CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS: BUILDING A SEAMLESS JOURNEY TO GLOBAL CONNECTIVITY
Julie Bolan, Global Head of Payments, Swift
EVOLVING CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS TO DELIVER AGAINST G20 GOALS
Barry Rodrigues, Executive Vice President, Payments, Finastra
BREAKING THE PAYOUT BARRIER: HOW HOSTED PAYMENT PAGES ARE RESHAPING CROSS-BORDER DISBURSEMENTS
Artur Zaremba, Head of Payment Solutions and Senior Product Owner, Ecommpay
Kellyn Gorman, Multi-platform database and AI Advocate, Redgate
As the leaves turn this season, finance finds itself in the midst of its own autumnal shift: a transition into a new age defined not just by speed and efficiency, but by resilience, inclusion, and responsibility. The Fall Edition of Financial IT explores this landscape of transformation, where artificial intelligence meets Blockchain, where wealthtech redefines the role of human advisors, and where cross-border payments break down barriers to connect economies, businesses, and communities across the globe.
At the heart of this issue, our cover story turns the spotlight on Redgate , a company proving that innovation is not simply about pushing the limits of what technology can achieve, but also about finding balance—between cloud innovation and data governance, between AI’s potential and regulatory guardrails, and between efficiency and trust. As Kellyn Gorman , AI advocate at Redgate , reminds us: “The cloud has become the backbone of modern business, enabling rapid scalability, advanced analytics, and collaboration across global teams. But with this innovation comes a high-risk balancing act.” In many ways, that balance is the story of finance today, as the industry races to innovate without losing sight of its duty to protect the individuals and institutions who rely on it.
One of the most compelling intersections lies in the convergence of AI and Blockchain, two technologies once regarded as disruptive in their own right but now increasingly powerful in
SEASONS OF CHANGE: FINANCE AT THE CROSSROADS OF INNOVATION
combination. Roger Burkhardt and Horacio Barakat of Broadridge describe this synergy as the “totality of platform,” a unifying layer where tokenized assets meet automated analytics. As they put it: “Blockchain brings the ability to tokenize assets and enable new settlement models, while AI drives automation, analytics and speed. The result is a foundation that makes rapid implementation possible for institutions.” The measurable impact is already clear: institutions deploying AI-Blockchain solutions report 85% improved intraday liquidity, 79% lower processing costs, and 71% fewer failed trades and payments . These are numbers that not only signify efficiency gains but also translate into wider accessibility, fairer costs, and reduced systemic risks for businesses and consumers alike. And yet, as Burkhardt warns, the challenge is no longer one of possibility but preparedness: “The real question is whether your team will be prepared when the C-suite asks how you are harnessing it.”
As we explore the wealth management space, we see similar pressures at play. Wealthtech is undergoing a profound shift from fragmented, tool-based approaches to integrated platforms that weave disparate solutions into seamless client experiences. Bob Pisani, CTO of Addepar , frames this evolution with precision: “ The industry is moving towards a more comprehensive, holistic platform approach, weaving disparate innovations together to provide a more seamless experience for advisers.” AI is at the core of this change. Already, 75% of UK financial institutions are
implementing AI to support wealth management, but fewer than half of advisors, just 43% have a developed strategy for using it. That imbalance reflects both the speed of technological adoption and the lag in building the necessary human and organizational capacity to harness it effectively.
What is striking here is not just the operational efficiency AI can deliver cleaner data, predictive insights, real-time context but the social value of amplifying human expertise. As Pisani stresses, no single organization can address these challenges alone: “The future of financial technology lies in a rich, interconnected ecosystem of partners, integrations and builders.” In practical terms, this means a future where advisors spend less time on manual reconciliations and more time on conversations that truly matter: guiding families in planning for retirement, helping small business owners manage growth, and ensuring that intergenerational wealth is stewarded responsibly. When technology becomes an enabler of human connection rather than its replacement, wealthtech fulfills its most meaningful promise.
This sense of finance as a connector runs through our examination of crossborder payments. Few areas of financial infrastructure affect everyday life so directly, whether it is a migrant worker sending remittances home, an SME trading internationally, or a humanitarian organization distributing aid. Claire Gates of CAB Payments captures the stakes clearly: “Cross-border payments play a
critical role in enabling the growth of these countries. Providers can act as sustainable development facilitators throughout emerging markets.” To think of payments infrastructure as a driver of sustainable development may once have seemed abstract; today, it is an urgent reality, particularly in hard-to-reach markets where economic inclusion hinges on connectivity.
The story is not only about reaching new markets, but also about modernizing the global system itself. Maxim Neshcheret of CMA Small Systems points to the growing role of ISO 20022 adoption, API harmonisation, and real-time connectivity in redefining the global financial fabric: “The world of cross-border payments is being redefined… The foundations for the global connectivity of tomorrow are being built one rail, one API and one trusted connection at a time.” And yet even as innovation accelerates, gaps remain. Julie Bolan of SWIFT reminds us that while 90% of payments now reach the beneficiary bank within an hour, only 43% are actually credited to the end customer in that time frame. “The final step regularly produces the most delays, as it often becomes tangled in domestic systems, internal procedures, and local practices,” she explains. Bridging this “last mile” is essential if the benefits of progress are to reach the people and communities that need them most.
But as payments accelerate and systems interconnect, another challenge intensifies: fraud. This issue also looks inside the minds of those battling financial crime. Matteo Bogana and Federico Valentini of Cleafy warn that AI is already being used by attackers to accelerate and personalize fraud. Bogana observes: “Recent evidence shows that AI tools are being systematically integrated into attackers’ operational backends, supporting multiple stages from identifying and profiling potential targets to generating custom attack code and bots.” Yet there is also hope in AI’s defensive capabilities. Valentini emphasizes its role as an ally rather than a silver bullet: “AI is most powerful as a co-pilot augmenting the abilities of human experts. It can analyse billions of data points in seconds, spotting anomalies that a human could never detect alone.”
This dual nature of AI both empowering defenders and enabling attackers illustrates why security cannot be an afterthought in financial innovation. The
cost of failure falls disproportionately on the vulnerable: consumers with limited recourse, small businesses with tight margins, and communities where financial literacy is still developing. Protecting trust in the system is therefore not only a technical imperative but a social one, ensuring that the very people meant to benefit from new infrastructure are not those most exposed to its risks.
It is in this context that our cover story on Redgate feels especially timely. The company’s work at the intersection of Cloud, AI, and Regulation demonstrates how innovation must be pursued not recklessly, but responsibly. Kellyn Gorman notes that “AI changes the velocity of cloud innovation… The organizations that innovate fastest often gain the biggest competitive advantage, but they also run the greatest risk of compliance failures, bias in AI outputs, or catastrophic data misuse.” Redgate’s emphasis on embedding governance in architecture, building privacy-by-design, and investing in automated compliance reflects a broader truth: trust has become the most valuable currency in the digital financial economy.
Taken together, the themes in this issue paint a vivid picture of finance in motion. AI and Blockchain are converging to reshape market infrastructure. Wealthtech is moving from fragmented tools to holistic platforms. Cross-border payments are being reimagined to connect people and businesses more inclusively. Fraud prevention is entering a new phase where human expertise and AI must work side by side. And throughout it all, the common denominator is collaboration between firms, across borders, and among technologies.
As Pisani reminds us, “Harnessing AI is no longer optional, as it unlocks real-time insights that will transform the industry and drive productivity.” The future is already arriving. The challenge now is to shape it with foresight, inclusivity, and integrity. The benefits of innovation must be broadly shared and trusted. In this way the cornerstone of financial systems is not merely preserved but deepened.
Tawney Kruger Editor, Financial IT
Although Financial IT has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this publication, neither it nor any contributor can accept any legal responsibility whatsoever for consequences that may arise from errors or omissions or any opinions or advice given. This publication is not a substitute for professional advice on a specific transaction.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, in whole or in part, without written permission from the publisher. Entire contents copyrighted. Financial IT is a Finnet Limited publication.
ISSN 2050-9855
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Publisher Chris Principe chris.principe@financialit.net
For more than a decade, there is a global view that the U.S. Dollar (USD) is an overly dominate currency. I will give my view on how going forward USD will actually increase in its dominance. Of course, this is in the US Governments best interest for the USD to be the dominate currency. What I will tell you is that this is happening despite other countries efforts and without any effort from the US Government.
De-Dollarization is the process of countries, institutions and individuals working to reduce the reliance on USD in global trade, finance and as country reserves. I believe that USD is overly dominate. This allows the US Government to take actions that influence economies and politics more than should be allowed. Think sanctions, capital outflows, and economic instability just by a change in political policy or interest rates. Notably this entrenches US Global Power as well as US Rule of Law. Despite, my own belief that a dominate dollar is not good for the world it is especially bad for emerging markets. The fast changing and evolving financial markets will drive the USD dominance up in
a way the US Government never could. Let’s look at De-Dollarization before seeing how recent financial changes will drive further USD dominance.
First many experts quote the Foreign Exchange Reserves. This is the amount that each country keeps in reserve of different currencies. Keep in mind that gold plays a huge part in country reserves. This shows a decline in USD kept in reserve from over 70% in 2003 to about 58% at the end of 2023. Even with this clear drop the USD lead is significant as the number two currency the Euro is a distant second at about 20%.
Given the size of the Euro Zone market, the Euro is primarily a strong regional reserve currency. In my view, this USD reserve reduction is not due to de-dollarization, but instead to the expansion of trading between countries based on the Internet effectively making the world smaller and easier to reach.
Back in the 1990’s USD was used in over 80% of global trade transactions. That has decrease by about 20% today to 60%+. Again, the second currency is the Euro (EUR) at a distant but consistent 20%, then
China (CNY/RMB) at about 7%, Japan (JPY) follows at 4%. The British Pound (GBP) is at about 3%. This illustrates the fall of the mighty as GBP was for several hundred years the dominate currency globally. Today the British Pound is a niche player mainly due to its overvalued role in world finance.
The Game Changer
OK, most of this is known and the above directly supports the de-dollarization trend of the last twenty years. What can possibly change a twenty-year trend that has global incentive and has shown a path of success. One word my friends, one word, Technology.
"Any sufficiently advanced Technology is indistinguishable from Magic."
Arthur C. Clarke - author of “2001: A Space Odyssey”
Yes, Technology, and tech does not care what or whose problems it solves or even if it solves a problem. Tech doesn’t care about what it changes, breaks, ruins, builds, fixes, advances, etc.
Tech is Neutral
When your bank tells you that this is a high value payment or a low value payment each with different prices and delivery times, the tech does not care. One zero or ten it is the same to the tech. There are bank reasons to squeeze you for more and restrict your control of your money.
The technology of change that I am referring to are Stablecoins. Yes, crypto, but not the volatile and bank less crypto
that we know and many of us have been using for years like Bitcoin. No, Stablecoins are a different breed of crypto. A crypto that has been around for years. Now springs into its true life with the advent of a slew of new regulations such as the Genisus Act. Stablecoins are being embraced as the greatest payment method we know today. Now, there is a way to pay and get paid; Instantly, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. No longer are we tied to banker’s hours and no weekend activity. No longer do we need to wait for our money while the banks profit from holding our money with their illconceived playing of the float. No longer are the seen and unseen fees that plague the foreign exchange transaction needed. No, my friends, Stablecoins are changing how money will move for ever and for the good of us all.
This is exciting news! No wonder bankers are trying their best to be in front of payments via Stablecoins. They are scared because the multiple revenues streams that they have grown fat on, will be no more. This will also be the great equalizer for businesses and individuals everywhere no matter if you are in Mongolia, Chile, Angola, it does not matter, all can use Stablecoins.
Stablecoins?
A Stablecoin is a cryptocurrency that runs on a blockchain and is backed by a stable asset, primarily the USD. One Stablecoin equals one USD and does not vary from this one-to-one status. When you buy one USD backed Stablecoin its value will always be one USD. Critically important, Stablecoins are a cryptocurrency without market driven volatility. It has the transparency and security afforded by a blockchain with 24/7/365 usability.
As I mentioned Stablecoins have been with us for a number of years. It is in the last year that their usage has taken off. $160 billion was the approximate market cap for Stablecoins in July 2024 and as of August 2025 it is over $300 billion. Top of the Stablecoins is Tether (USDT) which dwarfs the rest with a market cap of $170 billion. Next is Circle (USDC) at $75 billion. The next three make up about $22 billion and are Ethena (USDe), Dai (DAI) and Paypal (PYUSD). It is estimated at the current growth rate to double the market cap again over the next six months. Truly
impressive and I do not see a short term slow down to this growth velocity. All of this is great and clearly a boon to business, individuals, banks and governments. A win for everyone, but I am here to tell you why this will crush DeDollarization. We need to go behind the scene and pull the curtain back just a bit to see. What the major Stablecoin companies (USDT, USDC, etc.) are doing is the secret sauce to not only reversing the past 20 years, but to propel the USD to greater domination.
To be a Stablecoin it must be tied to a stable asset with USD as the primary one. Stablecoin companies are buying US Treasury Bills as the primary stable asset to back their coins. Treasury Bills, not bonds, are a short-term debt note that is liquid and trades like cash. More importantly they pay interest to the bill holder of about 4% and are backed by the US Government. This means that every time USDT is purchased, Tether buys corresponding Treasury Bills which yield about 4%. With the doubling of Stablecoin usages, the demand for US Treasury Bills increases. This also allows Tether to pay back a portion of the interest they earn to holders of USDT. This is USDT that is not used, but instead bought for the purpose of Staking. Staking is a safe way to hold USDT and earn maybe 2% interest on your staked USDT as Tether stills makes about 2% for doing relatively little.
Now globally, when we look at the emerging markets of the Southern Hemisphere which is made up of Latin America, SEA and Africa. The trade flow is estimated at $12 trillion yearly. These are countries that will benefit the most from Stablecoin usage. If over the next five years, 20% of this money movement switches to Stablecoins, about $2.5 trillion will be turned into US Treasury Debt instruments. This will greatly strengthen the unipolar system of USD Domination. USD backed stablecoins will fortify USD putting hundreds of billions in global capital into the U.S. Treasury. This creates a deep structural demand for both the dollar and US Government debt globally.
Over the next five years this acceleration of US Government debt purchases will push the dollar to new levels of dominance. Stablecoins will become the primary way that payments will be made and received. Reversing De-Dollarization, will be done by the Magic of Technology!
Chris Principe, Publisher, Financial IT
Tawney Kruger, Editor, Financial
Kellyn Gorman, Multi-platform database and AI Advocate, Redgate
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier,
Mark Andreev, COO, Exactly.com
Chris Principe, Publisher, Financial
Julie Bolan, Global Head of Payments, Swift
Barry Rodrigues, Executive Vice President, Payments, Finastra
Artur Zaremba, Head of Payment Solutions and Senior Product Owner, Ecommpay
26 THE NEXT FRONTIER IN CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS
Tom Pirone, Industry Lead, Financial Services, Appian
30 THE INTERSECTION OF AI AND BLOCKCHAIN: TRANSFORMING THE FINANCIAL SERVICES LANDSCAPE
Roger Burkhardt, CTO & Head of AI, Horacio Barakat, Head of Digital Innovation, Broadridge
32 AI IN FINANCIAL SERVICES: WHY ARCHITECTURE MATTERS MORE THAN THE ALGORITHM
Andrew Elmore, Chief Technology Officer & Engineering Manager, Gresham
34 DELIVERING CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS IN HARD-TO-REACH MARKETS: WHY AGILITY AND LOCAL EXPERTISE MATTER
Claire Gates, Global Head of Payments and Solutions, CAB
36 CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS ARE JUST ONE WAY TO CLEAR & SETTLE PAYMENTS
Toine van Beusekom, Strategy Director, Icon Solutions
40 CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS: BREAKING BARRIERS AND ENHANCING GLOBAL CONNECTIVITY
Maxim Neshcheret, Regional Director for APAC and Central Asia, CMA Small Systems
42 SO, YOU GOT A TERM SHEET NOW WHAT?
Yasemin La Riva, Counsel, Alfred Advisory AG
46 THE NEW AGE OF FINANCE: COLLABORATION, PLATFORM, AND AI
Bob Pisani, Chief Technology Officer, Addepar
48 INSIDE THE MINDS OF FRAUD FIGHTERS
Matteo Bogana, CEO, Federico Valentini, Head of Threat Intelligence and Incident Response, Cleafy
50 WHAT SEPA INSTANT PAYMENTS MEAN FOR NON-EU BANKS
Rossana Thomas, Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Payments, Fiserv
52 HOW TO TELL IF PAYMENT ORCHESTRATION IS WORTH THE INVESTMENT: 3 CASES
Denys Kyrychenko, Co-founder & CEO, Corefy
Kellyn Gorman, Multi-platform database and AI Advocate, Redgate
Kellyn Gorman is the multi-platform database and AI advocate at Redgate. She's been in the tech industry for a quarter of a century, specializing in relational systems and in recent years, artificial intelligence and data protection. Her focus on Azure and Google Cloud for high IO workloads on IaaS has been of exceptional interest for data-infra specialists in the tech world. Her content is highly respected under her handle DBAKevlar.
DATA GOVERNANCE IN THE CLOUD: BALANCING INNOVATION AND REGULATION
The cloud has become the backbone of modern business, enabling rapid scalability, advanced analytics, and collaboration across global teams. In the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the cloud’s role is even more critical, both serving as the storage and processing hub for vast quantities of data that feed machine learning models, power real-time analytics, and drive business innovation. With this innovation comes a high-risk balancing act. Organizations are under pressure to push boundaries with AI and cloudnative services, while simultaneously navigating a growing web of regulations and public concerns about data privacy, ethics, and security. For many, the question isn’t whether to innovate, but how to do so without crossing legal, ethical, or operational lines.
The Challenge of Critical Data in a Cloud-First World
Critical data, no matter if it’s financial transactions, health records, personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, has always been subject to strict governance. What’s changed in modern times is the environment in which it lives. Cloud platforms now host and process these sensitive assets, often across multiple
geographic regions, cloud providers, and third-party services.
This distributed model offers immense agility but also multiplies governance challenges:
• Data Residency
Many regulations, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), require certain data to stay within specific geographic boundaries. Cloud architectures that replicate and distribute data automatically can conflict with these mandates if not carefully designed.
• Shared Responsibility Models
Cloud providers secure the infrastructure, but organizations must secure their data.
Misconfigurations,(such as unsecured storage buckets) remain a leading cause of cloud data breaches.
• Complex Access Controls
With multiple user roles, integrated services, and external APIs, ensuring that only the right people and systems have the right level of access is increasingly difficult.
The governance of critical data in the cloud isn’t just about preventing leaks, but ensuring accuracy, compliance, and trust across a growing, interconnected ecosystem.
Innovation at AI Speed
AI changes the velocity of cloud innovation. Generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and autonomous decision-making systems can now be deployed faster than governance policies can be adapted in time. This creates an uncomfortable tension: the organizations that innovate fastest often gain the biggest competitive advantage, but they also run the greatest risk of compliance failures, bias in AI outputs, or catastrophic data misuse. AI-specific challenges for data governance include:
• Data Provenance and Lineage: AI models rely on training data whose origin, ownership, and usage rights must be documented to meet compliance and ethical standards.
• Bias and Fairness: Poor governance over the data used to train AI can lead to biased algorithms, triggering regulatory penalties and reputational damage.
• Real-Time Data Use: Many AI applications require low-latency access to productiongrade data, which can bypass traditional governance checkpoints if safeguards aren’t integrated into the architecture.
The reality is that traditional data governance is rooted in static, periodic audits rarely keeping pace with AI-driven cloud innovation. Continuous, automated governance is becoming a necessity, not a luxury.
The Regulatory Landscape: EULed, Globally Interconnected, and Rapidly Evolving
Across Europe and in the world today, lawmakers are racing to keep pace with the disruptive growth of cloud computing and AI. The European Union has positioned itself as a global leader in digital regulation, with the GDPR setting a high bar for privacy and compliance and influencing legislation worldwide. But GDPR is just one part of an increasingly complex framework: GDPR (European Union): Establishes strict rules for collecting, processing, and storing personal data, with severe fines for violations. Its principles of lawfulness, fairness, transparency, and data minimization, have become the global benchmark all others follow.
EU AI Act: The world’s first comprehensive AI regulation introduced risk-based requirements for transparency, safety, accountability, and human oversight in AI systems.
NIS2 Directive (EU): Expands cybersecurity obligations for critical sectors, requiring robust incident response and risk management in digital infrastructures.
DGA (Data Governance Act) and DMA (Digital Markets Act): Promotes trusted data sharing while curbing the power of dominant digital platforms.
Global Counterparts: While the U.S. addresses privacy and compliance through sectoral rules like HIPAA and SOX, and state laws like CCPA, Canada’s AIDA and similar initiatives in other regions are increasingly shaped by EU precedents.
For multinational organizations, compliance is a moving target. Regulations often overlap, diverge, or evolve in ways that demand continuous monitoring, legal expertise, and close collaboration between compliance, security, and engineering teams . In the EU, where enforcement is strict and penalties can reach up to 4% of global turnover, proactive compliance is not just a legal obligation, but competitive necessity.
Public Trust and Citizen Concerns
Beyond the legal requirements, there’s the matter of public perception. Individuals are more aware than ever of how their data is collected and used, becoming more skeptical about whether companies are acting responsibly.
Cloud breaches and AI missteps can erode trust overnight. For example, the unauthorized use of personal photos in AI training datasets has sparked public backlash, regardless of whether it violated specific laws. Similarly, data leaks involving cloud storage misconfigurations tend to make headlines, reinforcing concerns that personal data is not being adequately protected.
This heightened awareness means governance is as much about maintaining trust as it is about avoiding fines.
Strategies for Balancing Innovation and Regulation
The balancing act between innovation and regulation in cloud-based data governance requires a proactive, adaptive strategy:
1. Embed Governance in Cloud Architecture Governance must be built into the architecture and use policy-as-code, automated compliance checks, and integrated encryption instead of bolting it on after deployment.
2. Adopt Continuous Compliance Monitoring
Real-time compliance monitoring tools can detect policy violations before they become legal liabilities.
3. Invest in Data Lineage and Cataloging
A robust data catalog and lineage tracking system ensure visibility into where data comes from, how it’s transformed, and where it’s used, which is essential for both compliance and AI model transparency.
4. Implement Privacy-by-Design Principles Bake privacy safeguards into every stage of product development, rather than trying to retrofit them later.
5. Collaborate Across Disciplines
Legal, security, engineering, and business teams must work together, ensuring governance doesn’t become a bottleneck but a shared enabler of safe innovation.
The Future of Cloud Data Governance
The future will likely bring regulationaware innovation, which is a model where compliance and creativity are not opposing forces but partners in sustainable growth. This will require organizations to treat governance as a dynamic, datadriven process, evolving in sync with both technology and regulation.
AI will play a dual role: as a challenge that strains current governance models, and as a solution, AI-powered monitoring, anomaly detection, and policy enforcement to protect data more effectively than ever before will become essential.
In the end, organizations that master this balance will gain more than regulatory compliance, they will also earn the trust of customers, partners, and the public, building a foundation for long-term success in the cloud-driven, AI-enabled economy.
Julie Bolan, Global Head of Payments, Swift
In her multi-decade career in the banking and finance industry, Julie Bolan has worked as a Global Transaction Banking professional, payments domain expert across domestic, international, and wholesale banking and as head of risk, regulatory and financial crime programs. In 2023, Julie was awarded the Women in Payments Australia Distinguished Payments Professional Award.
In her current role as Global Head of Payments, Julie leads Swift’s payments business, driving the adoption and usage of strategic services to enable instant and frictionless payments across the Swift community.
CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS: BUILDING A SEAMLESS JOURNEY TO GLOBAL CONNECTIVITY
Today, the world is more connected than ever, which has caused expectations to shift – especially in the payments space. The ability to transfer money across borders quickly, securely, and transparently is no longer a gold-star service, but is the new standard for payments. Whether it's a small business paying its supplier overseas or a family sending money back home, consumers now demand a new level of quality for cross-border payments.
Thanks to years of industry-wide collaboration and innovation, the financial industry is increasingly meeting these expectations. The global financial community has made remarkable progress, and Swift data shows that 90%
of cross-border payments sent via our network reach the beneficiary bank within an hour.
This is well ahead of the G20’s target of having 75 per cent of cross-border wholesale payments processed within an hour by 2027. However, while inflight processing between originating and destination banks has significantly accelerated, the last domestic leg of payments still requires attention.
Hitting Bullseye on G20’s Targets
The G20’s roadmap, developed in partnership with the Financial Stability Board, laid out ambitious targets for
the global financial industry to enhance cross-border payments’ speed, cost, transparency, and accessibility. Financial institutions, market infrastructures, and technology providers have responded well to these targets, and the industry is well on its way to meeting its goals. However, there is much more to do during the final stretch, specifically where funds arrive at the beneficiary bank and are credited to the end customer’s account.
Globally, only 43 per cent of payments are credited to their end beneficiary within an hour. The final step regularly produces the most delays, as it often becomes tangled in domestic systems, internal procedures, and local practices. After observing global financial markets,
several common challenges emerge as hindering an efficient beneficiary leg.
A typical issue is batch processing and limitations around operating hours. Navigating global time zone challenges can be difficult, and in some countries, payments arrive outside of business hours or are processed in batches, not individually. This creates delays despite their proximity to the end customer. Regulatory and compliance checks represent another challenge. Although verifying the recipient’s identity and the purpose of the payment is essential, these steps can introduce manual processes that slow the journey down. This creates hurdles from both global regulations and domestic market requirements.
Thankfully, these issues are not permanent, and financial markets are already showing signs of positive change. Institutions with real-time domestic payment systems and 24/7 bank operations are positioned for greater success in the last leg of payments. Other success factors include areas where there are no significant FX or currency controls – or if they’re in place, they’re automated and executed quickly. Banks that meet these criteria consistently meet – and even exceed – the G20’s speed target, showing that faster end-to-end processing is on the horizon.
Improving the Customer Experience
Fast end-to-end transactions, however, is only one piece of the entire crossborder transaction puzzle. Swift’s recent research, conducted in collaboration with McKinsey & Company, reveals that customers value other qualities beyond a fast transaction. Their expectations for cross-border payments include:
• Simplicity: Customers value intuitive interfaces, pre-filled fields, and minimal friction when initiating a payment.
• Transparency: They want to know exactly how much a transaction will cost – including fees and FX rates –before the process begins.
• Traceability: Much like tracking a parcel, customers want to follow their payment’s journey and know when it’s delivered.
Thankfully, financial institutions are already meeting many of these expectations using the right infrastructure. Providers that leverage Swift GPI, payment pre-validation, and ISO 20022 messaging are delivering premium experiences –without overcomplicating the payments process.
Collaboration Creates Connection
A seamless transaction journey requires all parties involved to collaborate. Coordinated action across the ecosystem –banks, market infrastructures, regulators, and technology providers – is essential to reduce friction from isolated systems.
For regulators and policymakers, this means reviewing local requirements that may unintentionally slow down payments and exploring real-time processing and payment pre-validation. For financial institutions, it means modernising backoffice systems, meeting global standards, and introducing transparency into customer-facing channels.
For the financial community, it means continuing to share data, insights, and best practices to raise standards across the industry and build a more connected financial ecosystem.
A Flourishing Future
The financial industry stands at a pivotal moment. We’ve made significant progress building a foundation for fast, transparent, and interoperable cross-border payments. Now the focus must shift to improving the beneficiary leg to enhance global connectivity.
By collaborating, we have a real opportunity to transform the cross-border payment journey to meet evolving customer expectations. Together, we can build a future where businesses thrive, families stay connected, and economies grow.
Barry Rodrigues, Executive Vice President, Payments, Finastra
Responsible for Finastra’s payments organization, Barry Rodrigues has built his 35-year career in financial services around the world in leading companies. He has a compelling track record of working in both early stage and growth businesses, spanning digital banking, credit cards, buy now pay later, merchant acquiring, corporate/virtual cards and networks. Previous roles include Senior Advisor at Boston Consulting Group and Chief Executive Officer at Barclays Cards and Payments. He brings deep payments knowledge and strong leadership expertise to his role at Finastra.
EVOLVING CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS TO DELIVER AGAINST G20 GOALS
In recent years we’ve seen an explosion in new options for making cross-border payments. New developments are being fueled by advances in technology, rising demand for speed and convenience and the G20 roadmap setting out the building blocks for change. Banks traditionally only routed cross-border payments via SWIFT to their correspondent banking partners. Now in addition, they can choose to connect to a range of cross-border payment networks such as Visa Direct and Mastercard, or fintechs such as Thunes. Add to this the onset of blockchain-based digital currencies, such as stablecoins, and you quickly see that the ability for banks to evaluate the most suitable payment options to best service their customer needs is fast increasing.
From an adoption point of view, we have seen new schemes take a while to scale, but they eventually do so. Take the launch of the UK’s Faster Payments System in 2008, which began with the ability to send just a few hundred pounds between individuals. As the technology matured and risk management systems became more sophisticated, higher transaction limits were put in place, rising to over £1 million today. This led adoption by consumers and corporates to grow quickly.
We’ve seen a similar trajectory in adoption rates for other immediate payment schemes across the world with more than 70 countries now running immediate payment systems, from NPP in Australia, to UPI in India, PIX in Brazil, and FedNow and RTP in the US.
We are also now seeing the rise of regional payment networks such as BUNA in the Middle East, SEPA Instant Credit Transfer in Europe, and Project Nexus in Southeast Asia, interlinking domestic instant payment systems across countries and regions. These will be the precursor to more global immediate payment connectivity. As market-based immediate payment schemes in the 70 countries above become the norm, connecting them to cross-border applications, thereby enabling immediate cross border transactions that consumers and corporates can avail themselves of, will only be a matter of time.
Further, it is reasonable to believe that the scaling of corporates making immediate payments domestically and globally will be accelerated by the widespread adoption of the ISO 20022 messaging standard.
ISO 20022 as an impetus for change
As we near the November cutover deadline for the next ISO 20022 phase of the migration process, the new standard paves the way for seamless communication and payment acceptance between disparate systems enabling most transactions to be processed straight through, effectively eliminating the need for costly and timeconsuming reconciliation processes. This means that globally, banks will be able to provide corporates looking to execute cross-border payments, a much stronger value proposition in terms of liquidity management and working capital tools, helping them to manage their cashflow more efficiently.
Given the scale of change banks have had to undertake to ensure they are ISO compliant, it’s not surprising that it’s prompted many to consider exploring significant upgrades or full replacements for their cross-border payment systems, so that they can compete and provide new value-added services going forward. We believe that change will not stop once the ISO migration process is completed. Indeed, advances in technology will likely throw up future developments we haven’t even considered yet, making it important that banks ensure any new systems they deploy are easily adaptable and ready for the future.
The case for payment modernization
When we think about the legacy monolithic payment architectures banks have historically been running and the amount of work required each time an upgrade is due, it’s clear why many large banks are now taking steps to move to more modern, microservices-based payment solutions. A modular, component-based architecture allows banks to be far more agile and scalable in deploying new capabilities, making them more forward-compatible for innovation and evolution in payments for both domestic and cross border. It means they can move quickly to onboard new capabilities that customers want to use and to decommission others that are no longer required. For example, banks with a modern payment architecture could add stablecoin capabilities to access innovative settlement options, should they choose to
do so. Such an approach is also crucial in enabling banks to deliver a high-quality customer experience, providing holistic and transparent tracking for all payments endto-end regardless of the different payment rails being used.
It is not only the largest banks that stand to benefit from a modern, componentbased approach. Smaller banks adopting a payments-as-a-service (PaaS) model can also reap advantages from lower cost of ownership and the flexibility to offer new domestic and cross-border services to their customers, particularly if they can offer expertise in a particular niche or between specific geographies.
Modern systems and data architectures are also essential in delivering on the potential of AI. Banks are actively exploring the added value and efficiency savings AI can offer, for example in automatically detecting a failed payment, identifying any missing information or defects in the message and suggesting the correct repair. Automation can dramatically reduce the time involved in fixing payment exceptions, delivering tremendous operating efficiency. Another benefit of modernized payments systems is enabling smarter routing options so that banks can make these decisions for the benefit of the customer. Using smart routing in this way centralizes and optimizes routing decisions to reduce complexity, enhance reliability and operational efficiency, as well as offering a precise transaction settlement capability. It helps improve the speed and reliability of payments processing and reduces transaction costs.
Agility is key
It is clear that strong progress is being made against the G20 roadmap set out in 2020 for enhancing cross-border payments. However, there remains significant scope for ongoing change based on the interpretation and implementation of key building blocks.
In the face of such change banks can’t afford to stand still. Those that seize the initiative in modernizing their payments platforms will be best positioned to pivot quickly and help their customers navigate and capitalize on the opportunities ahead.
BREAKING THE PAYOUT BARRIER: HOW HOSTED PAYMENT PAGES ARE RESHAPING CROSS-BORDER DISBURSEMENTS
In the world of global commerce, getting paid is only half the battle. Sending money, particularly across borders, to individuals whose payment details aren’t readily available, is a challenge many businesses know all too well.
From the gig economy and travel platforms to insurance claims and gaming payouts, the demand for fast, flexible, and compliant disbursement solutions is accelerating. But traditional payout processes have lagged behind. They’re too often costly, complex, and designed with legacy frameworks that simply don’t meet the needs of today’s dynamic, user-led ecosystems.
At Ecommpay, we’ve been working to change that. Our latest solution, Payouts via Hosted Payment Page, is helping merchants and platforms overcome these longstanding bottlenecks – bringing new speed and simplicity to cross-border disbursements.
And it’s gaining industry recognition. Most recently, the solution won the Special Judges’ Award for Innovation and Transformation at the Financial Services Forum 2025.
Rethinking the last mile in payments
The final leg of the payment journey, delivering funds to the end user, is where many operational and compliance headaches arise.
Typically, payout flows have required businesses to collect and manage sensitive beneficiary data in advance, including payment card information. That’s not only a UX issue, it’s a regulatory burden and a development drain.
Ecommpay’s Hosted Payment Page model flips that on its head. Merchants no longer need to collect card or wallet details upfront. Instead, the recipient enters their payment information directly and securely on a fully customisable Ecommpay-hosted page, powered by our PCI DSS Level 1-certified infrastructure. That means fewer integration challenges, reduced data liability, and a smoother experience all around.
Whether you’re new to automated payouts or ready to scale quickly, this is a proven solution that’s already helping merchants like you move faster.
A better fit for global business models
Consider platforms like Uber, AirBnB, or freelance marketplaces, where beneficiaries are often individuals, not businesses, and where speed and scale are critical. With Payouts via Hosted Payment Page, these companies can initiate a payout request in seconds.
We’ve removed the need for custom development pipelines or manual processes. In just two simple steps – registering payout requests and retrieving the payment page for customers – merchants can streamline the entire process. Customers can then enter their payment details on the Payment Page and complete the payout effortlessly.
Speed to market without the compliance baggage
Regulatory compliance is one of the costliest aspects of implementing a payout solution, particularly when it involves storing or transmitting payment
Artur Zaremba, Head of Payment Solutions and Senior Product Owner, Ecommpay
Artur Zaremba is Head of Payment Solutions and Senior Product Owner at Ecommpay, leading three strategic product streams: CMS payment plugins, the Hosted Payment Page, and merchant-driven features. He has delivered innovations such as Click to Pay, Currency Choice, and an award-winning payouts product, recognised with the Judges’ Award at the Financial Services Forum 2025 Awards for Innovation and Transformation.
Passionate about creating seamless, reliable payment experiences, Artur blends product strategy with crossteam collaboration to drive adoption, growth, and lasting market impact.
details. Our hosted approach takes that pressure off merchants entirely. Because Ecommpay handles the sensitive data entry and processing, businesses reduce their PCI compliance scope dramatically. That frees up resource and engineering capacity to focus on product innovation and customer experience, rather than compliance checklists and security protocols.
To further protect merchants and their customers, we’ve built an additional layer of security directly into the payout payment flow on the Payment Page. Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) via email ensures only authorised users can complete payout transactions, significantly reducing the risk of compromises where intruders could attempt to divert funds to unauthorised accounts. By requiring this second verification step, we safeguard merchant balances and strengthen trust in our payment solutions.
In addition, we’ve designed the solution with localisation and UX flexibility in mind. The payment page can be tailored to match a brand’s look and feel using
our intuitive Payment Page Designer, available in the Ecommpay Dashboard. It supports multiple languages and payment cards, giving users an experience that feels native, wherever they are.
Shaping the future of disbursements
As cross-border commerce continues to scale, we believe payouts should be as seamless and intelligent as payments in. At Ecommpay, we see the rise of flexible, no-code solutions like Payouts via Hosted Payment Page as a key driver of that shift.
We’re already seeing early adopters, ranging from e-learning platforms to gig platforms, use this tool to reduce payout friction, improve user trust, and accelerate global expansion.
In a competitive, user-first digital economy, businesses can no longer afford to treat payouts as an afterthought. They’re a key part of the brand experience and a critical point of differentiation. With smart tools and simplified flows, we can make global payouts faster, safer, and more accessible for everyone.
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier, Founder and CEO, iBanFirst
GLOBAL FROM DAY ONE: THE FUTURE OF CROSSBORDER PAYMENTS
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier, Founder and CEO of iBanFirst, explains how his company is redefining the way small and medium enterprises (SMEs) or, as he calls them, “Small and Medium Multinationals (SMMs)” navigate the increasingly complex world of cross-border payments.
Financial IT: What is iBanFirst focusing on currently, and what exciting developments can we expect in the coming months?
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier: Our focus is very clear: helping SMEs that operate internationally. We call them “Small and Medium Multinationals.” They may be small in size, but their financial needs resemble those of much larger corporations. They’re dealing with multiple currencies, countries, entities, and banking relationships.
Managing all of this complexity is no small feat. That’s where iBanFirst comes in. We provide the tools and expertise to streamline international payments and cash management across different banks and jurisdictions.
Financial IT: SMEs seem to be going global faster than ever before. Have you noticed any shifts in how they handle cross-border payments, and what roadblocks are you helping them overcome?
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier: What we see today is that companies are international from the very beginning. Unlike a decade ago, when most SMEs focused first on their domestic markets, smaller businesses now think globally from inception.
Selling and sourcing worldwide has become far easier, and that shift has transformed how SMEs operate. If you are launching a business today, a global outlook is the default, and with that comes the need for the right tools to manage international operations effectively.
Another major trend is the move away from traditional banks. Until recently, banks controlled about 95% of the
cross-border payments market. Today, SMEs increasingly turn to specialized providers like iBanFirst, who can offer more advanced platforms, technology, and expertise than traditional institutions. It mirrors what happened in the consumer space with companies like Wise, where specialized players set a new standard.
Financial IT: How does iBanFirst position itself as "the new standard for crossborder transactions"?
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier: We position ourselves against traditional banks on three key dimensions: speed, security, and price. Across each of these, we consistently deliver a higher standard than what banks are typically able to provide.
Financial IT: How do you guarantee the security of assets flowing through your services?
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier: We have built multiple layers of security into the platform. One feature our clients value most is multi-signature functionality, which makes it simple to manage account rights and payment approvals. Even within a small company structure – a CEO, CFO, treasurer, and assistants rules can be set so that one person initiates a payment but another must approve it before release. Companies can also restrict certain transactions, for example allowing specific users to move funds only between the company’s own accounts while blocking third-party payments. By configuring these rules with ease, SMEs can maintain full control over how money flows through their accounts.
Financial IT: How does iBanFirst adapt to regulatory changes while maintaining seamless service delivery?
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier: Compliance and AML checks are central to everything we do in cross-border payments. We operate under two key regulatory frameworks.
First, our Belgian license allows us to serve clients across the EU, and under
this license we have established 11 offices throughout Europe.
Second, following Brexit, we secured an EMI license in the UK to support UK-based clients directly. Having both authorisations is highly valuable, since many of our clients maintain operations in both the UK and continental Europe. They require strong relationships with a European PSP as well as a UK-based EMI, and we are positioned to provide both.
Financial IT: Are you looking to expand geographically into other markets?
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier: Yes, we are continuing to expand across Europe, where growth is relatively straightforward thanks to our Belgian license, which can be passported throughout the EU. This year alone, we are opening two new European markets.
Beyond Europe, we are exploring opportunities in Dubai, Asia, and the United States, though each of these requires separate licensing. With a client base of 10,000 companies, many of whom are already expanding into these regions, it is a natural step for us to follow and support them in new markets.
Financial IT: Have you noticed any growing trends in where your clients are looking to expand?
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier: Our expertise is strongest in G7 markets, where the largest payment flows occur. The majority of transactions we process are Euro to US Dollar. A typical scenario is a European SME conducting business in Dollars, whether with partners in the United States or in China.
This remains the most common flow across our platform, as it reflects the realities of global trade. These economies are the largest in the world, and naturally they generate the bulk of international transactions.
OPEN BANKING, AI, AND THE NEW RULES OF CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS
Financial IT: Mark, global payments are evolving rapidly. From your perspective, what are the biggest opportunities that cross-border payments present for the fintech industry today?
Mark Andreev: Cross-border payments are at a turning point. For fintech companies, the biggest opportunity lies in helping merchants scale internationally without scaling costs at the same pace. With acquisition costs rising and margins under pressure, merchants expect more than just the ability to accept payments or send payouts. They need solutions that optimise expenses, reduce operational overhead, and still deliver on speed, conversion, and security.
One challenge is that merchants often don’t know which payment methods are critical in new markets, or how to prioritise them. This creates an opportunity for fintech providers to act as true partners, bundling a portfolio of local payment methods, simplifying integration, and educating merchants along the way.
At the same time, digital innovation is reshaping the landscape. AI, smart routing, Open Banking, and cloudbased architectures are making crossborder payments more cost-effective by improving FX management, lowering fees, and enabling near-instant payouts.
Another segment with significant potential is cryptocurrency, particularly stablecoins. While still early in adoption, crypto has the ability to address longstanding cross-border challenges by
enabling instant pay-ins and payouts, reducing reliance on intermediaries, and lowering transaction costs. Beyond efficiency, crypto also offers an inclusion angle: in regions with limited banking infrastructure, it can provide access to global commerce for the unbanked.
Financial IT: Many players see cross-border growth as a challenge due to complexity and cost. How do you see fintechs like Exactly.com turning these challenges into opportunities?
Mark Andreev:By building an extensive portfolio of payment methods, fintechs can help merchants diversify revenue streams and reduce reliance on a single channel.
Crucially, by decreasing the number of intermediaries in the payment chain and building more of the infrastructure inhouse, fintechs can significantly improve efficiency, stability, and transparency for merchants, especially in cross-border transactions. The key here is choosing direct integrations with solution providers and payment methods, rather than relying on third-party intermediaries, which often add unnecessary complexity and cost.
The segment of fintech aggregators, connecting various payment methods, is set to grow rapidly, creating space for new players that can combine global reach with local market expertise.
Financial IT: Open Banking and Open Finance are often described as game-
changers for payments. How do you see API-driven, bank-to-bank payments reshaping the global payments landscape?
Mark Andreev:Open Banking is often described as a global disruptor, but in practice its adoption remains uneven and heavily localised. In the EU and UK, frameworks are relatively mature, yet card schemes still dominate worldwide. One reason is user experience: while bank-to-bank payments are secure and cost-efficient, they don’t yet match the convenience of cards or cards-based wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay. Governments play a pivotal role in accelerating adoption and reshaping the landscape. One of the most effective levers is tighter integration between digital banking and public digital infrastructure. In several European markets, digital ID and electronic signatures are not limited to banking but are central to how citizens interact with both public and private services: when the same secure credentials give citizens access to everything from tax filings and government applications to financial platforms, trust and adoption rise significantly.
That said, without integration into daily life and core business operations, Open Banking adoption will remain limited. It is too early to speak about a truly global shift.
Open Banking is unlikely to replace existing rails, but it will complement them. Its greatest impact may be in
Mark Andreev, COO, Exactly.com
Mark Andreev is the COO of a payment provider Exactly.com, and a fintech leader with over 20 years of experience. A pioneer in launching card payments in Europe, he now leads the Exactly.com’s strategy to help e-commerce businesses scale across the UK and EU – without scaling costs. He champions a new fintech standard by combining smart payment technology with real human support, focusing on micro and SME merchants with ongoing assistance that extends beyond the integration stage. Previously, as CEO of Decta, he oversaw the company’s expansion across Europe and the UK and strengthened its payment infrastructure.
broadening consumer choice, pushing the ecosystem toward faster, cheaper, and more transparent payments, where cards, wallets, and Open Banking can coexist.
Financial IT: Credit and debit cards have long dominated cross-border payments. What advantages do Open Banking solutions offer over traditional cardbased flows?
Mark Andreev:Pay by Bank transactions typically incur lower fees than traditional card payments. By bypassing interchange fees merchants can significantly reduce costs, particularly on cross-border payments.
It’s often said that Open Banking transfers have no chargebacks, which is partly misleading. While a chargeback is possible, it’s much harder for the end consumer to succeed.
I’ve seen this first-hand. Some colleagues paid for Cirque du Soleil tickets by card, others by bank transfer. The event never happened and the organiser disappeared. Those who paid by card were able to recover their money, whereas the bank transfer payments were lost. This illustrates how difficult it can be for consumers to get funds returned.
Verification is another strength. Open Banking allows merchants to instantly verify a customer’s bank account details through secure APIs. This reduces errors and lowers fraud risk.
Speed and convenience are key drivers of adoption. First-time buyers
often experience friction entering card details, while Pay by Bank payments can be completed in just a few clicks. A smooth, fast experience can encourage repeat purchases.
Coverage and choice also matter. Some Open Banking solutions span the UK and a lot of European countries, allowing merchants to localise checkout with familiar banks for their customers, all through a single integration. Offer ing different payment options is critical: its absence can dramatically increase cart abandonment rates.
Financial IT: In your view, what barriers still stand in the way of widespread adoption of Open Banking for crossborder payments?
Mark Andreev: Across Europe, the adoption of Open Banking differs widely from country to country, both in regulatory approach and practical implementation. And there is currently no single provider capable of offering seamless coverage across all markets, meaning businesses often have to prioritise individual countries rather than scaling region-wide. Although some solutions now cover much of the UK and parts of Europe, full pan-European reach remains limited, restricting the potential for broader adoption.
Cultural differences and ingrained payment habits across countries also remain a barrier to usage.
Financial IT: You’ve suggested that global acquirers and card networks could eventually “go out of fashion.” Could you elaborate on what an inclusive, card-free global payment system might look like in practice?
Mark Andreev: The first question is whether we actually need such a system, and the second is whether it’s even possible to build a truly global one. Building a completely new digital banking infrastructure from scratch is neither feasible nor necessary; it would take decades to achieve.
Even if banks, fintechs, and regulators were to collaborate on a global payment system, it wouldn’t be fully achievable. “Truly global” would mean the same quality and functionality everywhere, but cultural, regulatory, and market differences will always remain.
So, while a card-free system might be desirable, I don’t believe it’s realistically possible to build one. Rather than replacing existing systems, what we’ll see is evolution: international card schemes adding more “towers” to their existing infrastructure, whether through in-house innovation or acquisitions. Visa and Mastercard, for example, have proven resilient not by reinventing themselves, but by continuously modernising. Apple Pay and Google Pay are essentially new towers built on their foundation, not entirely new buildings.
Nevertheless, card networks will continue to dominate. The real winners will be fintechs that know how to bridge global rails with local methods, and combine that with automat ion and cost-optimised infrastructure. This is where value is created: making global payments faster, safer, and more merchant-friendly without pretending to reinvent the system from scratch.
Financial IT: Connectivity is central to this shift. How important is collaboration between banks, fintechs, and regulators in creating truly global, interoperable payment systems?
Mark Andreev: Collaboration is crucial, but we need to be realistic about what it can achieve. Even if banks, fintechs, and regulators work together, a “truly global” payment system in the strictest sense isn’t possible. Regulations, consumer habits, and market structures vary too
widely. What we can achieve, however, is greater interoperability.
Where collaboration does move the needle is in creating frameworks that allow local and regional solutions to connect more seamlessly. We see this in Europe with digital IDs and e-signatures being integrated into both p ublic and private services. When governments support the infrastructure, adoption accelerates because trust and usability improve.
So collaboration isn’t abo ut building one single system for everyone. It’s about connecting many systems so that merchants and consumers can transact more easily across borders.
Financial IT: What trends are you seeing in different regions regarding the adoption of Open Banking and crossborder payment innovation?
Mark Andreev: Overall, we see growing interest in Open Banking across the UK and Europe, but adoption is far from uniform.
In the UK, it’s clearly ahead. Around 13 millions or about one in five digitally active consumers a nd SMEs, are now using Open Banking, with small businesses driving the growth. But we need perspective: Apple Pay is used by 63% of UK consumers , Google Pay by 37%, and nearly half of adults are registered for mobile contactless. Compared to wallets, Open Banking is still in its early stages.
In continental Europe, adoption is slower. Markets like Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and France are moving forward, but penetration is low.
The Baltics are an exception. In Estonia, the vast majority of the population uses online banking, and Latvia already has more than two dozen bank APIs. Strong infrastructure and a tradition of bank transfers make Open Banking a natural fit there.
To summarise: adoption is growing, awareness is improving, and businesses are beginning to trust Open Banking as a secure payment method. But habits and resistance to c hange remain the biggest barriers, and progress is still coming off a relatively low base.
Financial IT: What role do you see technology, particularly AI and datadriven tools, playing in improving
speed, security, and user experience in cross-border payments?
Mark Andreev: Technology is central to addressing the main pain points in cross-border payments. Implemented correctly, AI and data-driven tools help merchants increase revenue by reducing high payment fees, improving acceptance rates, and minimising false declines.
Routing and cascading of transactions have long been standard practice, but today they can be optimised using machine learning and predictive analytics. These systems can dynamically select the best payment path in real time, improving transaction success rates by using historical data.
Security and risk management also benefit significantly. Advanced machine learning models can identify fraudulent behaviour even before it becomes active, allowing us to predict and prevent fraud rather than simply reacting to it.
Financial IT: Looking ahead, where do you see global payments five years from now, and what role do you envision Exactly. com playing in that future
Mark Andreev: In five years, global payments will look far more intelligent and inclusive than they do today. AI and data-driven tools will be central, driving payment technologies. Over time, these same technologies will also optimise costs for providers, from onboarding and integrations to processing, which will help democratise fintech access worldwide.
But the real shift will be about who gets to benefit. While large enterprises have long had access to tailored solutions, SMEs often face high fees, slow support, or even outright termination due to turnover. Too many small businesses are left navigating ticketing systems instead of getting the guidance they need to grow.
This is exactly where Exactly.com steps in. We see ourselves as a partner for the ‘small giants’ – the micro and small businesses that form the backbone of the global economy. Our role is to deliver enterprise-level payments infrastructure with real human support: faster integration, proactive problem-solving, and genuine care. And this is something we do already, and AI together with machine learning will drive this process further and faster.
THE NEXT FRONTIER IN CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS
Cross-border payments have powered global commerce for decades. But despite their importance, these transactions remain inefficient and full of friction. Businesses, banks, and regulators alike have accepted a certain amount of pain as the cost of doing international business. Settlements take too long. Fees are often unpredictable. And compliance requirements vary so widely across jurisdictions that global consistency feels out of reach.
A market at a turning point
Now, though, we are at a point of real change. The year 2025 is shaping up to be an inflection point. Several forces are coming together to reshape how financial institutions manage payments across borders. Regulatory data standards like ISO 20022 are maturing. Digital payment networks are gaining traction. And technologies like AI and process automation are finally capable of addressing the operational bottlenecks that have plagued this space for years.
What makes this issue a priority for financial institutions?
• Inefficiency and Friction: Cross-border payments are inefficient, with slow settlements and unpredictable fees.
• Compliance Complexity: Regulatory compliance varies widely across
jurisdictions, making global consistency difficult.
• Operational Bottlenecks: Manual reconciliation and fragmented compliance systems lead to significant operational challenges.
• Hybrid Environment Management: Financial institutions must manage both traditional and digital payment infrastructures simultaneously, which introduces new complexities.
• Evolving Technologies: While new technologies like tokenized assets and blockchain offer promise, they also introduce challenges such as smart contract auditing and regulatory oversight.
• Customer Expectations: Growing customer demands for faster and more transparent transactions.
• Liquidity Visibility: The need for better visibility into liquidity across different payment rails.
• Competitive Pressure: The need to differentiate through customer experience and agile operations.
Hybrid infrastructure, hybrid complexity
The result is a complicated but promising new reality. We are no longer looking
Tom Pirone, Industry Lead, Financial Services, Appian
at a clean break from the past. Instead, financial institutions must figure out how to work with both old and new infrastructure at the same time. Traditional correspondent banking systems still handle most transactions. At the same time, digital rails are emerging. These rails are often faster and more transparent. Banks will need to move fluidly between both, often within the same transaction. To do that, they must rethink their operations.
Why orchestration is the answer
It is important to understand that modernization does not mean starting over. It means orchestrating what already exists in a smarter, faster, and more connected way. The institutions that succeed will be the ones that embrace orchestration as their competitive edge. The traditional payments model is struggling under modern demands. Most cross-border transactions pass through multiple intermediaries. Every step adds complexity and delay. Settlement times are measured in days, not seconds. Reconciliation is still largely manual. Regulatory compliance, especially for sanctions and anti-money laundering, is fragmented across disconnected systems. Even well-intended attempts at modernization often add new layers of complexity. Banks try to bolt on new capabilities like ISO 20022 translators or regional real-time payments schemes. Unfortunately, without an orchestrated foundation, these efforts create silos instead of solutions.
Emerging technology, new pressure
At the same time, new technologies bring both promise and risk. Tokenized assets, blockchain-based transfers, and digital currencies could simplify cross-border payments. However, they also introduce new challenges. Smart contract auditing, regulatory oversight, and asset custody are all still maturing. As a result, financial institutions are now operating in a hybrid environment. They must manage both traditional and digital transactions with the same level of control and transparency.
Coordinating the entire payment lifecycle
This is where orchestration becomes essential. Banks need more than integration. They need the ability to coordinate the entire lifecycle of a transaction. This includes initial risk screening, settlement, reconciliation, and everything in between. It means connecting core systems, digital platforms, compliance engines, and customer-facing channels in a unified workflow. It also means adapting to different message formats, asset types, and jurisdictional rules in real time.
Appian enables this kind of orchestration through a platform that combines low-code development with AI and a unified data fabric. Banks can design workflows that span every part of the payment lifecycle. They can do this without needing to replace their existing systems. This flexibility is critical. Compliance rules are tightening and customer expectations are growing more demanding.
Proof in action: Towerbank’s story
The benefits are clear. One global institution reduced sanctions investigation times significantly by automating low-risk alert triage using AI. Another streamlined its payment investigations by giving analysts a single view across SWIFT, regional payment systems, and digital asset platforms. With this kind of transparency, root causes are easier to spot. Responses are faster and more consistent. Reconciliation, often the last mile of the transaction process, also improves. By consolidating data from across systems and applying predictive analytics, banks can spot recurring errors and fix them proactively.
A particularly compelling example of this approach in action is Towerbank, a forward-thinking institution based in Latin America. Towerbank was facing two major pressures. On one side, they needed to serve a growing number of digital asset customers. On the other, they had to meet increasingly complex regulatory obligations in both fiat and digital environments.
Using Appian, Towerbank implemented an end-to-end orchestration layer that supports both traditional and digital payments. Their new platform enables full customer onboarding in minutes, with due diligence. It includes real-time transaction monitoring across asset classes and a single case management environment for investigations. It also integrates with digital custody providers. This allows the bank to operate confidently across multiple payment infrastructures.
The result has been faster time to market, a stronger compliance posture, and a foundation that can scale as new digital payment methods emerge. Towerbank’s experience shows how orchestration does more than solve today’s problems. It positions institutions to take advantage of tomorrow’s opportunities.
Looking ahead
There is a common myth in financial services that meaningful transformation requires core replacement. But this simply is not true. The fastest and safest path to modernization is to extend what already works. This is done through agile, purposebuilt orchestration. Appian has helped global institutions do exactly this. In one case, the platform enabled a multi-rail, ISO 20022-ready payments program to go live in under five months.
Cross-border payments are evolving. They are no longer just back-office utilities. They are becoming front-line differentiators. In an environment where customer experience, liquidity visibility, and regulatory agility matter more than ever, orchestration is not just useful. It is strategic.
The institutions that thrive in this environment will be those that can adapt quickly and operate confidently. They will move value across any payment rail with speed and control. Integration alone will not get them there. Orchestration will.
Ready to modernize how money moves?
Appian is helping leading institutions around the world move faster, act smarter, and prepare for what’s next. Discover how your organization can unify operations across traditional and digital payments. Visit appian.com to learn more.
THE INTERSECTION OF AI AND BLOCKCHAIN: TRANSFORMING THE FINANCIAL SERVICES LANDSCAPE
Intro
Conversations around blockchain and AI in financial services have matured in recent years. Previously, conversations were rooted in potential, but now we’re seeing the real-world deployment of these two ‘super trends’ to deliver measurable value to businesses.
Though each technology is disruptive in its own right, even further transformational impact comes from their convergence. Together, they are reshaping how markets unlock liquidity, accelerating transaction velocity, and taking structural costs out of post-trade.
For years, distributed ledger technology (DLT) was synonymous with pilots and proofs of concept. That phase is over. Broadridge’s DLR platform now processes billions of dollars in notional value every day in tokenized repos, with intraday repo use cases demonstrating tangible improvements in collateral velocity and liquidity management. According to
Broadridge’s DLT in the Real World survey, 50% of custodians and banks expect to run live DLT operations in 2025, clear evidence that the technology is integral to the next stage of market infrastructure. Agentic AI is driving up to 50% productivity gains as well as customer satisfaction gains from early production deployments in Operations. Broadridge experience includes settlement operations and fails research in the BPO and complex data extraction workflows in regulatory communications. The analyst consensus is for rapid growth, Gartner predicts 40% of large financial institutions will have AI agents deployed in missioncritical ops and compliance functions by 2027.
The totality of platform
This shift is enabled by what we think of as the ‘totality of platform’, the unifying layer where AI and blockchain reinforce each other. Blockchain brings the ability to tokenize assets and enable
new settlement models, while AI drives automation, analytics and speed. The result is a foundation that makes rapid implementation possible for institutions. And the C-suite are paying attention. Survey data shows 85% of firms report improved intraday liquidity, 79% see lower processing costs, and 71% highlight fewer failed trades and payments when deploying AI-blockchain solutions. For CFOs and COOs, these improvements directly map to capital efficiency, cost reduction and reduced risk.
Why operations leaders should care
Senior leadership expects significant progress, PWC’s 2024 survey of financial services CEOs shows that 70% of financial services CEOs expect AI to deliver measurable operational efficiency improvements within 3 years.
For operations managers, it highlights why leadership are asking tougher
questions: Are we getting the most out of our collateral? Why are settlement cycles still lagging? Which costs can automation strip out of post-trade?
However, wary of disrupting fragile dayto-day processes, many managers hesitate to move first. This is where adoption can feel uneven; the C-suite sees the strategic benefits clearly, while the operational layers remain cautious. Yet this hesitation is becoming harder to defend. The C-suites priorities are narrowing around three areas, namely liquidity, transaction velocity and cost reduction, and these are precisely the areas where AI and blockchain are already delivering measurable results.
Use cases in the real world
The biggest opportunity lies in targeted use cases – consider liquidity. Intraday repo has emerged as a proof point for how tokenisation can unlock liquidity by allowing collateral to be pledged and returned within hours. On transaction
Roger Burkhardt, CTO & Head of AI, Broadridge
Head of AI and CTO at Broadridge Financial Solutions and is a seasoned CTO, CDAO, CEO with twenty years’ experience leading technology transformations. He has a track record in accelerating value from AI and mission-critical computing and broad experience innovating in AI, big data, agile, mobile, cloud and user experience. Roger’s broad industry expertise including financial services, energy and technology. Prior to joining Broadridge he spent four years as a Partner in McKinsey’s QuantumBlack AI practice for financial services driving large scale programs in top 4 financial institutions in US and Europe. Before McKinsey, Roger was the CEO of EagleEye Analytics, a machine learning company, building the most accurate models in the P&C industry. Prior to this, Roger was CTO and EVP at the NYSE where designed and led the historic digital transformation from floor-based to electronic trading.
Horacio Barakat, Head of Digital Innovation, Broadridge
Co-Head of fixed income post-trade platforms at Broadridge, driving product strategy, revenue, and sales pipeline. He is also Head of Digital Innovation, leading the development of digital solutions for capital markets. As part of his responsibilities, Horacio is the GM of Broadridge’s DLT Repo platform (DLR), which he created and developed to become the leading global repo platform and has reached over $2T in monthly volume. He started his career at Broadridge as VP of Corporate Strategy and responsible for the development and execution of the company’s blockchain strategy, including principal investments and organic product development activities. Prior to joining Broadridge, Horacio held a variety of roles in investment banking, providing M&A and capital raising advise to financial services and financial technology firms. Horacio received his Industrial Engineering degree from Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) and his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
velocity, digital cash and stablecoins are enabling around-the-clock settlement, creating the possibility of 24/7 finance, reducing settlement risk and eliminating the constraints of market cut-offs. And on cost, AI-driven automation is proving its ability to strip out expensive manual reconciliations by triaging exceptions, classifying breaks, and accelerating resolution.
From curiosity to credibility
The evidence is mounting. These technologies are no longer theoretical experiments; they are being deployed at scale, processing trillions of dollars each month and demonstrating measurable benefits in liquidity, velocity, and cost. At the same time, adoption is becoming a competitive marker. Buy-side engagement is rising with survey data showing a 55% increase in sales and business development involvement and a 48% rise in C-level engagement between 2024 and 2025. Firms
that move early will not only capture efficiency gains but also help shape the platforms and standards others will need to follow.
Timing also matters. With 30% of organisations expecting ROI within 2–3 years and another 30% within 4–5, operations leaders are under pressure to prioritise use cases that demonstrate value quickly, not in the distant future.
The question is not whether AI and blockchain will transform financial services, that transformation is already underway. The real question is whether your team will be prepared when the C-suite asks how you are harnessing it. Those who embrace the totality of platform, where AI and blockchain reinforce each other, will not just keep pace with change, but help define the financial infrastructure of the next decade.
Andrew Elmore, Chief Technology Officer & Engineering Manager, Gresham
AI IN FINANCIAL SERVICES: WHY ARCHITECTURE MATTERS MORE THAN THE ALGORITHM
Artificial intelligence has dominated headlines and boardroom discussions across financial services in the past 18 months. From trade reconciliation to client onboarding, businesses are being told they must invest in AI to stay competitive. However, while there are huge gains to be had, many are struggling to translate this ambition into meaningful results.
The reason is simple: AI success is not primarily about algorithms. It starts with the foundations: data quality, a coherent system architecture, and the right technology platform to exploit the benefits of AI. Without these, the smartest models in the world will struggle to deliver value.
Why data integrity comes first
Financial institutions know that reconciliation, exception management, and regulatory reporting all depend on accurate, timely data. But the reality is that many systems remain fragmented, with inconsistent formats and manual processes slowing down the flow of information.
In this environment, AI will only amplify the noise. Feeding poor-quality data into machine learning or large language models produces unreliable outputs, precisely the opposite of what a highly regulated, riskaverse industry needs.
The institutions that will realise the potential of AI are those investing first in robust data management and modern, cloud-native platforms designed for real-time operations. This is not the “lift-and-shift” cloud approach that simply moves existing processes into a hosted environment. Instead, it requires rearchitecting systems to ensure automation, scalability, and resilience are built in from the ground up.
Embedding AI into the right platforms
Embedding AI into a modern, automationready environment unlocks new opportunities. Cloud-native reconciliation platforms, for instance, can apply AI to optimise matching rules, streamline exception handling, or onboard new data feeds with minimal human intervention.
This is especially relevant in today’s hybrid landscape, where financial institutions must reconcile transactions between nimble fintechs, operating on real-time rails, and incumbent players still running batch processes. AI can serve as the connective tissue, adapting logic and enabling faster, more accurate processing across mismatched systems.
The same is true for exception management. Rather than relying on static workflows or manual reviews, AIenabled platforms can dynamically classify, prioritise, and even resolve exceptions. This frees up staff to focus on complex cases where human judgement adds value. Crucially, these capabilities do not emerge from AI in isolation. They depend on an architecture designed for interoperability, resilience, and data integrity from the outset.
Turning investment into measurable outcomes
Financial institutions are rightly cautious about hype. Many so-called “AI solutions” in the market today are little more than statistical models. The real test is whether AI investments translate into measurable operational gains: faster reconciliation cycles, lower error rates, reduced exception queues, and ultimately lower cost-to-serve.
By embedding AI within cloud-native architectures, firms can track these improvements directly. For example, automating the ingestion of a new counterparty data feed, traditionally a time-intensive manual task, can now be completed in hours rather than weeks. Exception backlogs that once consumed days of staff time can be reduced to near real-time clearance. These are tangible gains that resonate with operations leaders and regulators alike.
Balancing innovation with trust
Of course, adopting AI in financial operations is not without its challenges. The hardware requirements are significant, regulatory scrutiny around data handling is intensifying, and institutions must maintain the highest standards of security and resiliency.
That is why an AI-ready architecture must embed controls for data governance, encryption, and jurisdictional compliance at every layer. Financial institutions cannot afford a trade-off between innovation and trust. The architecture must deliver both simultaneously.
The road ahead
Over the next three to five years, we will see financial institutions increasingly converge on a model of real-time, cloud-native operations where AI is not a bolt-on, but a core enabler. Firms that invest now in the right foundations – clean, reliable data and platforms designed for automation – will be positioned to demonstrate AI’s transformative impact across reconciliation, exception management, and beyond. For financial services leaders, the message is clear: don’t start with the algorithm, start with the architecture.
Claire Gates, Global Head of Payments and Solutions, CAB
DELIVERING CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS IN HARD-TO-REACH MARKETS: WHY AGILITY AND LOCAL EXPERTISE MATTER
Deep commodity reserves, young populations, and the rebalancing of global trade relationships have sparked undeniable interest and growth in emerging (‘hardto-reach’) markets. Individuals living in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean have fresh evolving buying power and expectations for connectivity. At the same time, expanding economies increase fiscal pressure on governments and central banks as they strive to balance economic growth effectively with innovation whilst protecting the interests of consumers and businesses.
Cross-border payments play a critical role in enabling the growth of these countries By facilitating money circulation between organisations such as banks, non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs), corporates, and international development organisations (IDOs), providers can act as sustainable development facilitators throughout emerging markets. But sustainable development is only achieved if those providers are prepared to adapt their technical solutions to local needs.
Hard-to-reach markets need partners and options
Unsurprisingly, the complexities that already exist in cross-border payments are amplified in hard-to-reach markets. Regulation and screening methodologies are maturing at varying rates across jurisdictions, leaving some vulnerable to financial crime and fraud.
IT systems also lack optimal ability to exchange and make use of information. Presently, this is manageable as fund volumes moving between hard-toreach markets are still comparatively small. But given the pace of growth,
interconnectivity will only become more complicated.
Providers offering an integrated orchestration model (which streamlines and unifies communication between various data sources and applications) will have the most success.
Yet still, the end-user experience often does not resemble that of established markets. For instance, when a client sends money to a hard-to-reach market, there is a high likelihood that it will not land in a checking account and instead go to a mobile wallet, or into stablecoin.
This is why optionality is key. Complementary transfer networks, like SWIFT, RTGS, and Automated Clearing House (ACH) routes, have distinct benefits depending on sector, end recipient, and ticket size. These are all optimised routes, and are especially critical for small-tomedium businesses, which are core to African financial development.
AI and stablecoins: tools, not solutions, for financial inclusion
It has become clear that blockchain and stablecoins will soon become embedded cross-border payment strategies for hardto-reach markets. They hold potential to counteract devaluation and fluctuation of local currencies, optimise treasury management, and free up trapped cash liquidity.
Hard-to-reach markets are arguably the best prepared to adopt stablecoins on mass, because their distinct needs necessitate building infrastructure. An example of this was seen in Latin America with phones, as many countries never bothered rolling out landlines. This meant that when mobiles
came along, adoption was quick. We’re seeing a similar phenomenon with fiat currency and stablecoins.
Stablecoins’ headwinds do not stem from a lack of capacity or demand, but from their reputation as a means of circumnavigating central banks. Greater transparency via regulatory compliance standards is clearly required, but it is unlikely that emerging markets will bend to a framework designed for G10 nations. Fundamentally, these jurisdictions want to control their stablecoin market infrastructure.
AI, meanwhile, can accelerate operational, risk and compliance capabilities. If providers can deploy AI quicker to identify patterns and irregularities based on historical transaction data, the cost of services will decline, and ultimately screening processes will become more sophisticated. To achieve this however, payments players must adopt AI in a deliberate manner suited to their clients. AI is not a payments solution itself, but should be viewed as one tool within a bespoke solutions package.
To conclude, cross-border payments providers must be agile to operate successfully and drive financial inclusion throughout hard-to-reach markets. They must work with institutions on the ground to identify pressure points and determine what makes sense locally. Those with a suite of network capabilities and a willingness to adapt technologically with a strong understanding and appreciate of the markets, will ultimately see capital flows.
CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS ARE JUST ONE WAY TO CLEAR & SETTLE PAYMENTS
Toine van Beusekom, Strategy Director, Icon Solutions
Cross-border payments are something of an anachronism in our supposedly globalised, digital world – largely seen as expensive, slow, inaccessible, and risky.
But if banks start thinking differently, it doesn’t have to be this way.
Why are cross-border payments perceived to be so hard?
While underlying structural challenges have undoubtedly inhibited cross-border payments, they are made worse by a serious technical hangover from a bygone area. Namely, banks have built complex and fragmented payment estates over decades. Individual processing flows and solutions were developed for different payment types – such as cross-border, domestic, highvalue, low-value, and instant – that each come with their own operational rules and requirements.
And because the ‘one hub to rule them all’ never really materialised, the result was (and is) batch-centric, asynchronous backend systems and a reliance on outdated IT infrastructure and a plethora of operational services. To compensate, banks are often forced to bolt new functionality onto these third-party solutions or add entirely new solutions – further fragmenting their infrastructure.
A turning point approaches
Though this approach was far from ideal, it was at least understandable. Wild differences in the infrastructures used to clear and settle different payment types – such as message formats and how these messages are processed – have long resisted any attempts at harmonisation.
But things are changing. Major regulatory initiatives have seen the (slow!) migration to the ISO 20022 messaging standard, in combination with support for both instant as well as cross-border payment schemes. With this, the rationale for using different payment systems for cross-border payments is disappearing as most payment processing moves towards a single messaging standard.
Yet these infrastructure-level developments mean very little if banks still insist on individual end-to -end processing engines for different payment types. For example, despite years of preparation and investment for the migration to ISO
20022, many still operate legacy estates that rely on ISO 20022 mappers around the edges – barely supporting low real-time volumes because the core wasn’t designed for that purpose. Compliance has been achieved through a series of short-term fixes, rather than a strategic approach to transforming the infrastructure to realise long-term business value and competitive differentiation.
With ISO 20022 volumes poised to increase precipitously in the coming months and years, the single biggest mistake banks can make is continuing to treat cross-border payments as a separate payment type. This will only create further fragmentation and complexity that simply will not stand up to the rigorous functional and non-functional requirements demanded by 24/7/365 realtime payments, be it cross-border or not.
Cross-border payments are just one way to clear & settle payments
The answer to breaking free of the constraints of outdated, legacy infrastructure lies in consolidation. Put simply – banks should start treating cross-border payments as just another payment. Specific requirements like Swift GPI and Standard Settlement Instructions (SSIs) can be orchestrated separately.
In fact, any bank in the business of processing payments should now be working towards a single, consolidated infrastructure capable of supporting any payment, anytime, anywhere. This will help lower costs by factors not percentages, while significantly bolstering resiliency and compliance.
Consolidation also makes it far easier for banks to support emerging, next-generation methods for clearing and settling crossborder payments. This is increasingly important as innovation in this space accelerates – spanning one-leg-out (OLO) transfers, stablecoins and CBDCs, various non-bank offerings, and initiatives such as Project Nexus, which aims to standardise connections between existing domestic instant payments systems.
A smarter approach to consolidation
For banks, the question is no longer if they should consolidate, but how. Thankfully,
the era of big bang transitions to a blackbox payments hub – which cost hundreds of millions, left banks entirely reliant on a single vendor, and almost invariably failed to deliver on the promise – has been consigned to history. Yet those building entirely in-house have fared little better in recent years, with projects overrunning, overspending and under-delivering (and if you think delivering payments functionality is hard, non-functional requirements are even harder to get right…).
This is why we are increasingly seeing banks turn to a new approach. To stay in control of their costs, build and risk, banks are now using flexible payment development framework solutions that allow them to sustainably move towards a consolidated payments processing infrastructure.
But to be successful, a clear strategy is needed that outlines why transformation is needed, what ‘good looks like’ in terms of the target state, and finally how to get there. Guided by this blueprint, banks can make use of a development framework to reimagine the payments processing value chain – moving from horizontal flows –or ‘rails’ – for single payment types and towards decoupled, vertical, bespoke, service-aligned flows spanning order management, execution, and clearing and settlement.
This progressive, gradual approach to transformation helps to realise immediate benefits that compound over time as more and more flows migrate over, while enabling banks to meet the requirements of new payment types, clearing and settlement methods, markets and usecases as they emerge, like the introduction of 'smart routing' in order management . Ultimately, this will position banks to take control, transform on their own terms, and lead payments forward.
Maxim Neshcheret, Regional Director for APAC and Central Asia, CMA Small Systems
Maxim Neshcheret is Regional Director for APAC and Central Asia at CMA Small Systems. Over the last 20 years he’s been responsible for the successful delivery of dozens of complex financial infrastructure projects across the Middle East, Africa and Asia. This includes implementing and advising on solutions for real-time gross settlement (RTGS), automated clearing house (ACH), instant payment systems (IPS) and central securities depositories (CSD).
Cross-border payments have long underpinned global trade and financial integration, yet for decades they remained slow, costly, opaque, and heavily dependent on complex correspondent banking networks and a handful of dominant currencies.
Most notably, the system has relied on the US dollar as the primary intermediary for settlement. In recent years, however, the landscape has begun to shift. This transformation is being driven by evolving geopolitical realities, increased regulatory convergence, and the growing maturity of shared standards such as ISO 20022.
Progress is also being fuelled by the modernisation of legacy technology stacks within banks, which have historically limited processing speed and flexibility. As financial institutions upgrade core systems and as new players like neobanks and fintechs enter the space, we are seeing faster, cheaper, and more inclusive models emerge. Combined with open APIs, real-time infrastructure, and cloud-native platforms, these developments are redefining how value moves across borders.
Global initiatives accelerate reform
The transformation underway in crossborder payments has been driven by a coordinated global effort. The G20’s Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-Border Payments, launched in 2020, identified key frictions in the system including cost, speed, access, and transparency. It laid the groundwork for a multi-year reform agenda that has since sparked major initiatives across central banks, regulators, financial institutions, and fintech innovators.
A key pillar of this reform is the global adoption of ISO 20022 as a common financial messaging standard. When implemented across infrastructures such as RTGS, ACH, and instant payment systems, ISO 20022 enables richer, more structured data, improving compliance, automation, and interoperability across borders. SWIFT has set a mandatory migration deadline of November 2025 for ISO 20022 adoption across its cross-border payment network, further reinforcing global alignment around this standard.
In parallel, the harmonisation of APIs and market practices is reducing the technical and legal complexity traditionally involved in connecting different jurisdictions. This progress is reinforced by regulatory
evolution in areas such as open banking, digital identity, and data portability.
Regional collaboration increases choice
Several global collaborative efforts are also accelerating change. The Bank for International Settlements has played a central role through initiatives like Nexus, Project Icebreaker, and mBridge, each testing models for secure and efficient crossborder connectivity. The Concorde project, developed by a group of central banks and industry stakeholders, is working to establish common technical and governance frameworks that will support secure, scalable, and compliant integration of crossborder systems.
Banks are no longer confined to relying on lengthy correspondent chains for crossborder transfers, especially newly established neobanks, which often lack an extensive network of correspondent relationships or clearing partners. In-country instant payment systems (IPS), once limited to domestic use, are increasingly being opened to cross-border participants. This shift allows banks to connect directly to regional schemes and settlement platforms, reducing costs and accelerating processing times.
The result is a growing menu of cross-border rail options. Domestic IPS infrastructure is being leveraged for crossborder use cases, while regional settlement platforms offer trusted, centralised rails for high-frequency transactions. As the number of real-time cross-border corridors grows, institutions have more choices than ever in designing payment flows that balance speed, cost, and compliance.
In the Caribbean, the CARICOM Single Payment System initiative, launched in 2025, is designed to reduce dependence on the US dollar and facilitate regional payments in local currencies, marking an important step toward financial sovereignty for small and mid-sized economies.
Further developments on the horizon
Looking ahead, several technological shifts will continue to shape the evolution of crossborder payments.
AI and data analytics are being integrated into transaction monitoring, fraud detection, and liquidity forecasting. These tools will enhance treasury operations by enabling
real-time visibility, smarter exception handling, and more predictive liquidity management.
Blockchain-powered networks, particularly those that enable atomic settlement and programmable money, are moving from experimental pilots to regulated applications. While interoperability and governance remain hurdles, the foundational technologies are maturing rapidly.
Stablecoins, especially when issued by regulated entities under frameworks like MiCA, offer the potential for near-instant, fiat-denominated transfers across digital wallets. While not a replacement for central bank infrastructure, they can complement existing systems, particularly for highfrequency or lower-value flows.
CBDCs may further transform the environment if interoperability standards are established. Central banks exploring cross-border pilots will need to address not just technology, but also legal, FX, and governance considerations. If aligned, CBDCs could integrate into existing payment layers and dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of international transfers.
The world of cross-border payments is being redefined. ISO 20022, API harmonisation, real-time connectivity, and regional sovereignty are reshaping how institutions and individuals move money globally. As traditional correspondent chains give way to dynamic, interoperable ecosystems, the industry must stay agile.
Success in the next phase will require embracing open standards, fostering publicprivate collaboration, and building systems that are not only fast and secure, but also fair and accessible.
The foundations for the global connectivity of tomorrow are being built one rail, one API and one trusted connection at a time.
Yasemin La Riva,
Counsel, Alfred Advisory AG
Yasemin is a venture capital and corporate lawyer focused on startups and business growth, with experience in investment deals, M&A, and advisory work for both emerging and top-tier funds. Trained at the University of Lausanne and Berkeley Law, Yasemin blends legal expertise with practical insight to guide founders and investors.
SO, YOU GOT A TERM SHEET
You’ve lined up interested investors, the pitch went well, and now someone wants to send you a term sheet. This is a big moment. But before you sign anything, it helps to understand what’s really on the table. Here’s a quick overview to help you understand what typically shows up in a term sheet and how to think about it, clear enough to be useful, without dragging things out with unnecessary complexity.
What exactly is a term sheet?
A term sheet is a non-binding document outlining the key terms of a proposed investment. Think of it as a roadmap for your deal. It doesn’t guarantee funding, but it sets the framework for negotiation and the final legal agreements (like the shareholders’ agreement and investment agreement). At its core, a term sheet tries to balance two key areas: economics (who gets what in terms of money) and control (who gets to decide what happens). Economics covers things like valuation, liquidation preferences, and anti-dilution, all about financial outcomes. Control shows up in governance terms like board structure, veto rights, and voting thresholds. Founders should evaluate both sides carefully. A generous valuation can be undercut by tight control provisions, and vice versa. The best deals usually reflect a healthy balance between investor protections and founder flexibility.
How long should a term sheet be? There's no single answer. Some run just a page or two, others stretch longer. The key is finding a balance: it should be clear and structured enough to reflect the future long-form agreements, but not so overloaded with detail that it slows things down or causes confusion. A well-drafted term sheet helps both parties align quickly on the main commercial and governance points without getting bogged down in legal fine print too early.
While term sheets aren’t legally binding overall, certain clauses (like confidentiality and exclusivity) usually are. Don’t assume you can ignore them once signed.
Valuation and investment amount
This is usually the first headline number in any term sheet along with the type of security,
and issue price: the pre-money valuation and the amount the investor plans to invest. Together, they determine the percentage of equity you’re giving up.
Understand how the valuation impacts dilution and future rounds. A higher valuation means giving up less equity, but it also sets expectations for future growth. Also, check whether the valuation is premoney or post-money, this affects how much of the company the investor actually ends up owning. For example, a USD 5 million pre-money valuation with a USD 1 million investment gives away 16.7%, while a USD 5 million post-money valuation gives away 20%. That difference matters. Valuation is often expressed on a fully diluted basis, which means taking into account not only existing shares but also all shares that could be created from options, warrants, or convertible instruments. For example, if your company has 1,000,000 outstanding shares today and you issue 200,000 options under an ESOP, investors will calculate their ownership based on 1,200,000 shares. In practice, that means their percentage ownership will be lower than if calculated on an outstanding-sharesonly basis. Depending on the term sheet, the ESOP pool is sometimes expanded before the investment, which can shift dilution more heavily onto founders than investors.
Liquidation preference
Investors will usually include a liquidation preference, which dictates how they get paid back in the event of an exit (such as a sale of the company or IPO). A typical preference is 1x non-participating, meaning the investor gets their money back first, but only if their pro-rata share of the exit proceeds would otherwise give them less than their original investment. If the exit price is high enough that their equity stake alone would already return at least their initial investment, the preference provides no extra benefit. Participating preferences ("double-dip") and multiples above 1x can significantly affect how exit proceeds are distributed. From a founder's perspective, they may reduce the upside in a successful exit. From an investor's view, these terms offer downside protection, especially in higher-risk deals. Whether such terms are appropriate depends on the stage, valuation, and broader deal dynamics.
Board structure and governance
Term sheets often set out how the board will look post-investment. This includes the number of seats, who appoints them, and what kind of decisions require board or investor consent. These consent rights typically cover major decisions, such as raising additional capital, selling the company, or changing the business model, and are designed to ensure alignment on key strategic moves. The scope of these rights varies, and both parties should aim for a setup that protects key interests without creating operational bottlenecks.
It’s common for investors to seek a board seat as part of their role in supporting and overseeing the company’s growth. At the same time, founders should ensure that board and consent structures remain workable and aligned with the company’s stage. Clear expectations and balanced governance help avoid decision-making bottlenecks while keeping both sides comfortable with their level of involvement.
Founder vesting and employment terms
Even if you’ve been building for years, investors often require founders to “revest” their shares over time. This isn’t just about investor protection; it’s also a way to safeguard the company and the remaining co-founders if someone exits early. By tying equity to continued involvement, vesting helps maintain fairness, preserve motivation, and support long-term team stability. It benefits the company and cofounders by ensuring that equity is earned over time. This helps promote commitment, fair ownership distribution, and long-term alignment among the founding team.
Typical vesting schedules are four years with a one-year cliff. What's considered fair can vary depending on the context, so it's worth discussing any terms that feel unusually restrictive or misaligned with the founders' or investors' expectations.
Anti-dilution provisions
Investors often include anti-dilution clauses that protect their share of the company if you raise future rounds at a lower valuation.
The most common is broad-based weighted average anti-dilution. It’s generally viewed as a middle-ground approach because it adjusts the conversion price of preferred shares in a down round based on both the size and price of the new issuance. This offers investors some protection without unduly penalizing founders or early shareholders. It’s widely accepted because it balances fairness and predictability, especially in early and growthstage financings.
Full-ratchet anti-dilution provisions can have a significant impact on ownership dynamics, especially in down rounds. They offer stronger protection for investors but may lead to substantial dilution for founders. Whether this clause is appropriate often depends on the specific circumstances, including market conditions, company stage, and perceived risk. It's worth evaluating case by case.
Warranties and due diligence
A term sheet may briefly reference representations and warranties you’ll be required to make in the final agreements. These are essentially confirmations about the state of the company, including your finances, legal standing, IP ownership, and compliance with laws. They become legally binding in the long-form documents. Expect a standard due diligence process to follow, where you'll need to present clear and well-organized documentation. This usually includes your financials, corporate records, contracts, cap table, IP assignments, and regulatory filings. While due diligence is thorough, it’s not adversarial, it’s a process designed to confirm that everything is as presented and to surface any potential risks early. It also gives founders a chance to get clarity on their own internal processes and legal setup, often prompting improvements that benefit the company regardless of the investment outcome. Treating it as a constructive health check can reveal gaps or inefficiencies that are easier to fix early than later under pressure.
Make sure your house is in order (corporate documents, IP assignments, employment contracts, taxes). If you're operating in a regulated industry, like fintech, medtech, or anything involving data infrastructure or financial services,
Every term sheet tips the scale; the art is keeping it level.
you'll also need to show that you're aware of, and on track with, any regulatory requirements. This might include licenses, approvals, or filings with supervisory authorities like FINMA in Switzerland. Regulatory preparedness is often viewed as a risk reducer and can strengthen investor confidence. It's also a signal that you're building with compliance in mind, which protects not only investors but also the long-term viability of the business. Surprises here can slow down or complicate the deal process. For example, if your IP assignments from a former contractor aren't clearly documented, it might delay the legal review or raise concerns about who owns key assets. Investors and founders alike benefit from smooth, predictable due diligence.
Exclusivity and confidentiality
Term sheets often include a clause preventing the startup from shopping the deal around to other investors for a set period. This helps the investor justify the time and cost of due diligence. Exclusivity also brings clarity and focus for the startup. It helps move both sides toward a decision efficiently and reduces the distraction of
parallel negotiations. When well-calibrated (not too long or open-ended), it can actually speed up closing the round.
Exclusivity periods of 30–60 days are common and are intended to give investors’ confidence that they can proceed with due diligence without competition. That said, excessively long exclusivity can limit a founder's flexibility in a dynamic fundraising environment. The appropriate length depends on the specifics of the deal and the expectations on both sides.
Final Thought
A term sheet isn’t just about the money; it’s the starting point for how you and your investors will work together. Knowing what’s standard, what’s negotiable, and what’s potentially problematic helps you build trust and protects your long-term interests.
THE NEW AGE OF FINANCE: COLLABORATION, PLATFORM, AND AI
The financial services industry is undergoing rapid change due to a variety of factors ranging from economic uncertainties and changes in regulation, to the integration of new technologies. Research highlights a multitude of ways that innovations such as AI could permanently benefit financial services, from using algorithms that suggest future investments to flagging and identifying suspicious user activity.
A staggering 75% of UK financial institutions are already implementing AI to support wealth management, but less than half of advisors (43%) have a welldeveloped strategy. The rush to adopt AI means that businesses often neglect building the necessary foundations for effective implementation.
This new age of finance can only be achieved through partnerships between firms, data providers and technology solutions – with deep integration that goes beyond surface-level AI adoption.
As most businesses are learning the ropes of AI as they go along, successful integration is dependent on meaningful collaboration.
Taking a platform-centred approach to wealth management
Historically, technology in wealth management has been viewed as a collection of powerful, standalone tools designed to address individual challenges. While these tools offer great capabilities, they can inadvertently contribute to fragmentation and operational silos. The industry is moving towards a more comprehensive, holistic platform approach, weaving disparate innovations together to provide a more seamless experience for advisers.
The key detail for success is creating a single unified platform, with AI technologies embedded by design. This can be achieved by bringing together the nuances of individual roles, diverse firm types and geographies to directly address the real workflows in which professionals live and thrive. This evolution is all about delivering complete solutions that meet the unique needs of firms and their business objectives.
Unlocking value through collaboration
No single technology or organisation can address the multifaceted needs of the financial industry in isolation. The future of financial technology lies in a rich, interconnected ecosystem of partners, integrations and builders spanning every critical category – from CRM and alternative investments to planning, trading, risk and accounting. The true challenge isn't simply finding these tools; it's ensuring a company’s entire tech stack is working together intelligently.
Successful businesses will champion an open and collaborative approach, partnering with best-in-class software, data and services providers. Partnerships need to extend beyond simple API integrations to deliver deep data connections, seamless UI/UX experiences and native, on-platform workflows.
Looking ahead, the ultimate breakthrough in this ecosystem play is the ability to create AI synthesis – providing
comprehensive, data-driven insights derived from diverse sources and powerful tools.
Amplifying human expertise using AI
AI is now far more than a buzzword; it's become an essential tool for businesses in nearly every sector. Its power in finance lies in its ability to generate real leverage within daily workflows. This begins with clean, reliable, high-quality and accessible data, which forms the bedrock for meaningful AI applications.
Embedding AI into a business’s data management strategy is key. It can enable everything from natural language Q&As about portfolios and clients to proactive insights that spot trends, reveal issues and elevate opportunities – ultimately revolutionising decision-making. As a result, businesses can build data-driven workflows that respond to real-time context across their platform.
Soon, agentic AI will drive automation across the entire platform and ecosystem
Bob Pisani, Chief Technology Officer, Addepar
Bob is the Chief Technology Officer at Addepar where he leads engineering, product, and design to deliver a complete, transformative technology and data platform for wealth and asset management. Prior to Addepar, Bob was the Chief Technology Officer at Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, a global quantitative multi-manager hedge fund, where he led the firm through a complete technology transformation and global platform expansion. He is an experienced technology leader with 25+ years of deep hands-on expertise in software, architecture, strategy, and digital transformation. He holds a B.A. from Long Island University and earned his M.B.A. from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
experience – moving the industry forward from using single products in a silo to collaborating across intelligent, cross-firm workflows. This means less time spent on manual searching, analysing, assembling, interpreting and translating, and more time for financial professionals to act with confidence and speed, empowering them to focus on high-value client interactions and strategic success.
How to lead in the future of finance
The future of investment technology is unfolding in real time, and the organisations that put data at the centre and embrace collaboration through technology will be the ones to set the pace. Harnessing AI is no longer optional, as it unlocks real-time insights that will transform the industry and drive productivity.
Together, these elements will equip finance professionals to confidently adapt to the technologies that are already shaping finance today and will continue to do so in the future.
INSIDE THE MINDS OF FRAUD FIGHTERS
Fraud is evolving at an unprecedented pace, leaving financial institutions racing to keep up. To understand what lies ahead, we spoke with two experts from the front lines of the battle against financial crime: Matteo Bogana, CEO of Cleafy, and Federico Valentini, the company's Head of Threat Intelligence and Incident Response. They offer a grounded, forward-looking perspective on where the real threats lie and what it truly takes to build a resilient defence.
Financial IT: Looking ahead five years, where do you see the fraud landscape heading for banks and payment providers? Are we on the verge of a dramatic, revolutionary shift?
Matteo Bogana: We see more of an evolution than a dramatic revolution, partly because of the intrinsic friction in the operational processes of large banking and payment organisations. However, this evolution will be driven by new regulations and technology creating opportunities for threat actors to devise novel attack patterns and cash-out methodologies. A illustrative example is SuperCard X, a threat our team recently uncovered. Chinese-speaking groups are reviving the world of 'carding' with a modern approach, combining multistage social engineering with malware and NFC relay capabilities. This allows them to perform fraudulent contactless transactions at ATMs or POS terminals remotely, creating an entirely new attack and cash-out technique that bypasses traditional card-present security.
Financial IT:: You mentioned regulation as a key driver. How do rules intended
to increase security, like PSD2, end up creating new opportunities for fraudsters?
Federico Valentini: It’s a classic cat-andmouse game. Regulations are designed to close doors, but threat actors don’t give up; they just look for new windows. The introduction of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) under PSD2 is a perfect example of a necessary step becoming a target, with malware like SharkBot engineered specifically to bypass it. By using an Automatic Transfer System (ATS) directly on a victim's trusted device, the malware intercepts one-time passcodes. From the bank's perspective, the transaction meets the SCA requirements, creating a false sense of security. This shows that compliance alone isn't enough.
Financial IT: Beyond regulation, Artificial Intelligence is the other major force. How is AI empowering attackers and making their methods more dangerous?
Matteo Bogana: Today, AI is not yet conducting attacks on its own, nor fully automating them. What it is doing already, however, is accelerating specific steps of the attack chain and enabling a level of target tailoring that was unthinkable just a few years ago.
Deepfakes are the most visible example to the public, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. Recent evidence shows that AI tools are being systematically integrated into attackers’ operational backends, supporting multiple stages: from identifying and profiling potential targets, to generating custom attack code and bots, and finally analysing massive datasets to orchestrate hybrid social-cyber
Matteo Bogana, CEO, Cleafy
Federico began his career as a cybersecurity consultant, specialising in penetration testing and vulnerability assessments for web applications and IoT devices. He now leads the Cleafy Threat Intelligence team, renowned for uncovering and reporting on new banking malware strains like TeaBot, Sharkbot, Pixpirate, and Spynote. Federico plays a crucial role in advancing the fight against fraud, continuously uncovering new threats and attack patterns used by malicious actors.
campaigns. The result is highly tailored attacks designed to maximize fraud returns and data exfiltration.
I expect adoption of AI within attackers’ infrastructures to continue growing. At the same time, we will also see rapid deployment of AI-powered defences for detecting fake voices, images, and videos— driven both by technological progress and public pressure on governments. What makes this evolution dangerous is the convergence of automation and personalization: AI will blend social engineering and cyberattack techniques in ways we’ve never seen before. Initially reserved for high-profile targets, these same capabilities will eventually cascade into mass-scale attacks against the general public.
This doesn’t necessarily apply to deepfakes, though they get a lot of hype. To ‘industrialise’ deepfake infrastructure would eat into fraudsters’ ROI, making them less effective as scalable massmarket weapons and limiting their use to high-value, targeted scenarios. What’s more, governments and regulators are already zeroing in on deepfakes, pressuring telcos and social platforms to embed automatic deepfake detection filters by default.
By contrast, AI-driven scanning of banking apps – both technical vulnerabilities and logical flaws – can be done at scale, in seconds, by automated bots. Combine that with AI-written tailored malware and social engineering scripts, and you have an attack model that is far cheaper, stealthier, and more scalable than a massive deepfake infrastructure. This is far more likely to define the next wave of scalable fraud.
Financial IT: If AI is making attacks so powerful, is it also the ultimate silver bullet for defence?
Matteo Bogana: While it’s tempting to think we can just fight AI with more AI, it’s not that simple. There are studies indicating that the cost of training and maintaining the highly complex AI models needed to counter these evolving threats could become unsustainable for many anti-fraud budgets. The sheer volume and variety of new attack patterns mean that a purely AI-driven defensive model would require constant, expensive retraining to remain effective. Relying solely on AI to make final decisions can also lead to an increase
in false positives, damaging the customer experience.
Financial IT: So, if AI isn't the complete answer, what is its proper role in a modern anti-fraud strategy?
Federico Valentini: It’s most powerful as a co-pilot augmenting the abilities of human experts. AI can analyse billions of data points in seconds, spotting anomalies that a human could never detect alone. The co-pilot can then present this information in a digestible way, for example, from natural language prompts like, "Show me all sessions with similar behavioural anomalies to this one" or "Summarise this attack step-by-step." This approach dramatically speeds up investigation times – we’ve seen it reduce workloads by over 70% – and allows analysts to focus on strategic decision-making rather than manual data crunching.
Financial IT: Finally, what is the strategic imperative for financial institutions? If they can't rely on a single technology, how do they build a defence that is truly resilient for the future?
Matteo Bogana: The objective is to move through cyberspace to find and connect all the dots, inside and outside the bank perimeter. But in this big picture, organisations often miss visibility on the attacker's infrastructure – key to predicting attacks by days. The point is to grab and correlate structured data in context from the most extensive perimeter possible to create the most comprehensive story ever. A truly resilient defence can see that entire story, which requires breaking down the silos traditionally separating cybersecurity and fraud prevention teams. You need a unified real-time platform that correlates different indicators, from malware traces to behavioural biometrics, device telemetry, and payment analysis. By weaving these disparate signals into a single narrative, you build a complex defence mesh that is very expensive and difficult for an attacker to bypass. This integrated approach, which we call Fraud Extended Detection and Response (FxDR), allows you to detect an attack in its earliest stages, even weeks before any money is moved. That is the future of defence: not a single, impenetrable wall, but an intelligent, interconnected web that provides visibility across the entire threat landscape.
With over two decades of experience in IT and High-Tech sectors, Matteo has held various roles at Accenture, General Electric, and Polytechnic of Milan. Throughout his career, he has focused on developing and bringing cuttingedge technologies to market. In 2014, he co-founded Cleafy – a global leader in enterprise cyber-fraud management. Under his leadership, Cleafy has experienced organic, solid hyper-growth, acquiring multiple European financial institutions.
Federico Valentini, Head of Threat Intelligence and Incident Response, Cleafy
WHAT SEPA INSTANT PAYMENTS MEAN FOR NON-EU BANKS
SEPA instant payments are here for some, but not yet all. Banks that are outside the EU or European Economic Area (EEA) but in SEPA may think they can close their eyes to the change – they aren’t mandated to comply, so why do it? Think again. All banks that haven’t already prepared for SEPA instant payments should do so, quickly. Instant payments are fast becoming a musthave in a competitive market. Any slow movers could be left behind.
Since January this year, EU banks have had to be capable of receiving instant payments; come October they will need to send them too to comply with regulation.
Making SEPA payments, which send Euros from one account to another within the SEPA region, instant will reduce the time a one-off payment takes from around one business day to within 10 seconds. This follows UK payments, where transfers within 15 seconds were introduced with the Faster Payments Service in 2008.
Non-EU banks in the EEA must comply with the new rules by 2027. Banks in SEPA, but outside the EU or EEA including the UK, are not mandated to comply with any deadline, but shouldn’t think they aren’t affected.
24/7 payments are the here and now
In this digital age, consumers expect faster, more convenient payments. They purchase online at all times of day and night and don’t see why payments shouldn’t be rapid and always-on, like so much else they have become used to.
Similarly, retailers and suppliers want to be paid as soon as they sell. Margins are perpetually squeezed for them in competitive markets. With cash flows under constant pressure, payments in as near as real-time make a big difference. Indeed, real-time payments were viewed as crucial to supplier relationships by 91% of manufacturers in a PYMNTS Intelligence survey.
Why all banks should act now on SEPA instant payments
The mood music is loud and clear, instant payments are welcomed by businesses. They will quickly become an expectation, a hygiene factor and a way for businesses to retain suppliers and therefore banks to retain customers.
It follows that companies operating multi-nationally or globally will favour payment service providers (PSPs) that offer them slick, consistent, instant payments across all the markets they do business in.
They may take their business elsewhere if they cannot enjoy these benefits for all their transactions, regardless of borders.
For some PSPs there is no question. They will take the leap - a recent survey revealed that one in seven UK banks already offer the service, but whilst a further quarter said they are almost ready to do so, that still accounts for less than half in total of those surveyed.
The same survey does, however, reveal that UK banks are keen for a new payments solution and 43% indicate they are exploring cloud options for modernisation.
This is encouraging, because PSPs will need to upgrade existing payments infrastructure or implement a tactical workaround for SEPA instant payments.
A workaround is no doubt tempting. Legacy systems and infrastructure are ubiquitous in financial institutions, making rip and replace an often-unrealistic proposition, from a cost and time perspective.
Indeed, legacy systems and technologies will continue to make change programmes complex for a long time to come. They present huge challenges for budgets and operationally for interoperability, backward compatibility and straightthrough processing workflows. A piecemeal solution could end up being costly after all and deliver a customer experience not in line with one they will receive elsewhere.
Then there are the technical skills and resources to design and implement a change of any type, be it an upgrade or workaround. PSPs may lack the necessary expertise.
Strategies for instant payments success
Instant payments processing involves a series of workflows, including validations and fraud controls. The systems and tasks that execute these requirements must all work within the new timeframe, which will require payments processing to be streamlined, possibly with synchronous, instead of linear, task execution.
PSPs must strive to future-proof their solution and can do so through a global
Rossana Thomas, Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Payments, Fiserv
Rossana Thomas is the Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Payments at Fiserv, where she leads the product management organization. With over 30 years of experience in strategy, product development, and executive leadership within the financial services industry, Rossana has been instrumental in driving payments modernization. Her focus includes consolidating payment channels on a single platform and expanding offerings globally.
Rossana’s expertise in leveraging cloud-based systems and ISO 20022 standards has positioned her as a key leader in the industry, dedicated to enhancing efficiency, security, and customer satisfaction.
payments hub that uses a single workflow for multiple clearing types.
As regulations continue to evolve, and a competitive market demands that PSPs stay ahead of the curve, a payments processing solution capable of integrating existing applications – from account processing to anti-money laundering (AML) – with new payment initiatives and regulatory changes provides an edge.
Such a solution can be on-premises, as is still the preference for many institutions, cloud-based or provided as a managed service.
The benefit of an API-based, cloud native platform is that it can auto-scale to meet demand within the instant payments timescale, even when batch payments and future dated payments put pressure on the system. This makes it an attractive option to meet both immediate needs and support future growth and change, such as adding new payment types, products or workflows.
A global hub for competitive instant payments
Regulation and standards are more than a compliance box-ticking exercise – they
provide a framework and guideline for service levels that all providers should strive to meet, whether mandated to or not. Regardless of where they are based PSPs including banks, with multinational customers will be at a competitive disadvantage if they ignore SEPA instant payments.
A global payments hub, that supports multiple clearing types, can help banks meet demand for real-time payments securely and with flexibility, across domestic and cross-border payments. With 24/7 instant payments fast becoming the norm, it’s time for all PSPs to get on board.
HOW TO TELL IF PAYMENT ORCHESTRATION IS WORTH THE INVESTMENT: 3 CASES
For businesses operating across multiple markets and payment providers, every failed transaction represents lost revenue, frustrated customers, and higher operational costs.
Payment orchestration offers a way to fix that by unifying fragmented payment flows, improving approval rates, and reducing inefficiencies. But before investing, one question matters most: will it pay off?
The truth is, orchestration isn’t a universal solution. For some companies, it can unlock millions in additional revenue and savings. For others, especially those with low volume or simple setups, the benefits may not justify the expense.
In this article, I’ll share three real-world scenarios to show where orchestration delivers measurable ROI and how to determine whether it’s the right move for your business.
Understanding the ROI of Orchestration
At its core, payment orchestration unifies disparate payment providers, methods, and flows under one intelligent platform. By doing so, it addresses three critical levers:
• Higher conversion rates through smart routing and cascading retries.
• Lower processing costs by directing traffic to the most cost-effective provider.
• Reduced fraud and disputes with centralised risk controls.
To calculate ROI, we look at the gains from these areas and compare them to the platform’s cost. Corefy’s ROI model uses industry benchmarks and client data to provide a clear, quantifiable picture. This approach helps businesses make informed decisions based on numbers — not assumptions.
Three Payment Orchestration ROI Scenarios
1. Crypto Broker in the Middle East
Profile: A crypto brokerage in the UAE processes around $3 million a month across six PSPs. Despite this, only 70% of payments succeed due to strict card checks, fraud, and disputes.
Challenge: High-value trades were lost due to failed transactions, impacting revenue and customer trust.
Solution with orchestration:
• Real-time risk checks to block fraudulent activity without slowing down legitimate trades.
• Smart routing to send each payment to the provider most likely to approve it.
• Selective 3D Secure to balance security and user experience.
Results:
• Conversion improvement: from 70% to 75%
• Extra revenue: ~$60,000/month
• Cost savings: ~$20,000/month
• ROI: 1,525%
By optimising every step of the payment flow, this broker turned lost trades into realised revenue and achieved a nearly 30x return on investment.
2. Online Fashion Retailer in Western Europe
Profile: A retailer selling apparel across several European countries, processing €1.2 million monthly. Roughly 25% of payment attempts fail due to limited
Denys Kyrychenko, Co-founder & CEO, Corefy
Denys Kyrychenko is the founder of Corefy, a global payment orchestration platform, and PayAtlas, a payment community platform connecting providers and merchants. With nearly two decades of experience in software development, system architecture, and management, he brings deep expertise in online payments and fintech innovation. Over the course of his career, Denys has helped launch numerous PSPs and e-wallets and co-founded Interkassa, a payment aggregator. A graduate of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, he is dedicated to building scalable, efficient payment infrastructure that enables businesses worldwide to optimise conversions, reduce costs, and expand seamlessly into new markets.
local payment methods and stricter issuer rules.
Challenge: Inconsistent coverage and lack of flexibility were leading to abandoned carts and lost sales.
Solution with orchestration:
• Multi-PSP cascading to retry declined payments instantly.
• Smarter routing based on regionspecific approval rates.
• Easy experimentation with local payment methods and A/B testing.
Results:
• Conversion improvement: from 75% to 80%
• Extra revenue: ~€47,000/month
• Cost savings: ~€4,000/month
• ROI: 1,323%
The orchestrator acted as a safeguard, ensuring no single provider failure derailed a purchase, while enabling fast experimentation to meet local preferences.
3. iGaming Operator in Latin America
Profile: A high-risk iGaming operator
processing $1.5 million monthly across four PSPs. Approval rates were just 52%, and popular local methods weren’t supported.
Challenge: Almost half of potential deposits were failing, with manual optimisation proving ineffective.
Solution with orchestration:
• Automated retries of declined transactions through backup providers.
• Fast integration of local payment options, including regional cards and cash vouchers.
• Centralised risk and fraud management to reduce chargebacks.
Results:
• Conversion improvement: from 52% to 61%
• Extra revenue: ~$116,000/month
• Cost savings: ~$11,000/month
• ROI: 3,239%
By recovering lost payments and aligning with local preferences, the operator turned a major operational challenge into a scalable growth opportunity.
Key Takeaways
Across these cases, a clear pattern emerges: orchestration delivers the greatest ROI when businesses face high transaction volumes, complex market coverage, or significant approval rate challenges.
For smaller companies operating in a single market with one provider, the benefits may not outweigh the costs. In these situations, it’s often best to wait until there’s enough scale to justify the investment.
A Practical Way to Evaluate ROI
If you’re unsure whether payment orchestration makes sense for your business today, start with the numbers. Corefy’s ROI calculator allows you to quickly model potential gains and costs based on your unique data — no guesswork required.
By quantifying factors like conversion improvements, processing cost reductions, and fraud savings, you can make a confident, informed decision about whether now is the right time to orchestrate.
