A new survey of payment leaders reveals conflicted attitudes among Europeans on cross-border payment interoperability, highlighting the challenges firms face in integrating across multiple markets and systems.
The findings reveal that despite a majority reporting confidence in their firm’s cross-border payment capabilities, decision-makers face difficulties including lost business from a failure to integrate with popular and emergent payment methods.
By 2026, 60% of the world’s population is expected to use digital wallets for daily payment needs.
But despite their growing popularity, they are ranked as the most problematic endpoint for cross-border payments.
And while 97% of respondents believe their systems today are ‘completely’ or ‘mostly compatible’ with how international recipients receive funds, nearly 40% reported losing business due to cross-border payment issues.
Key Findings:
Confidence vs. Reality: While 97% of respondents believe their systems are ‘completely’ or mostly ‘compatible’ with how international recipients receive funds, nearly 40% reported losing business due to cross-border payment issues.
Clear Differences: Respondents cited major differences in the ease of issuing payments to different endpoints. Bank accounts were ranked as the easiest method to facilitate payments, followed by global cards (Visa), e-Wallets (like PayPal), cash and local card schemes.
Digital Wallets: Despite their growing popularity, they are ranked as the most problematic endpoint for cross-border payments, with only 8% of respondents describing them as the easiest to integrate. By 2026, 60% of the world’s population is expected to use digital wallets for daily payment needs.
Barriers to Integration: Security concerns, payment tracking and processing speed were identified as the top challenges to integrate different payment systems.
Future Innovations: Respondents expect AI to play a critical role in improving payment processes, fraud detection, risk management and customer support. Blockchain technology and digital currencies are also seen as promising to facilitate secure, rapid and low-cost transactions.
“The research paints a very mixed picture. Payment leaders are confident in their capabilities but face significant integration challenges particularly with digital wallets,” says Chloé Mayenobe, President and Chief Operating Officer at Thunes
“Electronic wallets are becoming increasingly important, providing bank-like services and financially including those who are unbanked and underbanked. As commerce digitizes further, payment interoperability will become vital.”
“To meet the needs of individuals and businesses of all sizes to move money domestically and internationally easily and securely, payment interoperability remains a major challenge beyond traditional methods,” continues Ed Chandler, Head of Money Movement, Europe at Visa.
“We have a goal to enable money movement from any endpoint to any other endpoint, and rather than build an entirely new money movement system from scratch, we can use Visa’s scale and work with partners like Thunes to be a single connection point in a fast-evolving ecosystem.”
The survey, which included 233 European payment leaders from financial institutions, banks, fintechs, SaaS, money transfer operators and payment service providers in the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Spain, explored the state of cross-border payment systems and their interoperability.
The post Confidence Vs reality: European payment leaders bullish appeared first on Payments Cards & Mobile.