VocaLink: The changing face of payments 2015

07 July 2015

This year’s survey proves particularly interesting as the impact of mobile and payments apps are clearly indicating a rapid cycle change in the industry.

This is the fourth year that the Financial Services Club has collaborated with Cognizant and VocaLink with its annual survey about the state of the world’s largest payment processing infrastructures and how market conditions are introducing changes. As in previous years, focused was on the largest payments infrastructures worldwide – including SWIFT, Visa, MasterCard, CHIPS, Fedwire, STEP2– and the impact that innovation and regulation are having upon these infrastructures.

With Apple Pay, Blik, iZettle, Paym, Square, Swish, Venmo and Zapp etc, the most developed markets rapidly adapting to mobile real-time payments and established players facing real disintermediation threats were seen. Which market players are best placed to respond? How will back-end processing and infrastructures adapt to support these front-end apps?

The results of this year’s survey build upon the past three annual surveys, and show that:

• Regulation and innovation remain the two primary drivers of industry change
• Innovation through technology is now seen as being far more important to long-term industry structure than regulatory drivers
• There are much stronger opinions about the likely future scenarios in the industry, with mobile payments leading to disruptive innovation and new entrants such as Google and Apple
• Mobile is now seen as mainstream and the blockchain and cryptocurrencies are the ‘new disruptive kids on the block’

Full information (VocaLink subscription required for research download)

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