Authentication starts with who you are, and then it goes to what you intend to do. Christopher Omloo, Director of Sales Europe at G+D Netcetera, cuts through the noise on what UK banks and PSPs actually need to know about payment security in 2026.
1. Chris, if you had to explain to someone in a lift why UK banks should care about authentication in 2026, what would you say?
Fraud is always on, and in the UK, it is expensive, visible, and increasingly comes back to the bank in pounds and reputational damage. With reimbursement expectations tightening, authentication isn’t “PSD2 hygiene”; that is, the control that decides whether a suspicious payment is stopped early or becomes a loss, a complaint, and a regulator headline.
Treat authentication like a revenue-and-trust lever that protects customers, it reduces fraud and chargeback leakage, and keeps good transactions flowing.
2. What’s your perspective on how UK PSPs are responding to the fraud reimbursement requirements?
The response says a lot about where the market really stands. PSPs with strong fraud-prevention foundations in place adapted smoothly; the new requirements simply aligned with what they were already prioritising: protecting customers and building resilience. For others, it exposed authentication gaps that should have been addressed years ago.
The difference comes down to mindset: some PSPs asked, “What’s the minimum we can get away with?”, while others asked, “How do we use authentication to genuinely build customer trust?” You can guess which approach actually works.
3. You work with issuers across Europe. What’s the one thing UK banks do differently when it comes to fraud prevention, for better or worse?
Across Europe, every market has its own approach to fraud prevention. What strikes me about UK banks is their bias toward action, the act! They want solutions that work now, not in a theoretical future state. They test fast, deploy faster, and aren’t afraid to change course if something is not delivering. In fraud prevention, that mindset is genuinely valuable.
The opportunity, and this applies across markets, not just the UK, is pairing that speed with a longer strategic view. You can not ignore the structural issues that will bite you in 18 months, so the combination of quick tactical wins with a roadmap that anticipates where fraud is heading next is crucial and separates good from great.
4. Every fintech claims its solution is “frictionless.” What should a UK issuer actually ask when they hear that word?
Ask: Frictionless for whom, under what risk, and who absorbs the downside? “Frictionless” often means the customer sees fewer interruptions, but the issuer/PSP sees higher fraud costs, more disputes, or a heavier ops workload. Push for smart friction: prove you can step up only when needed, explain your false positive rate, show approval rate impact, and clarify how you handle edge cases (new device, travel, first time payee, unusual basket size). With 3-D Secure done well, most legitimate transactions can flow smoothly while the riskiest ones get challenged. A properly implemented 3-D Secure solution, for example, challenges less than 5% of genuine transactions while catching the fraudulent ones. That is not frictionless; it is smart friction.
5. Agentic commerce, AI-driven fraud, shifting regulations, it’s a lot to navigate. But if you had to bet on one thing, what would it be?
I would bet on trust delivered invisibly: the customer gets the right outcome with no awkward declines, no scary “was this you?” loops, and no surprise reimbursement fights afterwards.
AI and agentic commerce will raise the tempo, fraud will scale, but so will detection. In such a case, the differentiator becomes how well you blend identity, authentication, and real-time risk decisions without making customers feel policed. In the end, payments win when it disappears: it works reliably at the exact moment someone needs it, and that reliability is built on unglamorous excellence, data quality, controls, monitoring, and clear accountability.
Want to continue the conversation? Find Chris at Pay360 in London, or connect on LinkedIn.
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