Nordea report: Corporates want banks to deliver payment standardisation and provide new fintech solutions

A new Nordea report focusing on the future of the corporate and business-to-business payments landscape, including the changing role of banks and the impact of new technology, has shown that a lack of industry standardisation is a key concern among businesses. Meanwhile, more than half (57%) of respondents said they did not expect to work with fintechs directly, preferring to access new solutions via existing banks and vendors.

The report is based on the results of a recent survey conducted by Nordea with 60 customers spread across all major industry segments. Additional expert insights were gathered from a variety of customers, industry participants and Nordea executives.

Over the last few years, the payments industry has become one of the most dynamic areas of financial services. The Future of Payments report contends that four major factors have been driving this fast period of change: customers and their changing needs and behaviours; technology; regulation, such as SEPA, PSD2 and data protection requirements; and, the impact of new players on the banking and finance industry.

The report focuses on treasurers and finance managers, helping them to understand that the opportunities to pay and receive cash more quickly, securely and predictably is key to building robust, flexible supply chains, leveraging new business models, and boosting competitive advantage.

Assessed in the report are some of the most important payment innovations over recent years, and emerging solutions that have the potential to challenge and transform both domestic and cross-border payments in the future, such as Blockchain and real-time payments.

The report also analyses the challenges of the corporate sector as they enter an increasingly digitised and inter-connected payment ecosystem. It showed how 60% of respondents indicated that lack of standardisation of formats across banks was among their top three challenges, while 42% emphasised diversity of payment methods across markets as a key concern. Regulatory compliance and cross-border payments created significant challenges for 33% and 32% of participants respectively.

The majority of treasurers and finance managers expect their future bank relationships to be as important as they are today (56%), with just as many people anticipating that these relationships will become more, rather than less important (14% and 15% respectively). Elsewhere, the report showed how operating as an in-house bank is an important trend amongst corporations, but most notably on a payments-on-behalf-of (POBO) basis (37%) to rationalise accounts and bank relationships, and replace cross-border with domestic payment types.