CONTENTS PAYTECH FOCUS 16 Payments pizazz Riotous colour, vibrant music, sensuous dance and a unique, restless energy, Brazil’s get-up-and-go is filtering through into how it does payments, says PagBrasil’s Ralf Germer
30 New rules of conduct SmartStream has combined its deep knowledge of regulatory reference data and super-fast, Cloud-based, AI-driven reconciliation, to solve the investment industry’s reporting challenges. And – perhaps surprisingly – digital assets traders are clamouring for it, too, says Jethro MacDonald
55 The rationale for real time There are various motivations for implementing real-time payment systems. ‘Speed’ merely scratches the surface, writes George Evers, Senior Vice President for Realtime Products at Mastercard
NEW WORLD ORDER 6 Instant gratification The world of payments is moving at warp speed and providers must keep up, or fade into insignificance, say ING’s Mark Buitenhek and Dome Scaffidi from Volante Technologies
10 One-stop shop In order to thrive, retailers should prioritise providing their customers with real-time fulfillment in every possible avenue, says Andrew Mitchell from JCB
12 Small world, big possibilities Payments are driving unprecedented levels of global innovation and connectivity, including in insurance, say Vitesse PSP’s Phillip McGriskin and Mauro Di Buono
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2022 ISSUE#12
THE GUEST EDIT: AGE-FRIENDLY BANKING The fintech revolution promised us a complete re-invention, not just a revamp or renovation of finance. In many cases it has delivered – but in one important aspect, everything has stayed the same. Capture customers young and they’ll stick with you for life is age-old banking logic. And it’s a logic that has long worked for incumbents, because finance was always sticky – the incumbents won customers young, but they also held onto them into older age. And those customers played a crucial function – providing wealth. It’s their deposits that furnished lending to the young. With VC money washing around like soap suds and interest rates at near zero, I can see (if not mathematically square) why fintech has also been all about capturing young customers rather than wealthy, older ones; why it’s been about the low-hanging fruit in the digital native Gen Z and Millennial cohorts. Cool has ruled; not older under-banked boomers. But times are changing. Some of the neobank business models that looked wafer thin before look positively anaemic now that money’s being squeezed. If fintechs want to grow up and survive, I’d posit that they are going to need to square the circle and create self-sustaining, revenue-generating models. And for that they’ll want to grow not just customer numbers but deposits, too. That means recruiting older users. Either that, or they will really have to reinvent banking
and its centuries-old business model. For any fintechs fretting about the prospects of securing enough funding to see them through to that eureka moment, there’s hope – as we try to evidence in the Age-friendly Banking section of this edition. Boomers may not be budging, but that’s not because they’re happy with their lot from legacy providers. It’s because no one’s trying to speak to them, let alone serve them. Time for challengers grow up and do that? Guest Editor Natasha de Terán Natasha has spent a lifetime at the intersection of finance and regulatory and public affairs. She is passionate about improving financial access and literacy, and is co-author of The Payoff: How Changing The Way We Pay Changes Everything. She holds a number of advisory positions, including on the Payment Systems Regulator Panel and the Financial Services Consumer Panel, and is a member of the Bank of England’s CBDC Engagement Forum. She writes about and consults on a wide range of issues affecting the payments industry. Our last issue’s spine tingler, 'By endurance we conquer', is a quote from Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.
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