The Bank of England, the UK’s central bank responsible for maintaining monetary and financial stability, and Accenture, a global professional services company, have completed the successful transformation of the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service, a key element of the UK’s financial infrastructure.
The partnership was established to develop a modern wholesale payments infrastructure in the UK, according to FF News.
By rebuilding the RTGS system’s digital core, the Bank of England and Accenture aimed to strengthen financial stability by ensuring secure, instant settlement of payments between institutions.
The upgrade was designed to improve resilience, broaden access, enhance functionality, and lay the groundwork for future innovation.
The Bank of England operates RTGS, which underpins an average of £800bn worth of transactions each day and is vital to the secure flow of funds between financial institutions.
Accenture, meanwhile, provides strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations services globally, and played a central role in designing and delivering the new RTGS infrastructure.
Accenture developed a new core ledger and settlement engine built on cloud-native modern architecture.
The system is underpinned by end-to-end automation, improving interoperability, speed and scalability, and ensuring smoother processing of critical payments.
The upgraded RTGS platform went live on 28 April 2025. In the three months following launch, it processed more than 9.4m transactions worth £35.2tn, with the busiest single day handling 295,000 transactions.
The system now supports faster onboarding, broader participation and easier data access via external APIs, enabling a more diverse ecosystem of financial institutions.
Accenture also delivered several supporting capabilities, including automation running more than 40,000 tests daily, monitoring tools for operational visibility, and zero data loss recovery with “failover” features for continuity in case of disruption.
The consultancy worked closely with the Bank of England to embed Agile practices at scale and enhance internal expertise, ensuring the long-term sustainability of the project.
Shaheen Sayed, Accenture head of UK, Ireland, and Africa, said, “The Bank of England is a true world leader in providing the technology foundations for financial stability, and we are exceptionally proud of what we have achieved together to renew the UK’s payments infrastructure and improve banking systems for years to come. 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.”
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