something positive”.



UK Finance report that in 2022, criminals stole a total of £1.2billion through authorised and unauthorised fraud and scams.



During 2022 criminals have continued to focus activity mainly on socially engineering their victims, usually with the intention of tricking them into authorising a payment to an account within their control (known as Authorised Push Payment (APP) Fraud).



The tactics that criminals use include scam phone calls, text messages and emails, as well as fake websites and social media posts. Their aim is to trick people into handing over personal details and passwords. This information is then used to target victims and convince them to authorise payments.



Rowenna Fielding writes about data protection, ePrivacy and data ethics - you’ll find her blog here: MissIGGeek - and this is Rowenna’s story about how she (nearly) got scammed.



This is Rowenna’s story……..



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Unpack the UK's payments landscape with my newsletter - subscribe at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.payments-unpacked.com



Thank you to Rowenna for sharing your story - find out more about Rowenna on Linked In at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/missiggeek/ or via her website: https://missinfogeek.net

Making it easy to issue and pay bills - when you want, how you want.



Request to Pay (RtP) is a messaging ecosystem that provides the necessary interconnecting communications required to make secure payment requests possible.



It allows billers to initiate a payment request, and enables customers to choose when and how they pay.



RTP can be overlaid on top of existing infrastructure, saving you costs and increasing ROI. By connecting to RTP through Answer Pay, banks and other payment service providers can refocus their resources on building differentiated customer experiences in their apps.



Join us as we hear Peter Cornforth from Answer Pay unpack Request to Pay.



Make sure you subscribe to the Payments:Unpacked podcast with your favourite podcast app or via Spotify.



Unpack the UK's payments landscape with my newsletter - subscribe at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.payments-unpacked.com

Has the penny had its day?

"In terms of the coins in your pocket, it's useless" - the National Consumer Council 1983 talking about the half penny coin in the 1980's.

Like many of us over a number of years I had accumulated a bag full of Euro denominated coins so last week I took the opportunity of repatriating my bag full of Euro Cents by feeding a number of car park ticket machines along Germany’s Baltic Coast. 

As I “fed” the machines with these small strange coins I wondered whether the UK’s “penny” might have also had its day. Just 13 years after 1971’s Decimalisation the National Consumer Council stated that the half (new) penny was “useless” - now some 52 years after Decimalisation do we need to ask whether the one, two, and perhaps even the five pence pieces have also had their day?

Last month a consultation was launched on the Isle of Man (IOM) on whether low value coins should be removed from circulation and how this could lead to the introduction of a rounding system for all cash transactions.

Just 13 years after 1971’s Decimalisation the UK’s National Consumer Council stated that the half (new) penny was “useless” and some 52 years after Decimalisation do we need to ask whether the one, two, and perhaps the five pence pieces have also had their day?

Make sure you subscribe to the Payments:Unpacked podcast with your favourite podcast app or via Spotify.

Unpack the UK's payments landscape with my newsletter - subscribe at: ⁠⁠⁠www.payments-unpacked.com