New BNY Mellon Research Finds Corporate Payments Firmly Planted In Both Physical And Digital Worlds

Transformation is Underway and Accelerating, but Existing Solutions Have Staying Power

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Nov 05, 2018, 08:00 ET

NEW YORK, Nov. 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- BNY Mellon today released its latest whitepaper on trends in the payment space. "The Future of Payments— A Corporate Perspective" focuses on the needs, pain points, and priorities of corporates, their attitudes toward the wave of new technologies that have impacted payments so far, and their thinking around adoption of those technologies in the future. The whitepaper will also be featured in a presentation at the AFP conference in Chicago.

"The Future of Payments— A Corporate Perspective" finds that corporates have shifted from learning and exploring what is possible with payments to making concrete plans for what, when, and how to implement. Entire corporate industry segments realize that now is the time to address the many pain points in payments that their industries have been encountering for decades. New offerings such as instant and tokenized payments are coming to the forefront. At the same time, incumbent paper-based solutions such as checks and lockbox services remain firmly in place.

In support of its insights on the current state of payments and the likely trends coming into place, BNY Mellon conducted a survey along with in-depth interviews of corporates to understand and quantify their thinking and concerns. Key findings include:

More than half (54%) of respondents believe payment reliability needs the most improvement when thinking about the future of payments. Concerns about security, payment information, ease of execution, and cost round out the top five areas for payment improvement cited by survey respondents.
Almost 90% of corporates believe that moving vendor payments from check to electronic will have a very high or high impact on their businesses within the next three years. At the same time, lockbox solutions continue to hold a solid place for practitioners with customer bases that still pay primarily by check today, and appear as if they will continue to do so into the near future.
Nearly 70% of survey respondents believe Real-Time Payments will have a high or very high impact on their businesses within the next four or more years.
Almost two-thirds (64%) of respondents believe that tokenized payments solutions such as BNY Mellon's implementation of Disbursements With Zelle® will have an impact on their company in four years, with almost half (43%) stating that they would be ready in that time frame.
Nearly half of survey respondents (49%) felt they are ready to implement SWIFT's gpi initiative for cross-border payments, either now or within the next three years.
Nearly 80% of respondents cited reducing risk as the top benefit of new payment initiatives that might impact their companies over the next decade. Reduced internal costs were a significant benefit of new payment initiatives for 65% of respondents.
Availability of IT resources is cited as the biggest challenge in achieving an ideal future payment experience by almost 70% of respondents. They see increased technology resources as the most imperative strategic need to implement new payment solutions.

"The question for corporates has quickly evolved from what needs to change, to how much and how quickly that change can happen," said Jeff Horowitz, Managing Director, Market Head for Relationship Management, Corporate, Government & Not-for-Profit Segments, BNY Mellon Treasury Services and an author of the paper. "People are now looking for greater understanding around which improvements will best meet their unique payment requirements, and asking about the feasibility of applying those changes to their complex operations smoothly."

Co-author Carl Slabicki, Director, Product Line Manager for Immediate Payments, BNY Mellon Treasury Services added: "Corporates are moving into the new frontier, and we as payment providers are helping guide the way towards change. Payment technologies such as APIs, Robotics, AI, and Blockchain/Distributed Ledger are promising further efficiencies, streamlined capabilities, and cost savings that aim to speed payment operations."

For more information, additional findings, and the full text of "The Future of Payments— A Corporate Perspective," please visit our website.

About BNY Mellon

BNY Mellon is a global investments company dedicated to helping its clients manage and service their financial assets throughout the investment lifecycle. Whether providing financial services for institutions, corporations or individual investors, BNY Mellon delivers informed investment management and investment services in 35 countries. As of September 30, 2018, BNY Mellon had $34.5 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration, and $1.8 trillion in assets under management. BNY Mellon can act as a single point of contact for clients looking to create, trade, hold, manage, service, distribute or restructure investments. BNY Mellon is the corporate brand of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (NYSE: BK). Additional information is available on www.bnymellon.com. Follow us on Twitter @BNYMellon or visit our newsroom at www.bnymellon.com/newsroom for the latest company news.

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SOURCE BNY Mellon