Payments Are Being Transformed Right Before Our Eyes
An article at PaymentsJournal.com cites a 2019 survey by Aite Group indicating that only 18% of banks were at the point of moving from a transaction-based revenue model to a data-based approach.
While this figure is unlikely to have changed significantly since, PaymentsJournal.com goes on to note that data-driven payments are increasingly on the agenda for banks and we can expect more movement towards this.
"This is partly due to the accelerated cost-pressure on payments as a result of events in 2020. More importantly, though, banks are steadily identifying concrete use-cases and seeing their benefits. Helping corporates manage cash and liquidity through automated data-based actions can start to ease serious headaches for treasurers, for example. Equally, payments data can be used to provide valuable economic insights to corporate customers. At the same time, retail banks are getting better at making informed offers and suggestions to customers based on payment flows.
With the rise of embedded finance, the ability of banks to support personalised and contextualised payments will increasingly be expected by their customers. But organising data efficiently to undertake such actions is no mean feat. Perhaps in 2021, we will see more ways for actionable and insightful data analytics to help monetise payments."
ISO 20022, the multi part International Standard prepared by ISO Technical Committee TC68 Financial Services, describes a common platform for the development of messages. PaymentsJournal notes that ISO 20022 "allows banks to improve and extend the payments-related services they provide to business customers, enabling the move from pure transaction-based services to value-added insights and advisory services."
Given that manner of support -- and imminent industry competition using the new tools -- we can expect ISO 20022 to encourage banks to embrace payments innovation sooner rather than later.
Other factors cited by PaymentsJournal.com include:
Realizing instant payment benefits
On the retail and corporate side.
Government-backed, digital identity usage goes mainstream
Revisions to regulatory directives such as eIDAS, the coming age of CBDCs and emerging concepts such as Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) – plus a whole raft of other national, bloc and international policies on “Digital” – are pointing towards a fully digital world built on a cornerstone of trust.
The business case for payments transformation
Given the scale and pace of change, transforming expensive, inflexible and unreliable technology estates is no longer optional and must now be a key priority for many banks.
It is crucial for banks to continue embarking on the path towards platform modernization in 2021 and beyond. Customer expectations of a more digital experience -- while still receiving a quality customer experience -- is not an easy task, particularly if banks are still utilizing antiquated systems that are not available for cloud deployment. Furthermore, reading fields of a traditional payment such as a paper check is simply not enough. Banks need to invest in technologies that not only read the fields, but extract data from all channels that can be leveraged for additional benefits.
This blog post contains forward looking statements – click here to learn more.