The payments industry has gone through many changes in the last decade, from regulatory to technology and, not least, customer expectations. This is not going to abate in the next 10 years. Indeed, Celent would argue that it is likely to accelerate, and in part because some of these trends act as enablers for some of the other trends. For example, APIs will allow more innovative uses for real-time payments, which will drive their use. While both have value on their own, together they are even more powerful.

Real-time payments are one of the catalysts for this report. Just a short few years ago, based on the questions we were receiving from our clients, Celent wrote a series of reports that first described what a real-time payment was, and set out why they were not a localised, passing fad.