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Craig Ramsey

Craig Ramsey Head of Real-Time Payments at ACI Worldwide

What the banks vs fintech debate gets wrong

The boom in real-time payments is reverberating across the world, and by 2026 they will make up 25% of all electronic payments. Market forces and the global pandemic accelerated adoption to new levels, providing consumers and businesses cheaper, faster and more efficient ways to pay — and there’s no looking back. And as more and more countries l...

Craig Ramsey

Craig Ramsey Head of Real-Time Payments at ACI Worldwide

Why the COVID-19 pandemic might be a catalyst for further adoption of worldwide real-time payments

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has already led to massive changes in business and consumer behaviour, is accelerating the adoption of digital payments and the interest in real-time payments across the globe. During a recent webinar we organized to discuss ACI’s Global Payments Report ‘Prime Time for Real-Time’, 36 percent of attendees said that they...

/payments /covid-19

Craig Ramsey

Craig Ramsey Head of Real-Time Payments at ACI Worldwide

The European race to provide real-time payments

As individual European nations forge a real-time, digital-first payments environment, they raise the bar for all financial institutions conducting business in the Eurozone. Instant payments have become the normality, and it’s no longer a question of “what’s the business case for implementation?” but a matter of how instant payments players can tak...

/payments Banking Strategy, Digital and Transformation

Craig Ramsey

Craig Ramsey Head of Real-Time Payments at ACI Worldwide

SWIFT gpi, Cross-Border Payments for the Digital World

Why is SWIFT gpi so key for cross-border payments? SWIFT gpi is not a one-off delivery or by any means static – it is the payments community pushing ahead and developing additional features on top of the interbank network. With SWIFT gpi now accounting for more than 50% of SWIFT payments traffic, access to thousands of banks globally and the abili...

/payments

Craig Ramsey

Craig Ramsey Head of Real-Time Payments at ACI Worldwide

What's next for SWIFT gpi and cross-border real-time payments?

SWIFT gpi poses many opportunities for banks. Like any technology, the rate of change is accelerating, making it critical that banks keep pace with the market and with their competition. In 2018, as domestic real-time payments schemes reach near-ubiquity thanks to a combination of regulatory and customer demand drivers, we have seen an accelerated...

/payments SWIFT Matters

Craig Ramsey

Craig Ramsey Head of Real-Time Payments at ACI Worldwide

New Payments Ecosystem of Real-Time Payments

In the UK, faster payments are well established, and we have seen new innovations as well as new businesses being built since May 2008. In Singapore, which went live in 2014 with its Fast and Secure Transfers (FAST) scheme, we are starting to see similar innovations. And we can expect similar seismic shifts in payments innovation for years to come...

/payments UK Faster Payments

Craig Ramsey

Craig Ramsey Head of Real-Time Payments at ACI Worldwide

When Immediate Payments Go Bad

“I want it now.” Sounds like a petulant teenager, doesn’t it? But actually, it’s the sound of consumers and corporations around the world demanding immediate payments solutions. While immediate payments are already mature in some markets, in others they are still maturing, and for some countries, they are not even in the plans yet. But one thing...

/payments /sibos Finextra@Sibos

Craig Ramsey

Craig Ramsey Head of Real-Time Payments at ACI Worldwide

EBADay focus on Immediate Payments comes up short

Rather predictably, this year’s EBADay conference in Amsterdam was dominated by conversation of Immediate Payments. The great and the good from the industry came to discuss how we can all improve our customer relationships by simply implementing a pan-European Immediate Payments scheme. And the even better news is that if we implement it on ISO 2...

/payments

Craig Ramsey

Craig Ramsey Head of Real-Time Payments at ACI Worldwide

Digitalisation - Mind the Gap

Digitisation or Digitalisation? Whichever is the correct term, we've seen it prevalent at Sibos this year. Much has been said about how mobile players and other non-traditional competitors are encroaching on the space typically reserved for financial institutions. But this Sibos has put into frame more than that. It's not just a few payments that...

Craig Ramsey

Craig Ramsey Head of Real-Time Payments at ACI Worldwide

SEPA, is the burden turning into a benefit?

2014 finally saw the completion of the SEPA process that was some ten years in the making. As of the 1st August, the majority of European Banks are now compliant with SEPA guidelines. So, what does this mean for banks now living in a post-SEPA world? In theory, banks should now be in a position to reap the benefits of years of compliance to meet t...

/payments /regulation

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