Within the last few decades, a number of transformations have taken place in the financial services industry – from more advanced and secure payment cards to new forms of digital currency, this sector is changing faster than most. What’s more, one of the biggest shifts is still on the horizon – the addition of real-time payment capabilities.

Currently, many financial services institutions are preparing to support real-time payments. As these systems begin to be deployed, it’s worth taking a look at where we stand with this transition and the value real-time payments will bring once fully rolled out.

Progress of real-time payments

The Clearing House’s Senior Vice President Steve Ledford told Forbes the transition to real-time payments will be a gradual process, but the ultimate objective is to get as many institutions involved as possible. The organization is spearheading the rollout of RTP technology across the financial sector in the U.S.

“Our goal is to reach ubiquity as quickly as we can,” Ledford said. “Not all 10,000 banks will sign up at once, but very soon we will do an initial set of early adopter banks – pilot activity around business to business. Then very rapidly we will be ramping up from that point … I think [a] substantial part of [the] country will be covered by mid-2018.”

The Clearing House currently has its real-time payment infrastructure set up in two secure and redundant data centers, each supporting two iterations of the system. In this way, the infrastructure is as reliable and resilient as possible. TCH is also partnering with other vendor organizations to streamline the deployment process alongside rising demands for real-time payment capabilities.

“We are in discussions with partners who can bring in the thousands who want to go live,” Ledford said. “I think [this is] a faster ramp-up of this new payments system than we ever [have] in the past.”

RTP is coming to the U.S. – and fast.

The benefits of RTPs

While there’s typically hesitation toward newer technologies – specifically in the financial services sector, where privacy and data security is key – real-time payment systems are receiving considerable interest from large and small institutions. When one considers the advantages this type of payment can offer, it isn’t difficult to understand the rising demand. Some of the benefits financial institutions and their customers can reap from RTPs include:

• Comprehensive communication: JPMorgan Chase pointed out that current, traditional payment systems can leave gaps in communication, especially when it comes to the status of funds. Obtaining this information required the individual to go outside the payment system, where payers and payees had to manually track down payments themselves. This will all become a thing of the past with real-time payments, as the technology supports bi-lateral communication with two-way messaging capabilities. In this way, payers and payees will never have to wonder when or if funds will be received.
• Anytime payment capabilities: One of the leading advantages of RTP systems is the fact they are available 24 hours a day, even after a financial institution has ended its business hours. Payments can be processed at any time, meaning there’s no need to wait for the start of a business day for payments to be received.
• Consumer analytics potential: RTPs require the use of the ISO 20022 standard framework, a system that can create opportunities for data gathering. According to Accenture, this information can be analyzed to get a better understanding of the customer, helping financial institutions inform marketing and other efforts.
• An opportunity to modernize: The financial services industry has historically been bogged down by legacy technology, but RTP systems could provide an important opportunity for institutions to update their IT infrastructure.
• A global standard: Accenture predicts that within the next five years, global real-time payments could be possible, creating a more unified financial services industry.

Real-time payments are poised to considerably shift the financial services sector, providing real value for service providers and their customers. However, in order to take full advantage of this technology, it’s important that financial services providers have the right processes and solutions in place. To find out more, contact the experts at SK Global today.

Are you still spending time doing manual bank reconciliation? 

Bank Reconciliation is a dreaded process for most financial operators. This is the work of ensuring that your bank and general ledger balances are in sync. Ensuring that there are no inaccuracies can be a daunting task — whether you work with just one account or with thousands.

This is because the process is much like finding a needle in a haystack. Even a few dollars off here or there in any given transaction must be located and corrected among thousands of transactions, in order to produce a perfect balance match.

In addition, the task is often manual, and therefore slow and costly to complete. For companies that operate with numerous bank accounts and many transactions, the effort and associated cost goes up significantly.

Stop the madness. Enjoy automatic bank reconciliation in Microsoft Dynamics AX

In a modern ERP system such as Microsoft Dynamics AX, you don’t need to do your bank reconciliations manually — if you are able to electronically import your bank statement files from your bank.

When the bank statements are electronically imported, the process becomes almost enjoyable!

You can then check and validate transaction types between your general ledger and bank statement file. Using rules, you can even perform transaction matches to account for small tolerance variables. In addition, you can quickly create ledger transactions automatically, for those annoying bank fees, for instance. And everything takes place within Microsoft Dynamics AX, where the user is able to drill into each transaction and make corrections quickly.

To enjoy full automatic bank reconciliation in Microsoft Dynamics AX, you’ll need a Microsoft certified add-on solution.

What if the entire process, from end to end, was a completely automated process? A process which only needed your attention if and when a few transactions did not match?

You would be saving yourself time, you would save your company money, and eliminate human typo errors. Then this would be an easy place to increase efficiency for any Microsoft Dynamics AX user!

In order to enjoy 100% automatic bank reconciliation in Microsoft Dynamics AX, you will need a solution that goes above and beyond the standard Microsoft Dynamics AX functionality. You will need a solution which is built specifically to handle Automatic Bank Reconciliation in Microsoft Dynamics AX, a solution that is fully embedded within the system — and Microsoft Dynamics AX certified.

With the Automatic Bank Reconciliation solution offered by SK Global Software, you can enjoy the following:

• Easily deployed, installed and configured
• Unlimited and guaranteed banking coverage worldwide
• The direct integration to your bank is provided “out of the box”, ready to plug and play
• Enjoy 100% automatic bank reconciliation in Microsoft Dynamics AX
• Automate across any number of bank accounts, legal entities, and currencies
• Automatic and unattended mapping and matching of all transactions, even automatic creation and posting of missing general ledger entries
• The unattended process runs in the background, only notifying you if any exceptions need your attention
• Run the process at any interval, monthly, weekly, daily
• Access to full history log that you can review at your convenience
• Highest level of security with direct and automatic communication directly between your ERP and your bank

Contact us today to learn how quickly and easily you can enjoy Automatic Bank Reconciliation in Microsoft Dynamics AX

Still not convinced?

Download our whitepaper. We give you 15 Reasons why you should automate your Bank Reconciliation in our whitepaper: