The payments sector is evolving rapidly, and the pace of change continues to accelerate. Adapting to this dynamic environment requires businesses to rethink their approach to talent and workforce development.
The ability to facilitate quicker, easier, cheaper, and safer payments is critical to maintaining business agility in this evolving landscape. While innovation is key, the solution must be practical and meet business needs.
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Shifting Skill Priorities
Previously, banks and payment service providers (PSPs) favoured technical skills to build products and maintain services. Today, firms are concentrating on human-centred skills, with adaptability and curiosity cited as the most critical attributes by payments experts.
Navigating the Scale-Up Phase
Many high-growth payments firms are entering a critical scale-up phase, bringing new challenges and opportunities. By investing in an agile, forward-thinking workforce, businesses in the payments sector can meet today’s challenges and seize tomorrow’s opportunities.
Driving Change in the Payments Industry
According to The Future of Talent Agenda in Payments, a report compiled by the EY Skills Foundry, agility refers to the ability of payment providers and systems to quickly adapt and respond to changing market demands, technological advancements, and customer preferences. This includes:
1. Flexible Integration: Seamless, Secure, and Scalable
From e-commerce stores to subscription services to platforms and marketplaces, companies in almost every industry must accept and process payments securely, ensuring a high-quality customer experience. In fact, 63% of consumers prefer digital wallets and integrated payment solutions. According to a report by FIS Global, the global e-commerce market is expected to reach $8.3 trillion by 2025. Finding efficient solutions isn’t easy, but one approach makes it possible: integrated payments.
Integrated payments are becoming more popular with businesses since they enable seamless transactions and streamlined processes.
2. Rapid Innovation: The Shift Toward Sustainable Growth
After decades of hypergrowth, fintechs have entered a new era of value creation, focusing on sustainable, profitable growth. Technological progress and innovation have catapulted the sector from the fringes to the forefront of financial services. As recent as the last 10 years, fintechs have profoundly reshaped certain areas of financial services with their innovative, differentiated, and customer-centric value propositions, collaborative business models, and cross-skilled and agile teams.
3. Scalability: Future-Proofing Payment Systems
Scalability has become a key indicator of payments performance. Put simply, it defines a system’s ability to manage a rising number of inputs, outputs, data, or users without negatively affecting its performance and productivity.
Handling high transaction volumes efficiently is one benchmark of success. Scalability ensures that payment infrastructures can support growth without compromising performance, security, or reliability. Businesses risk slow response times, errors, and potential system failures without it.
4. Customisation: The Need for Tailored Payment Experiences
With the surge in e-commerce and digital transactions, merchants require flexible payment solutions that adapt to customer needs. Being up to speed with new payment methods helps your business evolve to be competitive and profitable. Features like multi-payment options, recurring billing, and personalised checkout experiences help companies to stay competitive.
Consumers today expect seamless, on-demand payment methods—businesses must evolve to meet those expectations.
5. Compliance Readiness: Staying Ahead of Regulations
With the rise of digital payments, regulatory compliance is more complex than ever. As a result, the stakes for non-compliance are higher than ever, posing significant legal, financial and reputational risks. Businesses must prioritise payment security to protect their customers’ sensitive information, maintain customer trust, and avoid costly financial losses.
Staying up-to-date with regulatory requirements and security standards is essential to safeguarding compliance while minimising disruptions to operations. Leveraging AI-driven compliance tools and real-time fraud detection systems can help businesses stay ahead of ever-changing regulations.
6. Data-Driven Insights: The Power of Payments Analytics
Leveraging data analytics and reporting tools to gain insights into customer behaviour, transaction patterns, and market trends enables businesses to make informed decisions and optimise their payment strategies.
The digitisation of payments has unlocked valuable consumer insights. Payment data analytics allows businesses to:
✅ Understand consumer behaviour
✅ Optimise pricing strategies
✅ Identify new revenue streams
✅ Enhance fraud prevention
By leveraging AI and machine learning, companies can transform payments data into actionable business strategies, driving innovation and customer satisfaction.
The Future of Payments: Agility Is Key
Agility in the payments space enables businesses to adapt to changing market conditions, seize growth opportunities, and deliver exceptional customer payment experiences.
Over the past decade, technological progress and innovation have catapulted the fintech sector from the fringes to the forefront of financial services. And the growth has been fast and furious, buoyed by the robust growth of the banking sector, rapid digitisation, changing customer preferences, and increasing support of investors and regulators. During this decade, fintechs have profoundly reshaped certain areas of financial services with their innovative, differentiated, and customer-centric value propositions, collaborative business models, and cross-skilled and agile teams.
The payments industry is no longer just about transactions—it’s about customer experience, security, and long-term growth. As digital payment solutions evolve, businesses prioritising flexibility, innovation, and compliance will gain a competitive edge.
