Peru

ACI’s Take

The pandemic has put pressure on Peruvians to avoid cash and boosted electronic transfers, in part through government benefits being distributed via digital payments. Volumes on the nation’s first-generation real-time payments scheme have soared as a result (as has the use of digital wallets), as people looked to send money to others in a way that is instant and convenient. This presents a great opportunity for Cámara de Compensación Electrónica (CCE), the Peruvian clearing house, which orchestrates real-time payments and is in the process of modernizing the country’s existing first-generation scheme.

Their goal is to be ready to handle further projected transaction growth, as well as enable new use cases for large numbers of Peruvian citizens joining the banked population. CCE’s aim is to become the facilitator of absolute interoperability between all of Peru’s payment systems and financial services to better meet the needs of the 70% of citizens who have yet to be financially included.

Financial institutions will be able to use modern APIs to connect to the new scheme ahead of the GA testing period, via a solution that also provides message transformation and data enrichment between CCE’s current ISO 8583 message specification and the new scheme’s ISO 20022 spec.

But banks and participants must think beyond merely being connected to the new real-time payments scheme. They must explore ways to build a business out of these payments, not just a processing capability, and work with partners who have global experience to ensure success. It will be vital for innovators to consider how to add value beyond purely shifting money. That means expanding their efforts into adapting and improving infrastructure so that future changes are easier to manage. It means devising new business models, too, and standing up digital API connectivity to be able to include real-time payments across the entire payments ecosystem.