UK Payments Authorisation Tracker

What the FCA has said

• The FCA must decide a complete application for payment institution authorisation within 3 months of receiving it, and any incomplete application within 12 months of receipt. The applicant may withdraw at any time before the decision. (Payment Services Regulations 2017, regulation 9)
• The same 3 month (complete) and 12 month (incomplete) deadlines apply to e-money institution authorisation. (Electronic Money Regulations 2011, regulation 9)
• The FCA also reports registration applications (small payment institutions, RAISPs and small EMIs) and variations against the same 3 month or 12 month statutory deadline, and agent notifications against a 2 month deadline. (FCA operating service metrics 2025/26)
• Since Q3 2025/26 the FCA reports payments and e-money authorisations and registrations against a faster voluntary target of 3 months for complete and 10 months for incomplete applications. The statutory deadlines stay at 3 and 12 months. (HM Treasury, Regulatory Environment: Cross-Cutting Reforms (July 2025), para 2.7)
• The FCA's quarterly timings are end-to-end calendar days from receipt of an application to determination, so they include time an application spends incomplete. (FCA Authorisations operating service metrics Q4 2025/26)
• In Q1 2026/27 the FCA missed its targets for Payment Services and E-Money Authorisations, citing operational challenges, applications needing greater scrutiny and the tighter deadlines it is working towards. (FCA Authorisations operating service metrics 2026/27 Q1)
• The FCA made no formal refusals of payment services or e-money applications in 2023/24, 2024/25 or 2025/26. Unsuccessful applications ended in withdrawal or rejection. (FCA SICGO metric OE-M02)
• Applications from payments firms that fail commonly show weaknesses in senior managers' competence and inadequate systems and controls, including financial crime controls. The FCA reports higher approval rates for the payments sector over the past year. (FCA Regulatory Priorities: Payments (March 2026))
• Across Q1 2023 to Q2 2025 the FCA closed 142 authorised e-money institution applications: 32 approved, 9 rejected and 101 withdrawn. It closed 26 small e-money institution applications with no approvals (7 rejected, 19 withdrawn). (FCA FOI2025/00317 Annex A (July 2025))
• Withdrawn applications in 2022 numbered 60 for APIs, 180 for SPIs, 77 for AEMIs and 14 for SEMIs; in 2023 they were 44, 70, 41 and 8. (FCA FOI11369 (June 2024))
• In 2018 the FCA concluded 1,135 payment and e-money assessments, including 1,027 approvals. This figure includes the re-authorisation of existing firms after PSD2 was implemented. (FCA FOI8658 (January 2022))
• Voluntary cancellations of authorised e-money institutions peaked at 13 in 2022/23, against 6 in 2021/22 and 4 in 2023/24. The FCA has never used its power under regulation 52 of the EMRs to suspend an e-money institution. (FCA FOI11185 (May 2024))
• Cancellations across all FCA-regulated firms cannot be split by sector, the FCA says. In total it approved 3,432 cancellations in 2025/26, down from 5,140 in 2023/24. (FCA SICGO metric OE-M07)
• Between Q1 2018 and Q2 2023, 5 e-money institutions and 7 authorised payment institutions holding client funds became insolvent. On average, clients were owed £11.3m per firm and total assets available were £4.0m. (FCA CP24/20 (September 2024), CBA paras 45 to 47 and Table 3)
• In 2023 the FCA opened supervisory cases about safeguarding arrangements at roughly 15% of firms that safeguard. (FCA CP24/20 (September 2024), para 1.2)
• The safeguarding Supplementary Regime (new CASS 15 and SUP 3A rules) came into force on 7 May 2026. It requires daily reconciliations, a resolution pack, a monthly safeguarding return to the FCA and an annual safeguarding audit by a qualified auditor. (FCA PS25/12 (August 2025), paras 2.21 to 2.22 and 2.33)
• A firm that has not had to safeguard more than £100,000 of relevant funds at any time over at least 53 weeks does not need a safeguarding audit. A firm holding no relevant funds needs no limited assurance audit. (FCA PS25/12 (August 2025), para 2.27 and Chapter 4)
• The first safeguarding audit under the new rules is due within 6 months of the end of the firm's audit period; later audits are due within 4 months. An audit period must not end more than 53 weeks after the firm becomes subject to the rules. (FCA PS25/12 (August 2025), Chapter 4 feedback)
• The FCA has said it may see more 'adverse' safeguarding audit opinions in the short term because it has raised standards. (FCA Regulatory Priorities: Payments (March 2026))
• The FCA's annual Regulatory Priorities reports replace more than 40 portfolio letters. The March 2026 payments report sets 4 priorities: competition and innovation, Consumer Duty, financial system integrity, and keeping customers' money safe. (FCA Regulatory Priorities: Payments (March 2026))
• The FCA's February 2025 payments portfolio letter set 3 outcomes: effective competition and innovation, firms not compromising financial system integrity, and firms keeping customers' money safe. It named weak governance, oversight and leadership as a root cause of many issues in the portfolio, and said directors of a UK PI or EMI must be based in its UK head office. (FCA Dear CEO letter, FCA priorities for payments portfolio firms (3 February 2025))
• In a 2024/25 review of 14 e-money and payments firms, none fully met FCA expectations on risk management and wind-down planning. (FCA multi-firm review: Risk management and wind-down planning at e-money and payments firms (June 2025))
• The share of UK consumers using a payment account with a payments firm rose from 1% in 2017 to 12% in 2024. (FCA PS25/12 (August 2025), para 2.1)
• The Government has proposed moving payments firms to more FSMA-style regulation, which the FCA says will increase the scrutiny needed at the gateway. (FCA Annual report and accounts 2025/26)
• Use of the FCA's pre-application support service rose by 218 (247%) in the latest reporting year, particularly in payments, cryptoassets and wholesale. (FCA SICGO Theme 1: Authorisations and operational efficiency)

What this means for an applicant

The FCA judges applications on their quality, not on volume, so the figures above are a guide to the queue and the bar, not a forecast for one firm. A complete application with capital, safeguarding and people in place on day one is the single biggest factor within an applicant's control.

The full requirements, capital, fees and timelines are on our UK EMI licence, small EMI, authorised payment institution and small payment institution pages. Not sure which applies? Use which licence do I need.

What the FCA does not publish

• The FCA does not publish a regular count of firms on the Register by type (APIs, AEMIs, SPIs, SEMIs, RAISPs). The latest type-level figures come from one-off FOI responses (March 2024, October 2025) and CP24/20 (2023 data).
• No published current count of registered account information service providers (RAISPs).
• No published total count of registered payment and e-money agents or distributors. Only quarterly agent notification volumes and an FOI list of large agent networks (September 2025) exist.
• The FCA's quarterly median, lower and upper quartile timings combine PS1 to PS4 (API, AEMI, SPI/RAISP and SEMI applications). There are no separate timings by licence type, no mean (average) times, and no split between complete and incomplete applications.
• The SICGO approval, withdrawal and rejection figures (OE-M01, OE-M02) cover a single 'Payment Services / E-Money' sector, with no split between authorisation and registration or by licence type.
• Applications received are not published regularly. Figures exist only in FOI responses: PSR and EMR receipts to March 2021, AEMI/SEMI/API receipts for 2021 to 2023, and AEMI/SEMI receipts by quarter to Q2 2025.
• No published count of payments applications pending (in progress) at any date.
• Outcomes by application year (the eventual approval rate per year of applications received) have not been published since the FCA's April 2021 FOI8168 response.
• The FCA-stated non-approval rate for PSR and EMR applications is not published for calendar year 2022 or 2025.
• No published count of payments or e-money firm insolvencies, or of safeguarding shortfalls, after Q2 2023.
• No published results yet from the monthly safeguarding returns or safeguarding audits under PS25/12. No first audit has fallen due as at 29 October 2026.
• Year-on-year change in the total number of EMIs and PIs is not published as a series. Cancellations are published only through FOI responses, and the FCA says firm-wide cancellations cannot be split by sector.
• The FCA flags that compliance percentages in earlier quarterly and annual reports may contain some inaccuracies following a working-day calculation issue (mainly MLR metrics). It says the published quartile timings remain accurate.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. You may quote and chart these figures with a link to this page.