How this innovation is changing the payments landscape, what banks should do to leverage its value fully, and how CNS can enable banks to adapt and innovate faster
The Instant Payments feature has revolutionized the payments landscape in more than 50 countries worldwide, and it’s coming to the Middle East. With 24/7/365 “always-on” availability, Instant Payments brings speed and convenience for funds’ transfer, along with transparency, certainty, and precision. In these ways, they meet the needs of consumers and businesses and comply with the next generation’s expectations.
Instant Payments will play a vital role as the Middle East transforms into a region of digital, cashless economies – with take-up primarily driven by customers who want to leverage the full potential of digitalization and “Everywhere Banking.”
Middle East payments are speeding up as the region continues its path toward instant payments; banks must develop faster and more sophisticated technology platforms to comply with regulations and meet customer demands. With all the developments taking place, GCC RTGS, BUNA, and SWIFT GPI banks in the Middle East have many competing priorities to contend with.
Compliance is just the beginning. Banks in the region will need to go beyond mere compliance, building agile platforms that can process instant payments, cross-border payments, ISO 20022 messages, and all while connecting to various APIs in an open banking environment.
The path to modernization lies in the cloud. Early adopters of a “cloud-first” strategy will prove to be the winners in an increasingly competitive landscape. Cloud-native technology allows banks to build out services and capabilities in stages at their own pace, giving them room to meet required deadlines first, then incrementally add features and capabilities to deliver superior services to their customers for years to come.
The considerations don’t stop there. There are requirements to manage fraud, anti-money laundering and compliance issues once an Instant Payments system goes live, as well as the impact of running a system 24/7/365 on IT systems and the overall operational costs. Banks must also consider vendors, determine how to recover the expenses used to implement and maintain the system and conduct business analysis and process mapping.
To breeze past the limitations of legacy payments technology so banks can adapt and innovate faster, cloud-native real-time 24×7 payments solutions built on a proven low-code technology platform and delivered as pure SaaS will likely provide viable solutions in the future.
How to prepare for Instant Payments – CNS
Partner with Payment Provider to configure a payment solution, providing banks with the only multi-network managed service solution available on-premise or in the cloud.
This partnership is a rich synergy of software and local presence, which will provide MEA banks with Real-time and cloud-native payments solutions combined with on-the-ground implementation and expertise.