Commercial VRPs: a new lever for collections teams under Consumer Duty pressure

Collections and recovery teams are being asked to do something that used to sound contradictory: collect more, spend less, and prove that every customer got a good outcome. FCA Consumer Duty has made that last part non-negotiable, and it's changing how collections software like Flexys gets deployed; less about chasing harder, more about engaging smarter. A recent development adds a new tool to that toolkit.

‍Acquired has become a founding shareholder of the UK Payments Initiative (UKPI), the industry-led scheme launched at Money20/20 Europe to scale account-to-account payments across the UK, in line with the Government's National Payments Vision. The scheme's focus, commercial Variable Recurring Payments (commercial VRPs), is directly relevant to how repayment plans get set up and kept on track.

Why commercial VRPs matter for collections, specifically

A commercial VRP lets a customer authorise their bank to make ongoing payments directly, with agreed limits on amount, timing and frequency. For a repayment plan, that's a materially better mechanism than a Direct Debit mandate that needs re-establishing after every bounce, or a card that's expired since the last agreed instalment. Two things follow from that:

1. Fewer plans break down for reasons that have nothing to do with affordability.
   A huge amount of "failed" repayment activity in collections isn't a customer refusing to pay, it's a payment method that couldn't collect. Commercial VRPs, run alongside fund availability checks ahead of each collection, are built to close that gap.
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2. It supports the evidence-of-good-outcomes requirement Consumer Duty demands.
   A repayment mechanism the customer has actively authorised through their own banking app, with visible parameters rather than a Direct Debit set-and-forget, sits well within a customer-centric collections strategy – the kind that shows up positively in vulnerability and outcomes reporting.

Acquired's position in the collections stack

Acquired is the only UKPI founding shareholder running a full multi-rail recurring payments stack (Cards, Direct Debit and VRPs, both Sweeping and Commercial) which gives it visibility across customer behaviour and payment performance that a single-rail provider doesn't have. Through its Convert, Retain and Recover framework, that translates into practical collections use cases: intelligently placing customers on the payment method suited to their situation at the point a plan is agreed, running affordability-informed fund checks ahead of each scheduled collection, and automatically migrating customers off a failing card or lapsed mandate before it becomes another entry on the arrears report.

In their words

"For too long, businesses have faced challenges when repeat payments fail, especially when central to revenue, retention and customer experience,"

said Eline Blomme, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Acquired.

"This will spark much-needed disruption to an industry that hasn't faced a real challenge to Card or Direct Debit for decades. Our multi-rail platform helps businesses optimise every stage of the recurring payments lifecycle, including transitioning customers at key points of friction."

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Greg Cox, CEO of Acquired, added:

"As a founding shareholder, Acquired is backing this shift and taking a leading role in the development of commercial VRPs. We believe they can increase choice in UK payments and give businesses – including those managing collections and recoveries – a more flexible, secure and effective way to manage repayment relationships."

The bigger picture for collections leaders

UKPI is heading into market rollout, and adoption of commercial VRPs across the collections sector will happen in phases, not overnight. But for teams already investing in collections software to improve outcomes and cut cost to collect, it's worth watching closely, because the biggest cost to collect line items are so often the plans that break down for entirely preventable reasons. A more resilient payment method only delivers if the arrangement around it is affordable, monitored and properly recorded, which is the work collections software like Flexys already does.

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Talk to Acquired about repayment plan resilience

Acquired helps collections teams keep repayment plans on track with commercial VRPs, Direct Debit and card payments working together, reducing avoidable breakage without adding pressure on customers. Get in touch with Acquired to discuss your cost to collect.