cVRP (commercial variable recurring payments): what are they, how do they compare to direct debit and card-on-file, and why are they biggest upgrade to recurring payments in a generation? TrueLayer's Rob Cockburn breaks it all down in less than four minutes in one handy explainer.

Transcript

In today's explainer, we're gonna break down commercial variable recurring payments and how it's changing the way businesses collect recurring payments. We've relied on direct debit for the last sixty years, since the Beatles were writing their third studio album. But direct debit became popular for a reason. Consumers can create payment mandates they can mostly set and forget.

But let's be honest, it was made for a different era of payments. Between the three day wait for the mandate to take effect and the three days for every payment to settle, you could end up waiting six or more days to collect your first payment from your customer.

In short, a change in recurring payments is overdue, and this is where cVRP comes in. It's a new payment method backed by the UK government powered by the same technology as Pay by Bank.

It's a way for your customers to link their bank account once and then let you take payments automatically going forward.

We call cVRP "Bank on File" because consumers are putting their bank accounts on file for future payments, and it's one less acronym to remember. The first set of cVRP use cases went live this year in 2026. You can use it for regulated financial services payments, like investing, trading, pensions, mortgages, and insurance payments. There's also utility payments, which includes energy, water, and telco.

Then there's rail tickets, charity payments, and even some government payments all available today. And there's more coming in 2027 when cVRP will become a reality in Ecommerce. So consumers will be able to use cVRP for one click checkout, grocery delivery, and subscription payments. Here's how a cVRP payment is set up.

Your customer chooses the payment method where they can see the parameters of the mandate.

They choose the bank they want to link for future payments.

Then they securely authenticate the mandate directly in their banking app, and they are sent back to your website where everything is instantly confirmed. If that mandate setup includes the consumer's first payment, they'll also see instant confirmation of that payment. From here, you can collect future payments automatically or consumers can initiate repeat payments with a single click. No more redirecting to the bank. For the consumer, it's a quick, secure, and easy setup with full visibility over the payment and time limits.

And by making the customer experience as easy as possible, merchants get incredibly high conversion rates, with some already seeing 98% of payments completing successfully. One useful feature that keeps the failure rate so low is the confirmation of funds endpoint. This is a silent, real time check into your customer's account balance to proactively manage payment risks.

cVRP might be new, but the likes of InvestEngine, Trading 212 and others already have it in their live payment experience. So now is the perfect time to explore whether it's right for your business. Thanks for watching.