Payments is more than just money - it's data

I recall a conversation in 2019 with Dan Karehana (RIP) in NZ about the value and potential of real time payments data analytics.

I don't know I fully appreciated the significance of that discussion at the time, but as the FedNow network expands (we're well over 1300 financial institutions now, and growing continuously), and Instant Payments move towards becoming ubiquitously available, and high volume, the potential value to be unlocked for agile businesses is enormous.

Beyond just the payments themselves, the ISO20022 spec is data rich. As businesses leverage that spec fully, for the data-savvy organization, I suspect the value of the data, and its ability to inform business activity and process, will rival that of the payments themselves.

Big companies will be able to build these capabilities themselves, but it is going to be exciting to see how fintechs and startups enable the rest of the market.