Payments revolution continues as:

• UK in June 2019:
  • Faster Payments continues to grow at +20%+ annually with single immediate payment at +27%
  • CHAPS grew by +6%
  • BACS: direct credit -2% and direct debits +3%
  • Cheques and credit declined - 8% 
• BofA Merrill is still Is top U.S. Issuer of Visa® and Mastercard® Commercial Solutions according to The Nilson Report, a financial industry publication covering card and mobile payments. Investing heavily in their card platform to increase security, expand product capabilities and extend geographic reach, e.g.
  • Launch of mobile wallet for Commercial and Prepaid cards in North America.
  • Enhanced Virtual Payables and Virtual Travel solutions.
  • Mobile friendly cardholder and program administrator tools.
  • Contactless cards across the globe
• Digital Wallets: Consumer spend via digital wallets across Europe and North America will increase by 40% this year to nearly $790 billion, according to a new study from Juniper Research. By 2024: digital wallets will increase from 2.3 billion this year to nearly 4 billion, or 50% of the world’s population
• Swift to test real-time cross border payments in Europe: To avoid lag as payments enter the domestic space Swift are testing real-time gpi cross-border payments through the Eurosystem’s Target Instant Payment Settlement (Tips). Participants include Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, BBVA, Deutsche Bank, Natixis, Santander, Sberbank and UniCredit
• AscendantFX, a technology-based payment provider, have launched SchedulePay, a payment service for corporate treasury departments to automatically schedule and submit batches of cross-border B2B and B2C payments in advance of monthly deadlines. 
• IATA Financial Gateway expansion continues: 
  • WorldPay has joined the Fintech and Payments Services Strategic Partnership Program. This initiative will enable payments across web, mobile, MOTO (mail order telephone order), NDC (New Distribution Capability), and PCI-DSS compliant chip and pin terminals. It also supports IATA’s plans to create a unified gateway, allowing airlines to increase their payment diversity and acceptance. 
  • Worldpay will support the upgrade and rollout of IATA’s new Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP) file format (DISH23). With pre-integration in over 100 BSP countries
  • Worldpay will help airlines consolidate their local BSP acquiring relationships into one global account
• Cash usage declines: UK's Link ATM network shows decline in the use of cash machines for withdrawing money and checking balances, as contactless cards and mobile banking services take hold with 8.7% decline in London, but only 3.7% in North East.

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CTMfile take: Payments are becoming more and more instant, BUT there are two big elephants in the room: 1) is cash worth preserving? and 2)  is how will all these payment systems talk to each other? To be discussed at SIBOS in London in September.