Welcome to 2026, when financial governance in the U.K. and EU is tightening, data standards are hardening, and verification at the point of payment is changing how corporates think about everything from ISO 20022 data to rising instant B2B payments.
This is not another compliance cycle to “tick the box” and move on. It’s a structural reset that links three fronts: tougher U.K. obligations under the “failure to prevent” part of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, EU e-invoicing mandates driving cleaner invoice-to-pay processes, and a major November 2026 deadline for corporates to embrace structured address data fields in ISO 20022 messages, aligning corporates with banks and financial institutions that did this last November.
The payoff for those who get ahead of it all is straightforward: fewer errors, lower fraud, faster reconciliation, and higher confidence in instant payments, according to Bottomline’s Richard Ransom during a recent interview about the outlook for 2026.
Governance Moves from Narrative to Proof
On the fraud front, regulatory expectations in the U.K. are shifting from policy statements to demonstrable prevention. The direction of rulemaking is clear enough at this point: prevention is the benchmark, not post-event remediation.
A great deal hinges on the company you keep and trustworthiness you can prove.
“You’ve got to basically persuade regulators that you have done enough to stop internal fraud in your organisation,” Ransom said, emphasising rigorous onboarding, change control, and data access discipline as first lines of defence.
Market pressures are amplifying the regulatory push, as are other factors. Payment behaviour scorecards, including the U.K.’s Fair Payment Code and Good Business Pays initiatives, are being used by suppliers and investors more now for assessing operational quality.
“If you are a good payer, you are probably worth investing in,” Ransom said, “because you have adopted good business practices, especially around reliable payments.”
In the EU, ESG Moves from Aspiration to Audit
In the Eurozone, weak governance will be read as misrepresentation in the new year and going forward in general. “If the governance is weak, the regulator is going to look at your ESG plan and say it’s just greenwashing,” Ransom said.
Perhaps the wisest 2026 compliance playbook is one that aligns governance proof points with payment behaviour and controls. Ransom suggests adjusting supplier onboarding and bank detail change request processes to show actual prevention, not promises.
E-invoicing and Instant Payments confidence
For a taste of the 2026 regulatory menu, France’s obligation to receive e-invoices by 1 September 2026, and Poland’s accelerated timelines will concentrate resources this year. Ransom’s advice is to treat the shift as a controls upgrade, not a compliance sprint.
“There should be benefits to doing e-invoicing in terms of reducing error and fraud,” he added, noting shared gains for corporates and tax authorities using e-invoicing.
Meanwhile, verification at the point of initiation is shifting the payments fraud baseline across the U.K. and EU. The U.K.’s Confirmation of Payee (CoP) and EU’s Verification of Payee (VoP) checks are already suppressing some of the most pernicious forms of fraud.
“We’re seeing a massive reduction in authorised push payment fraud,” Ransom said, pointing to similar success in markets like Portugal where verification is being embedded in instant payment flows with encouraging signs.
The outcome is behavioural as much as technical. “Because VoP and CoP introduce that level of checking, there’s a lot more confidence in instant payments,” he said.
Ransom's 2026 guidance is to embed CoP and VoP at every account and data touchpoint, including supplier onboarding, bank-detail changes, employee and contractor setup. Make account and identity verification table stakes for instant and cross-border payments.
ISO 20022 in 2026: Here Come the Corporates
For corporates using Swift, structured address data is in, free text is out, and componentized address elements (country code, street, town) are becoming mandatory. The U.K.’s CHAPS system may even go further than baseline Swift rules, heightening urgency for corporates operating in Britain and the wider EU.
“November 2026 is when corporates start to get hammered, especially around structured address information,” Ransom said.
The business case is pragmatic: better beneficiary identification, fewer exceptions, and tighter fraud controls. These gains translate into faster cycle times, cleaner reconciliations, and fewer write-offs.
Many banks have already prioritised their own migrations and are now turning to corporate customers. “Without a doubt, banks have concentrated on themselves,” Ransom said. “Now we’re going to go back to corporates and say, ‘you need to give us this data’.”
The near-term solution for most large organisations won’t be a wholesale ERP overhaul. It will be translation and validation layers that bridge old processes to new message standards.
“We can provide that layer of regulated compliance,” Ransom said, noting that this is an interim but necessary path to keep payments flowing while core platforms evolve.
Operational Quick Wins: Smarter Onboarding, Proven Prevention
Across governance, e-invoicing, and messaging, one pragmatic action stands out: putting verification out in front.
“That first CoP check can massively reduce the opportunity for fraud and the possibility of error,” according to Ransom. Applied consistently, at onboarding and whenever bank data changes, verification supplies the evidence regulators and auditors expect while removing friction from AP and payroll processes.
Compliance and performance are converging this year across the U.K. and the EU. Organisations that operationalize prevention, verification, and structured data will cut fraud, shrink exceptions, and move more B2B transactions to instant rails.
The prize is not only regulatory comfort, but also a measurable upgrade to working capital velocity and supplier trust. “Governance, control, and resilience. These are the things that UK regulators are really obsessing about today,” Ransom said. “Once you have them, that’s the basis of healthy companies and economies."