EBAday 2022: 71% believe the future of payments is yet to come

finextra.com:

Bringing industry leaders together for a strategic roundtable on ‘The future is now! How do we best employ technology and infrastructure in transaction banking and payments?’, Sulabh Agarwal, global head of payments, Accenture made history with Sara Castelhano, managing director, EMEA payments and commerce solutions, JP Morgan and Kerstin Montiegel, managing director, global head of client connectivity, corporate bank, Deutsche Bank in the first women-only keynote panel at EBAday.

Kicking off the session, Agarwal highlighted the substantial changes that have occurred to customer propositions across wallets and currencies. Further to this, he stated that trust has become increasingly important regarding technologies such as the cloud and new developments in the cryptocurrency, CBDC and metaverse space.

A poll revealed that 71% of the EBAday audience believe that the future of payments is still to come, while 29% think we’re there already. According to Montiegel, technology is now a “must have,” but also mentioned that there are environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations that must be made. Castelhano agreed that ESG is important, but we must also consider the speed at which the payments industry is changing.

“10 years ago, the quickest way to move money was to fly it on a plane. Last year, real time payments moved cross border. Future strategies for the metaverse and similar topics are moving quickly,” Castelhano said. She went on to say that this shift is occurring faster than every before because the consumer wants more connectivity, but due to everything not being embedded, the customer is currently getting a clunky service.

Using the metaverse as an example, she mentioned that while you’re able to play