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Whether it is access, APIs, banking or standards, ‘open’ is the new normal for financial services. Similarly, real-time or instant has now become the de facto standard for payments. Hence discussions around national payments infrastructures have changed. They have moved from questioning whether to adopt a central infrastructure or national payment system, to how to make this fit-for-purpose in the new open and instant era. How money moves within an economy is central to national development and prosperity. It is critical to promoting innovation and financial inclusion, stimulating competition and increasing the safety and security of financial transactions.
Hence governments and financial services stakeholders are currently grappling with how to implement or upgrade their national payment systems to support open, real-time transactions. In this white paper, we highlight the key design principles and challenges when implementing a national payments infrastructure. We examine selected propositions, such as person-to-person, person-to-business and payments to and from government.
We offer recommendations on what to do, who to involve and how to move forward with implementing a national payment system. These include the key learnings which can either make or break a project, such as interoperability between bank and non-bank operators in-country and strong branding to drive end-user adoption.
