Reflections on Nacha Payments 2015

As many of you know, I've been on something of a world tour, which started with Nacha Payments in New Orleans in mid-April. Expect a flurry of blogs as I pass on my impressions from my travels, starting with the Nacha show. Whilst I may live in London, I have global coverage. Payments is an interesting business – whilst its perhaps one thing that unites all businesses and consumers in all countries, and we are moving increasingly to global standards, the finer details show that it is still a parochial business. I don’t mean that negatively, more that payments have evolved over decades, if not centuries, to address specific local needs. That’s why the SEPA project was so difficult – even what we meant by certain terms turned out to be not straight forward. Nacha Payments this year was in New Orleans. For those not familiar, it's a long standing show focused primarily on the ACH business. It has a very active conference schedule – I was on a panel with Dwolla and BBVA talking about real-time payments - and an exhibition floor. The US is the single largest payments market, so it’s not surprising that the show is very US in focus. What still surprises me, even now, is the fact that in a shrinking list of exhibitors each year, every time I attend there are vendors I’ve never even heard of, let alone am familiar with their products. This demonstrates the size of the market rather than my lack of knowledge! Take-aways for me: What a difference a year makes. Last year, one senior banker said real-time payments wouldn’t happen in the US in his lifetime. This year, it’s seen as a when, no question about if. Indeed, all the talk was about the “secret” (so secret that every meeting I attended asked me about it!) meeting the key Clearing House banks were having to build out the requirements for the Clearing House solution. The general opinion is that the Clearing House is seeking to go live long before the Fed working groups even get close to having a plan for requirement gathering. More on this soon. Business is alive and well. At first glance, the exhibition floor looks notably smaller than the previous year. One thing to note is that the conference is often attended by more junior people, who also get re-certification credits for attending sessions – with so many sessions to choose from, the exhibition hall is often very quiet. Yet all the vendors reported greater numbers of good meetings, with tangible next steps – in short everyone was happy. Which several said wasn’t the case of some of the new sexier shows as Money2020. It strikes me that they’re very different events. Looking overseas. Payments are largely domestic in nature and what works in one country doesn’t always work in another. For example, check technology from the US (which writes 2/3rds of all checks globally) won’t be of interest in Finland (as checks were abolished in 1993!). As such, payment conferences tend to be very domestic in focus. Not a criticism, just pragmatic. Given the changes the US is facing, and given that many other countries have already faced many of the challenges, it was interesting to see such a noticeable increase in conversations seeking an international viewpoint. I don't think we're anywhere close to a global market - but the US seems to have taken a significant swing from "not invented here=not relevant" to "don't re-invent the wheel". See you next year, in Phoenix!