Real-time payments are at the heart of the innovation agenda for the majority of banks worldwide, with 96% stating that they will develop new and innovative services on top of their investment in this technology in 2019 and 2020, according to ACI Worldwide and Ovum.
The Culture of Innovation Index report shows that 92% of banks globally expect to grow revenue from real-time payments, reflecting the degree to which real-time has come to underpin a new wave of product innovation and revenue opportunities.
“Our research shows that real-time payments infrastructure is either a direct enabler or closely linked with most of the new services and propositions banks are developing globally,” said Craig Ramsey, head of real-time payments, ACI Worldwide.
The study finds that almost half of banks (47%) report that real-time payments overlay services are a top three product investment priority, and one in three (27%) rank this as their biggest single priority.
Other leading areas of investment are Open Banking (33%), leveraging transaction data to improve services (43%) and removing friction from the payment authentication process (48%).
Among banks worldwide, 95% report that Open Banking has helped change the way they approach delivering new products and services. However, 75% still view Open Banking/APIs largely as a compliance issue.
Also, 74% of banks plan to move mission-critical workloads into public cloud infrastructure either this or next year and 89% either have already made significant use of cloud or are planning to make further investments in 2019/2020.
“The most innovative banks recognise that investment in real-time payments infrastructure is a strong foundation for sustainable innovation,” Ramsey said.
