An update on Payment Services Hubs research

During my webinar on Taxonomy of Payments in September I mentioned that I have been conducting research on Payment Services Hubs (PSH). Since then I received a lot of interest from clients asking when the research findings would become available. I am pleased to announce that Celent will be publishing a series of reports on Payment Services Hubs very soon. One of my findings is that more work is to be done to get everyone to speak the same language and to agree the key definitions. Despite the fact that over the last few years, the PSH concept has been promoted by vendors and industry analysts as the leading approach to modernising banks’ payment infrastructures, there is plenty of confusion and lack of clarity. ‘Payment services hubs’, ‘payment engines’, ‘payment factories’ and other terms seem to be used interchangeably. The first report will be published this week and will propose Celent’s definition of key terminology related to payment services hubs. The second report will assess the capabilities of nine leading vendors and will name the XCelent award winners. Expect that report to be available before we all break for the holiday season. The third report will take a bank’s perspective and discuss the drivers for building a PSH and the key decisions a bank needs to make when embarking on a PSH project. It will also include a number of case studies describing different approaches various banks take to implement a payment services hub. Look out for Celent press releases announcing these reports formally. And please get back to me with your thoughts. For example, do you agree with my proposed definitions? What other alternative approaches do you see in the market?