Salt Edge, a leading open banking solutions provider, has processed its first commercial Variable Recurring Payment (cVRP) in the UK. The milestone transaction, a recurring donation from a UK consumer to a UK charity, was completed through Salt Edge’s payment initiation infrastructure under the consumer’s standing consent.

What happened

Commercial VRPs represent the next frontier in open banking, allowing businesses and organisations to collect recurring payments of varying amounts without the friction of traditional methods.

In this inaugural transaction, the donor authorised the recurring transfer just once, setting a maximum payment limit,  frequency, and duration. The funds moved instantly from the consumer’s bank account directly to the charity — no card details were exchanged, no Direct Debit mandates were created, no payment processor sat between the donor and the cause.

Through this setup,  consumers maintain absolute control, with full visibility to amend or cancel the payment mandate directly in their banking app. The charity receives the funds in near real time, eliminating card-expiry churn, chargebacks, and failed-payment retry cycles.

Why this matters for the charitable sector

UK charities lose significant revenue every year to two structural flaws in legacy payment systems: failed Direct Debit collections and lapsed card-on-file donations caused by expired or replaced cards. Both are sector-wide issues that no amount of donor goodwill solves.

Commercial VRP changes the model. Its single-consent architecture completely removes the renewal-failure vulnerabilities. Donors enjoy greater control than Direct Debit provides, while charities secure a highly durable income stream that card-on-file systems simply cannot match.

Built on production infrastructure

Salt Edge’s commercial VRP capability is fully live, integrated, and available to charities, merchants, billers, and platforms across the UK. The same infrastructure that processed this first transaction can process the next thousand. No bilateral bank negotiations required.

This first transaction is small. But the fact that it’s a donation made by a UK consumer to a UK charity is exactly the use case commercial VRP was built to enable. Recurring giving, with the donor in control and the charity getting paid reliably. We’re proud that our infrastructure carried it.

Ilia Dragan, Chief Product Officer at Salt Edge

What’s next

Commercial VRP collections are now open to all UK organisations running recurring revenue, including subscription-based businesses, billers, regulated financial services firms, utility providers, and charities of any size. The Salt Edge team is actively onboarding initial customers across multiple sectors.

If recurring collections are part of your operation, this is the conversation worth having now.

Talk to us about cVRP here

About Salt Edge

Salt Edge is a financial API platform with PSD2 and open banking solutions for every business. The company has two main areas of activity: enabling third parties to access bank channels via a unified gateway and developing the technology necessary for banks to comply with the directive’s requirements. ISO 27001-certified and AISP-licensed under PSD2, Salt Edge is integrated with 5,000+ financial institutions across 50+ countries. The company has been named a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Open Banking Intermediaries, 2023 Report.

For more information, please visit www.saltedge.com