I'm the CTO of an FCA-authorised Payment Institution. I spend most of my week either writing payments code or reading FCA / PSR consultation papers so my team doesn't have to. 2026 is the year that work stopped being optional for everyone else. Three things shifted in the first half of the year, and if you ship anything that touches UK payments — checkouts, wallets, invoicing, recurring billing — at least two of them affect your roadmap. Most developer threads I read are still pattern-matching open banking onto "OAuth, but for banks." The actual changes are more interesting than that, and a lot more consequential. Here's the part I wish someone had handed me as a one-pager. 1. Variable Recurring Payments went from "spec" to "shipping" The FCA confirmed that the first commercial Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) under the UK Payments Initiative scheme started flowing in Q1 2026. Phase 1 covers utilities, financial services top-ups, and payments to local and central government.…