Fiserv Sees No Let Up in Payments Hub Trend

Bad economy or not, large financial institutions are moving forward with the build out of new integrated payments infrastructures – encouraged by corporate clients looking for seamless transactions streams and treasury dashboard displays of activity— that could be in place within 18 months, according to a white paper published by Fiserv.
The payments hub strategy is one in which banks “are looking to converge middle office processes through the deployment of a payments hub to achieve operating efficiencies,” according to Mike Ringuette, FM of Fiserv’s Global Payments Solutions, in a statement. “Most are expecting that they can compete better in existing commercial markets and expand into new ones with a next generation payments solution.”
Besides process improvements, these new environments lend themselves to better risk management, says Ringuette, who noted that smaller banks appear to be holding out for vendors to come to the table with packaged payments hub products.
“With the payment environment substantially reshaping, the traditional payment silos in banks are slowly giving way to a more pragmatic approach to payment processing,” said Susan Feinberg, senior research director of wholesale banking at TowerGroup. “To achieve these more holistic client-facing payment services, banks will prioritize service-oriented architecture (SOA) and workflow projects allowing them to offer unified payment services, even when the payments processing and settlement continue to be siloed.”