Reflections of Nacha Payments 2017

Analysts have definite fixed points in our year. For me, one is the spring conference season, and which nearly always includes Nacha Payments, the big US payments conference. I was unable to attend last year, so I was particularly looking forward to returning this year. Indeed, there are groups of people I often only see at the event.

After being away, the first thing was that struck the exhibition floor was now much, much smaller. Not just that the stands were smaller, but there were fewer of them as well. Indeed, no banks had stands (though several had meeting “pods”). I also noticed that, at some point (or perhaps I had never noticed it), Nacha had snuck onto the Payments logo the word Faster. And the floor and conference sessions were abuzz with talk of real-time payments.

This had some interesting side effects.

First, the belle of the ball was The Clearing House, with virtually every conversation I had referencing their real-time solution directly or indirectly. Same Day ACH, by comparison, didn’t come up in a single conversation at all. Even in the few sessions I managed to attend, it was only briefly mentioned.

Second, the number of attendees (by our estimates) was up, though still down on a few years ago (my trip report blog for 2012 reported 2,500 vs. the 1800 this year). The result was a definite buzz, particularly on the exhibition floor, where most vendors reported good activity and good levels of conversation.

Third, the topic of conversation was real-time. If name checks in discussions are a valid, albeit unscientific, measure of which real-time solution will succeed, then The Clearing House is significantly ahead of Zelle, but with no other real-time solution even mentioned. Indeed, there seemed to be surprise that so many solutions were going through the Fed process. Whilst the Fed obviously is respecting confidentiality of those going through the process, the vendors themselves need to be very vocal and visible, or they could find themselves being seen as late to the party. I’m party to a number of the names, but I’ve not seen anything from those organisations at all.

Finally, and most interesting, was the sudden appearance of APIs. In Europe, because of PSD2, for the last couple of years, APIs have been something that banks have to discuss because they will become mandated. Their appearance in the US has quite probably been triggered by some of the international banks, but the types of banks discussing them was much broader. In Europe, APIs and real-time will most likely go hand-in-hand – it’ll be interesting whether that will be the case in the US too.

Next year Nacha Payments is back in San Diego. Given where the real-time adoption will be, it’s likely to be a pivotal moment in the industry. I think that sets up the event to be a must attend event. See you in San Diego!