ACI Worldwide — GLOBAL PAYMENT TRENDS — Charting the growth of 'immediate payments'

GlobalData is a leading provider of data, insights and analysis for the world’s largest industries, covering 17 industry verticals including banking and payments. GlobalData’s industry-leading data rests on a foundation of “Gold Standard” data derived from trusted central sources and a team of expert analysts in each sector.

This report leverages GlobalData’s Instant Payments market sizing data as well as insights on adoption of mobile wallets, use of online payment tools and consumer experiences of fraud from GlobalData’s Financial Services Consumer Survey.

The Instant Payments market sizing data is a custom-built dataset developed specifically for the Prime Time for Real-Time report series, based on a core methodology of secondary research into any publicly available data on the development of real-time payment systems available from the entities that run those systems, or from central banks. These numbers are then cross-checked against GlobalData’s in-house datasets covering overall payments by type, standardized and adjusted where necessary based on analyst input. To the historic and current-year data derived from this methodology, we apply our proprietary forecasting model based on tested correlations of the target variables against multiple macro-economic variables and reviewed by our team of expert analysts. Forecasts are provided five years into the future under this model, from the base year (2021 in this report).

GlobalData’s annual Financial Services Consumer Survey is a key source of unique information, complementing GlobalData’s deep market-level and alternative datasets to provide a complete picture of the financial services industry. The most recent survey, the 2021 Financial Services Consumer Survey, was conducted online in Q1-Q2 2021 among 52,742 consumers in 42 markets globally. The survey explores global consumer behaviors, purchasing preferences and attitudes across the most important banking products. Every year, respondents are recruited via an online panel. Quotas are set to ensure samples are nationally representative. The number of respondents to any particular question depends on individuals’ characteristics, their financial product holding and their interest in that area. Our questionnaire has been developed over a decade of iteration and client input, leading to a focused script that covers a wide range of financial services topics. Questions are designed with an emphasis on being closed-ended questions with a natural language used throughout. Our questionnaire aims to strike a balance between providing useable time-series data from questions that remain consistent over time and questions that address emerging themes in financial services.

Glossary of terms

Immediate payments

Immediate payments (IP), also known as instant payments, faster payments and real-time payments.

Key features include:

Immediate availability of funds to the beneficiary of the transaction
Irrevocability: once a payment has been made, the sender cannot deauthorize the transfer
Confirmation of funds via real-time balance. Once a payment is authorized, the sender’s account balance reflects the deduction instantaneously
While settlement timing may vary by scheme, it is often completed within a matter of seconds
Newer IP systems are often based on ISO 20022, the de facto real-time standard

Digital overlay services

Digital overlay services have appeared in global markets, particularly where we see high levels of real-time payments adoption.

These ancillary services often ride the real-time payments rails, and are flexible, nimble drivers of innovation. They enable many kinds of alternative payment methods.

The front-end touchpoint for consumers, merchants or corporate customers is a digital overlay service, as it’s about connecting IP to a purchasing experience, billing scenario or accounts payable process. Google Pay, WhatsApp Pay, Amazon Pay, Paytm and Walmart PhonePe are all examples of real-life overlay services.

RfP/RtP/R2P

Request for Payment/Request to Pay can be both a digital overlay service used by an end user to request or make a payment, as well as the core functionality of a central infrastructure (CI) – usually a real-time payments CI – that provides the RfP transaction flows and rules to play in the RfP network.

RfP has use cases across P2P, M2C and B2B scenarios, where IP needs to be integrated into a seamless workflow or interaction.

Central/national infrastructure

A centralized system for a payments network, including for IP. Referred to as a scheme, system or platform depending on locale. Providing a framework and/or rulebook for payments messaging and processing as well as digital overlay services.

From a CI point of view, RfP is either a capability within the IP CI itself or a closely related offering by the same CI provider. In some markets the CI has powers to fine participants for missed SLAs, to set variable fees for participants, and to mandate centralized fraud reporting.

Definitions

CSM	Clearing and Settlement Mechanisms
CI	Central Infrastructure
SCT Inst	SEPA Instant Credit Transfer
TIPS	TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), pan-European single currency instant payments system launched by the European Central Bank (ECB)
RT1	Pan-European single currency instant payments system launched by EBA Clearing
USSD	Unstructured Supplementary Service Data
EFT	Electronic Funds Transfer

Payment dynamics

P2P	Person to Person or Peer to Peer
G2C	Government to Consumer
B2C	Business to Consumer
C2B	Consumer to Business
C2G	Consumer to Government
B2B	Business to Business
B2G	Business to Government
G2B	Government to Business
C2M	Consumer to Merchant
M2C	Merchant to Consumer