Tracking property completions in near real time with CHAPS purpose codes

Simran Mehta and Valentina Macchiati

UK property transactions can be identified and observed directly within minutes of payment settlement using CHAPS, the UK’s high-value payment system. Taking advantage of the migration to the ISO 20022 payment standard in June 2023, and the introduction of mandatory purpose codes from May 2025, we have developed a real-time indicator of housing activity. We find that this closely aligns with existing official housing market statistics and therefore can act as a reliable real-time indicator of these statistics, superseding previously developed value-based proxies.

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Stress-free spending: why payment choice matters for disabled people

Lily Smith

Research on payment preferences in the UK has rarely explored how preferences and experiences vary by disability type, often treating disabled people as a homogenous group. Recent Bank of England research addresses this gap by focusing on the payment preferences and behaviours of different disability types and shows that, for disabled people, payment choice is crucial for reducing stress, building confidence, and supporting independence.

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War and payment innovation: the adoption of paper currency in Britain

David Rule

Digital currencies and stablecoins have increased interest in how new forms of money are adopted. Looking to three episodes from the 1690s to the First World War, this post considers how paper currency replaced coin in Britain, an historical example of adoption of new money. The underlying drivers were not technological changes but wars, leading to actual or feared shortages of coin, and a need to take specie out of internal circulation in order to meet overseas outflows. The public authorities took the initiative and created trust successfully in the new money. This is the first of a series of planned posts by Bank staff on past payment innovations.

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Could financial infrastructure be used to govern AI agents?

Peter Denton

AI systems are becoming increasingly capable of pursuing sophisticated goals without human intervention. As these systems begin to be used to make economic transactions, they raise important questions for central banks, given their role overseeing money, payments, and financial stability. Leading AI researchers have highlighted the importance of retaining governance control over such systems. In response, AI safety researchers have proposed developing infrastructure to govern AI agents. This blog explores how financial infrastructure may emerge as a particularly viable governance tool, offering pragmatic, scalable, and reversible chokepoints for monitoring and controlling increasingly autonomous AI systems.

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