At MoneyLive in London, payments leaders argued that the future of payments will depend less on new rails and more on the underlying mechanics of liquidity, data and infrastructure.
Banks are investing billions to build real-time payment infrastructure capable of supporting instant transactions, open banking and digital currencies.
Yet executives speaking at MoneyLive on 9 March warned the industry’s biggest constraint may not be technology, but liquidity — a structural limitation that could slow the promise of truly instantaneous global payments.
The discussion, moderated by Chris Higham, brought together Ross Jones, Global Head of Payments at Barclays, Vijay Lulla, EMEA Head of Cross-Currency Payments at JP Morgan; Dovile Naktinyte from the Bank of England’s RTGS and payments structures team; and Daragh Kirby, Head of Sales and Marketing at Intercope.
The panel focused on what they see as the real determinants of future success in payments: reliable liquidity, usable data, and infrastructure that can support a growing web of rails and formats. What emerged was a picture of an industry where the technologies dominating headlines – instant payment schemes, stablecoins and central bank digital currencies – are necessary but not sufficient.
Clients are spoiled for choice – and that is now a problem
The panel began by examining how client expectations are evolving as payment options multiply. Lulla described an environment where corporate and institutional customers now have “quite [a lot] of choices” both in how they initiate payments – through mobile apps, APIs, host-to-host connections or traditional channels – and which rails they ultimately use.
That abundance can create confusion rather than clarity. “There are times when clients, they get lost,” he said, arguing that banks and regulators must work together to provide “the right set of rails [and] right set of information” so customers can identify the best option for a given payment.
Jones picked up the theme from an operational perspective. Customers might initiate a payment in one channel, approve it in another and track its status somewhere else again. Delivering a genuinely coherent omnichannel experience with consistent controls and visibility is now becoming the baseline expectation.
For corporates, he added, the core requirements remain deceptively simple: international payments need to be cheap, fast and, above all, predictable. That demand is driving growing interest in richer status information, event-driven APIs and better visibility into where funds are at any point in the payment journey.
The Bank of England leans into its platform role
Naktinyte offered a view from the centre of the UK’s wholesale infrastructure. The Bank of England, she noted, plays a dual role in the payments ecosystem. It is both a regulator and policy maker, while also operating the RTGS system and the UK’s high-value CHAPS payment scheme.
Its long-term vision is what she described as a “multi money ecosystem”, where different forms of digital and traditional money can interoperate while remaining anchored by the “ultimate risk free asset” of central bank money.
To keep the UK’s core infrastructure relevant, the Bank is pushing ahead with reforms to RTGS.
One element is extended operating hours. CHAPS will move to a opening time of 01:30 from 2027, improving overlap with international payment systems and helping support cross-border activity. Further consultation later this year will explore whether operating hours should expand further, including the possibility of eventual 24/7 settlement.
Another development is the introduction of a new “synchronisation” capability. This will allow atomic settlement between balances held in RTGS and assets or funds recorded on external ledgers. In practice, that means either both sides of a transaction settle simultaneously, or neither does.
To enable that functionality, the Bank expects new “synchronisation operators” to connect RTGS with external platforms. A non-live Synchronisation Lab is due to launch shortly, with an initial group of firms testing end-to-end flows.
Naktinyte emphasised that the benefits of these reforms will only be realised if industry participants integrate them fully into products and processes rather than treating them as compliance upgrades.
Cross-border: rails are going 24/7, liquidity is not
When the conversation turned to cross-border payments, the panel agreed the industry is now dealing with a dramatic increase in speed, volume, and complexity. Kirby pointed to the combined impact of instant payment schemes, ISO 20022 migration, cross-border initiatives such as Swift’s CBPR+ and the rapid expansion of API-driven models.
Each of these developments increases both the amount of data moving through the system and the expectation of real-time processing.
“How do you support a dramatic increase in speed, volume and complexity?” he asked, describing it as the central challenge facing banks and infrastructure providers.
Lulla argued that many of the most difficult constraints in cross-border payments are not technological but financial.
Industry initiatives such as the G20 roadmap and Swift’s reform efforts are helping to improve messaging standards and coordination between markets. But the real bottleneck often lies in intraday liquidity.
He offered a simple illustration. Sending small-value payments to India late in the day may be manageable, but if “five clients come and say, oh, we want to send $5bn each”, most institutions will not have the necessary liquidity available in that market after cut-off.
Domestic systems may move towards 24/7 settlement windows, but the underlying liquidity required to support those flows does not automatically follow.
ISO 20022: migration is only the first step
The panel also addressed the long-running transition to ISO 20022 messaging.
While the industry has spent years preparing for the migration, the speakers suggested the real value will come only when organisations begin using the richer data embedded in those messages.
Lulla described ISO as the foundation for the next wave of data-driven services.
The payments industry frequently talks about artificial intelligence transforming operations, he said, but that transformation depends on having high-quality underlying data.
Without it, the familiar “garbage in, garbage out” problem persists. ISO, in his view, is beginning to create the base layer of structured data needed for more advanced analytics and automation. The next step is for banks, infrastructure providers and technology vendors to collaborate on shared use cases that extract real value from it.
Kirby pointed to a project with a major European central bank where ISO message flows are already being used to derive near real-time views of liquidity and positions.
Rather than waiting for traditional reconciliation cycles, organisations can begin to monitor positions directly from payment flows moving through the system. “Migrating is one thing, but using the data is the most important aspect of the value,” he said.
AI moves from pilot projects to operational reality
If ISO provides the raw material, artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to extract value from it. Lulla said JP Morgan has already implemented “more than 300 plus AI use cases” internally, particularly in operational and productivity-focused areas.
Over the past three years, he said, payment volumes have increased by roughly 35–40%, while false alerts have fallen by around 90% thanks to AI-driven improvements in monitoring and case management.
Kirby described similar developments on the vendor side, where AI tools are being used to repair or enrich payment data during ISO migrations. These tools can populate missing fields, improve message mappings and reduce data loss caused by translation between formats. However, he also warned that governance questions around AI are becoming increasingly important.
As banks rely more heavily on machine-learning models embedded in third-party systems, institutions must be clear about who owns, trains and audits those models, as well as how the underlying data is managed.
Stablecoins and digital money: pragmatic use before disruption
Digital assets inevitably featured in the discussion, but the tone among panellists was notably pragmatic.
Lulla said that the most immediate use cases he sees for stablecoins and tokenised deposits involve liquidity management and internal transfers between large clients. Balances are often moved “within the books” of a bank or group rather than across an open ecosystem.
The real challenge arises when trying to move transactions off-chain and back into fiat systems.
While stablecoins and tokenised deposits “can move at the speed of light”, he said, underlying liquidity cannot move at the same pace. That mismatch limits the extent to which these instruments can currently transform cross-border payments.
Jones added that while some corporates are exploring the possibility of accepting stablecoins for online purchases or travel bookings, broad-based demand remains limited.
Pay-by-bank: protections may determine adoption
Account-to-account payments and “pay-by-bank” propositions were also discussed as part of the evolving payments landscape.
Jones said adoption and interest in account-to-account payments are increasing, particularly as regulators look to scale these systems through initiatives such as the UK’s New Payments Architecture.
A key factor in wider adoption will be the introduction of consumer protections similar to those available in the card ecosystem. Once those safeguards are in place, he expects merchant and consumer uptake to accelerate.
Lulla, however, noted that the industry has previously been optimistic about the speed of adoption for some payment innovations. Banks have invested heavily in new rails and schemes in recent years, he said, without always seeing the commercial uptake initially expected.
Payments becomes a technology business
Asked what will ultimately determine the resilience and interoperability of future payment systems, the panellists converged on several themes.
Regulation still plays an important role, Lulla said, particularly when it supports innovation while maintaining appropriate safeguards. But the long-term goal should be to make payments feel simpler and less fragmented for end users.
“A payment is a payment,” he said. “There should not be a differentiation between a low value, high value, domestic cross border.”
He also summarised a shift that ran through the entire discussion: “Payments is no longer a banking business… it’s a technology business.”
Naktinyte emphasised the importance of collaboration between the public and private sectors as payment infrastructure evolves. Co-creation between regulators, banks and technology providers will be essential if core systems are to keep pace with changing technologies and user expectations, she said.
Kirby concluded with a reminder of the scale of the challenge: the industry has simultaneously increased the speed, complexity, and volume of payments while continuing to innovate on top of that infrastructure. Ensuring the resilience of the underlying systems, he suggested, must remain the priority.
