Deutsche Bank’s latest paper reviews the industry’s major ongoing payments initiatives through the lens of client needs and identifies global reach as the major long-term challenge for the industry

The rush of innovations that continues to come forth from the payments sector has turned the payments landscape into a puzzle that is hard to piece together.

Yet a full and clear picture of the industry is crucial to ensuring further developments are in tune with one another and focused on meeting the needs of end clients. With this in mind, Deutsche Bank’s latest white paper, “Piecing together the global payments puzzle”, pulls together the pieces that make up the payments landscape – providing a comprehensive guide to today’s complex and evolving payments landscape and an assessment of where the industry should go next.

“The combined forces of digitalisation and regulation have triggered the development of a kaleidoscopic range of new payments solutions,” says Marc Recker, Global Head of Institutional Market Management, Cash Management, Deutsche Bank. “This is fantastic for all market participants, but we must not get ahead of ourselves. Effective innovation is predicated on a clear understanding of what clients need, what is currently available to them, and how this can be improved upon. In short, before we innovate, we must piece together the puzzle of global payments.”

The paper looks to do this by first identifying the core needs of payments users – namely, security, speed, efficiency, transparency and global reach – and systematically grouping initiatives according to which ones they address and which industry players are leading them. This not only provides a comprehensive guide to ongoing payments initiatives, but also shows exactly where each one fits into the bigger picture.

“This is far more than a guide to what fits where in the payments world,” notes Recker. “By taking a big-picture view of what clients need, our paper also gives us a clear view of where industry developments are serving clients well and where further initiatives could add significant value. It thus stands as resource for determining the direction of future innovation.”

In particular, ensuring global reach for payments users remains the long-term challenge.

“It is clear that correspondent banking networks are the only viable means of providing global reach at the present time,” says Recker, “and they will continue to be crucial to the workings of global trade for the foreseeable future. We cannot focus on long-term visions at the expense of short-term needs and must balance our drive for innovation with the need to sustain and develop existing correspondent banking networks.”

To read “Piecing together the global payments puzzle”, please click here.