Aite - which surveyed 16 wholesale payments vendors for the study - says the global wholesale payments market is "evolving rapidly and undergoing tremendous growth".

At the same time there are economic and regulatory drivers leading the market toward payments convergence, says Aite, and banks are demanding increased support for related functions, including foreign exchange, trade finance, and electronic invoice presentment and payment (EIPP), says the report

As a result, technology vendors are under pressure to "close gaps" in product sets.

"The most successful vendors in this market will be those whose solutions are flexible, configurable, and easily integrated with other external systems," says Nancy Atkinson, senior analyst, Aite Group. "They will act as building blocks with standard connections, allowing disparate offerings to connect to each other and creating the ability to add more blocks at any time in order to meet the needs of the client."

The research found that banks are slowly realising that vendors can better help them to succeed with their overall payments strategies, but are still opting to maintain in-house systems.

Systems integrators surveyed by Aite reported that only two per cent of bank clients are replacing in-house payment systems. For payment software providers the figure is less than five per cent, whilst core systems vendors say fewer than 10% of implementations represent in-house replacements.

The figure is considerably larger for cash management providers, with 30% to 50% of implementations replacing in-house developed systems.