Offering insight into payment infrastructure changes
Payment infrastructures are a crucial component of global financial systems. With ever-changing technological advances, regulation and consumer demands, both retail and wholesale payment markets are undergoing continual changes.
VocaLink, the international payments specialists, has released research undertaken by the Financial Services club and Cognizant into the impact of changes to the international payments market. The study has surveyed the finance industry’s view on the current and future trends for payments around the world.
The research spoke to senior and middle managers at banks, payment processors, consultants and technology providers on what they consider to be the most important themes and trends of the payments industry and discovered three recurring topics:
- The impact of regulation on payments (Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), Payment Services Directive)
- The convergence of payment infrastructures in the future
- The rise of mobile payments and the security threats that this entails
The results provided an overview of the current state of the market, what is anticipated in the future, and what the drivers for change are. Some of the key findings showed that security and mobile are seen as the biggest factors for success in retail payment infrastructures. Of those surveyed, 58% view mobile as the most important technology in payments in 2013 and 70% believe there will be a specific mobile payments processors in the future, as traditional processors may struggle to adapt to the increase in low value payments. Many respondents believe the industry will move further towards real-time payments and in the long term expect there to be a consolidation of the number of payment infrastructures used.
Although the research suggested that current payment infrastructures are sufficient to deal with today’s volume of processed payments. The rise in mobile payments will present a significant challenge to payment processing technology. It’s crucial that the payments industry continues to innovate the infrastructure that underpins the whole sector and continues to keep pace with the payments revolution.
To read the full report, please click on this link.
By Chris Dunne
About the author – Todays guest writer is payment services director at VocaLink.
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