Preparing for IPS

As we prepare for the IPS event in London, I am looking forward to the presentations and conference sessions, of course, but I think I am looking forward to the one-to-one discussions on the stand even more. There is no doubt that this is an exciting time in the industry and there are still a lot of changes happening. I am expecting three topics of conversation to come up again and again this week. 

The first I think is the increasing importance of transaction banking – with growing corporate electronic payment volumes and the increasing global nature of those payments, corporates are demanding more information and more consistency of service from their payment providers. The second area, and one that just doesn’t go away, is the issue of fraud, especially in the corporate world. With electronic payments of trillions of dollars moving around all the time, one breach in fraud systems and the criminals can walk away with significant amounts of money. 

Last but not least is the less glamorous, but possibly even more fundamental discussions about the payments infrastructure within banks. For many banks, their payment systems are decades old, but with the escalation of changes happening in payments, it is getting less and less acceptable to ‘make do and mend’. But how do financial institutions start down the road of evolving a system that is at the heart of what they do, and where there simply is no chance for downtime?

I will be blogging more this week on these topics and others that come up at the event. And hopefully I’ll see some of you there.