Debo Sen: From Citi’s point of view, it’s that corporate clients and consumers do more and more business online. Payment providers must make sure to enable them for that. Our customers’ business models are changing; they’re becoming more and more digital. This is the main driver for innovation for us as a bank.

Sen: In Germany you have a lot of auto OEM manufacturers. A few years ago, they used to deal with large suppliers and large dealers and distributors. Today, many of them are selling online and they must provide payment solutions to these consumers as they have not done before. This is changing their business model. Our task is to support them by providing suitable solutions.

Sen: Definitely. And it’s happening in all kinds of businesses. Another example could be a corporate that is already used to dealing with consumers. Previously their way of advertising was to buy space in the large publications which required large payments. Suddenly they're having to make payments that operate very differently. For example, today they are probably leveraging influencers and freelancers, who may for example want to get paid in their digital wallet in the Philippines. Business models and commercial models are fundamentally changing. And therefore, how they make payments and receive payments, too. It's becoming more miniaturized, it's becoming faster, it's becoming 24/7 and always on.

Sen: We are trying to make sure that we can meet our clients’ needs. We are enabling them to use instant payments, real time payments, real time liquidity, and better data. There are many tools at our disposal now including changing regulations. But in the end, it’s our client which will help us to meet its need.

Sen: From the client’s perspective, not that much. I think the problems everyone's trying to solve are very similar. The trend about business moving online or business moving to digital is secular and it's happening everywhere. The differences that we can see around the world come from the emphasis on addressing these changes.

Sen: In Asia they are  very big on digital wallets, which are popular in every country. In Latin America, we saw a huge trend for instant payment, especially in Brazil. In the US, instant payments hasn't taken off as much because the wallets and cards have always had a very strong hold. But it's starting to change now, with FedNow coming in as well. I would say the regions are in different phases of the journey, and there's more emphasis on some instruments and less emphasis on others. But the trend of invisible simple 24/7 payments is the same.

Mark McNulty: I wouldn't characterise it as either or. Clients and customers are reacting to the digital transformation, and regulators across the world are basically looking to drive digitalization in their economies. Verification pay is a great example of that.

McNulty: Yes. In my view, regulators are looking to digitalize the entire economy, often using payment instruments and the payment mechanisms. And I think that helps to drive innovation on a scale. Regulation can be a tremendous enabler. Because as much as we will create and build solutions for our clients and innovative solutions for our clients, they also need to operate across the ecosystem. If you look at the need to make instant payments, for example you need schemes that ideally are adopted by all banks to create scale. But then obviously banks need to be able to take advantage of that by developing solutions for clients that the clients can take.

Sen: I would agree on that. I spent a lot of time in Asia; there was a hunger and a need for innovation. So, if you see how instant payments developed in India, in Singapore, Indonesia and the Southeast Asian markets, or even the North Asian markets, it came from a client need. But regulations really enabled it. I think the regulators felt that they needed to drive a standardised, safe and secure way which creates that interoperability. And they led with some of those regulations, much like what we are seeing happening in Europe now.

McNulty: We are very, very focused on where the clients are going, what our clients need, and make sure that we're focused on delivering client outcomes in terms of reacting to that transformation into the digital economy.

Sen: Of course we are constantly watching the developments in the market. But we're not going after something new just because it's dictated to new technology or sounds cool. It’s not because it’s new, but because these are the problems our clients are trying to solve.

Sen: Sure. It came out as a client need that their suppliers are demanding liquidity because they have onward liquidity needs. Because as commerce is moving online, the velocity is just becoming much faster. We address this problem by connecting our internal blockchain network that allows our clients to transfer liquidity 24/7 in US Dollar from the key treasury centres, UK, US, Singapore and Hong Kong with our multi-bank network. It allows our clients to move dollars 24/7 amongst 250 banks. The connection of the two networks will be very useful to corporate clients in Europe because now they can pay their supplier in Vietnam even on a US holiday.

Sen: I think the challenges these companies face are very similar to the things that corporates around the world are trying to solve. They're aiming to facilitate their businesses to perform online real time commerce, which means the concept of real-time treasury is becoming much more of a reality.

Sen: Real-time treasury means the ability and flexibility and the data to be able to forecast your liquidity needs in a 24/7 world. There are three key elements: data visibility, the ability to move around the world, and payment forecasting. We’ve been very focused on solving those problems both for German corporates, European corporates, but also global clients. We do not only make real-time payment solutions available to them, but we're doing that with richer data. And we're leveraging the ISO 20022 changes that are happening all over the world. By combining these efforts with real time liquidity support, we can make sure that clients can make the funding when they need to make the payments.

Sen: That’s what makes our solutions very suitable for them. Because we are always making sure that our customers don't have to make deep technical changes to integrate on us. They just have to use the way they currently operate with us, and we will turn on the innovation.