Trust Is Being Engineered into Every Layer of Payments: UKPI, MoneyGram's MGUSD and Handshake Finance

Money20/20 Europe wraps today in Amsterdam, and the launches coming out of the show line up on a single idea: trust is being engineered into the rails of money at every layer. The UK has its first new national payment scheme in nearly two decades. A long-standing remittance brand has put a dollar stablecoin on a public blockchain. And in Singapore, a tiny startup just raised pre-seed funding to plug trust gaps in everyday service payments. Here is what is happening, and why it matters for merchants, partners and financial institutions.

The UK Launches UKPI, a New Open Banking Payment Scheme

The UK Payments Initiative (UKPI) formally launched at Money20/20 Europe on 3 June, the country’s first new domestic payment scheme since Faster Payments went live nearly two decades ago. UKPI is an industry-led consortium of more than thirty banks, building societies and fintechs, including HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, Santander, Nationwide, Monzo, Revolut, Starling, GoCardless and Token.io.

The scheme establishes a shared rulebook, commercial model and operational standards for commercial Variable Recurring Payments, letting consumers authorise recurring or variable account-to-account payments directly from their bank accounts within defined limits, without sharing card details or relying on traditional Direct Debit.

The Financial Conduct Authority publicly backed the launch, framing it as a major step forward for open banking and commercial Variable Recurring Payments, and confirmed it will consult on a long-term regulatory framework by the end of 2026, subject to expected legislation. Use cases will start with government agencies, utilities, charities and financial services. GoCardless completed the first live recurring open banking transaction under the scheme’s testing phase in March, and went live commercially as the scheme launched. The underlying business case is striking: the UK card duopoly currently clears 84 percent of all spending by turnover and costs UK merchants more than 1.5 billion pounds a year in interchange, processing and scheme fees.

Why it matters: This is the most serious structural challenge to card networks in a generation in one of the world’s most mature payments markets. By giving recurring Pay by Bank a shared rulebook and consumer protections similar to those of cards, UKPI removes the missing piece that has held account-to-account back from subscriptions, utilities and bill payments. Expect a multi-year shift in the economics of UK merchant acceptance, and other markets to study the model closely.

The Debia angle: Trust is the quiet foundation that makes a payment scheme actually work, not the technology underneath it. The UKPI launch is a vivid illustration of that principle: open banking already had the rails, what it lacked was a shared rulebook, dispute resolution and consumer protections strong enough to support recurring commerce. The same lesson applies to every market and every channel Debia operates across. The providers who win are the ones who treat trust frameworks as part of the product, not paperwork around it.

MoneyGram Launches MGUSD, a Dollar Stablecoin on Stellar

Also at Money20/20 Europe, MoneyGram launched MGUSD, its native US dollar stablecoin issued on the Stellar blockchain, deepening a long-running product development partnership between the two companies. The token is purpose-built for low-cost international remittances and uses a notable multi-party architecture. Crypto protocol M0 governs the minting smart contracts, Stripe-owned Bridge serves as the compliant issuer, and Fireblocks secures institutional liquidity, with funds flowing directly into self-custodial consumer wallets. Denelle Dixon, chief executive of the Stellar Development Foundation, described the launch as proof that stablecoins have moved from conceptual pilots into large-scale utility.

The strategic significance is bigger than one token. MoneyGram serves migrants and diaspora communities at scale through cash and digital channels in some of the most expensive corridors for cross-border money movement. Putting a native stablecoin under that business signals that the regulated, asset-light end of remittances is increasingly comfortable building on blockchain rails, provided the compliance, custody and liquidity pieces are properly assigned to specialists like Bridge and Fireblocks. Banks, fintechs and remittance specialists are now visibly converging on the same architecture for stablecoin payments.

Why it matters: Remittances are one of the use cases where blockchain rails most clearly improve customer outcomes, through lower fees, faster settlement and round-the-clock availability. When a household brand like MoneyGram puts its own stablecoin into production, it accelerates consumer trust in stablecoin payments and pulls regulators, banks and corridor partners further along the same path. Expect more incumbents in remittances, payouts and cross-border B2B to follow with their own programmes.

The Debia angle: This launch underlines a view we have consistently held: the future of cross-border payments is interoperability between traditional rails and compliant digital assets, with each player specialising in what it does best. MoneyGram for distribution and customer trust, Bridge for issuance compliance, Fireblocks for custody and liquidity, Stellar for rails. The same modular logic applies to Debia’s work, where the value lies in stitching together the right partners and rails so a merchant or partner sees a single, predictable experience on top.

Handshake Finance Raises S$500K for Escrow Payments in Singapore

In Singapore, Handshake Finance announced today that it has closed a S$500,000 pre-seed round to scale its escrow-as-a-service infrastructure for high-trust service industries. Founded in September 2025 by Christopher Chan and Lee Jun Xian, the company is starting in renovation and interior design, a market where the gap between paying a contractor and getting work delivered has long been a source of disputes, with longer-term ambitions to extend the platform into other service industries where payment trust remains a structural problem.

The model treats trust as the product. Funds from a customer are held in escrow and released against agreed milestones, with disputes handled inside the platform rather than relying on goodwill or after-the-fact legal action. It is a small round, but a telling signal: in a region where consumer-facing rails and digital wallets are already excellent, the next layer of innovation is increasingly about the contractual and behavioural fabric around a payment, not just the speed of the transfer itself.

Why it matters: Real-time payments have raised expectations everywhere, but in service economies, speed alone does not solve the underlying problem of paying for work you have not yet seen. Embedded escrow and milestone-based payments could meaningfully change the experience of buying services online, particularly for higher-value categories. For markets across ASEAN, where small services businesses make up a large share of activity, this kind of trust infrastructure could matter as much as faster rails.

The Debia angle: We pay close attention to early plays like this because they reveal where the payment industry will mature next. Once instant transfers become the norm, the differentiator shifts to the layer of contract, identity and dispute resolution wrapped around the money. That is exactly where Debia’s focus on payment infrastructure intersects with the next wave of merchant and partner needs: making sure trust is engineered into the product, not negotiated separately.

At Debia, we track these changes because the future of payments will be shaped by speed, trust, interoperability, and smarter financial infrastructure. We do not just process payments. We understand the infrastructure, regulation, technology, and market shifts behind the future of digital commerce, and we build for where the ecosystem is heading next.