Real-time payment systems offer significant potential to accelerate growth and innovation in the payments industry. Instant payments, with low cost and irrevocability, yield systemic benefits for all parties in the transaction. It is the advent of new-age technologies including 5G, blockchain, and IoT that holds the potential for real-time payment systems to attain higher speed, rich context, connectivity, and security. Financial institutions accessing the data in real time will improve the customer experience, fuel connected commerce, and provide new products and services. 

The adoption of real-time payment systems is driven largely by the inherent characteristics of the local infrastructure, demographics, and a supporting ecosystem. The innovation-led growth in the adoption of real-time payments — in addition to increased interoperability and harmonization of data — will provide the impetus for businesses to transform their real-time payment systems to stay ahead of further and future disruptions. 

Several factors are essential within a real-time payments system, as shown below. Wipro’s report, Real-Time Payments Accelerated, provides a more detailed look at these factors, which drive the real-time payment systems, and the benefits of real-time payments.

The future state of real-time payments 

The world is rapidly moving toward adoption of real-time payments. 54 countries have adopted a real-time payments system, and the next stage for these systems is to achieve interoperability across borders. Banking and infrastructure fees are currently managed through correspondent banking and SWIFT at significant cost and complexity. Although various approaches to fix this problem exist, there is no serious contender. Meanwhile, national real-time payments infrastructures and bank-level transformations continue to see innovation surrounding real-time payments.

The above initiatives require proper forward planning and an extensive transformation budget over an extended (e.g. five years) period. Additionally, this approach will continue to populate the agglomeration of systems and increase cost, complexity, and inflexibility—pushing the bank into a corner. 

How Wipro can help 

Wipro has gained extensive expertise in the payments arena while partnering with banks, financial institutions, and payment networks in their technology-led transformations. We serve clients by modernizing and simplifying their payments technology infrastructure to optimize cost and operations, increase agility, and minimize risk. We can help all sectors develop a transformation roadmap aligned to their business’s regulatory and technology priorities.

With Wipro, a wealth of expertise is available to meet your needs:

• Strong capability: We possess end-to-end transformation capabilities including advisory, consulting, and managed services. Our high-quality resources deliver projects within your timeframe and above your expectations. Our approach is designed to ensure effective knowledge transfer and pragmatic delivery of quick wins. The objective is to get IT moving in the right direction in a timely manner to better support your business. 
• Deep market experience: Experts in the payments industry lead Wipro’s dedicated payment practice. Whether wholesale or retail payments, we work with all banking and infrastructure providers. Our global experience gives us the ability to write thought leadership content and anticipate industry trends. 
• Delivery excellence: We deliver solutions based on structured and proven methodologies—refined by numerous client engagements—to accelerate progress and allow projects to proceed rapidly. 
• Alliances and partnerships: We partner with a broad spectrum of technology solution providers in the payment space to deliver the right solution for our clients. 
• Innovation culture: Wipro uses cutting-edge and disruptive technologies to solve our clients’ real-world business challenges. 

This article is part of Wipro's custom analysis and research. For an in-depth analysis of real-time payment systems, download our Real-Time Payments Accelerated report.

Omkar Nisal

Senior Vice President & Head – Banking EMEA

Omkar, a financial services technology industry leader at Wipro Limited, works closely with clients in digital and cloud transformation with significant focus on enterprise engineering, ways of working, cloud adoption and AI-led innovation. A seasoned professional with over 25 years of experience in creating industry leading products for various markets globally in Universal Banking, Channels, Payments, Wealth Management and Compliance. A passionate technologist at heart, Omkar has been a speaker at many international conferences and authored in key industry journals on a range topics addressing the needs of the IT industry.

Sachin Sharma

Senior Manager, Wipro Insights

Sachin is the lead for banking EMEA and APJ in the Wipro Insights team. He is responsible for generating knowledge insights to help drive business growth. Sachin

is a seasoned research and analysis professional and specializes in several aspects of banking sector research and insights including thought leadership development, strategic intelligence, and bespoke analysis.