At the Pay360 conference event in London this week, NatWest Head of Payment Strategy and Research, Lee McNabb, shared his thoughts on the future of payments with Payment Expert’s Senior Business Journalist Callum Williams.
The UK payment landscape is undoubtedly living in a digital reality, and the byproducts of this economy has seen the increased prominence of emerging technologies, alternative payment methods and digital currencies, such as stablecoins.
McNabb acknowledged the rise of stablecoins, stating there is “no doubt, genuine, credible scale” for the digital-fiat-backed digital currencies that has seen some of the largest payment providers, such as PayPal, enter the market.
An example of stablecoin proliferation, which McNabb highlighted, was the recent report of Visa working with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to develop a stablecoin digital wallet that could only further accelerate adoption across businesses, merchants and customers.
Speaking on OpenAI, McNabb shared how proud the NatWest team were of becoming the first UK bank to partner with the Generative AI leader, a partnership that is set to transform how NatWest delivers on customer success.
Moving towards a more government-focused topic on digital currencies, McNabb outlined what a potential UK central bank digital currency (CBDC) would look like if it were to be issued by the Bank of England tomorrow.
The conversation steered to a discussion on the current state-of-play between the bank and fintech dynamic.
McNabb revealed that when a customer opens a bank account with NatWest, they don’t realise they have already used six to seven fintechs during that process. He was more optimistic on the cooperation aspect of the two sides, believing that both can benefit from one another.
Lastly, the NatWest Head of Payment Strategy revealed what he believes the payments landscape will look like in 2030, citing the development of account-to-account payments, AI, and digital currencies.
