ComputerWeekly: Cognizant’s Vice President and Head of Banking and Financial Services Practice in the UK & Ireland Explores the Changing Landscape of Payments

“There is a huge opportunity for the payments ecosystem to adapt and evolve in line with the digital transformation that is changing the rest of the world,” writes Tony Virdi. “Such change helps organizations to run differently and be able to compete with new players. But for this to work, those involved in the industry must build strong partnerships, based on analytics and evidence that a payments channel is of interest to the consumers. At the same time, all payments providers must ensure that the customer experience is enhanced without compromising on security requirements and regulations that protect our money in the first place.” Excerpts:

“In order to keep up with alternative payment providers, those players in the payments ecosystem who do not look to the future, risk stagnating as consumers increasingly seek alternative, more convenient and immediate ways of making payments. But what are the market conditions changing the payments landscape and which are the current priorities of payment providers and processors?

In our recent report published in conjunction with the Financial Services Club and VocaLink, we explore the state of the world’s largest payment infrastructures and how market conditions are changing the game. Overwhelmingly, the evolution of technology and in particular, the rise of online and digital channels is having significant impact. As check payments are moving towards possible extinction, organizations now notice the importance of mobile and smartphone usage, social networking and collaboration. In addition, security concerns around cloud computing seem to be lessening – according to our research, security has been replaced as the top priority by mobile, with 79% of respondents. As a result, the cloud is used by many of the most forward-thinking organizations who are already putting these observations into practice.

While these mobile, digital and social changes are mostly impacting the front end of retail payments, there is also an important role to be played in the back-end integration of new payment channels. Co-operation is  now key and this involves all parties from banks, merchants and card issuers to payment processors, mobile operators and handset manufacturers working together to develop a multi-channel payments process that is user-friendly.”

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