The Finzly team of Brian Anderson, Director of Foreign Exchange and Suja Ramakrishnan, Director of Marketing, met with payments expert Sarah Lauridsen, Head of Products and Solutions at Banking Circle, in a panel discussion that focused on the motivation for banks to offer instant payments to their business customers.
https://content.finzly.com/hubfs/Videos/Instant%20payments%20webinar.mp4
The panel began with an examination of the high expectations that P2P platforms and non-financial providers are setting in the B2B space. The consequence of this benchmark is an obvious evolution of similar services to business customers.
The panel agreed on the point that if banks don’t appease their business customers with payment experiences similar to peer-to-peer yardsticks, banks would lose out to fintechs and other progressive banks. Many banks are complacent because of the failure to see the ROI on investments in payments.
“It is an investment for opportunity that would open up later”
Sarah discussed how European banks are using A2A instant payment transfers as a preferred payment option for e-com transactions. Banks are also monetizing from extended use cases seeing adoption in paying gig workers and instant payrolls.
“Account to account payments are at the forefront because of the speed and the lower cost involved”
The panel also spoke about the value-added services offered by overlay services like Request for Payment, especially for business owners like plumbers and window cleaners. The popular adoption of Request for Payment to cater to simple B2B and B2C use cases for invoice generation and bill payment were also discussed, with an emphasis on the need to adopt standards like the ISO20022.
“In addition to the speed, convenience and ease, businesses are looking for value from banks.”
The need for banks to undertake instant payments adoption as a project that traverses the full value chain, including operational considerations and liquidity, were discussed.
While there is a variable rate of adoption across the world, the trendsetters have enough data to substantiate that instant payments is the way forward in the new payment ecosystem.
“The imagination is the limit – wherever there is a use case for instant gratification, instant payment is a natural part of that.”