Building payments infrastructure for the real-time economy

In the Business Reporter article Keeping up with demand: building payments infrastructure for the real-time economy, the evolution of payment systems is explored against the demands of today’s digital financial environment. As societies and businesses increasingly expect money to move instantly and securely, legacy systems designed for batch processing are struggling to keep pace.

Payments underlie virtually every economic interaction, from daily retail purchases to corporate transactions, and that even brief outages have tangible impacts on individuals and businesses. Traditional account-to-account payment systems were built for slower processing cycles and are now challenged by regulatory initiatives and consumer demand for near-instant settlement.

Banks that have developed their own on-premises infrastructure face complex modernisation hurdles, while fintech and challenger banks, although architected for speed, must balance rapid innovation with trust and compliance. As a result, modern payment infrastructure requires resilience and architectural flexibility; strategies such as multi-cloud deployment, hybrid platforms and redundancy are necessary to ensure continuity of service even in adverse conditions.

The richness of ISO 20022—the structured data, the extended fields, the interoperability—is a massive opportunity for banks. But it’s also an invitation to rethink legacy infrastructure. Taking full advantage of ISO means more than just translating messages. It requires modern systems that are flexible, future-proof, and ready to scale with evolving standards.

And evolution is coming. The Federal Reserve has already signaled upcoming maintenance releases for 2026 and 2027. These aren’t optional. They will require banks to adapt yet again. Institutions relying on tactical or hardcoded solutions today will likely face significant cost and complexity during those future upgrades.

For Form3, these industry trends underscore the need to provide payment infrastructure that supports real-time processing without the operational burden of legacy systems. By enabling cloud-native, API- driven connectivity to multiple payment schemes and supporting robust, always-on architectures, such solutions allow financial institutions and fintechs to keep pace with rising demand.

This capability not only enhances operational resilience but also positions organisations to capitalise on the expanding real-time payments ecosystem, supporting faster, more reliable and customer-centric financial services.