There are more announcements and new facilities in payment systems than any other area in corporate treasury. Many of these are minor tweaks and changes to existing systems, while others are much more important and fundamental. Recent key developments have included:

• Coverage of POBO solutions and their many benefits including ability to increase transparency, enable better control of cash disbursements, improve DPO, and reduce bank fees through streamlining banking relationships continues, but corporate treasury departments need be aware that there are problems with POBO solutions:
  • many institutions do not allow or recognise payments made by a sister company on behalf of
  • some payments related to taxes, regulatory agencies or payroll related items are not accepted by government or other institutions
  • the regulations vary world-wide, e.g. In China some structures for cross-border POBO are allowed, but domestic POBO is not
• Payment solutions are being incorporated into more and devices, e.g. 
  • Worldline and Hease Robotics have signed a partnership to enable extended services on customer-facing robots in public places like malls, shops, entertainment locations, events locations, and transport stations
  • STMicroelectronics, Giesecke & Devrient and FitPay have joined forces to "overcome traditional barriers to OEMs implementing payment applications on wearable devices"
  • Honda have conducted the first proof-of-concept demonstration of in-vehicle payments for parking and fuel at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas
• Walmart and Visa have ended an acrimonious and public battle over interchange fees that saw the Walmart refuse to accept Visa credit cards in its northern Ontario and Manitoba stores. (This is just another example of how retailers are refusing to automatically accept the banks and other payment system providers’ charges.) Retailers can and should fight for cost-effective payment charges.
• Loyalty scheme platforms are being integrated with the mobile payment platforms, e.g. SA Technologies, Inc, a payment technology provider of cashless and mobile transactions in self-serve retail, have announced it will integrate its MORE. loyalty and payroll deduct platform with Apple Pay, for use at up to 300,000 machines nationwide
• Stand alone banking and alternative payment systems are making their services more generally available as the relaxing of payment system regulations opens the door to new competitors, e.g. Contis Group, one the leading alternative banking and payments solutions group, who offer all its UK current and future “white label” clients the ability to have a fully functional current account facility, are adding Faster Payments Service and direct debits.
• Experiments in the use of block chain in payments continue, e.g. Euroclear announced the successful completion of its first pilot for Euroclear Bankchain, the gold bullion based blockchain solution, with FinTech company Paxos.