Despite investment in faster rails and AI, data fragmentation remains the industry’s most pervasive operational challenge, slowing decisions and undermining regulatory readiness.
Payments firms are racing to deliver real‑time services on foundations that are anything but real‑time.
AutoRek’s 2026 Payments Survey reveals that 80% of organisations face moderate to significant operational disruption from fragmented payments data, with 34% reporting severe impact on reconciliation and monitoring.
As the report warns, “payments data remains distributed across formats, platforms, and providers—making end‑to‑end visibility difficult and real‑time controls elusive.”
The findings expose a widening gap between the industry’s real‑time ambitions and the operational reality underpinning them. While instant payment networks, AI‑driven controls and emerging digital rails continue to accelerate, the data infrastructure supporting day‑to‑day operations remains stubbornly siloed.
AutoRek’s research shows legacy internal systems and third‑party processor limitations are the primary causes of fragmentation. Despite years of investment in modernisation, firms still struggle to unify data across formats, platforms, and providers; a challenge that becomes more acute as transaction volumes rise.
Standards not the answer
ISO 20022, expected to bring richer and more consistent data, is instead highlighting the scale of the problem. Although 83% of firms say they are at least partially implemented, only 29% are fully migrated and live. More than half remain in coexistence mode, creating additional complexity at the very moment when standardisation was meant to reduce it.
AutoRek’s survey shows that firms are experiencing slower exception handling, growing reconciliation backlogs and reduced visibility over post‑trade risk. The report notes that fragmented data “slows real‑time decisions, increasing exception backlogs” and undermines confidence in reporting.
The consequences extend into regulatory readiness. Safeguarding and client money compliance – already under deadline pressure – is being hampered by inconsistent data and manual processes. With only 33% of firms fully prepared for upcoming safeguarding deadlines, the inability to centralise and reconcile data is emerging as a critical barrier to compliance.
The report argues payments leaders are increasingly turning to reconciliation overlays, centralised data hubs, and unified control platforms to regain visibility. Data architecture, rather than transaction speed, is becoming the true foundation of modern payment operations.
Did someone mention AI?
This shift is also shaping AI adoption. While 96% of firms now use AI in some capacity, nearly half struggle to integrate it with legacy systems, and 61% cite data security and regulatory risk as their top concern. As AutoRek’s Jim Sadler puts it: “AI doesn’t fix broken data. It amplifies whatever foundation it’s built on.”
The same applies to emerging settlement rails. Firms expect 24% of payment volume to flow through blockchain‑based rails by 2030, but the operational frameworks required to reconcile and control these transactions depend on unified, high‑quality data. Without it, the benefits of programmability and transparency risk being overshadowed by operational friction.
AutoRek’s conclusion is that the industry’s biggest risk is not technological disruption but operational inertia. Payments firms understand where the market is heading – real‑time payments, AI‑driven controls, interoperable networks, and digital assets – but many have not modernised the operational core required to support them.
The report argues that the next 12 months will be decisive. Firms that consolidate fragmented data, automate reconciliation and embed safeguarding into daily operations will be positioned to scale. Those that continue to rely on manual processes and siloed systems risk widening the gap between strategy and execution.
