The future of payments : A corporate perspective

The company which did the report - BNY Mellon

About the company - BNY Mellon is a global investment company dedicated to helping its clients manage and service their financial assets throughout the investment lifecycle. Whether providing financial services for institutions, corporations or individual investors, BNY Mellon delivers informed investment, wealth management, and investment services in 35 countries.

The main points of discussion in the survey:

1. A collaboration of insights
2. Payment transformation underway
3. Embracing changes - industry adoption/challenges 
4. The new frontier- APIs, robotics, artificial intelligence and blockchain
5. Education and guidance through a time of change

Findings of the survey:

1. 54% of respondents believe payment reliability needs the most improvement when thinking about future payments. Payment security and wealth of information tied as the second most areas of improvement when thinking about new payment technologies practitioners’ payment processes.
2. 53% of healthcare respondents cited lack of information as the highest need for improvement in the payment process in the future. Higher visibility into bank accounts would offer fast knowledge about the settlement of payment, reducing the risk for the business by allowing for quicker decisions. By citing ease of the execution and a company’s internal cost as main payment process pain points respondents indicate that limited staff and funding resources remain a continual hindrance. 
3. The movement to electronics is unmistakable and unstoppable and is addressing the concern with a new wave of solutions. 
4. Almost 90% of corporate believe that moving to vendor payment from check to electronic will have a very high or high impact on their businesses within the next three years, with 43% noting that their company is ready now for this type of program.
5. 70% of responders believe remittance processing will have a very high or high impact on their company within the next three years. While 60% of responders rated their company as currently being ready to implement a lockbox, only 6% saw that readiness is more than five years from now.
6. Nearly 70% of responders believe real-time payments will have a high or very high impact on the businesses within the four years or more years. Some discussions revealed the common belief that RTP is a product offered by banks rather than the THC network it truly is, which provides a new payment rail for the industry.
7. 11% of respondents say their business is ready to implement the RTP network now.
8. 64% of respondents voted as tokenized payment initiative to have an impact on their company in four years with 43% again stating that they’d be ready in that time frame but the increased understanding of the true benefits of this technology, such as the increased speed and ease of use, may help boost adoption rates among corporate as they become more familiar with the technology.
9. 49% of the survey respondents felt that they are ready to implement SWIFT’s GPI initiative, either now or within the next three years.
10. 80% of respondents cited reducing risks and “importance to our customers” as the biggest potential benefits from new payment initiatives throughout the next decade.
11. Reduced internal costs were a significant benefit of new payment initiatives for 65% of respondents.
12. Availability of IT resources and competing priorities are cited as the most challenging obstacles to overcome for respondents.
13. Corporate cited increased technology resources as the most imperative strategic need to implement new payment solutions. 
14. 66% name competing priorities rate as the biggest barrier in achieving the ideal future payment experience. Respondents also indicated that having a good banking partner is what makes a lot of options less challenging to understand, as opposed to those without access to such expertise.
15. 40% of respondents cited platform support as the most necessary item needed to drive change within a company in order to embrace future payment efficiencies while 34% of respondents noted that the process of re-engineering to increase automation and offer seamless services to customers is necessary to streamline incoming payments that have exceptions or other anomalies.
16. Live tracking services to capture the payment status, inquiries and cash positions at any point in time are the most important improvement for the payment process. Nearly, 60% of the respondents highlighted tracking vendor creations or vendor changes in a live environment will be helpful for companies to further streamline the payment process when new bank information is received and when tracking unique one-time payments not going through the usual treasury process when validating banking detail.
17. Roughly half of the respondents think APIs will bring a fundamental shift in how corporations communicate with banking partners, and 54% believe their company’s first API interaction will be within one to three years.
18. Only 5% of respondents are not looking to their bank providers to integrate and facilitate API services.
19. A majority of respondents cited Account Reconciliation as a “must-have” API use case.
20. More than half of the respondents said their companies will be ready to implement bots for payment and/or reporting within the next 3 years.
21. Blockchain was cited as the most important payment initiative within the next five years or more, with bots and AI for payments tied for second place.
22. While only 6% of companies believe they are ready to embark on DLT payment initiatives now, 43% felt they would be in the next three years.
23. The majority of survey responders said they are 3-5 years away from a meaningful AI implementation, with almost half indicating that auto reconciliation and matching on manually intensive processes are top use cases for the technology.

Questions :

1) ____% of respondents believe payment reliability needs the most improvement when thinking about future payments.

1. 54
2. 23
3. 62
4. 10

2) ____% of healthcare respondents cited lack of information as the highest need for improvement in the payment process in the future.

1. 20
2. 53
3. 48
4. 72

3) Almost _____% of corporates believe that moving to vendor payment from check to electronic will have a very high or high impact on their businesses within the next three years.

1. 90
2. 52
3. 65
4. 23

4) _____% of corporate noted that their company is ready now to move to vendor payment from check to electronic.

1. 90
2. 43
3. 52
4. 65

5) What % of responders believe remittance processing will have a very high or high impact on their company within the next three years?

1. 52
2. 34
3. 70
4. 48

6) What % of responders believe real-time payments will have a high or very high impact on the businesses within the four years or more years?

1. 65
2. 23
3. 94
4. 70

7) What % of respondents say their business is ready to implement the RTP network now?

1. 11
2. 23
3. 45
4. 70

8) What % of respondents voted for tokenized payment initiative to have an impact on their company in four years?

1. 64
2. 72
3. 38
4. 12

9) What % of the survey respondents felt that they are ready to implement SWIFT’s GPI initiative, either now or within the next three years?

1. 56
2. 49
3. 82
4. 13

10) What % of respondents cited reducing risks and “importance to our customers” as the biggest potential benefits from new payment initiatives throughout the next decade?

1. 56
2. 23
3. 80
4. 74

11) Reduced internal costs were a significant benefit of new payment initiatives for ______% of respondents.

1. 23
2. 48
3. 65
4. 10

12) What % is name competing priorities rate as the biggest barrier in achieving the ideal future payment experience?

1. 66
2. 52
3. 48
4. 10

13) What % of respondents cited platform support as the most necessary item needed to drive change within a company in order to embrace future payment efficiencies?

1. 40
2. 23
3. 80
4. 10

14) What % of the respondents highlighted tracking vendor creations or vendor changes in a live environment will be helpful for companies to further streamline payment?

1. 40
2. 10
3. 60
4. 92

15) What % of respondents are not looking to their bank providers to integrate and facilitate API services?

1. 12
2. 5
3. 32
4. 50

16) _____ of the respondents said their companies will be ready to implement bots for payment and/or reporting within the next 3 years.

1. ¼ 
2. Less than half
3. More than a quarter
4. More than half

17) _____% companies believe they are ready to embark on DLT payment initiatives now.

1. 6
2. 12
3. 34
4. 80

18) _____% of companies felt they would be ready to embark on DLT payment initiatives in the next three years.

1. 52
2. 43
3. 60
4. 82

19) What is the title of the report?

1. Digital Transformation
2. Research insight
3. The future of payments
4. Asset Management

20) The report was done by?

1. Standard Chartered
2. UOB
3. Synchrony
4. BNY Mellon