FIS on Why Payments Orchestration is Now Mission Critical

Real-time payments are gaining momentum globally.

In light of this shift, financial institutions are under a growing amount of pressure to modernise infrastructure, manage fraud risk and deliver seamless, multi-rail payment experiences. 

This move is about orchestration as well as speed – integrating multiple payment rails, optimising routing and ensuring operational readiness at scale.

Elaine Duff, SVP and Head of Money Movement at FIS, leads efforts to help banks and fintechs navigate the complexities of real-time payments, advising on product strategy, fraud prevention and the systems required to support always-on, digital-first payment ecosystems. 

At FIS, a global provider of financial technology and services, she works across infrastructure, digital channels, and settlement to enable institutions to modernise and compete in an increasingly real-time financial landscape.

In this Q&A, Elaine shares her perspective on what it takes to scale real-time payments successfully, the growing importance of orchestration and how financial institutions can balance innovation with operational resilience and fraud management.

FedNow adoption has surged – what does success look like beyond transaction volume growth?

Success goes beyond volume. It’s about meaningful scale and integration into the broader payments ecosystem.

That means enabling send as well as receive capabilities, embedding instant payments into customer workflows like commercial, small business and consumer, optimising fee and commercial models and ensuring operational readiness and fraud controls so the digital channel is sustainable and trusted.

Why is payments orchestration becoming the next major priority for banks and credit unions?

Orchestration lets institutions treat instant payments as part of a holistic suite rather than a point solution. 

It combines FedNow, RTP, same‑day ACH and card rails with intelligent routing, policy and UX so customers get the right option at the right price and risk profile.

Together, this improves client experience and helps banks commercialise payments more effectively.

What are the biggest operational challenges institutions face when managing FedNow, RTP and ACH simultaneously?

The main challenges are ensuring 24/7 operational and support coverage or choosing correspondent or third‑party support, enabling origination channels for send transactions, harmonising settlement and reconciliation across rails and aligning fraud, limits and dispute workflows across real‑time and batch processes.

What separates institutions that are succeeding with real-time payments from those that are falling behind?

Successful institutions plan for scale. They enable send and receive, integrate instant payments into product ecosystems, invest in origination and channel readiness and have robust fraud analytics and support models. 

Institutions that fall behind tend to be receive‑only, treat instant payments as a checkbox and haven’t aligned operations, fraud and commercialisation strategies proactively.

How much of the competitive advantage in payments comes from the infrastructure layer versus the payment rails themselves?

Both matter, but the competitive differentiation increasingly comes from the infrastructure and orchestration layer such as intelligent routing, UX, fraud analytics and integrations that determine when and how to use a rail. 

Rails are foundational, but the value to customers often comes from how institutions leverage infrastructure to orchestrate and optimize across rails.

Where are banks encountering the most friction when trying to modernise legacy payments systems?

Friction arises in modernising origination channels, updating back‑office reconciliation and settlement, integrating new fraud and analytics tools and changing internal processes for 24/7 support. 

Legacy systems often lack APIs and real‑time processing semantics, which creates work to enable seamless multi‑rail flows and decisioning.

How do you expect multi-rail money movement to reshape customer expectations and banking strategy?

As multi‑rail becomes common, customers will expect immediate, context‑aware payment options and seamless choice between speed, cost and risk. 

Banks will shift strategy from offering single‑rail point products to building orchestration platforms that present the best option per use case, monetise value‑added routing and use AI analytics to reduce fraud and personalise experiences.