Although the crisis has largely passed, the industry continues to undergo changes driven by regulation and the continued evolution of payments from mere products to reliably profitable lines of business.

The global payments technology initiatives for 2012 fall into two primary categories: operational efficiency (for both technology and operations) and customer experience.

Operational Efficiency

Noncash payment volumes are growing approximately 5% per year as markets mature and participants seek out faster, more efficient payment methods.  Downward pressure on revenues, payments convergence, and increased competition from alternative payment providers has been forcing financial institutions to examine how they run their payments businesses for a number of years.  The approval of a final end date for SEPA migration adds further impetus to examine – and modernize – given that banks in the SEPA zone must migrate their payments businesses to ISO 20022 by February 1, 2014.

In order to meet these challenges, banks must examine ways to make their payments infrastructures more flexible and scalable, all while making operations more transparent in order to combat financial crimes and meet increasingly strict liquidity requirements.  Many of these needs will be achieved by creating service-oriented infrastructures, using next-generation delivery models for needed services, or both.

Customer Experience

Also challenging payments firms is the need continue to improving the customer experience by supporting changing usage patterns and creating new offerings designed to meet the requirements that these changes create.  Chief among these is the evolution of mobile payments on a global scale, as well as the role mobile plays in the P2P and workers’ remittance markets for banked and unbanked alike.

These 10 top technology initiatives help FSIs prioritize the many demands from business and IT in ways that create better a more profitable and robust payments business. Are you planning for all 10 this year?  To learn more, Commercial Banking and Payments members can access our latest research report, Global Payments: Top 10 Technology Initiatives for 2012.