Are we entering the era of “slower payments”?

For decades, the financial services industry has been racing toward faster payments. The UK’s pioneering Faster Payments Service began delivering Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) as early as 2008; in the US, the Clearing House launched its RTP network in 2017, the same year the European Union introduced SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst); and Brazil’s Central Bank launched its instant payment platform, Pix, in 2020. Wherever you look, the need for more speed is apparent everywhere.

Or is it? Monzo just announced a new feature that enables customers to cancel a bank transfer if a mistake is made. So long as the cancellation happens within 60 seconds, a cardholder who realises that they entered the wrong amount, or selected the wrong recipient, can correct the mistake before any money is transferred.

Similarly, apps like Uber Eats provide a short grace window in which customers can view their order after they have authorised payment, but before the order is confirmed, thus providing customers an opportunity to add, edit or remove items if they have made an error or changed their mind.

These simple tools provide a brief but valuable opportunity for errors to be identified before any harm is caused. Think how much this could save businesses like Citibank, for example, which mistakenly sent $900 million to lenders rather than the $1.5 million intended. US District Judge Jesse Furman reportedly claimed that such transfers were "final and complete transactions, not subject to revocation", and Citigroup spent years trying to recover the funds.

Faster payments mean faster fraud

Instant, rapid, real-time – call it what you will; an unintended consequence of faster payments is faster – unchecked – fraud. The quicker processing times intrinsic to faster payments may seem like the holy grail for businesses, promising instant payment for a healthier cashflow, but they limit the ability to perform robust fraud checks.

This can increase the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing, as fraudsters can act with similar speed to exploit the convenient yet vulnerable attributes of faster payments, like 24/7 availability and high transaction limits. In so doing, they can potentially initiate unauthorised transactions before disappearing as quickly as they came, albeit with their pockets slightly fuller.

Increasingly, such fraud is perpetrated through social engineering techniques, manipulating victims into transferring funds. Instant payments, most often in the form of account-to-account (A2A) transfers, are quick but they are also irreversible. Without the protection mechanisms of card payments, businesses become vulnerable to huge losses, which unlike B2C transactions, often run into the millions. There is simply too much at risk to forgo more stringent checks; security and accuracy are far more critical than speed.

The industry is responding, albeit slower than many would have liked. The UK introduced Confirmation of Payee in 2020, a name-checking service to help provide confidence that the receiving party is the intended person or business. The European Payments Council’s Verification of Payee programme, mandated for implementation by 9 October 2025, arguably goes further with a broader range of checks, such as VAT or LEI identification. Each is designed to enable critical checks that marginally slow the speed of payment but reduce the potential for errors.

Prompt payment trumps instant payment

So, amid the rush for faster payments, a new trend may be emerging in B2B: slower payment. Do not misunderstand this trend: it does not mean a return to widespread late payments, three-day clearing cycles or that suppliers will be waiting months for buyers to pay. Rather, it recognises that instant payment is not always right for every business or every buyer-seller relationship.

Instead, these slower payments follow the priorities of businesses: highly secure payments, made promptly – not instantly. This enables time for critical fraud and security checks such as the payment amount threshold, the supplier trading lifetime, verifying new suppliers or changes to supplier details. Passing these checks enables businesses to operate with confidence, while still demonstrating best practice compliance with initiatives like the UK’s Fair Payment Code.

The infrastructure around business payments has evolved to deliver this careful balance of prompt, accurate, secure payment; it is largely unrecognisable from even just a few years ago. Straight-through processing (STP) is one such B2B payment technology that is increasingly implemented by businesses to automate payment processes, reducing exposure to card numbers and minimising the resources required to make payments.

STP can process a commercial card or virtual card, settle funds, and deliver payment results to both Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, without human interaction. It automatically 'pushes' payments to suppliers, rather than ‘pulling’ them from buyers, and offers a breakdown of cost in real-time, as well as better visibility of cashflow. For peace of mind, some financial directors may prefer to activate an additional approval step within their automated payment flow, allowing for human review of the payment before permitting the system to progress the transaction.

Virtual cards can be generated for a specific purpose, such as a one-time transaction, allocation to a specific supplier or internal employee/department, and/or assigned a spending or time limit for their use.

Accepting virtual cards through a managed payment gateway also makes it easy for Accounts Payable teams to enhance the KYC process and reduce fraud by generating Verifiable Credentials (VCs) from within the platform. This enhances trust by delivering complete assurance in the verified identities of those issuing and using the virtual cards.

For many businesses today, using an API-enabled platform to automate virtual card processing via STP is a straightforward decision; Mastercard estimated that businesses can drive cost savings of $0.50 to $14 per transaction.

Helping businesses get paid

It’s no secret that late payments are the scourge of the business world, causing thousands of businesses to go under every year, but instant payments are not necessarily the answer. Businesses should ask themselves if they need the fastest payments possible, or if they want stronger security measures. In many cases, it is more important to businesses that payments are verified and authenticated rather than being made instantly.

Speeding up the process further is a project of diminishing returns. So long as the payment is made promptly within the mutually agreed timeframe, there is little value to businesses of utilising instant payment infrastructure. Today, trust and precision are what we need, not more speed.