Swati Deshpande, Marketing Manager at URocked, on how digital payments bring clearer records, faster reconciliation and far less manual intervention across finance and payroll
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Cash now accounts for less than 10% of payments in the UK and is expected to fall below 4% over time. As transactions move almost entirely through digital channels, the way money flows through businesses is becoming more structured, more visible and more demanding to manage.
In sectors like hospitality, which are already dealing with rising costs and tight margins, businesses continue to absorb pressure from business rates alongside the removal of pandemic-era support. As a result, this leaves very little room for inefficiencies in day-to-day operations, especially as they directly affect customer service and employee satisfaction.
Tipping, once informal and largely self-managed, now sits firmly inside those operations.
From direct exchange to recorded transaction
For years, tips were exchanged directly between customers and staff, most often in cash. They were immediate, visible and largely outside formal business systems.
That has changed as customers increasingly pay by card or mobile. Tips are now added to the bill and processed as part of the overall transaction. They pass through payment infrastructure, are captured in financial records and become part of the data businesses must manage.
The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act has further increased employer responsibilities. From 1 October 2024, businesses have been required to pass on 100% of tips to staff and maintain clear records showing how those payments are allocated.
However, research into how businesses have responded to the Tipping Act shows that implementation remains uneven. One in four employers reports making no changes to how they handle tips since the legislation came into effect. A further 26% say they have struggled to understand how it should be applied in practice. There are also gaps in awareness – only 53% of employers know that all tips must be passed on to staff.
Digital transactions leave a clear audit trail, which makes inconsistencies more visible. With all payments now recorded, the informal approach that once relied on trust is harder to maintain when every transaction is logged. However, where processes are unclear or inconsistent, businesses struggle with compliance and admin overload.
The hidden workload behind micro-payments
The individual value of a tip may be small, but the number of transactions accumulates quite quickly. A busy venue can generate hundreds of tips in a single day. Multiply that by different locations, and that becomes thousands of individual payments every single month. Each of those payments must be separated from revenue, recorded and reconciled before distribution. Tips then need to be allocated across staff, often taking into account roles, hours worked or agreed distribution models.
For finance and HR teams, this creates a continuous stream of work that involves monitoring transactions, validating totals, managing allocation rules and ensuring that payments are made within the required timeframe. The process becomes even more demanding once it is scaled across a business. The more transactions there are, the greater the need for consistency and oversight, and this is where many organisations are still adjusting.
How employees experience the change
Tipping with cash used to create a direct link between the customer and the staff. Today, digital payments introduce a layer of processing between collection and distribution, essentially putting businesses in charge of the transaction. That change places greater importance on transparency. Employees need to understand how tips are calculated, when they will be paid and how allocations are determined.
The data suggests that experience is mixed. A quarter of hospitality staff say they have not noticed any change in how their employer handles tips since the law came into effect. A further 23% report receiving fewer tips. At the same time, 65% of staff rely on tips or service charges as part of their income. When processes are unclear, they influence earnings, confidence in the employer and overall job satisfaction. For businesses, if more time is spent on reconciliation and corrections, it effectively drives up operational costs in an already margin-sensitive sector.
While most respondents say the Tipping Law change has improved fairness for staff, gaps in understanding and inconsistent implementation remain widespread. Closing that gap now depends on clearer guidance, stronger transparency and processes that ensure tips are distributed accurately and consistently across the sector.
What tipping reveals about digital payments
Tipping highlights a broader pattern that applies across the service economy. As cash becomes less common, every payment becomes part of a formal payroll system, regardless of its size. Even the smallest transactions are now expected to meet the same standards as larger payments, which increases the level of operational processes required across the business.
High volumes of small payments need to be processed accurately without errors, and processes must be robust enough to meet compliance requirements. This brings different functions closer together. Payment handling, payroll and compliance are no longer separate concerns. Decisions in one area affect the others directly, particularly when employee income depends on how payments are managed.
While digital payments have made transactions faster and more convenient for customers, some still prefer tipping with cash. Mixing cash with digital payments creates an additional unnecessary friction, which slows reconciliation and increases the risk of errors. Without a consistent digital record, discrepancies are harder to spot, and manual cash handling adds another layer of risk, from simple mistakes through to loss or theft.
Moving away from cash removes much of that complexity. Digital payments bring clearer records, faster reconciliation and far less manual intervention across finance and payroll. With the right systems in place, payments, bookings and reporting flow together, cutting down admin and giving a much clearer view of how money moves through the business while making sure those who keep customers happy are rewarded fairly.
TerraPay, a global money movement company, and Alipay+, Ant International’s unified wallet gateway, today announced a strategic partnership to enable…
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TerraPay, a global money movement company, and Alipay+, Ant International’s unified wallet gateway, today announced a strategic partnership to enable seamless cross-border QR payments for digital wallets, significantly enhancing global payments interoperability for users across Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.
In the initial phase, 15 of the digital wallets across Africa connected to Xend, TerraPay’s wallet interoperability network, will be able to pay at more than 150 million merchants across Alipay+’s global merchant ecosystem. The partnership also expands TerraPay’s cross-border payment capabilities from account-to-account to global in-store acceptance.
Pay Like a Local, anywhere in the World
Many continue to face friction when transacting across borders. While their digital wallet works seamlessly locally, when travelling, they often revert to cash, foreign exchange counters, and payment methods that feel unfamiliar and costly.
Through Xend, TerraPay’s wallet interoperability network, wallet partners across the world piloting with Africa, can enable their users to pay directly at Alipay+’s global merchant ecosystem. Wallet users can simply scan a QR code to pay, using the same wallet they already trust.
“The home wallet on your phone, that is from Kenya or Colombia or any country, should work the same way in Singapore or China or anywhere in the world, as easily as it does at home. That’s the promise of Xend. This partnership with Alipay+ is a major step toward making cross-border wallet payments as natural as paying locally.”
Ambar Sur, Founder and CEO, TerraPay
Supporting a growing mobile economy
As digital wallets become the preferred payment option, users increasingly expect their trusted financial interfaces to work seamlessly across borders, merchants, and payment ecosystems. Wallet providers have built powerful domestic ecosystems – loyal users, trusted rails, meaningful scale, yet cross-border utility remains limited.
Xend, TerraPay’s wallet interoperability network solves this by connecting to a global ecosystem, via Alipay+, through a single integration, enabling wallet providers to offer their customers something genuinely new: the ability to spend internationally, without switching apps or carrying cards. Alipay+ connects over 50 international payment partners to more than 150 million merchants across 220 destination markets, including through over 10 national payment systems.
“By bringing TerraPay’s network of wallets to Alipay+, we’re helping more people and businesses connect across borders, creating new pathways for growth, and unlocking new opportunities. This reflects our joint commitment towards a more connected and inclusive global commerce ecosystem.”
Edward Yue, General Manager of Alipay+ Global Power Center, Ant International
Ant International is a leading global digital payment, digitisation and financial technology provider, offering a unified techfin platform supporting financial institutions and merchants of all sizes to achieve inclusive growth. It’s unified wallet gateway, Alipay+, provides cross-border payment and digital services that help connect global merchants to consumers.
Aaron Holmes, CEO at Kani Payments, on the need for regulatory readiness
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For years, Fintechs have approached regulation as a compliance challenge.
When a new rule arrives, firms typically turn to compliance teams, legal advisors and consultants to understand what has changed and what needs to be done. The assumption is that once the requirements are understood, the hard part is largely over. Increasingly, that assumption no longer holds true.
The FCA’s updated safeguarding regime, introduced under PS25/12, highlights a much broader shift taking place across financial services. Regulation is no longer simply testing whether firms understand the rules. It is testing whether their operating models can support them.That distinction matters because understanding a regulatory requirement and operationalising it are two very different things.
Recent research into safeguarding readiness across the UK payments sector illustrates the challenge clearly. While 32% of payments firms believe they are already compliant with the FCA’s updated requirements, only 13% are currently performing the daily reconciliations the new regime expects. At the same time, 84% say they could explain their safeguarding calculations to an auditor if required.
Taken together, the findings point to a widening gap between understanding the requirements and operationalising them. The industry understands where it needs to get to. The question is whether its infrastructure is capable of taking it there.
When compliance becomes an infrastructure problem
Much of the conversation around safeguarding has focused on reporting obligations, governance requirements and regulatory expectations. But safeguarding is increasingly becoming an operational challenge.
The updated framework requires firms to move from periodic compliance activities to continuous operational control. Daily reconciliations, enhanced record-keeping and evidence readiness are not simply more frequent versions of existing processes. They require fundamentally different ways of working.
For many organisations, this means rethinking how data flows through the business, how reconciliations are performed, how exceptions are managed and how evidence is stored and retrieved. In other words, the challenge is infrastructure.
This is why many firms find themselves in a difficult position. They understand exactly what regulators expect but are working with processes originally designed for weekly or monthly cycles. A weekly reconciliation process cannot simply be accelerated and expected to deliver daily control. The underlying systems, workflows and governance structures need to evolve alongside the regulation itself. The safeguarding reforms are making that reality impossible to ignore.
The limits of legacy operating models
One of the most telling findings from the research is the industry’s continued reliance on spreadsheets. Nearly two-thirds of firms still use spreadsheets in some form to support safeguarding returns. While spreadsheets are not inherently problematic, they were never designed to provide the level of control, auditability and evidential readiness regulators increasingly expect.
As compliance requirements become more demanding, manual processes become increasingly difficult to scale and evidence. Data must be extracted from multiple systems. Calculations require manual intervention. Audit trails become fragmented. Key knowledge often sits with a small number of individuals who understand how various reports and reconciliations fit together.
None of these challenges are unique to safeguarding. They are symptoms of a wider issue affecting many areas of financial services. As firms grow, operational complexity increases. Processes that once worked perfectly well begin to strain under the weight of regulatory scrutiny, reporting obligations and customer expectations.
The result is that compliance teams increasingly find themselves trying to solve problems that are, at their core, technology and infrastructure challenges.
A trend extending far beyond safeguarding
What makes safeguarding particularly interesting is that it reflects a broader regulatory direction of travel. Across financial services, regulators are placing greater emphasis on demonstrable outcomes rather than documented intent.
Whether the topic is operational resilience, Consumer Duty, financial crime controls or safeguarding, firms are being asked to prove that controls work consistently in practice, not simply that policies exist on paper. That requires a different level of operational maturity.
Regulators increasingly want evidence that can be produced quickly, reconciliations that happen consistently and controls that are embedded into day-to-day operations. The expectation is not that firms can assemble evidence when requested. It is that evidence already exists and can be retrieved immediately.
Historically, many compliance processes have been designed around reporting deadlines and audit events. Increasingly, regulators are expecting firms to operate in a constant state of readiness. That changes the role of technology from a supporting function to a critical component of regulatory compliance.
Building for the next generation of regulation
The payments industry has always been highly effective at adapting to change. The challenge now is recognising that regulation is increasingly testing operational capability as much as compliance knowledge.
The future regulatory battleground will centre on operational capability rather than awareness of the rules. Most firms understand what regulators are asking of them.
Can firms reconcile data quickly and accurately? Can they evidence decisions and controls without extensive manual effort? Can they demonstrate consistency across processes, teams and systems? Can they respond to regulatory scrutiny without relying on institutional knowledge or spreadsheet-based workarounds? These are infrastructure questions as much as compliance questions.
The organisations best positioned for the future will be those that recognise this early. Rather than treating regulation as a series of individual projects, they will build operational foundations capable of supporting continuous compliance across multiple regulatory frameworks. In that environment, regulatory readiness becomes less about reacting to change and more about being flexible enough to adapt from the outset.
Ross Osborne, CEO of UK Payments at Rippling, on why the future of finance will be defined less by incumbency and more by execution velocity
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As with most industries today, developments in technology are reshaping how people and companies bank. Traditional banks with in-person branches are no longer the default. Global FnTtech investment reached $116 billion in 2025, underscoring the scale of this shift. Meanwhile, firms like Revolut – recently securing its banking licence and targeting a valuation above $100 billion in a future IPO – highlight the continued rise of digital-first challengers.
But beneath the growth story, much of this innovation is still concentrated in a small number of large platforms. They are repeatedly solving similar core problems – payments, accounts, onboarding – that traditional banks already spent decades building infrastructure for. The result is less a reinvention of banking, and more a reallocation of who delivers the same underlying services.
Where FinTechs are outperforming traditional banks is not in vision, but in execution. The key difference is structural: legacy institutions are constrained by layers of governance, compliance, and internal process. This means even simple changes can take multiple steps to implement. FinTechs, by contrast, are built for rapid iteration and direct deployment. This allows them to respond to customer demand in real time.
That speed matters. Modern businesses, especially those now operating in an AI-enabled environment, expect financial services to operate at the same cadence as the rest of their technology stack. Over time, that responsiveness becomes a competitive advantage, not just in product delivery but in attracting talent and capital. However, compressing decision cycles also concentrates operational and compliance risk, which needs to be managed deliberately rather than assumed away.
Building beyond legacy systems
Legacy banks are constrained by decades-old systems and processes that create a blockade of bureaucracy. Even getting a single decision over the line requires navigating endless layers of middle management and committee approvals. In that environment, processes and innovation can take twice as long as necessary.
In contrast, FinTechs have emerged in the space that banks left behind. They don’t have the traditional overheads of corporate structures, meaning they don’t just solve problems but become the solution itself. What we see in the FinTech space is super-efficiency. Operations are conducted at pace, stripped of the performative meetings and red tape that haunt traditional institutions. There is a brutal focus on output over ‘process for the sake of process’. This speed is their greatest competitive advantage. This agility means FinTechs can iterate rapidly on pricing and features, compounding their advantage in customer experience and innovation.
Banking without borders
Digital-first banking is inherently global. As businesses expand across markets, an online platform means that it is more accessible, with seamless cross-border transactions, currency conversion, and international payment processing. JP Morgan predicts that international transfers are expected to increase 5% annually until 2027. Underpinning the demand for easier access to cross-border banking.
The question is whether legacy payment rails can absorb that growth without friction eroding already thin transaction margins. As volumes scale, operational complexity tends to compound faster than efficiency gains. Particularly in systems not designed for real-time global settlement.
Against this backdrop, the lower operating costs associated with purely digital platforms enable FinTechs to offer competitive pricing and innovative, tailored financial products. This enhanced accessibility is not just about geography; it’s also about democratising finance, ensuring that banking services can keep pace with the rapid expansion and complex operational needs of an interconnected world economy.
Technology-based solutions for technology-based customers
Consumers now expect banking to mirror the best consumer apps they use every day: instant, intuitive, and mobile-first. Research comparing online to traditional banking finds customers cite convenience, time saving, and accessibility as primary reasons for shifting to digital channels.
Digital-first and mobile-only FinTechs are designed around these expectations from day one, whereas incumbents are still retrofitting branch-centric models to a digital world. Even as large banks have reduced their branches by about 15% over a decade, customer relationships have deepened digitally. Trust has become more associated with brand experience, transparency, and app reliability. Neobanks and FinTechs often rate highly in app-store reviews and NPS.
While legacy institutions sit on mountains of siloed data that they struggle to process, FinTechs are leveraging AI to provide real-time financial insights and automated wealth management. This transition from passive storage to active intelligence transforms the bank from a mere vault into a proactive partner. By the end of 2026, predictive analytics will be the baseline expectation, allowing agile players to anticipate customer needs before a single click is made, further cementing FinTech’s role as the architects of modern commerce.
The ecosystem of banking is also changing – shifting from product-centric to platform-based models, including embedded finance, marketplaces, banking-as-a-service. Yet many traditional banks are structurally and culturally less prepared for platform thinking, compared to FinTech or big-tech players.
Nurturing talent-driven innovation
This shift isn’t just about technology; it’s also about talent. Forecasts in London suggest FinTech job vacancies could grow by about 37% year‑on‑year in 2026. High-velocity environments are a magnet for and a product of top-tier talent. The best engineers, product managers, and thinkers want to work where their impact is immediate.
FinTechs offer just that. Not having to work through legacy systems means innovators are given the chance to shape processes themselves, creating output a lot faster than traditional banks, but also promoting continuous growth. By attracting the right talent who value autonomy and pace over stability, fintechs create a self-sustaining cycle of innovation that traditional banks simply cannot match with their current structures.
The rise of FinTechs
The evolution of the financial sector has reached a definitive tipping point where speed and agility are table stakes. As we move through 2026, the contrast between legacy institutions and FinTech disruptors has never been sharper. While traditional banks remain anchored by the weight of their own bureaucracy and theatrics, FinTechs are capitalising on a leaner, more intentional model that prioritises output over process.
Ultimately, the rise of FinTechs isn’t just about better apps or lower fees. It reflects a shift in what determines success in financial services: the ability to decide quickly and execute at speed. The winners will be those that can do both consistently – not those with the longest history or the deepest legacy advantage.
For modern businesses and consumers, that recalibration is already underway. The future of finance will be defined less by incumbency and more by execution velocity.
Global financial institutions and FinTech infrastructure providers are delivering seamless cross-border payments
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TerraPay, the global money movement company has announced a collaboration with Deutsche Bank. It will provide access to the bank’s correspondent banking network, technology and product capabilities, supporting more efficient and reliable movement of money across borders. The milestone highlights the growing role of partnerships between global financial institutions and FinTech infrastructure providers. It is delivering more efficient, reliable and seamless cross-border payments.
Through this collaboration, TerraPay gains access to Deutsche Bank’s correspondent banking network, payments capabilities and foreign exchange services. This strengthens TerraPay’s settlement infrastructure and enhances its ability to facilitate cross-border payments for customers around the world. The initiative is expected to support greater efficiency, speed and reliability in USD settlement while further strengthening TerraPay’s global payments network.
The future of cross-border payments
“The future of cross-border payments will be built through collaboration between global financial institutions and purpose-built fintech infrastructure. Our relationship with Deutsche Bank brings together the strength of one of the world’s leading banks with TerraPay’s global payment network, creating new opportunities to improve settlement efficiency, expand market reach and deliver superior payment experiences for customers around the world.”
Ambar Sur, Founder & CEO, TerraPay
The collaboration lays the groundwork for future opportunities between the two organisations as they explore ways to further enhance global payment connectivity and support the evolving needs of customers worldwide.
“We are pleased to support TerraPay as it continues to enhance its global cross-border payments infrastructure. By combining Deutsche Bank’s correspondent banking, payments and foreign exchange capabilities with TerraPay’s network, this partnership will help facilitate more efficient and reliable payment flows. It reflects our commitment to supporting Fintech clients in the Middle East region across the evolving payments landscape and connecting businesses and communities through our global network.”
Majed Julfar, Chief Country Officer for the UAE, Deutsche Bank
About Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank provides retail and private banking, corporate and transaction banking, lending, asset and wealth management products and services as well as focused investment banking to private individuals, small and medium-sized companies, corporations, governments and institutional investors. Deutsche Bank is the leading bank in Germany with strong European roots and a global network.
Deutsche Bank AG, Dubai (DIFC) Branch is a branch of Deutsche Bank AG located and registered in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) in the Emirate of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with registered no. 00062. Principal place of business in the DIFC: Dubai International Financial Centre, ICD Brookfield Place, Floor 35, PO Box 504902, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Deutsche Bank AG, Dubai (DIFC) Branch is regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (“DFSA”) and is authorized to provide Financial Services to Professional Clients only, as defined by the DFSA.
About TerraPay
TerraPay simplifies global money movement, providing a single connection to one of the most expansive cross-border payment networks, regulated across multiple markets. Our network enables payments to receiving and sending countries worldwide, reaching a vast network of mobile wallets, bank accounts, and cards. We make money transfers instant, reliable, transparent, and fully compliant for its partners, connecting them 7.5Bn+ bank accounts, in 156+ countries. We work behind the scenes as the trusted partners for some of the world’s most innovative financial players, from banks and digital wallets to MTOs, corporates and fintech platforms. On a mission to create a borderless financial world, TerraPay operates Xend – the first of its kind payments interoperability network, enabling secure, real-time cross-border payments, to and from 3.7B wallets through a single, unified connection. TerraPay is headquartered in London, with offices in cities including, Dubai, Milan, Miami, Singapore, Bogota, Johannesburg, Kampala, Bangalore.
Both Amazon and eBay have announced the introduction of Pay by Bank as a payment method in the UK. If…
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Both Amazon and eBay have announced the introduction of Pay by Bank as a payment method in the UK. If there was ever any doubt, this signals that Pay by Bank is beginning to solidify itself as a mainstream global payment option.
Initially a “made in Europe” alternative to card payments, Pay by Bank is now a genuinely disruptive force, challenging traditional payment methods and offering faster payments, stronger security, and a simpler user experience.
A recent Token.io survey demonstrated that 91% of respondents reported strong merchant demand, while Open Banking Limited estimates a £4.4 billion opportunity. For UK businesses, Pay by Bank could unlock huge savings through lower transaction fees and improved reconciliation processes. This includes an estimated £331 million from online payments, £40 million from in-store transactions, £110 million from one-off bill payments, and £78 million from recurring billing.
Recent data from Open Banking Limited also shows Pay by Bank is a safer way to pay, with fraud rates 2.4x lower than payments industry norms. During 2025, approximately one in 6,000 open banking payments were fraudulent, compared with one in 2,500 across the broader payments industry.
Pay by Bank
Today, popular Pay by Bank use cases include credit card repayments, current account top-ups and savings account funding, with adoption set to expand significantly as new schemes emerge.
Yet as Pay by Bank scales, a familiar pattern is revealing itself: fragmentation.
Across the UK and Europe, multiple industry-led and regulatory-led Pay by Bank schemes have emerged, each bringing its own functionality, geographic reach, dispute frameworks and commercial models. In these regions, open banking regulation created a foundation for every use case, but not every capability that merchants, billers and consumers need, including recurring payment mandates and dispute resolution frameworks.
Multiple Pay by Bank schemes reflect a payments ecosystem maturing beyond a one-size-fits-all model; this is not a flaw but a sign of healthy competition. Fragmentation is the inevitable consequence of a market scaling at pace, yet the fragmentation competition causes needs to be addressed.
Looking at the financial challenges, as more Pay by Bank schemes emerge, payment service providers (PSPs) could find themselves needing to integrate with multiple networks, each with its own technical, operational and commercial requirements. This increases developmental costs, maintenance requirements and operational complexity.
Greater Efficiency, Lower Operating Costs and Wider Adoption
If left unchecked, those costs risk being passed through the payments value chain, reducing some of the economic advantages that have made Pay by Bank so attractive. The industry should instead aim for greater efficiency, lower operating costs and wider adoption.
Limiting competition between schemes is not the goal, simplifying access to them is. Rather than integrating separately with every Pay by Bank network, PSPs can connect through a single infrastructure provider that enables access to multiple schemes via one integration. Those efficiencies can then be passed on to merchants, helping ensure that fragmentation drives innovation, not unnecessary cost.
Yet, the key is not to resist fragmentation, but to abstract both its technical and commercial complexity. Success is achieved for those that access multiple PBB schemes through a unified layer, benefiting from the reach and functionality of different networks without managing them directly.
Pay by Bank’s next chapter will be defined less by whether it succeeds and more by how the ecosystem scales. The rise of multiple schemes is evidence of a market attracting investment, innovation and competition, all hallmarks of a maturing payments category.
Fragmentation is therefore a sign of progress. The task ahead is to ensure that complexity is abstracted away, enabling PSPs and merchants to benefit from the reach of multiple schemes without the operational burden that comes with them.
About Token.io
Token.io is the leading Pay by Bank infrastructure provider. Powering major Pay by Bank schemes in the UK and Europe, Token.io’s turnkey infrastructure makes it simple for banks, platforms and payment companies to grow revenue, reduce costs and expand to new markets with Pay by Bank. Unrivalled acceptance, industry-leading conversion rates, and a uniquely collaborative partnership and distribution model make Token.io the market benchmark, as recognised by independent analysts. The company’s partners include three of Europe’s five largest financial institutions.
Real-time bank-to-wallet cross-border payments now available as Inter advances its mission to build the financial infrastructure connecting Brazil, the United States, and the world
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Digital wallets have become the default way people send and receive money across large parts of the world, but the banks that hold and move the majority of global capital have largely stayed outside that ecosystem, reliant on legacy rails not built to reach wallet users directly. Inter, a global financial technology company serving 45M customers worldwide, today announced it has extended its cross-border payment infrastructure to reach 3.7 billion digital wallets worldwide through a strategic partnership with TerraPay, a global money movement company.
Real-Time Bank-to-Wallet Transfers
This integration connects Inter’s regulated infrastructure in Brazil and the United States directly to Xend – TerraPay’s global wallet interoperability network, enabling real-time bank-to-wallet transfers without requiring new connectivity layers.
TerraPay recently launched Xend for real-time wallet interoperability across financial ecosystems, empowering last mile localised payouts, cross-border wallet payments and merchant payments.
Inter serves as the licensed settling institution for these transactions in both BRL and USD, combining its existing payment capabilities — PIX, InterPAY, Same Day ACH, and Real-Time Payments — with TerraPay’s global wallet reach to deliver most transactions in under one minute.
“Our focus has always been building infrastructure that behaves like software, not legacy banking. This partnership connects that infrastructure to billions of digital wallet destinations worldwide, demonstrating Inter’s long-term strategy to be the platform that links Brazil and the US to the global financial system, for our customers and for the enterprises that move money at scale.”
Ralph Boragina, Head of Cross-Border Payments, Inter
Payments at Scale
The scale of the opportunity reflects where payments are heading. The total value of digital wallet transactions is projected to grow from $9.85 trillion in 2026 to $23.4 trillion by 2031, a nearly 140% increase over five years. For platforms and enterprises managing payouts at scale, the infrastructure to reach that wallet economy has been the missing piece.
“The next phase of cross-border payments will be defined by interoperability between banks and digital wallets,” said Ralph Koker, Head of Europe and Americas, TerraPay, “Inter’s infrastructure, together with regulated, real-time, and built for scale, is exactly what that future requires. This partnership extends what Inter has already built to reach billions of digital accounts globally, through existing rails, without friction.”
The announcement marks the latest step in Inter’s international infrastructure build-out, which includes its position as one of Brazil’s largest PIX payers, a leading FX operator by contracts registered with Brazil’s Central Bank, and the holder of a federally authorized banking branch in the U.S. Through TerraPay’s network, Inter is now positioned to serve the full spectrum of cross-border payment needs, from individual customers to high-volume enterprise disbursements, within a single regulated operating environment, settling in both BRL and USD.
About Inter
Inter (Inter&Co Inc./NASDAQ: INTR) is a global financial technology company providing banking, credit, investments, payments, and lifestyle solutions to more than 45 million customers worldwide. Inter leverages technology to unlock simplicity, offering mortgages, credit, gift cards, investments, and international payments through Banco Inter S.A., Brazil’s first digital bank, and a growing global footprint. Recognised by Forbes, CNBC, and others as one of the world’s leading fintechs and digital banks, Inter is guided by the Rule of 50 — a commitment to growing profitably and with discipline as it expands globally.
TerraPay simplifies global money movement, providing a single connection to one of the most expansive cross-border payment networks, regulated across multiple markets. TerraPay’s network reaches 3.7 billion mobile wallets and 7.5 billion bank accounts across more than 156 countries, serving as a trusted infrastructure partner to banks, digital wallets, money transfer operators, corporates, and fintech platforms. TerraPay is headquartered in London, with offices in Dubai, Milan, Miami, Singapore, Bogotá, Johannesburg, Kampala, and Bangalore.
Koert Grasveld, Senior Director – Payments at TerraPay, on why the experience of moving money in the travel industry will continue to converge with the experience of booking travel itself
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When a traveller in Barcelona makes arrangements for their next trip to Bali, the experience feels immediate. A few clicks, a confirmation, and the journey is set. But behind that seamless user interface lies a financial chain of considerable complexity: airlines, online travel agencies, hotel wholesalers, local operators, and payment providers spanning multiple currencies, time zones, and regulatory environments that rarely align neatly with one another.
The scale of what flows through this system is considerable. UN Tourism estimates that between 1.52 billion arrivals, international tourism generated USD 1.9 trillion in receipts globally in 2025. Each of those journeys generates its own trail of payment obligations: commissions settled across continents, supplier disbursements sent into markets where banking infrastructure varies enormously, refunds processed across multiple currencies and time zones.
For decades, the infrastructure handling all of this evolved slowly. Payments moved through chains of correspondent banks, accumulating fees and delays at each step. Not only does this result in uncertain settlement times, but payees have to deal with opaque FX markups and the headache of manual reconciliation. The system functioned, but its inefficiencies were absorbed rather than resolved because they were built into margins and managed through workarounds that became institutional habits.
Today, that model looks completely different.
The Infrastructure Behind the Booking
Global travel is, by its nature, a uniquely cross-border industry. For example, in the course of operating an international flight, an airline may be required to settle fees with airport authorities in different jurisdictions, while the process of an OTA reconciling commissions with hotel partners could involve layers of intermediary wholesalers. Even the process behind a tour operator disbursing payments to local guides and experience hosts could take place in multiple markets where banking infrastructure varies enormously
In all these examples, businesses are forced to navigate the same underlying complexity, just from different points in the chain. As travel volumes rebounded following the pandemic and consumers increasingly moved to booking trips, accommodation, and experiences online, payment volumes grew sharply with them, and the limitations of legacy infrastructure became harder to absorb.
The core friction is structural. Traditional correspondent banking was designed for large, infrequent interbank transfers, not for the high-volume, lower-value disbursements that characterise modern travel payments. Each intermediary in the chain adds time, cost and increases uncertainty about final settlement amounts, leaving travel finance teams managing a system that was never built for the demands now placed on it.
The gap between ambition and reality is reflected in the G20’s cross-border payments roadmap, launched in 2020 with the goal of making international payments faster, cheaper, more transparent, and more inclusive. That those goals still feel ambitious reveals the scale of the infrastructure challenge. Data from the BIS and Financial Stability Board show that only 35% of global cross-border retail payments currently settle within one hour, against a target of 75%.
Faster Payments
Yet progress is visible where it matters most: central banks across Southeast Asia have been actively interlinking domestic fast payment systems – with the BIS-led Project Nexus. For example, bringing together the central banks of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand to connect their domestic instant payment systems through a single standardised platform
What is changing, then, is not simply the speed of individual transactions (though that’s still important). The more significant evolution is the emergence of payment networks that connect directly to local infrastructure – domestic rails, mobile wallet platforms, real-time payment schemes – rather than routing everything through the correspondent banking chain.
When funds move through fewer intermediaries and settle directly into local systems, outcomes improve across several dimensions simultaneously: settlement becomes more predictable, cost structures become clearer, and payment data can travel with the transaction rather than being lost along the way. For travel companies with supplier networks across dozens of markets, that combination has direct consequences for the commercial relationships at the heart of the business. Suppliers who receive payments reliably and with clear remittance information tend to be more flexible partners, and that trust has real commercial value in an industry where supplier relationships frequently determine product availability and preferential terms.
Beyond the Bank Account
Perhaps the least visible dimension of this evolution, from a corporate finance perspective, is the growing importance of mobile wallets as a payout endpoint. In many of the emerging markets that represent the travel industry’s most significant growth corridors – across Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Latin America — mobile money infrastructure has developed ahead of, or independently from, the traditional banking system.
McKinsey has characterised Southeast Asia as a “wallet-first” region, where more than six in ten people remain unbanked yet smartphone penetration is high and wallet adoption is accelerating across urban and rural markets alike.
For travel companies expanding into these corridors, the ability to disburse to wallet endpoints determines whether payment can reach local partners in a form that is immediately usable. The World Bank estimates that remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries reached USD 685 billion in 2024 — surpassing both foreign direct investment and official development assistance combined, and illustrating how consequential payment access is for communities whose incomes depend on cross-border flows. The same logic applies, at a different scale, to the independent operators and service providers who form the supply base for much of global tourism.
The Collaborative Architecture of What Comes Next for Payments
The transformation underway in cross-border travel payments is not the work of any single institution or technology. Instead, it reflects a convergence of regulatory intent, infrastructure investment, and commercial innovation that is gradually reshaping how money moves across borders. And the direction, even where the pace remains uneven, is clear. Payment networks, banks, and fintech providers building the next layer of cross-border infrastructure are doing so with interoperability and reach as design goals, creating conditions in which the geographic and institutional barriers that have historically constrained travel payments are eroded rather than simply worked around.
For travel companies, this evolving infrastructure represents an opportunity to reconsider payment operations not as a cost centre to be minimised, but as a capability that can differentiate supplier relationships, support expansion into new markets, and provide a clearer picture of financial performance across a complex global business.
In the years ahead, as real-time payment adoption expands across emerging markets, as mobile wallet networks deepen their reach, and as data standards improve the quality of information travelling alongside transactions, the experience of moving money in the travel industry will continue to converge with the experience of booking travel itself: faster, more transparent, and far more connected to the destinations it ultimately serves.
Brian Gaynor, European Chief Executive at BlueSnap, on why the future of European payments sovereignty may ultimately lie in fundamentally reshaping the terms under which existing networks operate
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The recent move by UK bank bosses to explore alternatives to Visa and Mastercard has reignited a long-running debate about payments sovereignty in Europe. At its core, the initiative represents a recognition that the continent’s financial infrastructure is overly dependent on two US-controlled networks, a vulnerability that carries both economic and geopolitical risk.
The strategic logic is sound. Across Europe, governments are increasingly scrutinising their dependence on American technology and infrastructure. From enterprise software to cloud services, the push to develop sovereign capabilities is gaining real momentum, exemplified by moves such as the German state of Schleswig-Holstein’s decision to phase out Microsoft 365 in favour of open-source alternatives. It was only a matter of time before payments, arguably one of the most critical layers of economic infrastructure, came under the same lens.
As the world’s two dominant payment processing networks, Visa and Mastercard exert enormous influence over global commerce. For the UK and Europe, that level of concentration raises legitimate concerns about market control, pricing power, and the strategic vulnerability of relying on infrastructure governed from abroad. Financial institutions and regulators are right to take these concerns seriously and to explore what alternatives might look like.
But recognising the problem is one thing. Solving it is quite another. The difference between payments and other areas of technology is fundamental, and in its current form, Europe’s bid for greater payments autonomy faces formidable obstacles. Obstacles that no amount of political will alone can overcome.
Beyond a technology problem
Payments are fundamentally different from other areas of technology. Unlike enterprise software, there is no straightforward ‘open source’ equivalent waiting in the wings. Building a viable alternative to global card schemes is not just a technical undertaking; it requires merchants, consumers, and banks to adopt it simultaneously.
To date, the most credible European initiative aimed at reducing US dependency has been Wero, a unified European account-to-account digital wallet and instant payment system which is being rolled out across the region. However, it remains limited in scope. It is not yet available across the entire EU, has only recently begun supporting eCommerce payments, and does not yet offer key capabilities, such as Near Field Communication (NFC).
Interoperability with other local schemes is planned, but meaningful traction will take time and will likely require sustained government backing. Even then, success is far from guaranteed.
The adoption paradox
The fundamental issue is adoption. For any new payment system to succeed, it must achieve simultaneous scale among consumers and merchants. Without a sufficiently large number of users on both sides, any new payment scheme will struggle to compete. Consumers and merchants in the UK and Europe are deeply accustomed to card payments, and there is little incentive to switch unless the alternative offers a significantly better experience. At present, it is not evident that this is forthcoming – card acceptance is deeply embedded, secure and cost-effective, making it a difficult incumbent to displace. Indeed, previous regulatory interventions limiting interchange fees in Europe have made card processing extremely cost-effective and removed a typical entry point for a challenger to win on price.
Comparisons to systems like Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India or Pix in Brazil are often cited, but they are misleading. In both cases, adoption was driven by the shift away from cash rather than by the displacement of well-established card networks. In both countries, card penetration was much lower than it is in the UK and Europe. By contrast, the UK and Europe already have highly mature card ecosystems, making behavioural change far more difficult.
Pragmatism over ambition
Instead of pursuing outright replacement, businesses should prioritise building resilience. Governments are already advising citizens to keep cash on hand for emergencies, highlighting concerns about systemic vulnerabilities, ranging from connectivity failures to wider infrastructure risks. For merchants, this means diversifying payment options and working with providers that can offer alternative routing in the event of scheme outages.
In the longer term, the most realistic outcome is not the displacement of Visa and Mastercard, but their transformation under regulatory pressure. Government intervention could drive greater localisation of processing within the UK and Europe, enabling the use of local technology and intellectual property rights to operate schemes more locally while remaining aligned with global networks. Such a shift would resemble arrangements that existed before Visa Inc. acquired Visa Europe, restoring a measure of regional control without severing ties to the wider global payments ecosystem. It would also address the core concern driving this debate: that critical financial infrastructure should not be entirely subject to decisions made outside of Europe.
This kind of structured adaptation would allow governments to address concerns about sovereignty and resilience while preserving the considerable benefits of globally integrated payment networks, a pragmatic compromise that serves the interests of all stakeholders.
The future
The ambition to develop credible alternatives to the Visa-Mastercard duopoly is justified, and the UK banking sector is right to be raising the issue. But the expectation that new schemes will meaningfully supplant entrenched global networks underestimates just how deeply embedded card payments are in European economic life. Unlike in markets such as India or Brazil, where digital payment adoption was built on replacing cash, the UK and Europe face the far harder challenge of displacing systems that already work well for most users. For Visa and Mastercard, adaptation under sustained regulatory and political pressure is the far more likely outcome than displacement. The future of European payments sovereignty may ultimately lie not in building something entirely new, but in fundamentally reshaping the terms under which existing networks operate.
Q&A – Inez Berkhof-Hollander, EMEA Vice President at the global B2B payments network TreviPay discusses the future for B2B payments
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Your research with 550 senior UK and European business buyers found that AI is now widely used in B2B payments. Where is it being implemented, why, and are there any risks here?
“What we’re seeing is that AI adoption in B2B payments is less about experimentation and more about removing friction from complex, high‑volume processes that were historically manual. We see AI currently mostly used on the AP side, not so much on the AR side yet.
Today, AI is most commonly applied in three areas: invoice processing and data extraction; payment routing; and reconciliation. The undervalued opportunity is still on the AR side. For exception handling, dispute management and in credit and risk decisioning. These are all pain points where accuracy, speed and scale really matter. Particularly in industries with high invoice volumes or complex payment terms.
The business driver is clear… Suppliers want faster time to cash. Buyers want fewer errors and disputes. And finance teams want better cash predictability.
That said, the risk isn’t the technology itself – it’s how it’s governed. In B2B, when AI decisions sit close to credit, compliance and customer relationships; black‑box models without explainability, or automation without appropriate guardrails, can introduce operational and regulatory risk. The most effective applications we see are those where AI augments human decision‑making. Rather than replacing it entirely, there is clear auditability and accountability built in.
In other words, AI is already delivering tangible value in B2B payments, but the winners will be those who treat it as an enterprise capability, not just a standalone feature.”
Looking wider – the research also examined friction within the payments process. What were the most important areas that suppliers can leverage to their competitive advantage?
“One of the clearest signals from the research is that payment experience has become inseparable from the overall customer experience and the commercial relationship.
The biggest opportunities sit at the intersection of flexibility and predictability. Suppliers that make it easy for buyers to pay – through compliant and accurate invoicing, aligned payment terms, and transparency throughout the lifecycle – are easier to do business with as they reduce disputes and accelerate cash flow. Hence, ultimately they will increase customer loyalty.
What’s interesting is that many of these levers are not new, but they are finally being treated as strategic. Invoice accuracy, payment visibility, dispute resolution, and alignment between sales and finance are no longer just operational hygiene; they are differentiators. In competitive markets, the ability to offer consistent terms across regions, customized invoicing or reporting or to accommodate how buyers want to pay without creating internal complexity, is increasingly decisive.
From an O2C perspective, friction often appears at handovers: from order to invoice, from invoice to payment, and from payment to reconciliation. Suppliers that invest in smoothing those transitions – rather than optimising individual steps in isolation – are better positioned to compete on experience without eroding margin.”
Your report shows 82% of buyers value invoice customisation. Why has something traditionally seen as back-office admin become such a decisive competitive factor?
“Because invoices are no longer just accounting documents – they’re a key part of the buyer experience.
In B2B, invoices often trigger downstream processes on the buyer side: approval workflows, ERP/PO matching, compliance checks, and even cash forecasting. When invoices don’t align with a buyer’s internal requirements – whether that’s formatting, data fields or references – friction is inevitable. That friction shows up as delayed payments, disputes, and strained relationships.
What the 82% figure really tells us is that buyers are under pressure themselves. Finance teams are expected to do more with less, manage risk more actively, and support the wider business – all while maintaining control. Invoice customisation helps them do that.
For suppliers, this is a powerful insight. Meeting buyers where they are, instead of forcing one‑size‑fits‑all processes, has moved from ‘nice to have’ to a strategic necessity. It’s also a clear example of how O2C capabilities directly support revenue protection and growth – not just operational efficiency.”
What was the regional difference in your data that surprised you the most?
“What stood out most was not just what differs by region, but why.
Across Europe, Pay by Invoice (or ‘Net Terms’) remains dominant, but the expectations around speed, visibility and automation vary significantly. In some markets, buyers are primarily focused on control and compliance; in others, on efficiency and working capital optimisation. Regulatory maturity, banking infrastructure and ERP penetration all play a role in shaping those expectations.
What surprised me was how consistently these regional nuances translate into different definitions of ‘good experience’. The markets that move fastest are not necessarily those with the most advanced technology, but those where finance, procurement and payments strategies are more closely aligned.
For suppliers operating pan‑European or globally, this reinforces the importance of flexibility. A single market‑specific approach rarely scales. The winning strategies are built around a common O2C backbone, with local adaptability layered on top.”
Pay by Invoice remains dominant in Europe, but you also highlight digital wallets and even stablecoins. How do you see the payment mix evolving over the next 3-5 years?
“Pay by Invoice will remain the backbone of B2B payments in Europe for the foreseeable future. And that’s not a sign of stagnation, but of trust in a model that supports credit, risk management and commercial flexibility at scale.
Where we will see change is behind the scenes. Greater digitisation, faster settlement, and better integration between invoicing, payments and reconciliation will progressively modernise how Pay by Invoice operates.
When it comes to alternative instruments like stablecoins, the conversation is still early, but it’s becoming more serious. Their potential value lies in settlement efficiency and cross‑border use cases, rather than replacing core commercial constructs like trade credit. Whether they become relevant at scale will depend on regulation, risk frameworks and clear economic benefit for both sides of the transaction.
What’s important is that B2B payment evolution will be pragmatic, not disruptive for its own sake. Buyers and suppliers will adopt new rails where they reduce friction or risk – not because they’re new, but because they meaningfully improve the O2C lifecycle.
New research from Aqua Global shows banks are struggling to keep up with compliance, as legacy tech drags them down
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Aqua Global, the financial messaging hub built for payments, treasury and securities processing, today revealed research showing European banks are prioritising compliance over customer experience as legacy infrastructure struggles to keep pace.
The survey of 150 European IT banking leaders, with half based in the UK, showed that:
Regulation is putting a drag on innovation:
77% of respondents say regulatory demands outweigh customer demands when it comes to payment modernisation.
67% spend more effort adapting systems to new standards than improving customer experience.
Banks fear missing milestones – but can’t keep up:
77% say missing a key regulatory milestone would cause significant operational and reputational damage.
But 60% admit their existing infrastructure struggles to keep pace with evolving standards.
Richer data requirements expose structural weaknesses:
72% admit richer data requirements (e.g. AML, sanctions, fraud) have exposed gaps in their current infrastructure.
Structured addresses, AML/sanctions-related data and counterparty identifiers (BIC/LEI) are the most difficult piece of data to capture.
“The challenge with richer payment data isn’t availability, it’s fragmentation. Information sits across multiple systems and formats, making it hard to build a complete, trusted view of a transaction. The ability to manage, govern and validate data at scale is quickly becoming a defining factor in payments resilience. This is why 81% of respondents believe a unified messaging hub across multiple channels will be essential to remain compliant and competitive in the future.” Elliot Wood, Chief Technology Officer at Aqua Global.
ISO 20022 and T+1: Regulatory Compression Exposes Legacy Fragility
One in five respondents experienced downtime and/or payment disruption during migration to the new ISO 20022 standard. Almost all respondents (97%) experienced challenges, with the top three cited as:
Legacy systems unable to handle structured ISO 20022 data.
Poor underlying data quality for enriched ISO 20022 fields.
Integrating challenges with other third-party systems, such as AML, sanctions and fraud systems.
As a result, 65% still rely, at least in part, on translation tools to remain compliant, even though 83% believe such short-term fixes will prove more costly in the long run.
The same structural weaknesses are now surfacing in preparation for T+1 settlement. While 21% of banks have taken action to prepare, almost a quarter (23%) have no plans in place. Legacy systems incapable of supporting compressed settlement windows without significant investment remain the most cited barrier.
Together, ISO 20022 and T+1 highlight a broader issue: regulatory timelines are accelerating faster than banks’ infrastructure can adapt.
“The migration challenges we’re seeing aren’t isolated incidents – they expose the structural limits of legacy payment architecture,” says Cian Fernando, CEO of Aqua Global. “Treating regulatory change as a tick-box exercise encourages short-term fixes that increase complexity. Banks that modernise natively reduce cost, operational risk and friction over time. As regulatory deadlines tighten and data requirements grow richer, banks relying on fragmented systems face rising operational risk and mounting cost pressures, with less capacity left to compete on customer experience.”
For over 43 years, Aqua Global has delivered a robust suite of financial messaging and transaction automation solutions for payments, treasury, and securities processing that integrate internal systems to external services. Trusted by leading banks across 22+ countries, our Aquila orchestration and integration framework offers exceptional performance, control, and scalability.
Meryem Habibi, Chief Revenue Officer at Bitpace, on why the most resilient payments infrastructure will be the one with the most adaptability
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The traditional global payments narrative is obsolete. For decades, the West viewed emerging markets (EMs) as ‘catch-up’ economies, destined to eventually mimic the legacy banking structures of London, New York, or Frankfurt. In 2026, the reality is the inverse. While the Global North manages the ‘Inertia Tax’ of legacy systems, EMs have built a $3.47 trillion payments ecosystem from the ground up, designed for a digital-first, real-time world.
While developed economies are busy polishing the ‘front end’ of ageing systems, shaving seconds off a checkout or refining a UI, EMs have been forced to rebuild the ‘back end’ entirely. Out of necessity, Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia have leapfrogged traditional banking, turning stablecoins and decentralised rails from ‘niche alternatives’ into the primary engine of trade.
With 6.2 billion digital wallet users globally, the question for leadership in developed economies is no longer about supporting financial inclusion elsewhere; it is about whether they can afford the inertia of their own legacy.
From ‘Workarounds’ to Global Standards – the Liquidity Revolution
In stable economies, payment friction is an annoyance. In volatile ones, it is a solvency risk. This has turned stablecoins from a speculative asset into a $1.2 trillion foundational infrastructure for international commerce.
In 2026, despite the G20’s efforts, the global average cost for a traditional $200 remittance still hovers near 6%. Whereas stablecoin settlement has compressed that cost to under 1%. In fact, the actual stablecoin payment volumes reached $390 billion in 2025, more than double the previous year. This means that when an e-commerce merchant settles in stablecoins, they aren’t just ‘saving money’. They are optimising 5–9% of their working capital instantly. In a high-inflation world, time is the most expensive currency.
What does it mean in the real world? For an SME in Nigeria or an exporter in Brazil, traditional cross-border rails are a tax on growth. Often clawing back 6–10% in fees and trapping capital in settlement limbo for days. By shifting to stablecoin settlement, these businesses aren’t just ‘saving money’, they are optimising their working capital. When costs drop below 1% and settlement is instantaneous, capital’s velocity increases.
Developed markets often view crypto through the lens of speculation or regulation. Emerging markets view it through the lens of utility and margin. If the West continues to anchor itself to Swift and correspondent banking while the rest of the world moves on digital rails, the ‘developed’ world will eventually find itself holding the most expensive, slowest pipe in the global room.
Radical Interoperability – Breaking the Silo Mentality
The West suffers from ‘walled garden’ syndrome. We have highly sophisticated, yet isolated payment silos: banks, card networks, and FinTech apps that rarely speak the same language, requiring a dozen intermediaries.
Emerging markets have bypassed this by adopting Intelligent Orchestration. In high-growth regions, a merchant doesn’t care if a customer pays via a QR-based wallet, a local bank transfer, or a USD-pegged digital asset; the infrastructure is built to handle all of them simultaneously.
For instance, in Southeast Asia, where digital wallet adoption has surged by over 300% in recent years, ‘rail-agnostic’ infrastructure is the standard.
By 2026, 80 countries have launched domestic real-time payment (RTP) schemes. India alone now accounts for 46% of all global real-time transactions, proving that scale and speed are no longer the exclusive domain of Western card networks.
Flexibility is a competitive moat. The EM model proves that the future of finance isn’t a “winner-take-all” rail; it’s a fabric of interoperable layers. Leaders in developed economies must stop trying to protect their proprietary silos and start building for a multi-rail reality.
Programmable Trust: Compliance as an Operating System
The most dangerous myth in FinTech is that innovation and regulation are at odds. In markets where financial stability is fragile, ‘built-in’ compliance is a survival requirement.
EM-based digital asset platforms have had to pioneer automated KYC, real-time transaction monitoring, and transparent reporting frameworks just to earn the right to operate. They haven’t ‘bolted on’ compliance to satisfy a regulator; they have encoded it into the protocol to build trust in high-stakes environments.
In 2026, the integration of ISO 20022-rich data standards has led to straight-through processing (STP) rates rising, but only for those on modern rails. Legacy banks still face up to a 60% manual intervention rate on cross-border flows due to data fragmentation.
This is the blueprint for the next generation of Global North finance. As we move towards tokenised assets and CBDCs, the winners will be those who build the most programmable trust, not those who move the fastest
The Competitive Imperative – Inertia is a Risk
Legacy strength breeds complacency. When a system ‘mostly works’, there is little appetite for the systemic overhaul required to stay competitive. Emerging markets do not have the luxury of satisfaction. Their constraints have forced them to innovate at scale, creating a payments infrastructure that is faster, cheaper, and more resilient than anything currently running on legacy Western rails.
In 2026, ‘real-time’ is the baseline, and ‘programmable’ is the requirement. The ‘developed’ world needs to stop looking at emerging markets as a charity case and start seeing them as a mirror. The most resilient infrastructure will be the one with the most adaptability.
AccessPay, the leading bank integration provider, has announced a new partnership with PayPoint. It will integrate PayPoint’s Confirmation of Payee (CoP) capability…
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AccessPay, the leading bank integration provider, has announced a new partnership with PayPoint. It will integrate PayPoint’s Confirmation of Payee (CoP) capability into AccessPay’s payments automation suite for modern finance teams. £258m was lost to authorised push payment (APP) fraud in the first half of 2025 alone. Organisations need access to robust payment controls that scale with their operations. PayPoint’s CoP offering enables AccessPay’s customers to verify payee account details as part of their payment workflows. Reinforcing AccessPay’s position at the centre of a growing ecosystem of technologies designed to automate and de-risk the Office of the CFO.
Fraud Prevention
CoP, also known as Account Name Verification (ANV), is a valuable anti-fraud measure. It checks the accuracy of payee details before funds are sent. It can be used to confirm payee details at the point of collection, when creating a payment instruction, or both. PayPoint’s CoP capability is designed to handle peak-usage scenarios for corporate clients, including payroll runs, supplier payments, and seasonal spikes. It is recognised for its ability to process exceptionally high transaction volumes. Additionally, it provides flexible access options, including APIs, user interface and bulk processing. This enables organisations at different stages of their automation journey to embed account name verification seamlessly into existing processes.
A Partnership Expanding a Tech Ecosystem
“Our customers want to automate high-volume, high-value payments with confidence, knowing robust safeguards are built directly into their processes. PayPoint is recognised for delivering payment and fraud services at a national scale. By partnering with them, we are strengthening the fraud and error protections available within the AccessPay platform. And improving operational efficiency by reducing payment resubmissions, exception handling and manual intervention. The service is already available to customers and has been positively received since we began working together in 2025.” Anish Kapoor, CEO of AccessPay
“AccessPay sits at the centre of modern finance operations. It securely connecting businesses to their banks and enabling automated payment flows at scale. Partnering with AccessPay allows us to extend our CoP capability to thousands of finance teams that are actively transforming how they manage payments. Together, we’re helping organisations reduce fraud risk, minimise payment errors, and deliver more secure, trusted payment experiences.” Jo Toolan, Managing Director Payments,PayPoint
The PayPoint partnership reinforces AccessPay’s commitment to expanding its technology ecosystem. To help finance and treasury teams automate securely, reduce manual intervention, and build resilient, future-ready payment operations. By combining AccessPay’s bank integration platform with PayPoint’s payment and fraud prevention expertise, organisations gain stronger protection against fraud. Also unlocking greater efficiency and confidence in automated finance processes.
About PayPoint
PayPoint is the UK’s leading multichannel payments and community services provider. It delivers innovative solutions that simplify and secure how customers and businesses transact. The core of our offering is MultiPay. A single payment platform that unifies Open Banking, card, Direct Debit, and over-the-counter cash payments into a streamlined solution.
Our Open Banking services are designed to deliver a frictionless and secure payment journey. From account-to-account payments to Confirmation of Payee (CoP), we empower companies with the tools to build trust and reduce fraud. All through a suite of easy-to-integrate APIs. These services can be integrated into your existing financial or customer management systems. Or accessed via our portal, white-labelled websites or mobile apps—providing flexibility to meet your needs.
As a proud Gold Partner of Open Banking Expo 2025 and winner of the Best Sector Initiative for our PayPoint OpenPay innovation at the Open Banking Expo Awards, we’re thrilled to return in 2026 to continue driving innovation and delivering value through Open Banking.
About AccessPay
AccessPay is a leading provider of bank integration solutions, pioneering finance transformation for the Office of the CFO. AccessPay helps finance and treasury teams modernise their operations through secure, cloud-based bank connectivity.
Our platform connects back-office systems to banks, enabling the automated flow and transformation of payment, bank statement and other financial data. Thousands of businesses around the world partner with AccessPay to automate supplier and client payments, Direct Debit collections, and bank statement retrieval. Improving efficiency, reducing fraud risk, and gaining real-time cash visibility.
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Manchester, UK, AccessPay is trusted by global enterprises to automate finance and treasury operations and build a future-ready Office of the CFO.
Partnership enables financial institutions to expand faster into new markets with automated, consistent and compliant localisation workflows
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Plumery, the digital banking development platform, and Lokalise, a leading platform for continuous localisation have joined forces to embed enterprise-grade localisation functionality, including translation and market adaptation, directly into digital banking experiences. This will enable financial institutions to deliver hyper-localised experiences at scale. Improving accessibility, engagement, compliance and customer satisfaction.
Today, financial institutions increasingly compete on experience, speed, and accessibility. Global banking customers now consider native language support a baseline expectation. This makes it essential for institutions to adopt a multilingual-by-design approach.
Plumery combines developer-friendly, customer-centric digital banking platform with Lokalise’s best-in-class localisation infrastructure. Together, their AI orchestration will help financial institutions expand their customer base. This can be done in a scalable way by launching and updating multilingual journeys faster, with full control and compliance.
Modern Digital Banking
The partnership also removes one of the biggest blockers to delivering modern digital banking. Financial institutions can now deliver high-quality localised digital banking experiences. Moreover, at a fraction of the cost and time, across all channels, without engineering bottlenecks. This reduces operational overhead, speeds up market entry, improves compliance with language- and accessibility-related regulations. All of which delivers a better, more inclusive customer experience. Financial institutions can move faster without increasing operational risk.
“Localisation is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s essential for delivering truly inclusive and personalised banking experiences. Partnering with Lokalise allows us to bring world-class localisation into every digital journey our clients build on Plumery. Together, we’re helping financial institutions launch faster, scale globally, and meet the expectations of modern customers who want banking in their own language, context and culture.”
Danielle Cohen, Head of Product at Plumery
“This partnership is a game-changer for financial institutions looking to scale globally with confidence. By embedding AI orchestration and continuous localisation directly into the Plumery platform, we are empowering customers to easily launch and update multilingual services at a fraction of the cost, ensuring consistent, compliant, and local experiences that accelerate market expansion and drive rapid customer growth.”
Etgar Bonar, CMO at Lokalise
The partnership is live across all markets Plumery and Lokalise serve, with the first mutual deployments already underway.
About Lokalise
Lokalise is the most intuitive and powerful AI localisation platform, trusted and loved by 3,000+ global companies to deliver high-quality human-level translations at a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, with advanced AI orchestration, 60+ deep integrations and world-class support, it is built to automate, collaborate, and scale growth while maintaining full brand and regulatory control.
About Plumery
Headquartered in the Netherlands, Plumery’s mission is to empower financial institutions worldwide, regardless of size, to craft distinctive, contemporary, and customer-centric mobile and web experiences.
Plumery operates with a diverse team that embodies a unique combination of seasoned expertise and vibrant innovation. This blend has been cultivated through years of experience at start-ups, scale-ups, and established financial institutions, and most notably at globally leading financial technology companies, where they were instrumental in creating disruptive digital banking solutions and platforms that now serve 300+ banks globally.
Plumery’s Digital Success Fabric platform provides banks with the foundation for success beyond fast-time-to-market by expediting the development of their digital front ends while significantly cutting costs compared to in-house initiatives or solutions with high total cost of ownership (TCO).
Brian Gaynor, European Chief Executive at BlueSnap, on leveraging the new tools that are needed to meet today’s tech demands
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Finance teams have a problem. The demands of doing business in 2025 go far beyond the limits of the tools they’ve been using for decades. Every day, teams wrestle with myriad spreadsheets, struggling to manage critical business processes with the tools they’d use to plan the Christmas party.
But the alternative feels too risky. Decision makers shy away from changing the systems they’ve worked in for years, and the investment and imagined disruption this would bring. Surely ‘better the devil you know’ – even if the present is particularly hellish.
On first glance, refusing to change may seem like the cheaper choice. Yet familiarity comes with a hidden premium. The cost of inefficient manual processes quickly mounts up and missed opportunities mean higher losses. As businesses face shrinking margins in a strained economic climate, this is a cost they can no longer afford.
Spreadsheets Conceal a World of Secrets
One of the biggest challenges finance teams face today is the lack of visibility into outstanding invoices. Manual spreadsheets often hide the true scale of late payments, often until it’s too late. When unresolved invoices pile up, companies face reduced cash flow, strained internal coordination, and great exposure to compliance risks. The extent of this damage should not be underestimated: late payments cost the UK economy £11 billion a year and shut down 38 businesses every day.
However, modern AR automation tools can bring cash secrets into the light. They’re able to give businesses real-time visibility over accounts receivables so overdue payments are spotted earlier and businesses can launch proactive collection strategies, rather than desperately chasing overdue accounts at the very last minute. Automated reminders, dispute resolution workflows, and digital invoicing help take the friction out of invoicing, as well as giving finance teams a smarter view of receivables year-round, not just during heightened crunch periods.
Using AR software to reduce financial bottlenecks creates a cascade of business benefits. Freed from spreadsheet hell, customer-facing teams now have the time to focus on client relationships, and drive company growth, rather than endlessly chasing late payments. This means they can bring their talent to create real value for a business, rather than being forced to take on manual tasks that should be left to a machine.
Keeping Cash Flowing
Cash flow is the lifeblood of every business yet legacy processes often drain it. Manual invoicing and reconciliation often end up extending collection cycles and, subsequently, straining liquidity. Stuck with outdated processes, companies end up waiting weeks – or even months – longer than they need to access their own funds.
By contrast, AR automation accelerates invoice collection, allowing businesses to unlock working capital much faster than any manual process could. At the same time, it helps individuals and organisations increase their productivity by eliminating repetitive, error-prone tasks such as data entry, reconciliations, and follow-ups. Finance professionals can then redirect their time to higher-value work such as interpreting data, advising leadership, and shaping strategy. This is the work that helps grow a business and allows an organisation to move with agility which is crucial to economic resilience in today’s difficult climate. The ability to free up capital and employee bandwidth can be the difference between stagnation and growth.
Extending the Range of Vision
Another casualty of manual processes is cash flow forecasting. Spreadsheets are reactive documents, providing a static, backwards-looking view of finances, and are often plagued by version control issues and human error. This means finance leaders are left making critical business decisions without a clear picture of future cash flow, reducing strategic planning to a roll of the dice.
Automation offers the opposite. By offering real-time visibility of accounts, invoices, and performance, it enables finance teams to forecast cash flow with confidence. This foresight allows businesses to accurately anticipate liquidity needs, mitigate any risks, and respond faster to shifts in demand or supply chain disruption, meaning they can work proactively rather than reactively. The ability to be on the front foot is another crucial block in building business resilience.
Enhancing the Customer Experience
Outdated systems don’t just create internal inefficiencies, they affect an organisation’s relationship with their customers. Legacy systems have a significant impact on the customer experience, as manual processes, such as cheque reconciliation, slow down operations and make payment processing cumbersome.
Again, automated AR solutions can help here. Automated systems enable businesses to offer customer-friendly features, like a ‘pay by link’ option that makes it easy for customers to instantly settle invoices. This reduces friction in the payment process, prompts clients to make payments quickly and on time, and helps strengthen the trust between an organisation and its customers.
Ultimately, modern finance platforms that use automation greatly enhance the customer experience by making billing seamless, accurate, and transparent. Payments are processed faster, disputes are handled proactively, and customer satisfaction improves as a result. At a time when every client counts, such benefits can’t be ignored.
Familiarity Comes at a Price
With so many advantages stemming from AR automation, why are so many organisations choosing to stick with spreadsheets? One may think that the biggest barrier to change is technology, but often, it’s their attitude. Too many finance leaders assume that because their current processes haven’t collapsed, they must be working well enough to remain in place. But ‘if it ain’t broke’ is a destructive mindset. Opting to be complacent and being satisfied with ‘good enough’ tools, is a costly decision. And are these tools actually working if they lead to lost productivity, delayed revenue, weakened forecasting, and damage to customer relationships?
Businesses may think it’s up to them to upgrade their finance systems. But the decision to automate is quickly being taken out of their hands. Companies that still cling to the processes of the past will soon find themselves left behind, as competitors leverage the new tools that are needed to meet today’s demands. While change may seem intimidating, or feel temporarily uncomfortable, ultimately, it’s crashing into the red that’s going to feel worst of all.
Radi El Haj, CEO of global payments technology leader RS2, argues that while cost-cutting is important, banks are overlooking AI’s biggest opportunity: fuelling growth through hyper-personalisation, predictive analytics, and dynamic pricing, all while staying on the right side of compliance
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In banking, artificial intelligence (AI) is often portrayed as an efficiency force-multiplier: automating back-office tasks, detecting fraud, reducing cost. Yet the bigger prize is less about cost and more about growth: unlocking new revenue streams through data monetisation, hyper-personalisation and dynamic pricing. At RS2, a platform that powers issuing and acquiring across banks and enterprises globally, we see how these possibilities can move from concept to profitable reality.
Unlocking Transactional Data for Revenue
Banks sit on rich transactional data – what customers buy, how they spend, when they engage. Historically, this data has helped reduce risk, fight money-laundering or optimise operations. But now it can be used to drive growth. According to an EY overview, AI-powered tools enable banks to personalise services, identify cross-sell opportunities and “potentially boost revenue streams.”
Consider a bank that analyses a customer’s payment behaviour, identifies recurring patterns (e.g., frequent travel, high hotel spend) and then offers a tailored premium travel card or concierge-style value add. Or a commercial bank that segments SMEs by payment volume and cash-flow profile and monetises by offering dynamic pricing on foreign exchange or supply-chain financing.
Responsible monetisation demands governance. A recent essay on monetising financial data with AI warns that “you’re sitting on a goldmine of data … but the major caveat is the need to manage risk”. The practical implication: invest in data-quality, maintain strict consent and usage controls, disaggregate personally identifying detail where possible and ensure transparency with customers. As banks move from “can we do this?” to “should we do this?”, the ones that succeed will embed data ethics, consent frameworks and explainability at the core.
Compliance and Innovation: Building Self-Hosted AI Frameworks
Growth-facing AI can’t sail past compliance. Banks need to remain within the bounds of regulatory regimes such as GDPR, PSD2 and CCPA. A key enabler is self-hosted or controlled AI infrastructure that allows experimentation without exposing sensitive data to third-party cloud vendors or uncontrolled derivative uses.
In the UK, the Bank of England notes that the future of AI in financial services demands both innovation and safety – building internal capabilities while contributing to systemic resilience. For banks this means: maintain internal model-hosting (or tightly controlled cloud with data isolation), build a “sandbox to production” pipeline where models are validated for bias, fairness and explainability, and treat regulatory engagement not as a blocker but as a design parameter.
With this architecture in place, banks can push beyond the cost-centre mindset (fraud detection, operations) into growth-mindset use-cases – real-time decisioning, dynamic pricing, micro-segment product design – all while retaining control over data flows, vendor risk and audit trails.
Explainable AI: Trust at the Front-Line
If AI is going to power new revenue models – dynamic offers, predictive cross-sell, hyper-personalised pricing – then customers and regulators alike must trust the outcomes. Enter explainable AI (XAI).
Explainability isn’t a nice add-on: it’s mandatory when AI touches decisioning that affects consumers (pricing, credit, product eligibility). If a customer is offered a differential rate based on their profile, they are entitled to know (in clear language) why. If a regulator challenges the fairness of an algorithmic decision, the bank must show the decision-tree, the bias mitigation steps and the audit trail of model monitoring.
As banks deploy AI in growth-facing scenarios, transparency becomes a strategic differentiator: one bank may claim to offer “smarter offers” – another will be able to document that those offers are fair, auditable and compliant. That traceability becomes a selling point when partnering with fintechs, regulators or corporate clients.
Lessons from Leading Banks: Growth-Not Just Cost-Cutting
While many banks still emphasise cost-cutting, the story is shifting. For instance, research from FIS shows that banks with a strong data strategy are tying AI investments to revenue outcomes, not just automation.
In practice, a global bank uses AI-driven cash-flow tools for corporate clients and is now preparing to monetise the service rather than treat it purely as a cost centre. Another major institution, NatWest, has embedded AI in its digital-assistant ecosystem and already reports improved customer engagement metrics and lower servicing costs.
From the experience at RS2, we see banks and FinTechs that pay attention to platform architecture, data lineage and flexible monetisation workflows succeed faster. The value flows not from a single “AI project” but from embedding AI into the payment rails, product lifecycle, pricing engine and loyalty ecosystem.
It is noteworthy that banks are not alone here: payments-technology providers like RS2 are collaborating with financial institutions to integrate AI into issuing and acquiring flows, offering a way to turn payments data into behavioural insight, and knowledge into value-added services.
Bringing it Together
For banks, the dominant mindset should shift from “AI as efficiency tool” to “AI as growth platform”. That transition requires three foundational capabilities: a clean, consent-driven data ecosystem; an AI infrastructure that balances innovation and control; and an organisational discipline around explainability, governance and monetisation strategy.
At RS2 we believe that the combination of payments technology, platform mindset and global scale gives us a front-row seat to this shift. The banks that lead in the next five years will be those that embed AI not in margins but in revenue lines – crafting new products, offering dynamic pricing, delivering real-time personalisation and monetising payments data in a responsible manner.
The future isn’t about AI simply making existing processes cheaper; it is about re-working how banks generate value. If your AI agenda stops at cost-cutting, you’re leaving the biggest opportunities on the table.
About RS2
RS2 is a leading global provider of payment technology solutions and processing services, offering a unified approach to managing payments across all channels for banks, integrated software vendors, payment facilitators, independent sales organizations, payment service providers, and businesses worldwide. RS2’s platform stands out as a robust cloud-native solution designed for both issuing and acquiring operations. With its advanced orchestration layer seamlessly integrating all aspects of business operations, clients gain access to comprehensive analytics, reporting tools, and reconciliation features. This empowers businesses to effortlessly expand their global footprint through a single integration, while also gaining valuable insights into payment processes and customer behavior, enhancing operational efficiency, increasing conversion rates, and driving profitability.
Sam Kohli, CEO at PAYNT, on the need for continued innovation with biometric payments to enhance trust
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For millions of people, biometric security, or the use of unique personal characteristics such as fingerprints or facial recognition to confirm a person’s identity, has become an everyday process. These technologies are now deeply integrated into a huge variety of activities. From unlocking smartphones to authorising mobile payments. It’s quick, efficient and, compared to many other methods, relatively secure.
The underlying principles are long established. Fingerprinting can be traced back to around 500 BC, when it was used on clay tablets as a form of signature. In more contemporary terms, by the 1970s and 1980s, biometric systems began appearing in government and defence environments. Although these nascent technologies were expensive and slow.
Commercial adoption only became viable in the last 30 years or so as computing power increased, when applications were focused on workplace access control rather than payments. The real breakthrough came with smartphone integration. This began with fingerprint sensors on consumer devices, such as Apple’s Touch ID and Face ID, which are now extremely popular.
A Growing Ecosystem
A quick glance at the underlying trends reveals just how rapidly the ecosystem is now expanding. According to Juniper Research, for example, by 2028, the total in-store transaction value for biometric payments is expected to reach $1.2 trillion across 46 billion biometric-enabled transactions globally. While that’s already impressive, there is still enormous growth potential.
The problem is, adoption is starting to outpace trust. A recent study published by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), revealed that while nearly 90% of respondents had been asked to provide a biometric to verify their identity in the past year, nearly two-thirds expressed serious concerns about doing so. Moreover, 39% went as far as to say that the use of biometrics should be banned for both identity verification and/or recognition.
Consent First Design
So, what can be done to close this trust gap and help ensure biometrics are used across fintechs as a more secure alternative to passwords and PINs? One area that requires more emphasis is consent-based design. Whereby users are given clear and revocable permission regarding how their biometric data is collected, stored, and used.
In practical terms, a consent-first design could resemble a digital wallet that provides users with clear, active choices regarding the use of biometrics. During setup, biometric authentication is optional and switched off by default. The app explains what data is collected, where it is stored and how to disable it later. During the payment process, all matching occurs locally on the device, rather than in a central database, and independent certification confirms compliance with data protection standards.
These processes must also be designed so they continue to act in the best interests of users. For example, consent should be viewed as an ongoing decision, rather than a one-time formality. Users must be able to revisit and change biometric permissions at any point and without difficulty. Settings should not be buried under layers of menus and options. They should be readily available so that users understand they are in control at all times.
Biometric Authentication
For example, if a user decides they no longer want to use biometric authentication in their payment app, they should be able to switch that functionality off with a single action. In these circumstances, the app immediately reverts to PIN or password authentication, so access isn’t disrupted. At the same time, any biometric templates held on the device are securely deleted.
If the user chooses to close their account entirely, the deletion workflow should extend to all associated data, so nothing is retained unnecessarily. Users should then receive a notification that their biometric identifiers are no longer stored.
Even these relatively basic processes can help put users in a much stronger position to understand and control the use of their biometrics. And don’t forget, this isn’t just a nice-to-have; it is increasingly a regulatory requirement issued by the EU and other authorities worldwide. GDPR is a good example, as it classifies biometric data as a special category of data and prohibits processing it unless explicit consent or another lawful basis applies.
Closing the Trust Gap
Let’s be in no doubt: trust (or the lack of it) is a real problem across the payments ecosystem. Including those organisations that rely on biometrics. In many current environments, a persistent trust gap, uneven implementation and mixed user experiences show that compliance alone does not guarantee confidence. Better progress now depends on practical execution, clear communication at the point of use, and systems that make data handling visible and auditable. Collectively, these processes can help reassure people that organisations are doing the right thing consistently and for the right reasons.
As a result, transparency and education are now key to improving confidence, ensuring users understand how their biometric data is protected and how they can stay in control. For many FinTechs, this requires a shift in mindset, where transparency is seen as a core product feature, rather than an afterthought or compliance tick box. With consent first design principles in place, users should be regularly reminded about where their biometric data resides and how to delete it.
Additionally, regular external audits or certifications help demonstrate accountability and ensure FinTechs operate to recognised standards. Granted, relatively few consumers are likely to study the fine details, but the act of being credibly audited is an important contributor to the way consumers build trust.
Trust as a Competitive Advantage
In these circumstances, trust can actually evolve into a competitive advantage. Transparent payment systems and processes will always face fewer adoption barriers, fewer customer complaints and possess stronger reputational resilience in the event of incidents. Ultimately, the more open and consistent the provider, the more users adopt and stay engaged. In markets where penetration is still low, a consent-first design and a focus on trust will reassure users that they will always remain in control of their data. Encouraging increased adoption of newer, seamless payment methods.
Regardless of how you look at it, the need for change is becoming increasingly urgent. Biometric payments are evolving beyond single-factor models toward richer, multimodal processes that introduce a combination of fingerprints, facial recognition, voice patterns and behavioural signals. As these capabilities mature, they will be applied in a wider variety of payment contexts, ranging from in-store to remote authentication and open banking apps.
This will only serve to heighten expectations around transparency and user control. In this environment, consent-first design does more than support regulatory compliance; it lays the foundation for future adoption by building systems that are flexible enough to accommodate new biometric methods without compromising user trust. As consumers become more digitally savvy and accustomed to a culture where switching between service providers is relatively easy, building trust in biometrics will contribute significantly to FinTech success.
Berkley Egenes, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer at Xsolla, on the future of frictionless payments in gaming and why convenience is king
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From subscriptions to battle passes and in-game marketplaces, today’s video games are just as much about payments as they are about play. But with players now used to lightning-fast experiences, the way money moves in gaming is undergoing a dramatic shift. In this kind of space, one truth stands out: convenience is king.
In 2025, a slow or clunky payment experience can cost more than just a sale; it can cost a player. As global competition heats up, gaming companies are quickly realising the easier it is for someone to pay, the more likely they are to stay.
Players Expect More Than Just Good Gameplay
Video games have come a long way from cartridges and cash registers. With the rise of mobile gaming, free-to-play models, and digital-first ecosystems, the way people pay and what they pay for has changed completely.
But something else has changed, too: expectations. Players now want to make purchases without stopping the game. No long card forms, no redirects, no confusing fees. Just a quick tap, swipe, or confirmation, and they’re back in the action. It sounds simple, but delivering that kind of seamless experience is anything but.
It’s no longer just about offering the right content; it’s about removing every hurdle between a player and their purchase. Whether it’s a new skin, currency top-up, or unlocking extra content, the process has to feel natural, safe, and crucially, fast.
Speed, Security, and Staying Power
When payments work well, we barely notice them. However, when they don’t, they stand out for all the wrong reasons.
In gaming, timing is everything. A player sees an offer in the middle of a boss fight, and they want to buy. Yet if they’re forced to pause, enter details, confirm identities, or troubleshoot errors, the moment is lost. Consequently, the sale disappears, and the player might even give up altogether.
Security remains essential, of course. As digital fraud evolves, the challenge is building protections without creating extra friction. Gamers expect secure transactions, but they’re not willing to wait around for them.
This is where payments innovation is starting to shine. Tools like tokenised credentials, biometric authentication, and invisible fraud detection are helping strike that delicate balance between trust and convenience.
For game developers, reducing payment friction doesn’t just boost conversions; it also builds trust. A smooth first transaction can turn a casual user into a loyal player. It sets the tone for the entire relationship.
Why Global Games Need Local Solutions
Gaming is a global industry, but payments are still intensely local. What works for a player in California might not suit someone in Cairo or Jakarta, and this is where games can stumble.
Enter Xsolla, a game commerce company that’s quietly powering payment backbones of some of the biggest games worldwide. Xsolla has only one goal: to make it easy for players to pay for the games they love, wherever they are.
Xsolla supports 1000+ local payment methods across more than 200 countries and geographies, from mobile wallets in Southeast Asia to cash-based options in Latin America. This means players can use the payment tools they already trust, without currency confusion, hidden fees, or extra friction.
For developers, it’s a game-changer. Xsolla handles regional taxes, compliance, and localization, making global reach feel simple. The result is that more players complete purchases, higher conversion rates, and greater long-term retention.
In a global gaming world, going local is no longer optional – it’s essential.
Embedded Payments are the New Normal
Imagine spotting a new item in a game and buying it instantly, without ever leaving the screen. No redirects, no passwords, no second devices, just one click and it’s yours. This is the point of embedded payments, and it’s quickly becoming the gold standard.
Rather than treating payments as something which only happens outside the game, developers are increasingly building them right into the experience. Whether that’s a virtual wallet, an in-game currency, or a checkout button inside the character menu, the goal is still the same: to make the payment feel like part of the gameplay.
It’s not just about a better experience for players; it also unlocks new possibilities for game economies. Players can trade items, gift content, or top up in real time, without ever breaking immersion.
Even more complex technologies like blockchain and NFTs are starting to be embedded in this way. Platforms like Immutable, for example, are working to make digital asset ownership feel as simple as buying a power-up, no crypto know-how required.
Web Shops: Gaming’s Direct Line to Players
A growing number of game publishers are launching web shops – standalone sites where players can buy in-game currency, cosmetics, or exclusive offers directly, outside traditional app or platform stores.
Why? It’s partly about revenue. Many major platforms can charge up to 30% in fees, but developers can offer better prices and keep more of the profits.
It’s also about control. Web shops allow for tailored promotions, local pricing, loyalty rewards, and a wider choice of payment methods – all without platform restrictions. But the experience still matters: web shops must be fast, secure, and mobile-friendly to meet modern expectations.
As regulations evolve, expect web shops to become a key part of the payment strategy – quietly reshaping how games are monetized beyond the app store.
The Future of Payments
Gaming is no longer just about graphics, storylines, or even community. It’s also about experience and that includes how players pay. Get the payment experience right, and you gain more than just revenue. You gain loyalty, trust, and longevity. Get it wrong and players won’t wait around for you to fix it.
Convenience isn’t just king, it’s the kingdom. In gaming, it might just be the most powerful weapon of all.
Chief Operating Officer Bhavna Saraf gives us the lowdown on the genesis of Quidkey and how it is leveraging APIs & AI to transform open banking networks into merchant-ready solutions driving higher conversion and borderless coverage with no-cost simple integration
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Founded in early 2023, Quidkey has quickly established itself as a trusted provider of next-generation Account-to-account (A2A) payments. Also known as ‘Pay by bank’. Leveraging AI-powered bank prediction, instant settlement, and a streamlined user experience, Quidkey has created a bank-branded checkout system powered by Open Banking. It combines refunds, rewards, and real-time settlement bringing together cash flow, trust, and convenience for merchants. Its growth in the UK and EU is now being expanded to service Australia and the US corridors.
Chief Operating Officer Bhavna Saraf met CEO Rob Zeko and CTO Rabea Bader, Quidkey’s co-founders, at the end of her time with Santander. They were pitching Quidkey’s offering to top bank executives. Their vision was ambitious:
Democratising access to bank products amongst its customers through a single channel
Leveraging and monetising its API stack for payments
Providing value add services making open banking usable for businesses
“I remember thinking it wasn’t a standard FinTech pitch,” recalls Bhavna. “It was a real infrastructure story that was additive and complimentary to all ecommerce ecosystem players, merchants, banks, PSPs and consumers. When I began figuring the next steps in my career, Rob reached out. The discussion evolved into a collaboration – the timing was serendipitous.
Rob believes A2A payments are the future of commerce, and merchants deserve simpler, faster and fairer ways to get paid. “We’ve built a model designed to scale responsibly,” he notes. “Bhavna brings the structure and operational depth to help us do just that.”
Rabea is responsible for technology and product at Quidkey. With a seasoned background in technology, he has developed the core engine driving Quidkey’s diverse solutions. These include bank-prediction algorithm, refund automation, and multi-currency settlement, through simple API integrations.
“Our aim is to make the technology invisible,” Rabea explains. “If it feels effortless for merchants, it means we’ve done the hard work well.”
Together, Rob and Rabea laid the foundation. Bhavna’s arrival added the operational layer needed to take Quidkey global.
FinTech Strategy spoke with Bhavna to learn more about her journey. And how her experience is driving Quidkey’s progression across the payments landscape…
Tell us about your approach to leadership at Quidkey… How do you reflect on what has been achieved during your time with the organisation?
Learning has always meant leaning into the unknown. It’s not just about a strategy, but a mindset. Taking on new business lines, exploring unfamiliar customer segments, getting closer to technology, or stepping into entirely new organisations. It’s important to look outside your comfort zone, because that’s where you find growth. Each pivot builds experience equity. The instinct to link problems with solutions, to adapt with nuance, and to lead effectively no matter the context.
It’s the same mindset that underpins my approach to leadership. That it’s not just about hierarchy but influence. Creating an environment where people feel trusted, empowered, and part of something larger than themselves. It’s important to build a feel-good factor where collaboration replaces control and purpose drives performance. Such a philosophy can shape teams and inspire peers. It has helped me forge strong connections across clients, colleagues and ecosystems alike.
What drives and inspires you?
At the core of my journey is a relentless drive to deliver progress. Time is money. And… Impossible is nothing. Those words capture my pragmatism and optimism. Qualities that have guided me from scaling trade finance at Citi, to launching digital propositions at Lloyds, to leading payments innovation and strategy at Santander UK. Each chapter has broadened my perspective and sharpened my instinct for where financial infrastructure is headed next. At Quidkey, I get to bring all I’ve learned from building at Citi Ventures to leading across banks and apply it where innovation and impact truly meet on a day-to-day basis.
Could you share how your extensive experience with the dynamics of payments across your career (Citi, Lloyds, SWIFT, Santander etc) have honed your skills in the space? How is it enabling you to drive positive change in the market through your role at Quidkey?
Across leadership roles at Citi, Lloyds, Santander and HSBC, I built and scaled businesses that fuse technology, finance, and innovation. Taking ideas from zero to one or propelling growth to the next level. The focus has consistently been on unlocking near-term value while shaping future-ready roadmaps aligned with market trends, regulatory change, and evolving customer needs.
Alongside my day job, at Citi, I first experienced entrepreneurship, as the founder of an intra-bank start-up within Citi Ventures’ D10X program. We raised funding, assembled a team and developed algorithms to match clients across the bank’s global network. The project advanced to Seed 2 funding, earning recognition from Citi’s Global TTS CEO and the Head of Citi Ventures.
I caught the founder’s bug. That experience showed me the power of turning an idea into reality. It taught me to balance innovation, risk, and speed. And gave me a deep respect for what it takes to build something new.
Tell us about the genesis of Quidkey and its mission…
Quidkey was born from a simple idea, that merchants should be able to grow with confidence, scale sustainably, and offer customers a seamless payment experience, at home or abroad.
For too long, fragmented rails and card scheme costs have added friction to the payment ecosystem, especially hurting SMBs. Quidkey changes that. Our payment solution requires no change to the checkout experience yet simplifies payment routing, reconciliation, and settlement optimisation behind the scenes.
By cutting out unnecessary intermediaries and using Open Banking rails, Quidkey delivers faster, more transparent and cost-efficient payments, empowering merchants to grow and helping banks realise greater value from existing infrastructure.
This novel approach sets the foundation for what could evolve into a global clearing layer for digital commerce, removing friction, reducing cost, and reshaping the future of payments.
What industry challenges can Quidkey solve?
Payments today are still more complicated than they need to be. Merchants face high fees, chargebacks, and slow settlements, while banks and PSPs struggle to turn their Open Banking investments into meaningful value. The result is a fragmented system that creates friction for everyone.
Quidkey bridges that gap. By simplifying how money moves between banks, fintechs, and merchants, we make payments faster, cheaper and transparent. The outcome is better liquidity and smoother experiences for merchants, stronger customer relationships, and a real return on infrastructure for the banks that power it all.
What benefits are your clients experiencing from Quidkey’s approach to open banking?
Open banking adoption is accelerating fast. There are already more than 15 million UK consumers and small businesses taking advantage of open banking-powered services, generating two billion transactions per month and growing. We expect Open Banking payments to generate about 5x more in global revenue by 2030.
Quidkey is at the centre of this evolution, turning Open Banking into measurable value through intelligent settlements, stronger customer loyalty, and real returns on investment. We optimise payment rails for merchants, enhance efficiency for banks, and keep payments frictionless for consumers.
Why should UK businesses and consumers embrace open banking with Quidkey? How does Quidkey make the cross-border rails more usable so everyone can benefit?
With the rapid global expansion in consumer adoption of A2A payments, global A2A transaction volume is expected to increase by 209% in the next 5 years. From 60 billion in 2024 to over 185 billion by 2029. This growth is driven by cost efficiency, speed, convenience and enhanced security compared to traditional card payments. It is especially prevalent across key markets like Europe, where A2A is a leading online payment method in several countries.
Quidkey offers merchants the ability to seamlessly integrate this new technology and deploy it both domestically and for cross-border purposes, while simultaneously reducing transaction costs by up to 60-70% as compared to legacy payment models:
Consumers enjoy frictionless, bank-authenticated payments with protections
Merchants save on processing costs, increase conversions, and reduce fraud/chargebacks
Banks strengthen customer primacy and democratise access to their products at checkout.
API – Application Programming Interface. Software development tool. Business, modern technology, internet and networking concept.
How easy is it for merchants to deploy Quidkey?
Quidkey offers easy integrations via Shopify plug-in, WooCommerce, or iFrame with set up in minutes… No code and zero impact to existing payment options – just faster payments that generate capital to invest in growth.
With fair fees and no lock-ins, Quidkey’s daily settlement can cut costs and optimise cash flow with product bundles designed for growth. Additionally, Quidkey delivers an Apple Pay–style one-tap experience but over bank rails that reduce fraud and charge back risks.
Talk us through some of the big success stories for Quidkey that will provide a platform for future growth?
Our early priorities focused on go-to-market execution – getting the Quidkey solution in the hands of consumers to iterate and prove product-market fit. Quidkey is among the few companies approved to service Shopify checkout globally.
Additionally, we’ve announced a strategic partnership with Tryp.com to power next-generation ‘Pay by Bank’ travel payments. The collaboration is delivering instant settlement, loyalty rewards, and a frictionless A2A experience – achieving a 12% checkout take-up rate versus <1% for traditional Open Banking solutions. The early data shows strong consumer resonance, with room to grow through education and incentivisation. Quidkey’s tech is industry-agnostic – already extending to sectors like fashion, cosmetics, jewellery, and home goods. And we plan to expand next into globalised B2B payments.
What’s next? What forthcoming initiatives are you particularly excited about for 2025 and beyond…
“The transition from multinational banking to fintech is less of a leap and more of a return. In a bank, you have all the resources but with layers of bureaucracy; in a start-up, full permission but no resources. The goal is to combine both, the creativity of a start-up with the rigour of an institution.
Looking ahead, Quidkey’s focus is clear: scale globally, expand merchant adoption, deepen ecosystem partnerships, and build a sustainable, purpose-driven organisation.
Cross-border commerce remains one of the toughest challenges – yet also the biggest opportunity. Global payment flows reached $45 trillion in 2023 across B2B, e-commerce, and remittances, and are expected to hit $76 trillion by 2030. Still, businesses face high fees, slow settlements, and fragmented rails.
Quidkey is tackling this head-on by building a merchant-facing clearing layer that harmonises domestic and cross-border payments, making it as easy to sell abroad as it is at home.”
Tell us about some of the partnerships Quidkey has forged?
Quidkey recognised the geographical limitations in the A2A payments market presented a significant adoption barrier. It’s an increasingly globalised economy, with existing open-banking providers unable to provide full-service cross-border functionality. So, we’ve been hard at work developing a new payments paradigm with mutually beneficial partnerships to help us deliver on the full potential of globalised A2A payments. Now, with our initial solutions fully tested and our user experience optimised to provide seamless integration across channels, we are focusing on cross-border flows to build out the foundations that will underpin Quidkey as the next generation A2A global clearing house.
For example, our partnership with Transfermate enables cross-border A2A ecommerce, harnessing open banking technology to replace costly card rails with a faster, more efficient model of payments. TransferMate’s global network of payments, receivables, and local accounts will power Quidkey’s merchant offering, enabling instant or near-instant settlement in domestic markets and accelerated cross-border payments worldwide, with a waiting list of 100+ merchants in Australia selling into EU, UK and US.
“We believe execution doesn’t slow down innovation – it amplifies it. I want to make sure Quidkey scales with purpose – fast, but in control, ambitious, yet trusted.”
About Quidkey
Quidkey is a cross-border payments technology company enabling merchants to accept instant account-to-account payments across the UK, EU, and US. By operating alongside existing PSPs rather than replacing them, Quidkey gives merchants a seamless path to lower costs, faster settlement, and higher checkout conversion. Quidkey is simplifying today’s fragmented payment mix (cards/wallets), enabling tomorrow’s open banking corridors, and preparing for the future of tokenised money – capturing the $2.6tn and growing global e-commerce payments opportunity.
Kani Payments CTO Panos Savvas on the next generation of banking and payments and why it’s not just about fast banking but complex banking
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The future of banking won’t be decided by algorithms or apps, but by how well we manage the data that drives them...
For years, ‘next generation banking’ has been shorthand for agility, innovation and a clean break from the technological baggage that constrained traditional institutions. Neobanks and fintech challengers built their reputations on speed, automation and digital-first thinking. Yet as the sector matures at a rapid pace, a more layered picture is emerging.
Despite their reputation for a ‘tech-centric’ approach, many digital banks are discovering that operational excellence is harder to achieve than customer experience. In some of the most critical areas of financial infrastructure, data management, reconciliation and reporting, modern banks are grappling with challenges that feel decidedly old generation.
Of course, this is not a failure of innovation, but a reminder that progress in banking is rarely linear. Building for scale, compliance and resilience inevitably exposes the complexity beneath the sleek surface of digital transformation and in this sense banks aren’t alone with this.
This is a very revealing statistic. While the customer interface has evolved rapidly, the back office hasn’t kept pace. The typical neobank experience may be seamless for users on the surface, but behind the scenes, operations often rely on fragmented data flows, multiple third-party integrations and human oversight.
The mismatch doesn’t make them laggards. It simply highlights a structural truth: automation is easy to market, but difficult to master. Data integrity, not digital branding, is what separates the truly next generation from the merely new.
Data: The Hidden Legacy
Every modern bank understands that clean, reliable data is its most valuable asset. It fuels compliance, supports decision-making and underpins every audit trail. Yet half of neobanks in the same survey said data cleansing was among their most time-consuming reconciliation tasks, with 44 per cent citing auditing and 39 per cent data verification as similar drains on time.
These are not edge cases, they are foundational disciplines. When half of a bank’s operational resource is tied up in validation rather than value creation, the issue is not technology but data governance.
Traditional institutions often blame legacy systems for inefficiency. For fintechs, the challenge is different. Modern platforms are fast to deploy, but when combined across multiple partners without shared data standards, they can create inconsistencies that require manual resolution. The future of finance depends less on speed and more on how consistently that speed produces trustworthy data.
Managing Risk, Not Just Reputation
Errors in reconciliation aren’t just accounting irritants, they’re board-level risks. Half of neobanks pointed to compliance exposure as their biggest concern, with 44 per cent linking data breaks directly to market trust.
That finding alone reflects sector maturity. Modern institutions now recognise that trust is not simply a brand asset but a measurable operational outcome. The firms investing in traceability, explainability and real-time audit trails are also the ones strengthening their regulatory relationships.
It’s important to recognise that regulators are not barriers to innovation. They are collaborators in resilience that want firms to show evidence-based controls. The direction of regulation, particularly under initiatives like the UK’s Consumer Duty and Europe’s PSD3, points toward transparency, not obstruction.
Turning Data into Context
How a bank enriches and contextualises transaction data is a reliable indicator of operational maturity. Yet many organisations, not only neobanks, still have enrichment processes that rely heavily on human intervention. 61 per cent of neobanks manually add metadata to transactions, while only a third integrate third-party data automatically.
That dependence on manual enrichment reflects an industry-wide balancing act. The challenge is not capability but confidence. Integrating external data sources requires robust governance, clear permissions and the ability to trace every enrichment to its origin. For a sector under constant regulatory scrutiny, it’s no surprise that many firms err on the side of caution.
The next step is to make enrichment auditable as well as automated, so that data quality, not data quantity, becomes the competitive differentiator.
The AI Rush
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become the headline act of modern banking, promising to transform everything from fraud detection to credit scoring. Yet there’s a risk in assuming that AI will fix underlying operational inefficiencies.
Across the industry, many are racing to bolt AI onto customer-facing functions while leaving back-office processes largely untouched. Without robust data hygiene, reconciliation and enrichment, AI is at risk of improvising around gaps rather than accelerating truth.
True next-generation banking will emerge not from the adoption of algorithms but from the discipline of data stewardship. When banks invest in consistent, explainable data architectures, AI becomes a multiplier for accuracy and trust, not a mask for structural fragility.
Beyond the Buzz
The phrase “next generation banking” has become so elastic that it risks losing all definition. For some, it means AI-driven services; for others, embedded finance or real-time payments. These innovations matter, but they rest on the same foundational truth of, if the data isn’t right, nothing works as it should.
A bank that can open an account in minutes but takes days to close its books is not yet fully digital. A platform that deploys AI for insights but can’t trace the lineage of its data is not yet intelligent. The goal of next-gen banking should be to make the invisible visible, ensuring that every process beneath the surface is as modern as the experience on top.
The Real Definition of “Next Generation”
It’s easy to imagine next-generation banking as something futuristic and abstract. In reality, it’s about something deeply practical: building systems that make data dependable.
Neobanks and fintech banking began as the antidote to legacy complexity. Their next chapter will depend on how well they tackle their own hidden legacies and the invisible operational debt that lurks beneath every modern interface.
The banks that succeed will be those that blend speed with substance, innovation with integrity, and automation with accountability. In the end, the only kind of innovation that endures is the kind that accelerates truth.
Raman Korneu, CEO and Co-Founder of neobank myTU, on how FinTech innovation can push positive payments progression
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In 2025, you’d think payments would move as fast as the businesses they power. But for many digital-first companies (especially marketplaces, lenders, and online platforms) the basic task of reliably moving money in and out is still a daily struggle.
This shouldn’t be the case. The industry has made huge advances in consumer UX, credit innovation, and embedded finance. But when it comes to back-end operations, FinTech has left too many problems unsolved. The result? A silent drag on growth, unnecessary labour costs, and a persistent erosion of customer trust.
Broken Payments, Broken Business
When payments are slow or opaque, everything suffers. Vendor payouts get delayed. Customer refunds take too long. Internal teams lose hours manually checking for confirmation or chasing missing funds. And while the friction is operational in nature, the consequences are strategic: damaged relationships, regulatory risk, and lost revenue.
Take reconciliation, for example. Many businesses still use spreadsheets to match payment events across bank accounts, payment processors, and internal systems. Others run Slack channels to manually track funds. This makes things slow and leads to a complete lack of real-time, reliable visibility.
This complexity becomes a serious burden when transaction volumes scale. Time zone differences, batch file delays, poor API support, and siloed software can all contribute to failures or mismatches that cause downstream chaos. According to Modern Treasury’s 2025 Payment Operations report, 98% of businesses still run some payment operations manually, and 49% use five or more systems, making reconciliation slow, error-prone, and expensive.
The Core Problem: No One’s Talking to Each Other
It’s not payment initiation that’s broken; it’s what happens after. Money gets sent, but teams don’t know if it landed. Banks don’t notify businesses. Systems don’t talk to each other. In many cases, there’s no real-time feedback loop to confirm what worked, what failed, and what needs action.
This disconnect is a byproduct of legacy infrastructure and siloed design. Most banks don’t expose real-time payment events, and their APIs (when they exist) are often outdated, cumbersome, or not developer-friendly. This leaves businesses stuck in a limbo where payments can go missing, get delayed, or trigger compliance issues, and no one knows until it’s too late.
What Better Systems Look Like
FinTechs are uniquely positioned to solve this, not with dashboards, but with infrastructure that integrates directly into the tools businesses already use.
Plug-and-play APIs and webhooks are the key. When embedded into CRMs, ERPs, and accounting platforms, they can push real-time payment updates exactly where they’re needed. No more spreadsheet-based tracking, and no more switching between portals.
The best systems will feel less like platforms and more like invisible plumbing, meaning that they’re always running, always syncing, always up to date. Businesses won’t want to log into yet another dashboard. They’ll expect payments to “just work” within the flows they already operate in.
Cards Help, But They’re Not the Solution
Modern business cards can improve control on the front end (think: spend visibility, real-time limits, cash flow planning). But they don’t solve the backend challenge of inter-system communication or reconciliation. What’s needed is a shift in how we think about payments infrastructure. We need to insist on and build for clarity and control after the money moves.
Why FinTech Hasn’t Solved This Yet
For years, payment operations have been seen as ‘boring’. That’s why so many startups have chased flashier front-end use cases: crypto, neobanking, buy now/pay later, and super apps. But that neglect is catching up with the industry.
As the ‘Decoupled Era’ of banking continues to fragment the value chain, the complexity of payments behind the scenes only grows. And with instant payments in the EU projected to surge 10x by 2028 (McKinsey), reconciliation needs to happen in real time, 24/7, without manual input.
This isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s an operational baseline.
The Competitive Edge No One Talks About
Payments should be boring, because they should work flawlessly in the background. But for too many fast-scaling businesses, they’re still one of the most complex and error-prone parts of operations.
Ultimately this will create a divide. Businesses that build on flexible infrastructure will outpace and outperform those who constantly hit limits and choose to stick to more manual transaction tracking and the guesswork that comes with it. Pulling ahead of the competition isn’t always a matter of out-innovating them. Smoother operations are a way to steadily and quietly outcompete. Fintech is in the position to build this better, and to give smart businesses the edge they deserve
Raman Korneu is CEO and co-founder of neobank myTU, a fully automated, AI-powered and cloud-first digital bank offering smart, secure, and affordable financial services. With over 25 years of experience in banking, Raman has held senior roles across finance, including consulting roles at Ernst & Young and PwC, where he worked on over 100 projects for over 50 major banks and companies, including Merrill Lynch Securities and Raiffeisenbank. Raman holds prestigious qualifications including an EMBA from Judge Business School at Cambridge University, the prestigious Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and ACCA membership. Driven by his passion to tackle problems in traditional banking, Raman leverages his extensive expertise to lead myTU in delivering innovative financial solutions.
PA Consulting’s payments expert Simon Williams on the seismic shift in cross-border electronic payments with ISO 20022
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November 22nd 2025 marks a turning point in electronic payments. ISO 20022 becomes mandatory for cross-border transactions on the SWIFT network. It requires banks to replace traditional payment messages with a larger, data-rich format called MX. At first glance, it sounds like a technical update – something happening at the edge of banks’ infrastructure. But its impact reaches far beyond compliance. ISO 20022 isn’t just a messaging standard. It opens the door for serious modernisation in banking and finance.
A New Era for Payments
For decades, electronic payment messages have relied on formats designed in the 1970s. These are messages with rigid structures, fixed-length fields, and little room for complexity. To convey essential details, banks have often resorted to private codes and workarounds. They are greed between one another to pass on critical information about a payment.
ISO 20022 changes that paradigm, introducing a richer, more flexible, and globally standardised format. This can carry structured data seamlessly across systems. In doing so, it unlocks opportunities for better fraud detection, customer experience, and operational efficiency. These benefits extend not only to banks, but also their clients and service providers across the financial ecosystem.
Firms that haven’t properly prepared for the November deadline risk delays, disruption, and rising costs. With SWIFT charging a penalty for every payment message sent in the legacy format. But beyond compliance, many firms are overlooking the opportunities the change poses. Payments are the lifeblood of a bank, and the data they carry is a strategic asset. So how can firms turn the ISO requirement into a competitive advantage?
Product Owners and Customer Journey Managers
First, banks should use this moment to strengthen their customer journeys. Starting with a deep dive into customer pain points and breaks in the payment flows. This will involve reviewing existing customer journey maps, analysing complaints data, and gathering fresh qualitative and quantitative customer insights to uncover points of friction.
For example, unexpected delays in payments or confusion about correct tax reporting and purpose codes are common issues. Data is often at the root cause of these problems. Which is why ISO 20022’s structured data format can help fix issues. Think how tax and fee codes, transaction references, and other enriched fields could reduce ambiguity and speed up processing. Could this avoid the need for banks to contact clients for further information about the correct coding of payments made? Or prevent clients making complaints about delays and fees deducted? Beyond fixing known issues, firms can also use ISO 20022’s richer data to spot patterns. Such as correspondent banks that consistently slow down transactions. And take subsequent steps to address them.
Money Laundering Reporting Officers (MLROs)
ISO 20022 could also be a game-changer for economic crime prevention in 2026. Anti-money laundering, transaction monitoring, and other sanctions screening relies on interrogating transactional data. And their effectiveness is often only as strong as the data available.
Even seemingly simple improvements to data matter. For example, ISO 20022’s structured fields call for addresses to be stored as distinct elements like ‘street name’ and ‘country code’, rather than the generic ‘line one’ and ‘line two.’ This level of precision makes it far easier to flag suspicious activity, like multiple unrelated accounts tied to the same address, or a mismatch between the street name and country code. In other words, ISO 20022 equips banks with the granular data needed to fight financial crime more effectively.
Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) add another layer of value, enabling a specific organisation to be uniquely and consistently identified across borders, which could streamline KYC and sanctions screening processes. However, two challenges stand in the way: legacy platforms may not support ISO 20022 data, and other banks may not send useful data if it’s not mandatory, such as LEIs for non-financial institutions.
Overcoming these hurdles requires a proactive approach, with banks understanding the potential, prioritising technical upgrades that deliver the greatest compliance benefits, and collaborating with other banks and payment schemes to encourage richer data exchange. The payoff? Reduced compliance burdens and a stronger defence against economic crime.
Bank Enterprise and Data Architects
Bank enterprise and data architects have a key role to play in helping other functions understand the richness and potential value of the ISO 20022 format. Today, many banks translate data into and out of ISO 20022 as payments move through their systems. A process that introduces risk and inefficiency. Extending ISO 20022 structures deeper into internal systems avoids these pitfalls.
Updating customer-facing channels to capture payment instructions in an ISO-compliant format will ensure alignment with the structure of messages transmitted by the bank, avoiding the risks inherent with translation. It will also enable future changes, like annual updates to mandatory fields, to be implemented more easily.
Thinking of ISO 20022 as a bank-wide data standard opens the door to reducing complexity and preserving data integrity. Ultimately, ISO 20022 can be used to better describe customers, their addresses, and the relationships between parties in a transaction. While it’s only required at the boundary of a bank – where payments are sent to or received from central infrastructure – aligning internal systems with the standard unlocks additional benefits, creating a more open, flexible banking system.
Corporate Treasurers and Finance Teams
Looking beyond banks, ISO 20022’s benefits extend to customers, corporate treasurers, accounts payable, and accounts receivable teams. Improved reconciliation, better liquidity management, and greater transparency in payment processing are all within reach. ISO 20022 makes it possible to embed detailed information directly into a payment, down to the invoice line-item level. That level of precision could eliminate misallocated payments or stop transactions from bouncing back because they can’t be reconciled.
Many ERP systems already support ISO 20022 for both payment initiation and receiving confirmations and statements, making it possible to transmit and receive this enriched data. But success depends on collaboration across the entire payment chain. Customers should be encouraged to embed remittance data into their payments. Banks should ensure this information flows intact through their systems and into payment networks. And IT teams may need to upgrade ERP platforms or enable the use of ISO messages. When everyone plays their part, payments become faster, smarter, and far more reliable – turning payment operations from a source of friction into a driver of value.
FinTechs
Fintechs have a natural advantage when it comes to ISO 20022. With fewer legacy constraints, they can embed the standard into their platforms from the ground up – most have been ‘ISO-native’ from day one. The question now is how to turn that technical strength into a competitive edge.
Consider looking across the customer ecosystem – and internally – to identify opportunities to outperform the competition and deliver benefits to customers. From delivering richer data insights to enabling faster, more transparent payment experiences, firms that move beyond compliance will stand out in an increasingly crowded market.
Moving Beyond Compliance
The November deadline marks the end of the readiness phase: most banks have ensured compliance at the boundary, where systems connect to payment schemes. But the real work is only beginning.
ISO 20022 should not be seen as a technical mandate. It’s a new language for financial information, one that can unlock efficiency, transparency, and innovation across the ecosystem. We are now entering the most exciting phase; the point where true business benefits can emerge. Has your organisation considered where those opportunities lie?
Matt Whetton, Chief Technology Officer, Acquired.com on the future of payments with cVRPs, AI and vertical integration
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There are three powerful forces shaping the future of payments and how businesses pay and get paid today. Commercial variable recurring payments (cVRPs), AI, and vertical integration. These forces are transforming the way that businesses can interact with their customers. They are still in the early stages of their development. As these technologies evolve, they hold great potential to redefine payments, benefiting both businesses and consumers alike.
cVRPs – recurring commerce done smarter
When open banking is discussed, many people are familiar with options like “pay by bank” at checkout. While this is mostly used for one-time purchases, recurring payments like bills and subscriptions still rely heavily on direct debits. Businesses serving British consumers, who collectively spend almost £30 billion a year on subscription services, face challenges with slow settlements. There are also high fees (especially for failed transactions), and limited customer control.
cVRPs, the latest evolution of open banking, promise to ease many of the challenges. For example, cVRPs enable businesses to securely collect payments from customers’ bank accounts within agreed limits. These include the amount, frequency, or duration, without requiring customers to re-authenticate each time, reducing friction yet increasing optimisation.
In addition to providing the same benefits as ‘pay by bank’ at checkout, such as the convenience of not having to enter your card details and security of not sharing these details with the retailer, cVRPs can unlock new business models for businesses dependent on recurring revenue. The open banking infrastructure which powers cVRPs allows businesses to gather data insights from these transactions. This enables the introduction of offers like dynamic pricing for subscriptions, or variable insurance premiums based on usage. Not only does this help operational efficiency, but it ultimately enhances the customer experience, encouraging them to keep coming back.
Critically, cVRPs are more likely to successfully complete compared to traditional direct debits, as businesses leverage advanced capabilities like smarter retry logic and dynamic payment routing. These are typically implemented by providers offering VRP services. With open banking making real-time account balance checks possible, businesses can determine the best time to retry a failed payment, such as after payday. Dynamic routing enables merchants to route transactions based on pre-defined business rules, such as transaction value, geographic region, or acquirer performance. This flexibility ensures that payments are directed to the most suitable acquirer or provider. Therefore ncreasing the likelihood of successful transactions and optimising cost efficiency. Together, these capabilities help reduce failed payments, keep customers subscribed, and increase revenue over time.
However, its nascence means there are still potential threats ahead. Regulators need to learn lessons from the growth of ‘pay by bank’. There are 27 million monthly payments now taking place after a slow start, as well as already piloted sweeping VRPs to ensure a solid business model for open banking. With collaboration from banks, FinTechs, business, and government, the ecosystem can take full advantage of these innovative capabilities to reduce friction.
AI/ML’s transformative impact
The advances in AI and machine learning (AI/ML) are written about every day. So, it’s perhaps no surprise that they are having a profound impact on how businesses process payments, detect fraud, and improve customer service. AI’s ability to process large volumes of transaction data efficiently helps businesses identify patterns, trends, and anomalies that would otherwise be difficult to detect.
Not only does this capability benefit fraud prevention, but it can also help businesses gain meaningful insights from the data. Allowing them to expand their service offerings. For example, businesses can apply AI/ML to automate tasks enabled by open banking, such as income verification, affordability checks, and financial health scoring. This helps speed up onboarding and approval processes. Meanwhile, giving consumers access to more sophisticated services. These include spend forecasting, budgeting nudges, and alerts for unusual activity, thereby helping them manage their money more effectively.
Looking ahead, AI/ML will be central to unlocking the full potential of open banking. By improving operational efficiency and enabling richer customer experiences, AI will help businesses transition from reactive to proactive financial services. Currently, the best use cases for AI are assistive, not autonomous. AI is at its most powerful when it augments human decision-making, particularly in nuanced or regulated environments. We’re still early in the maturity curve. As the technology becomes more affordable and the technology within it more explainable, it’s hard to imagine the full potential impact of AI in the payments industry.
Tailored Solutions
The combination of open banking and AI has led to a more tailored and specialised approach to payments technology, particularly for businesses in specific industries. While these powerful tools offer great potential, it is crucial that they are applied in the right way, at the right time, and for the right business.
To move beyond generic payment solutions, the industry is seeing increasing vertical integration. Instead of simply processing transactions, payment providers must now deliver more comprehensive solutions that address the needs of specific sectors. In industries where payment needs are more complex, vertical integration ensures that payment solutions are tightly aligned with business operations. For example, businesses in the construction sector often require project-based billing and payment systems that reflect the way projects are managed. Elsewhere, hospitality providers need solutions that integrate payment systems with real-time inventory tracking and booking management.
It’s fair to say firms will always be looking for any place to optimise to gain an edge. The trend towards vertical integration, combined with cVRPs, and AI are redefining the future of payments. There is a move away from a technical area of the business, to become a core operational function. Businesses adapting to leverage these technologies are well placed to create stronger connections with their customers and drive long-term growth.
Mark Andreev, COO at Exactly, presents a practical guide to tackling e-commerce fraud with payment tokenisation
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Tokenisation can solve a big problem… e-commerce fraud is a growing threat that continues to impact online businesses worldwide. According to recent figures from Statista (2025), global e-commerce losses due to online payment fraud are projected to exceed $100 billion by 2029. As fraudsters increasingly exploit IT vulnerabilities, it is imperative for online and brick-and-mortar businesses to fortify their cybersecurity posture.
Amidst the current security challenges, payment tokenisation emerges as a technology to future-proof business operations and is projected to reach USD 28.97 billion worth by 2033.
This guide explores the concept of payment tokenisation, emphasising its value and role in ensuring credit card payment processing standards for merchants.
What is Payment Tokenisation?
Tokenisation is the process of substituting sensitive data with non-sensitive values – tokens. It works as a key layer of protection for stored data by replacing card numbers with illegible, surrogate values.
During a transaction, payment details are securely transmitted to a trusted payment provider via hosted payment page or through direct API integration.
In the hosted payment page flow, the customer is redirected to a secure payment page operated by the payment provider. Here they can enter their payment information. The provider handles data collection, encryption, and transaction authorisation, keeping sensitive information off the merchant’s servers.
In the API integration flow, the merchant’s website collects payment details using secure client-side tools. In this case, the merchant is responsible for ensuring full PCI DSS compliance, as sensitive data passes through their systems.
Following a transaction, sensitive card data is substituted by a special character sequence. The translation of characters into randomised values refers to the tokenisation process.
For merchants who are not PCI DSS compliant, storing sensitive information on their side is not allowed. In these cases, the third-party payment provider retains the sensitive data and the tokens for future use, while merchants don’t retain any sensitive information.
This method is one of the key cybersecurity best practices to ensure payment providers remain compliant with PCI DSS and is also crucial for merchants using API integration to store sensitive data.
Different Types of Tokens
There are different types of tokens available to merchants, offering different levels of complexity and security. Simple tokens refer to randomised reference numbers that are unidentifiable and unrelated to customer data. They provide a high level of security when implemented correctly by a reputable payment provider.
On the other hand, token vaults represent a more complex system of payment security and data handling. Essentially, token vaults are encrypted repositories of original payment data associated with tokens from each customer transaction. Depending on the type of payment gateway integration, either the merchant or the payment provider may retrieve the payment information as needed. Token vaults can also be deployed in cloud environments, mitigating the need for extensive infrastructure.
The Value of Tokens
In an era where cybersecurity is paramount, failing to secure customer data can come at significant costs. Recently, the IT systems of the UK’s most prominent retailers suffered significant downtime following a series of cyberattacks. They were prevented from serving their customers as a result. As the consequences of these attacks continue to linger, affected UK retailers are working overtime to get back on track. In these situations, the use of tokenisation payment security has partly helped prevent what could have been a catastrophic breach. Reducing the risk of a lateral exploitation of customer data. In fact, using payment tokens, retailers avoid the need to encrypt and retain sensitive payment details. This lowers the risk of attacks, breaches, and noncompliance with ever-changing payment processing and data security policies.
Tokenisation also enables seamless customer experiences, addressing a crucial customer demand – convenience. In fact, with tokenisation enabling one-click checkouts, customers avoid re-entering card details and access a seamless shopping experience, meeting an important need for comfort and familiarity for consumers.
Finally, from a regulatory perspective, compliance with PCI DSS is mandatory for payment providers and merchants specifically using API integration within payment gateways to store sensitive information. In this regulatory context, tokenisation becomes a straightforward strategy to meet fundamental data handling legal requirements. In an era of rising cyber threats and increasing customer expectations, tokenisation offers merchants a scalable, effective, and future-ready approach to safeguarding sensitive data, building trust, and preserving business integrity.
MoneyLIVE Summit is coming to London’s Business Design Centre March 10-11. Book your tickets now!
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Hosted in the FinTech capital of the world, MoneyLIVE Summit is the global payments and banking event bringing together industry leaders at the top of their game. This is where ground-breaking partnerships are forged, where innovation is accelerated and where the brightest ideas are born.
MoneyLIVE Summit sets the agenda for the future of banking and payments
For over 30 years, MoneyLIVE has brought together the movers and shakers of the banking and payments industry. Through impactful conferences, webinars, reports, roundtables and digital content.
Join 1500+ attendees and hear from 200 expert speakers across five stages. Revolut’s UK CEO Dr Francesca Carlesi, Lloyds Banking Group COO Ron van Kemenade, Standard Chartered UK CEO Saif Malik, ABN-AMRO’s CDO Jorissa Neutelings and Groupe Crédit Agricole Group COO Philippe Coue are among the baking leaders sharing insights across Payments Infrastructure, Digital ID, AI & Operations, CX, Digital currencies and Blockchain, Open Banking and much more.
“An unmissable event for those serious about banking and payments transformation.” Global Head of Strategy & Innovation, ING
Startup City
Welcome to Startup City, the innovation epicentre of MoneyLIVE Summit 2025. This designated hub is designed to accelerate start-up and scale-up growth, featuring a dynamic stage, exclusive networking zone, and high-impact deal booths.
If you’re on the hunt for funding, seeking scaleup opportunities, or looking to forge distribution partnerships, you’ve found your ultimate arena.
Luke Kyohere, Group Chief Product and Innovation Officer at Onafriq, on payments innovations to look out for this year
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The global payments landscape is undergoing a rapid transformation. New technologies coupled with the rising demand for seamless, secure, and efficient transactions has spurred on an exciting new era of innovation and growth. With 2025 fast approaching, here are important trends that will shape the future of payments:
1.The rise of real-time payments
Until recently, real-time payments have been used in Africa for cross-border mobile money payments, but less so for traditional payments. At OnAfriq, we are seeing companies like Mastercard investing in this area, as well as central banks in Africa putting focus on this.
2. Cashless payments will increase
In 2025, we will see the continued acceleration of cashless payments across Africa. B2B payments in particular will also increase. Digital payments began between individuals but are now becoming commonplace for larger corporate transactions.
3. Digital currency will hit mainstream
In the cryptocurrency space, we will see an increase in the use of stablecoins like United States Digital Currency (USDC) and Tether (USDT) which are linked to US dollars. These will come to replace traditional cryptocurrencies as their price point is more stable. This year, many countries will begin preparing for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), government-backed digital currencies which use Blockchain. The increased uptake of digital currencies reflects the maturity of distributed ledger technology and improved API availability.
4. Increased government oversight
As adoption of digital currencies will increase, governments will also put more focus into monitoring these flows. In particular, this will centre on companies and banks rather than individuals. The goal of this will be to control and occasionally curb runaway foreign exchange (FX) rates.
5. Business leaders buy into AI technology
In 2025, we will see many business leaders buying into AI through respected providers relying on well-researched platforms and huge data sets. Most companies don’t have the budget to invest in their own research and development in AI. Therefore, many are now opting to ‘buy’ into the technology rather than ‘build’ it themselves. Moreover, many businesses are concerned about the risks associated with data ownership and accuracy so buying software is another way to avoid this risk.
6. Continued AI Adoption in Payments
In payments, the proliferation of AI will continue to improve user experience and increase security. To detect fraud, AI is used to track patterns and payment flows in real time. If unusual activity is detected, the technology can be used to flag or even block payments which may be fraudulent. When it comes to user experience, we will also see AI being used to improve the interface design of payment platforms. The technology will also increasingly be used for translation for international payments platforms.
7. Rise of Super Apps
To get more from their platforms, mobile network operators are building comprehensive service platforms. These integrate multiple payment experiences into a single app. This reflects the shift of many users moving from text-based services to mobile apps. Rather than offering a single service, super apps are packing many other services into a single app. For example, apps which may have previously been used primarily for lending, now have options for saving and paying bills.
8. Business strategy shift
Recent major technological changes will force business leaders to focus on much shorter prediction and reaction cycles. Because the rate of change has been unprecedented in the past year, this will force decision-makers to adapt quickly, be decisive and nimble. As the payments space evolves, businesses, banks, and governments must continually embrace innovation, collaboration, and prioritise customer needs. These efforts build a more inclusive, secure, and efficient payment system that supports local to global economic growth – enabling true financial inclusion across borders.
