Payments technology reaches critical inflection point

Payments technology reaches critical inflection point

Banks across the globe make investment in payment technologies a top priority

For Immediate release

Melbourne, 4 December 2014: The Ovum ICT Enterprise Insights* program, based on interviews with 6,500 senior IT executives, has revealed that the payments industry is set to be a key area of focus for banks across the globe in 2015.

The shift in payments modernisation, brought on by diversification and mobile channels in particular, is a truly global phenomenon. In most instances, less than a third of surveyed respondents claimed that they will be maintaining their payments technology in its current state.

Banks that have so far been reluctant to foray into the digital payments space are set to finally make their moves into the digital wallet space, with 23% of respondents placing the technology as their top investment priority. Mobile proximity payments, incorporating NFC and QR codes held the second highest priority level at 17.6%.

Alongside these new areas, immediate payments technologies are quickly emerging as the next wave of global payment innovation, with products in this area being a top 3 investment priority for nearly 48% of respondents, although this investment is being driven in many instances by regulatory demands. Underpinning this is a high appetite for payments modernisation particularly for critical payment functions such as switching, clearing and settlement.

As payments has become a lot more complex and diversified, Banks are reacting to this with strong investment in the payments space which in turn is driving infrastructure investment. Chief amongst infrastructure priorities are payment switching and authorisation (42.2% citing it as a priority, and 21.8% as a top priority), clearing and settlement (49.2% citing it as a priority, and 18.4% as a top priority) and payment operations (45.4% citing it as a priority and 17.1% as a top priority).

Gilles Ubaghs, Senior Analyst in the Ovum Financial Services Technology team said: “Payments has now reached a critical inflection point, with banks almost regardless of region choosing to make investment in this area a top priority. Banks realise the importance of enabling payment innovation and diversification, which in turn is driving much needed infrastructure that is both flexible and configurable. Vendors themselves should now focus on implementation and modernisation strategies for their own critical payments infrastructure - with flexibility in mind given the diverse range of payments technologies now emerging.”
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