Bottomline on 2022: 12 issues that demand attention

Banking And Financial Messaging

Bottomline

Jan 10, 2022

There’s a widely quoted story told by author Anne Lamott about the time when her younger brother had a high school science assignment to identify 100 birds that were native to the United States. Her brother posed the question: “How am I gonna do all this?” To which her father replied: “Bird by bird, son.”

The same method might be applied to business payments, digital banking, anti-fraud efforts and other related issues. This year will become a potentially overwhelming confluence of regulations, key deadlines, digital transformation urgencies and new technology dependencies. Best to take them the way the young Mr. Lamott did: One at a time.

It’s with this volume of information and potential consequence that we approached our “Bottomline on 2022” project. We selected 12 trends across the globe and across topics affecting businesses and financial institutions. We could have easily doubled that number. Instead, we enlisted 12 of our subject matter experts to give us their take on the business dynamics that demand the most attention fintech and financial services. We invite you to read all of them, but here’s a sampler of what you’ll find in the link provided here:

Jessica Cheney, Vice President Product Management & Strategic Solutions on real-time payments: “One of the things I’ve been surprised by is the volume of use cases that are coming to the fore either as real-time, bank-based payments or other instant payments platforms. From a consumer perspective, reliance on Zelle, Venmo and other instant payment platforms has skyrocketed during the pandemic. For example, Venmo expects to grow from its current 76 million user base to 120 million by 2023. So, the American consumer is certainly familiar with the concept of real-time payments.”

Ed Ireland, Senior Market Development Manager on ISO 20022: “ISO is also a key to digital and payments transformation. In fact, it can be seen as a springboard to both, and the complexities involved will demand effective partnerships and third-party providers. For example, challenges must be considered depending on how several countries plan to leverage the ISO change as a core part of their payments architecture - introducing new transaction data elements, network providers, connectivity options (e.g. API), rails (e.g. Instant Payments), digital services, and overlay services (e.g. Request to Pay).”

Erik Nilsen, SVP Small Business Solutions on banking for smaller businesses: “Too many banks put smaller businesses and companies on retail banking platforms, which typically don’t give them what they need to run manage their payments and cash lifecycle needs. They need something that has more utility for them without being so big that only an enterprise business can use it. Placing a business on a retail platform gives it the consumer-like capabilities of basic money movement like bill pay and mobile payments, but it doesn't meet their needs as a small business, like budgeting, cash flow control, liquidity management, accounting automation and more advanced payment services. The interesting thing now with SMBs is that so much of their day-to-day business operations are happening outside of what the bank can offer them.”

There’s the start. Three Bottomline team members sharing insights on three important issues. We hope the 12 trends we discuss touch upon some element of your business. We hope that you find more than a few of those helpful, one at a time, of course.    

To see the full collection of insights, visit these regional sites:

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Bottomline

Bottomline Technologies helps make complex business payments simple, smart, and secure. Corporations and banks rely on Bottomline for domestic and international payments, efficient cash management, automated workflows for payment processing and bill review, and state of the art fraud detection, behavioral analytics and regulatory compliance solutions.

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