The Future of Payments: From Invisible to Inclusive

For much of the past decade, progress in payments has been measured by how little users notice them.

Real-time infrastructure and embedded finance have created conditions where payments can move faster, more reliably and with fewer manual steps than ever before. For many consumers and businesses, instant and predictable payments are now the baseline expectation.

Speed alone is no longer a differentiator. The conditions are there for this to be widespread. The question now is how we can make that experience as widely accessible as possible whilst maintaining the structure, safeguards and operational resilience that are increasingly essential to a properly functioning, trusted financial ecosystem.

This is a shift from optimising for invisibility to designing for inclusion.

Invisible payments are now the baseline

The industry has made substantial progress in reducing friction in payments, with faster and more predictable settlement, clearer status updates, and integrated payment journeys. For most users, the ideal payment is the one they barely notice. In consumer banking, challengers have made this the expectation not the exception. Increasing numbers of businesses are going to demand a similar service in 2026.

As reliability improves, payments increasingly fade into the background of wider workflows – payroll runs complete automatically, suppliers are paid without intervention, and customers move through checkout without thinking about the mechanics underneath. These journeys are no longer novel, and they’re trusted by users.

This is what “invisible” payments get right: they reduce cognitive load. But invisibility at the experience layer doesn’t remove complexity from the system and it doesn’t mean there aren’t risks either. That makes trust and control even more important.

The more seamless payments become, the more essential it is that safeguards are embedded into the flow, rather than added as friction when something goes wrong.

Greater risk is no barrier to innovation

Fraud continues to escalate, driven by greater digitisation and increasingly sophisticated social engineering. But I don’t believe fighting this threat results in a slowdown in innovation. It simply reshapes where innovation is taking place and brings it upstream.

The industry won’t stop trying to get money to the right recipient faster. But increasingly, the question becomes: how confident are we that the “right recipient” is who we think it is? This is why so much innovation now focuses on identity, behavioural signals, context and real-time intervention.

Confirmation of Payee is a clear example. It doesn’t change how money moves, but it makes them safer and more trustworthy. When implemented effectively, the impact is twofold: fewer fraud losses and higher overall trust in domestic rails. These kinds of targeted interventions are becoming essential foundations, not optional enhancements.

UK payments regulation is trying to walk a difficult line: enabling innovation while strengthening resilience, safeguarding and consumer outcomes.

Regulatory change as enabler and obstacle

Recent regulatory updates, including consumer-focused directives, faster payments obligations and data standardisation efforts, have prompted internal transformation across the sector. These changes create safer, more transparent systems. But they can also make it difficult for new FIs and fintechs navigating complex classifications and risk requirements.

Small institutions can easily find themselves subject to expectations designed for very different customer profiles and struggle to obtain or maintain banking access as a result. These are often legitimate businesses with real customer demand, but their operating models fall outside traditional risk appetites. This steps into the issue of maintaining inclusion, an issue that I think is often overlooked in the broader conversation around payments.

Without meaningful access to payment rails, these institutions become effectively unbanked. The industry cannot claim to be advancing inclusion if those building innovative financial products are excluded because they are perceived as too complex or too expensive to manage.

Partnerships matter here. Providers that can accurately assess business models, understand their transaction patterns, and support them with proportionate oversight will play a critical role in broadening access. Inclusion starts with enablement.

Of course, this doesn’t remove the obligation for organisations to ensure their own regulatory compliance if they want to play in this field. Those that come out on top will be those who’s product and compliance teams operate in close alignment. When regulation is treated as a design input rather than a final checkpoint, it can become a source of differentiation. For clients, this translates to clearer experiences and more predictable outcomes.

Interoperability remains the hardest problem

Some cross-border payments challenges aren’t solved at home, however. Despite progress, global interoperability continues to be constrained by fragmented standards, legacy infrastructure, inconsistent API designs and mismatched regulatory frameworks. ISO 20022 has moved the industry closer to alignment, but adoption is uneven and often layered on top of older systems.

Delays in cross-border payments have a disproportionate effect on smaller businesses and institutions. This creates a system where global payments are only truly seamless for the largest, best-resourced participants.

Greater technical and regulatory alignment is essential for a more inclusive environment. Without it, the ability to scale will be harder to access. For companies doing business internationally, that is likely to remain one of the biggest obstacles.

AI as a tool for expanding access

AI is often discussed in payments almost exclusively as a fraud solution – and rightly so. But its longer-term value lies in precision.

Many of the businesses mentioned above are not high-risk, they are simply high complexity. They require more nuanced onboarding, deeper data understanding and more adaptive monitoring. AI can enable institutions to build richer profiles, differentiate between known and unknown risks, and apply controls more precisely.

In B2B payments, this can unlock better insights into customer behaviour, more personalised product design and through more intelligent application of regulatory standards – broader access.

From invisible to inclusive

The industry’s achievements in speed and seamlessness have set the stage. But I’m interested in the next transformation.

A future-ready payments ecosystem must provide access as reliably as it provides speed. That means strong identity layers, shared responsibility for fraud prevention, coherent regulatory frameworks and deeper collaboration on standards, alongside continued innovation.

More than anything businesses need partners that are willing to support complex but legitimate business models. UX has been revolutionised; The next challenge is ensuring those experiences are reachable – for consumers, merchants and the complex but legitimate businesses shaping the future of finance.

That is how we move from invisible to inclusive.

• Read more under:
• BankingTech
• PayTech