Published on the 13/10/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
The 2015 World Payments Report has demonstrated Australians’ continued enthusiasm for non-cash transactions with the country ranking fourth in the world…
Released annually by Capgemini in association with the Royal Bank of Scotland, the World Payments Report for 2015, has revealed a quickening growth of non-cash transactions which this year are tipped to grow by 8.9 percent and reach 389 billion transactions fueled by mobile and contactless payments technologies.
The report found that demand for non-cash payments in Australia grew 9 per cent between 2012 and 2013, to 8 billion transactions. On a per capita basis that made Australia the fourth in the world in terms of its embrace of non-cash payments.
The arrival in 2017 of the first phase of the country’s new National Payments Platform, which will allow immediate payment settlement, is likely to further spur demand.
Philip Gomm, head of banking and payments at Capgemini Australia, said that for Australia’s banking and finance sector, along with the fintech startups the report provided a useful yardstick to measure consumer demand for payment alternatives.
He said that to date the “Financial services industry has perhaps not been as innovative with respect to innovation and disruption as it might have been.”
Gomm said that consumers were now questioning the legacy platforms and batch processing systems which can delay the transfer of value between banks, when this was no longer the case with more innovative value transfer platforms. He said that it was up to the banks to continue to roll out solutions that would “defend the bank account” especially given the interest from regulators who recognised that anything that speeds up the transfer of value can also speed the growth of the economy.
He predicted that in the next three to five years there would be a raft of new arrangements, that might meld the back end bank account related systems of the banks with new fintech delivered front ends, all delivered under the watchful eye of technology savvy regulators.
The next frontier of payments will likely he shaped by the rise of what Capgemini describes as “hidden payments” which are processed through non-bank systems – such as through mobile apps and virtual currencies. The report indicates that these will make up about 10 percent of non-cash transactions in 2014 and are expected to grow.
The report also notes the rise of Blockchain technology as part of those hidden payments, which offer the underpinnings for virtual currencies such as bitcoin. It is this technology which is attracting the most attention at this week’s Sibos event in Singapore, which is the biggest global gathering of bankers and financial services companies focused on how technology will impact the sector.
Capgemini’s report meanwhile notes that; “The size of the global hidden payments market and its anticipated growth puts it on the radar of regulators.”
