EBAday 2013 is approaching fast and the community is gearing up to discuss again the challenges that banks and their payments and infrastructure providers are likely to face in the future.

As 2013 begins, the next five to seven years promise to deliver a rapidly changing landscape as increasing globalisation, electronification and mobility is expected to change the face of payments and transaction banking. The key forces and factors influencing the landscape of today can be illustrated as follows:

The processing capacity that each individual has now at hand will grow in the future. Processing capacity will change the manner consumers and corporate customers behave. Payments production will increasingly gravitate around predictability and richer information, while payments consumption will be determined by convenience and immediacy. Interaction between banks and their customers will be defined by freedom and customisation. From a B2B, B2C or P2P perspective, there will be a wide variety of situations related to payments production, consumption and interaction. The underlying trend is that convergence is happening around transactions and the customer experience. The focus is shifting from product-orientation to client-orientation, while payments are moving to a point of commonality.

This year, let us explore together how to build new common value propositions that go beyond cost reduction and beyond traditional borders and discuss how our industry can best adapt to upcoming changes in market context. The countdown is on!