In the pandemic era and for a few years after, finance leaders generally accepted that digital transformation is uncharted territory, needing new capital expenditures, and new ways of measuring gains. In 2026, however, the mandate is shifting, putting the focus on translating years of payments modernization into more measurable outcomes.
After a long stretch of infrastructure buildouts, policy shifts, and piecemeal adoption, the agenda for the next 12 months is refreshingly concrete. Institutions that master straight-through processing (STP), compress processing times, and align pricing and incentives to stimulate usage will pull ahead. Increasingly, boards want to see old-school Return on Investment (ROI) reflected in new and improved processes, fulfilling the promise of digital.
With expectations rising around liquidity visibility and predictability, 2026 is poised to reward banks and payment service providers who connect the dots from richer data to better customer outcomes. To that end, Bottomline’s Edward Ireland frames 2026 as “the year to operationalize value rather than merely comply with standards.”
In a recent interview, he said many banks “met” the November 2025 ISO 20022 deadline using translation workarounds and partial adoption. The work now is to finish the job in ways that reduce exceptions, improve reconciliation, and deliver clarity in cash positions.
On that checklist, “The most important [item] is structured address,” Ireland said, pointing to Swift data showing a large share of messages (80%) still carrying unstructured address fields. This will start to get unwieldy, given that another ISO 20022 deadline looms, this time for November 2026, and requiring structured country and city data.
It’s an important fix to remove a common breakpoint in cross-border flows.
Ireland said that when financial institutions (FIs) get such key details right, the compounding benefits are seen in greater STP, fewer handoffs, and better customer experiences throughout 2026.
B2B Cross-Border 2026: From Ambition to Execution
Cross-border payment improvements in 2026 will come from end-to-end thinking rather than isolated upgrades. And the sequence of choice is emerging. Ireland noted that pre-validation to stop identity errors and fraud, rich structured data to preserve intent, tracking payments to reduce uncertainty, and confirming receipt, are a winning combination.
The main friction point in this workflow isn’t intention, but legacy. “The biggest break point is going to be legacy architecture,” Ireland said, underscoring the reality that core banking system replacements remain rare and expensive. The more practical route is continuous investment that integrates capabilities without destabilizing operations.
When evaluating vendors and internal builds, he said to ask key questions, for example: do they genuinely support end-to-end payments, or are they stitching together point solutions that struggle under higher volumes and richer data?
Pre-validation is also accelerating, for regulatory and commercial reasons. Either way, the business case around pre-validation is undeniable.
“If you want a commercial reason to implement a confirmation of payee solution (CoP), it’s the reduction in misdirected payments and the reduction in APP (authorized push payment) fraud,” Ireland said.
Instant rails sharpen that logic. CoP has reduced misdirected payments by over 50% since inception in 2020. Corporates, too, are recognizing that verification services reduce misdirection, which turns Verification of Payee from a bank feature into a competitive differentiator embedded in payment propositions.
Markets will take different paths to the same destination. In Europe and the UK, Verification of Payee (VoP), CoP, and ISO maturity promise higher STP throughput and fewer exceptions. Cross-border specialists will lean into Swift GPI for transparency and predictability, Ireland said.
In the U.S., where two real-time systems now vie for share of a fledgling market, the value of confirmation of receipt, speed, and liquidity visibility will determine whether instant becomes truly useful at scale and for cost.
ISO 20022 Redux: Finish the Job to Unlock Value
ISO 20022 is the backbone for many gains expected in 2026, Ireland said, but only if FIs and corporates push beyond minimum compliance. He said the critical steps are straightforward and high impact. Focusing on the cover values of ubiquity, structure, and more granular data.
First, structure addresses consistently so that the country and city can be understood without manual intervention. Given how much traffic remains unstructured, even partial improvements will yield outsized benefits in STP.
Second, move statements to the ISO standard to close the gap many banks created by modernizing payments while leaving statements in legacy MT (message type) formats. That disconnect slows reconciliation and erodes the advantage of richer transaction data.
Third, automate case management and exception handling, an area where messaging updates are arriving and have to be implemented by November of 2026. “Automating these junctures may sound basic, but the benefits compound, lowering cost per transaction and removing latency where customers feel it most,” Ireland said.
For banks wary of disruption, he advises continuous investment rather than rip-and-replace. Modern workflow engines and APIs now make it viable to add capabilities without core upheaval, provided the architecture is aligned to end-to-end processing, not siloed.
Competitive dynamics matter here. Ireland added that enhancements to legacy rails can narrow the perceived gap with alternatives like stablecoins and distributed ledgers; standing still simply concedes ground.
“The market will reward those who connect ISO data quality with automated investigations, transparent tracking, and clear confirmations,” he said. By the end of 2026, he expects a tangible reduction in processing times and an increase in STP rates. These improvements are both measurable and bankable (ROI).
Adoption Economics: Price for Usage, Not Prestige
Pricing remains an underappreciated lever for determining whether instant rails and faster payments achieve their potential. Ireland said lessons from Brazil’s Pix network and India’s UPI are unmistakable: “Low-cost access drives volume, which in turn drives network effects and better customer experience,” he said. Granted, those were not built as B2B payment networks, but the economic comparison is valid.
And treating instant payments as a premium product is known to suppress traction. Ireland noted examples where premium pricing correlates with low adoption, whereas accessible pricing removes friction at the point of decision for both banks and corporates.
The US situation underscores this challenge. With top-tier infrastructure in both the RTP network from The Clearing House, and the FedNow Service from the Federal Reserve, and a $10 million per transaction limit each, adoption still lags. Ireland said this is because of misaligned fees and legacy incentives that favor status quo behaviors and payment rails. The behavioral component also explains ongoing use of the unsafe and inconvenient paper check.
He painted it as part of a false economy of legacy instruments: front-end fees look low, but total cost including processing, lockbox, and fraud is higher than electronic alternatives.
“Most banks don’t charge enough for checks,” Ireland said, and that underpricing masks the true costs while slowing migration to better options.
The job in 2026, he said, is to articulate value and align fees accordingly. When banks quantify fraud reduction, reconciliation gains, and liquidity benefits, customers can make rational choices that also serve the network’s health. It’s time for such explainable ROI.
That same thinking should align and guide internal investments. Rather than choosing between instant, cross-border, or ISO, the smarter move is to sequence investments, so that each builds on the last. Verify before you send structure data so machines can read it, automate exceptions so humans can add value where it matters, and track and confirm to deliver confidence.
Ireland said that budgets remain sturdy but distributed, for now, funding multiple initiatives that have already been piloted and now need to show results. If banks and FIs stay the course, the industry will look back on 2026 having gained processing speed, higher STP rates, and fewer costly exceptions.