A review of our changing payments landscape

The starting point for our Payments Direction strategic initiative was to complete an environmental scan of the payments ecosystem. This scan consisted of a wide ranging and extensive review of local and international research which we then used to assess global trends and the potential impact of those trends on New Zealand’s payments ecosystem.

The findings from this research have been consolidated and analysed in a report we’ve called 2015 Environmental scan report: Our changing payments landscape. The report outlines the trends and influences that could affect our payments ecosystem over the next decade and is the first of three companion outputs from our Payments Direction initiative.

The full environmental scan report will be available to our Participants, Members and those attending The Hub on 24 September 2015. The report will be available at a later date on request via our website.

UPDATE Feb 2016: The 2015 Environmental scan report is now available in the Payments Direction section.

Highlights from our environmental scan report

From our environmental scan we identified five themes that describe the trends and influences currently occurring in payments. These themes are:

1. Payments are increasingly continuous and international in orientation. 

There is an increasing expectation that payments instruments and payment system availability should facilitate the continuous economic activity of companies and consumers that takes places irrespective of geographic location or time zone.

2. Payments are increasingly faster, more mobile, more informative and linked across the value chain.

Payment instruments and payment systems need to: support immediacy in commercial interactions, irrespective of location; allow information of value to be transmitted with the payment; and open the way for new payment propositions to be delivered.

3. Payment infrastructure refreshes and renewals are widespread and arise for a number of reasons. 

Infrastructure refreshes and renewals are a catalyst for change, enabling faster or real-time payments to be delivered, multiple payment instruments to be handled on a single platform, and helping to achieve compliance with regulation and regulatory policy.

4. Financial services and payments regulation is expanding and aiming to produce more inclusive and resilient systems. 

Regulators are showing a renewed interest in the operation and governance of financial and payments systems, with some of that regulation being driven from offshore for a number of reasons. Additionally, in some jurisdictions regulators are driving payments system modernisation and inclusion.

5. Payments associations face rising expectations. 

Payment associations are expected to be positioned to articulate a long-term vision for payments, to engage in meaningful ways with a diverse range of stakeholders, to demonstrate their independence, and to work productively with regulators.

Our analysis of these five themes together with the findings from the environmental scan, informs our next Payments Direction paper: Payments 2025 – A view of the payments ecosystem in 10 years. This next paper will outline Payments NZ’s view of what the future payments ecosystem could look like and we will be presenting the key findings at The Hub event in September.

We hope you will continue to watch the progress of Payments Direction and the future work programmes that will follow for Payments NZ.