Payment Chiefs on Real-Time Settlement Future

As instant payments transform the global financial landscape, industry leaders are navigating the complexities of real-time settlement, fraud prevention and cross-border transactions. 

In this roundtable discussion, John McNaught, Senior Vice President and Head of Payouts at Worldpay, Gary Conroy, CEO of TransferMate Global Payments, and Andrew Moseley, Head of Solution Consulting Europe at ACI Worldwide, share their expertise on evolving payment infrastructures. 

From domestic real-time networks to the implications of Central Bank Digital Currencies and the challenges of international transfers, these executives offer valuable insights into how payment providers are building more efficient, secure and accessible systems for businesses and consumers.

Question 1: How is your organisation's instant payments infrastructure evolving to accommodate the increasing demand for real-time settlement in both B2B and P2P transactions?

John McNaught, Senior Vice President, Head of Payouts at Worldpay

Consumers and businesses are expressing increasing demand for real-time settlement. To anticipate this, Worldpay incorporated direct integrations with Visa Direct and Mastercard Send from 2017 to allow for instant payouts to cards across the globe. We are also working to expand instant payment capabilities further by lobbying for additional card issuers to adopt fast funds programmes.

Worldpay has also gained access to instant bank rail clearing in more than 50 markets, which supports both domestic and cross-border payouts. To ensure the accuracy of transactions, Worldpay has implemented real-time tooling for beneficiary account validation.

The infrastructure's backbone is supported by modern, high-performance APIs designed to manage extremely high volumes of transactions and process them without delay. Complementing these advancements, Worldpay offers instant foreign exchange capabilities, utilising real-time rates to facilitate immediate and seamless currency conversions for international transactions.

Gary Conroy, CEO TransferMate Global Payments

TransferMate offers a range of payment options with customisable detail levels to meet our B2B partners' specific requirements. In the UK, for example, we provide FP, BACS, CHAPS and SWIFT options. This approach applies across all countries we serve. 

For businesses that need to trade in multiple currencies, we enable conversions even over weekends when FX markets might be closed. We facilitate this through customer whitelisting to meet specific business needs. 

TransferMate is continuously evolving as industry demands increase. The new EU Instant Payment Regulation (IPR) mandates that instant payments must be offered, must complete within 10 seconds, must cost the same as standard transfers, and must include verification of payee at no additional charge. 

This regulation provides clear guidelines with an October 2025 deadline for receiving and verification of payee functionality. 

Andrew Moseley, Head of Solution Consulting Europe at ACI Worldwide 

We currently power 26 domestic and pan-regional real-time schemes across six continents - including 11 central infrastructures - and are therefore uniquely positioned to partner with central banks and financial institutions to help navigate this increasing demand for instant payments by ensuring their infrastructure evolves accordingly. 

At ACI, our instant payment infrastructure is built on the global ISO 20022 standard and enables additional features such as Request to Pay and Alias management, providing partners with opportunities for new payment types and revenue streams. 

For example, we worked with Mexipay, a leading financial technology company, to enhance Mexico’s instant payments ecosystem, with the aim of accelerating instant payments adoption and boosting economic growth and financial inclusion for its businesses and consumers.

Question 2: As Central Bank Digital Currencies gain momentum globally, what implications do you foresee for private instant payment networks and how are you preparing your systems for potential integration?

John McNaught, Senior Vice President, Head of Payouts at Worldpay

We expect Central Bank Digital Currencies to coexist with commercial bank money rather than replace it. At the end of 2024, CBDCs were live in The Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria, while pilots were underway in 44 countries including Brazil, China and India. Despite its international appeal, CBDCs are yet to reach 1% of transaction value in the markets, according to Worldpay’s Global Payments Report.

It’s important that when considering CBDCs, payments providers are preparing systems for the potential integration. By ensuring infrastructure is flexible and capable of accommodating new forms of digital currencies, consumers and businesses will be able to continue to use a diverse range of payments methods. In the long term, CBDCs will become just another element within the broader payment landscape that requires seamless integration to maintain efficient transaction processing.

Gary Conroy, CEO TransferMate Global Payments

CBDCs are essentially stablecoins issued by central banks and we're seeing stablecoins growing in usage. Stripe now offers stablecoin USDC payment acceptance across multiple networks and has acquired Bridge, a stablecoin platform, for over £1bn. 

The key difference is that CBDCs are backed by central banks, tying them more closely to the political landscape, with different drivers behind their launch compared to stablecoins. Recent events have sparked renewed interest and momentum in CBDC development. 

For instance, Europe's Digital Euro project is necessary, according to ECB Chief Economist Philip Lane (a fellow Blackrock College and Trinity College Dublin alumnus), to preserve Europe's monetary autonomy. 

The concern is avoiding a situation where transactions in Europe occur via third-party systems beyond European control. This echoes ECB President Christine Lagarde's position that Europe must build alternatives to US and Chinese controlled platforms like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Alipay. 

There are many similarities with the drive towards instant payments. We discussed the need to convert currencies while markets are closed and to settle instantly 24/7. Stablecoins offer similar benefits by never shutting down. Additionally, for volatile markets, USDC and other stablecoins play an important role in providing currency stability. Currently, most stablecoins are pegged to the dollar. 

Andrew Moseley, Head of Solution Consulting Europe at ACI Worldwide 

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) may be piquing interest globally, but they are increasingly proving to be a failed experiment rather than a transformative innovation. Countries like China have aggressively pushed their digital yuan, but adoption remains low due to limited consumer demand and the continued dominance of private payment platforms. 

Similarly, pilot programs in Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa have struggled to gain traction, as CBDCs offer little advantage over existing digital payment methods. The lack of clear commercial use cases, privacy concerns, and regulatory uncertainty has further hindered adoption. As a result, many central banks are now scaling back or reconsidering their CBDC integration strategies. 

Question 3: 

Real-time fraud detection remains a significant challenge for instant payment systems. What innovative approaches is your organisation implementing to mitigate fraud without compromising the seamless user experience?

John McNaught, Senior Vice President, Head of Payouts at Worldpay

It is often the perception that AI is managing everything these days, but it is clear that human intervention and intelligence is still critical for identifying risky behaviour. As most machine learning fraud tools are optimised to work on cards, it is crucial to have some level of manual intervention in place to fill in the gaps when a traditional machine learning (ML) model cannot solve a problem. 

Amid fraud tools becoming more sophisticated with the use of AI and ML, one of the best ways to mitigate against it in the instant payments landscape is customer verification through using multi-factor authentication (MFA). This is especially the case for new customers, large transactions and high-risk items commonly resold on third party marketplaces.

Using biometric, device-based or behavioural verification when authorising a payment can support in providing a seamless user experience. And to further facilitate convenience and speed, providers should consider allowing repeat customers to use trusted devices so they are not prompted with MFA on each purchase.

Gary Conroy, CEO TransferMate Global Payments

Real-time payments significantly enhance user experience. We've mentioned Verification of Payee in Europe. Confirmation of Payee already exists in the UK, having been mandatory for large UK banks since 2020. 

TransferMate extends beyond the UK and Europe, implementing these verification systems across multiple markets today.  

This represents just one toolset in our approach. The Authorised Push Payment fraud rules by the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), covering Faster Payments and CHAPS for payments from personal and micro-enterprise accounts, provide a reimbursement scheme where the onus is on banks and payment service providers to prove gross negligence. This responsibility is split 50:50 between sending and receiving institutions. 

To manage this effectively, we need to identify specific patterns such as first-time beneficiary setup, amount limits, and Account Verification results. 

Crucially, these checks must be secured in real-time. Rule-setting and AI are key factors in accomplishing this. Where suspected fraud is identified, banks and payment service providers can implement a 72-hour delay to conduct investigations. 

Andrew Moseley, Head of Solution Consulting Europe at ACI Worldwide 

Detecting this type of fraud has been a key challenge for instant payment systems. However, AI is transforming this. We’ve seen it enable instant payment transaction monitoring, anomaly detection, and adaptive fraud prevention. 

Traditional rule-based fraud detection systems struggle to keep up with sophisticated threats, but AI models can analyse vast amounts of data in milliseconds, identifying fraud patterns with high accuracy- all while the user experience remains uncompromised. As AI continues to advance, our approach to fraud prevention will remain proactive, not reactive - anticipating risks before they materialise. 

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