Executive summary
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Executive summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated
change in the payments industry. Digital payments
have soared as the world has worked and played from
home. Innovation has ramped up as the payments
industry has raced to meet demand and develop new
products and services. And organizations’ resilience
has come under greater stress as they scramble to
meet their payments obligations while mitigating risks
such as the cyber threat.
Against this backdrop, this research looks forward
rather than backward. It charts what lies ahead using
the results of a quantitative survey of 1,500 public and
private sector organizations across Europe and the US
and qualitative interviews with industry experts.
Will the way organizations make and receive
payments go back to how things were before the
pandemic, or has it changed for good?
TRANSFORMATION CONTINUES
The short answer from the research is that
transformation is continuing at pace and most
organizations are now even more determined
to invest in their payments infrastructure. The
lessons from the pandemic have been invaluable:
organizations identied shortcomings in their
payments capabilities and placed a higher priority
on determining innovative solutions.
In particular, the research suggests that real-time
payments are at an inection point. Demand from
customers and suppliers is growing, and providers
are now overcoming their previous challenges of
fragmentation and technology blockages. As the
real-time payments model matures, businesses will
increasingly see benets beyond speed and cost
reduction. They will also apply real-time payments
to a diverse range of innovative use cases.
KEY FINDINGS
• Payments investment is set to increase:
70 percent of organizations plan to
increase spending
• Spending will focus on skills (a key priority for
44 percent) and technology (37 percent)
• Speed of payments is now companies’
leading challenge
• Organizations recognize a range of drivers for
real-time payments and led by new technology
advances (35 percent), increased availability of
oerings from third parties (35 percent)
• Real-time payments adopters expect to see
benets that include improved communication
with counterparties (41 percent), better
liquidity management (35 percent) and access
to transaction data (30 percent)
• Adoption is limited today, but it is accelerating:
14 percent of organizations have already
embedded real-time payments
• Organizations are currently using real-time
payments domestically for accounts receivable
and payable, cross-border payments will follow
• Organizations are looking for support with
implementation: 77 percent would outsource
at least part of the work of developing real-time
payments capabilities
• The biggest challenges in shiing to real-time
payments are fragmentation and issues with
legacy infrastructure (both cited by 30 percent
of respondents)
