Resilience and financial crime remain core tests
The FCA framed market integrity around consumer confidence, operational resilience and effective action against financial crime. The speech pointed to cloud outages, digital harm and cross-border activity—including offshore gambling and prediction markets—as examples of risks that can move quickly across firms and sectors. Pritchard said the regulator intends to focus on outcomes and use data and intelligence to identify system-wide issues.
Partnership and digital-asset policy
The FCA highlighted cooperation with domestic and international agencies and said it will use existing powers assertively where harm falls within its remit. It also linked that enforcement posture to forthcoming work on digital assets. The remarks are not a new rulebook, but they signal the evidence and controls likely to matter in supervisory conversations: resilient infrastructure, traceable decisions, clean customer journeys and prompt escalation of suspicious activity.
What it means for merchants
Merchants and payment providers should treat third-party outages and financial-crime controls as connected risks. Test cloud and processor failover, preserve transaction-level audit trails, document ownership for alerts, and ensure offshore or crypto-linked propositions have a clear regulatory perimeter assessment.
Read the original announcement
Financial Conduct Authority · 22 Oct 2026This brief summarizes the linked primary source. Claims and reported figures have not been independently audited by Payment Guide.