2021. What an interesting year. With the world turned upside down by a pandemic that seemingly had its sights set on...
Actionable data, clearly highlighted on dashboards, is key to continued growth in payments.
IR
Adrian“The information about a payment is as important as the payment itself.”
“Corporations want more [actionable] data – and they’re willing to pay for it.”
Gareth Lodge,
Senior Analyst at Celen
[A leading research and advisory firm focused on technology for financial institutions globally]
The umbilical cord connecting the world of payments with NonStop systems has never been stronger. From the time when ATMs began first appearing it was the reliability and resilience of a fault tolerant NonStop systems that gave rise to their ubiquity. With just the combination of NonStop and payments software, consumers everywhere benefited from the 24 x 7 access to cash.
When looking at the payments landscape you will see that it has changed significantly with the emergence of fintechs, faster payments and a world of microservices and apps even as NonStop systems changed almost as quickly as the payments. While still available as traditional systems NonStop can now be licensed to run on virtual machines supported by any vendors’ implementation of the Intel x86 architecture and in so doing, is entering the world of clouds. Cloud computing, on-prem via private cloud implementations, and very soon expected to become viable on public clouds (where network fabrics are accessible), ensures this umbilical cord between system and solution remains intact for years to come.
However, changes to just the systems and solutions overlooks the more impactful changes those that makes up the complete payments landscape. For instance it is hard to ignore the explosive growth among e-commerce providers given the impact of the global pandemic. COVID-19 may be looked back upon as the single largest contributor to fundamental changes in consumer behavior ever and on a par with the arrival of the first shopping centers. Whereas they allowed a shopper to visit just the mall, with e-commerce you now don’t even need to get up from the kitchen table. What was once viewed as normal is now openly referred to as the new abnormal as society as a whole expects everything to take place immediately and to be accessible whenever you want it to be.
“There is no ‘normal’ anymore: We are in a period of transition.”
Gareth Lodge, Celent
In the post to the IR Blog, The top 5 payment trends shaping 2022 by IR Head of Payments and Infrastructure Products, David Guiver, our attention is drawn to just how much change is taking place in the world of payments. “The world of today’s payments relies on a staggering array of ever-evolving technology to keep turning,” said Guiver. “The accelerated adoption of digital payments has been phenomenal, with more change globally in the last two years than we’ve seen in the last decade … Consumers have forced banks and businesses to change their payment habits, with the massive shift away from cash, and an inexorable move to cloud technology.”
In Guiver’s post, he presents the results from a recent conversation with Gareth Lodge of the research and advisory firm, Celent. According to Lodge, one of these five trends has to with the changes occurring with the investments being made in payments technology:
“Even before the pandemic, 2020 was being hailed as one of the most pivotal years in payments ever. There were already more changes occurring, with more payments systems being introduced in several countries.
“Spending was put on hold due to uncertainties about the market, and priorities for IT budgets began to head in a different direction. Banks were forced to face the reality that they were not as digitally advanced as the circumstances required.
“Now, consumers are demanding more – new payment methods, omni-channel options, more seamless experiences – and this is driving changes in how organizations allocate technology investments.”
In another trend, Lodge references the need for business data and in so doing highlights the contribution data is making in influencing business decisions even as it provides a vehicle to cut through the noise of business that arises from the complexity of the infrastructure:
“Payments data is important because it identifies trends and patterns which can shape future business decisions. It allows businesses to operate in real time and can uncover actionable insights that can increase revenue and improve ROI.
“Data insight is the key to simplifying payments complexity, and can help businesses to facilitate better business decisions, provide a great customer experience and keep downtime and outages to an absolute minimum.”
In closing, the exchange with Lodge highlighted the value proposition that comes with perhaps the biggest trend shaping 2022 and that is how payments utilizes insights to drive business decisions. This really shouldn’t surprise any member of the NonStop community nor should it be a surprise to those NonStop users who have relied upon IR Transact. As we said in last month’s article to NonStop Insider referencing the post by Jason Krebs, IR’s Senior Product Manager, “IR Transact can help by bringing real-time visibility and access to your entire payments environment, businesses can turn data into intelligence, and keep their payments systems flowing.”
And isn’t that where NonStop running payments supported by IR Transact are headed when we look beyond 2022? Doesn’t the experience in payments we bring to the conversation highlight how IR values data and how it displays data in a form that produces actionable outcomes? Technology may indeed be ever-evolving but it is imperative that the vendors you choose are visibly changing too. Data, dashboards, decisions – they are all accommodated for payments on NonStop today with IR Transact.
If as yet you haven’t read this latest post to the IR blog or simply wish to know more about IR Transact and how beneficial it is when navigating change, then please don’t hesitate to reach out to your IR sales team.
Kevin Johnson,
VP Sales – Payments Performance Monitoring
www.ir.com