An Evolving Payments Landscape

4 Treasury and Trade Solutions complexity and overhead costs. By gaining global coverage (and an accelerated speed to market) through a single solution, corporates can focus on other areas that are critical to consumers such as the checkout experience or reconciliation. Instant payments Instant payments are likely to represent a larger part of the payments landscape in the future. Countries representing around 85% of the world’s GDP either have instant payments today or are in the process of building an instant payment network. Citi has direct access to over 25 instant payment schemes and has enjoyed a 200% growth in instant payment volumes year-on-year. Historically, corporates have been reluctant to invest in instant payments because given their existing structures, such as payment factories or shared service centers, it was unclear what benefits instant payments would deliver. Now, there is greater willingness as a result of an increased focus on consumers, which is driving changes to their business models. Moreover, the enriched data and tokenization offered by instant payments (mobile numbers or email addresses can be used to facilitate payments) are increasingly seen as adding value and making reconciliation more straightforward. In Asia, two billion more people have a bank account than a credit card, many of which can now be reached through near ubiquitous instant payment schemes in the region. 1 Yet instant payments alone are not a panacea for eCommerce. The goal is to create a card-like experience using instant payment rails. So, for instance, online purchases might use a combination of a QR code with either instant payment or instant collection to create a frictionless experience. Of course, local instant payment schemes will be just one of many payment methods including cards and wallets: different solutions will be applied in different use cases depending on the preferences of consumers. The future payments landscape may be considerably more diverse than is currently the case. How to select a payment provider There has never been a greater choice of payment providers or services. When selecting a payment service provider, scale and experience are critical: many emerging payment providers are non-banks and there have been some high-profile bankruptcies. Given the rapid growth of eCommerce, it is also important to choose a provider with omni-channel experience rather than a more traditional bricks-and-mortar offering.