Pay360 is the annual conference of the Payments Association, and speakers across the two days offered valuable insights for attendees interested in the direction of travel of the modernisation of the property industry.
The themes explored included real-time infrastructure improvements, digital asset acceptance and processing, interoperability, and trust – all of which sit at the very heart of how property transactions could be transformed in the coming years.
Modern infrastructure needs to set the pace of evolution
One of the sessions was delivered by the Bank of England, which discussed the evolution of its Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service. As a critical piece of national infrastructure that processes vast sterling volumes daily, RTGS has undergone significant modernisation to improve resilience, flexibility and performance.
In the property market, platforms like PEXA Pay rely on this infrastructure to enable secure, near real-time settlement of property transactions. The direction of travel is clear: legacy infrastructures are being re-engineered and upgraded to support faster, more synchronised outcomes – something that the homebuying process has historically lacked.
The Bank’s ongoing work on synchronisation, including its experimentation with “atomic settlement”, is particularly relevant. In a property context, this points towards a future where funds and title transfer simultaneously, reducing risk, delays, cost and friction. PEXA is also currently part of the Bank of England’s ‘Synchronisation Lab’, which is focusedon these areas.
Tokenisation and “smart money” are coming into focus
Another key theme of discussion was the progress being made with Great British Tokenised Deposits (GBTD). While still in pilot phase, the concept of representing commercial bank deposits as programmable digital tokens has clear implications for property transactions.
In a world where completion funds are not just transferred but programmed (i.e. released automatically when predefined conditions are met) we move beyond traditional payments into smarter payments, aligning perfectly with the complexity of property market, where multiple parties and dependencies must be coordinated, particularly on sale and purchase transactions.
Alongside this, discussions around stable coins and digital assets reinforced a broader point across all payment types: there won’t be a single “winning” payment mechanism. Instead, the future will be defined by optionality and interoperability. PEXA already has a live solution in place in the property sector (PEXA Pay) which aims to be complimentary alongside other emerging enhancements to the property transaction process.
For PEXA, with our focus on the property sector, this means designing upstream systems that can integrate with multiple forms of money and payment rails, whether traditional, tokenised, or something in between, advocating the BoE’s “singleness of money” principle.
Still innovating on old rails
A recurring observation across Pay360 was that innovation is accelerating, but often still layered on top of legacy rails. This creates a disconnect between what is technologically possible and what is operationally delivered.
Encouragingly, this gap is beginning to close. The recent collaboration between PEXA UK and NatWest to enable digital mortgage completions is a tangible example of new rails being adopted in practice, not just discussed in theory. This signals progress from experimentation to implementation, something the property industry has been waiting for. Specialist property payment rails offer the prospect of further innovation for the property sector, which the industry agnostic RTGS service struggles to prioritise for.
Trust, identity and the complexity of property
Trust was another central theme, particularly in discussions around digital identity. While onboarding journeys in financial services are already highly optimised, property transactions remain more complex.
Multiple stakeholders (such as lenders, conveyancers, brokers and estate agents) often repeat the same KYC verification processes at different stages. Embedding digital identity more effectively into the property ecosystem could reduce duplication, cost, improve security, and streamline the overall experience. It could also help to tackle the growing issue of fraud in the property industry, as highlighted last year during International Fraud Awareness Week .
Overall, this is not just about speed, but about creating a more coherent, predictable and trusted journey for all participants.
Implications for the property industry
The key takeaway from Pay360 is that payments innovation is front and centre of discussions in the financial services industry, and it is a foundational enabler of property market transformation:
- Real-time, resilient infrastructure is now in place and being actively leveraged
- Programmable and tokenised money is gaining momentum
- Interoperability will define the future
- Digital identity and consistent trust frameworks are key to unlocking efficiency
For the UK property industry, the opportunity is clear: to align with these advancements and embed them into the end-to-end transaction process. At PEXA, this alignment is already underway, as part of our focus on enhancing the ‘last mile’ of a property transaction – the completion process. As an FCA regulated payment services provider, we provide the UK’s only FCA regulated digital property completions infrastructure that connects the movement of money and lodgement of title in a single secure platform.
By combining modern payment rails with property-specific workflows, the property industry can move closer to a future where transactions are more efficient, safer, and significantly more transparent for everyone involved.
Pay360 reinforced that this future is not a distant vision, it is already built and operational, and we’re proud to be playing our part in it.