Clearing Technology
Michael Boel
05 Aug 2026
As instant payments, digital assets, and cross-border innovation reshape financial services, Michael Boel, co-head of Clearing Technology, Banking Circle, considers how the payments industry is entering a new phase
Image: Clearing Technology
Conversations at Money20/20 Europe this year reflected many of the themes continuing to shape the payments industry: instant payments, interoperability, digital assets, and the future of cross-border commerce. While these developments are attracting significant attention, a broader shift is taking place across the market. The technology underpinning modern payments has advanced significantly over the last decade and the challenge is now ensuring that infrastructure, regulation, and investment keep pace.
For much of the past 10 years, the industry has focused on what was possible through technology. Today, many of those capabilities are already available. Real-time payment rails have become established across multiple markets, stablecoins continue to gain traction, and new payment methods are emerging alongside traditional cards and account-to-account payments. The next phase of progress will be less about introducing entirely new technologies and more about enabling existing capabilities to operate at scale.
Instant payments are becoming the expectation
One of the clearest examples of this shift is the growth of instant payments.
Customer expectations are changing and instant payments have moved from being a differentiator to becoming an expected part of the service. Businesses and consumers increasingly expect funds to move quickly, regardless of the time of day or day of the week. What was once viewed as a premium capability is increasingly becoming a baseline requirement.
Adoption, however, remains uneven. While many institutions are investing in real-time capabilities, others are still modernising infrastructure and adapting operating models to support a 24/7 payments environment. In many markets, instant payment schemes are well established, but participation and usage continue to vary across institutions and transaction types.
As a result, the industry’s challenge is no longer proving that instant payments can work but ensuring that the wider ecosystem is ready to support them consistently and at scale.
Achieving that will require not only broader access to instant payment rails, but also the operational resilience, liquidity management, and compliance processes needed to support real-time payments around the clock.
Regulation is helping drive the next phase of innovation
With significant progress in payments technology, many of the barriers that remain are regulatory rather than technical.
Cross-border payments are a good example. While the industry has invested heavily in connectivity and standardisation, financial institutions must still navigate multiple regulatory requirements, from Wire Transfer Regulation and Travel Rule obligations to newer instant payment mandates.
Where expectations overlap or remain unclear, institutions must balance the need for speed with obligations around compliance, sanctions screening, and risk management.
The Instant Payments Regulation in Europe demonstrates how regulatory clarity can accelerate adoption.
By providing clearer guidance on sanctions screening in an instant payments environment, regulators helped remove uncertainty and gave institutions greater confidence to invest and innovate.
Far from slowing innovation, effective regulation can create the conditions for it to scale. When expectations are clear and consistent, institutions can focus on delivering better services to customers.
The growth of SEPA Instant provides a useful example, with regulatory intervention helping drive broader participation and creating stronger foundations for innovation across the market.
Modernisation requires long-term investment
While the industry has made significant progress, legacy infrastructure continues to present challenges for institutions.
In many cases, the systems that support payment processing today were not designed for a world of instant payments, always-on operations, and increasingly complex regulatory requirements.
Modernisation is rarely achieved through a single new solution.
Supporting real-time payments, richer data requirements, and evolving regulatory expectations requires investment across the value chain, from customer data and transactions processing to APIs and customer-facing services.
As new requirements continue to emerge, institutions face a choice: continually adapt legacy systems or invest in infrastructure designed to support future demands.
While the latter requires significant commitment, it is often the most effective way to build a scalable and resilient operating model.
The organisations best positioned for long-term success will be those willing to take this broader view of transformation.
Modernisation is not simply about meeting today’s requirements. It is about ensuring institutions can adapt efficiently as payment systems, regulation, and customer expectations continue to evolve.
More payment methods, greater choice
Alongside infrastructure modernisation, businesses should prepare for a payments landscape that offers greater choice in how transactions are initiated and settled.
Consumers and businesses are already using different payment methods depending on the market, use case, and transaction type. Cards, account-to-account payments, and emerging digital asset solutions are contributing to an increasingly diverse ecosystem, with adoption patterns varying significantly between jurisdictions.
Stablecoins are likely to form part of this landscape, but as a complement to existing payment methods rather than a replacement. Their long-term role will become clearer as use cases continue to emerge, regulatory frameworks mature, and adoption grows.
As payment preferences continue to diversify, businesses will increasingly need to support multiple payment methods across markets while maintaining a consistent customer experience. The challenge will be less about predicting which payment method will dominate and more about building the flexibility to support a wider range of customer preferences.
The technology underpinning payments has advanced significantly over the last decade. The next challenge is ensuring that infrastructure, regulation, and market participants evolve alongside those capabilities.
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