Mobile Outweighs Speed In Treasurers’ Payments Priorities

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PYMNTS has seen a pattern, at least anecdotally, when it comes to faster payments initiatives and corporates: Executives would rather have secure payments than faster payments, and they’re concerned that, as faster payments initiatives progress throughout the world, it gives the industry less time to identify and mitigate a security threat.

New research from TD Bank offers some data to back up this pattern. The bank published the results of a survey conducted at the NACHA payments conference held last month and found that 88 percent of the 283 attendees surveyed by the firm expect payment fraud to rise in the near future as payments go digital and speed up.

But according to TD Bank, fewer professionals are prepared to handle the problem. Only 20 percent of survey respondents said their organizations have a paperless payments process in place.

Even fewer, only about 10 percent, believe there is an effective solution to the threat of payments fraud in existence today.

“Corporate treasurers need to have conversations with their banking partners to establish controls within their payments processing and accounts and find better ways to implement layered defenses and detect fraudulent activity,” said TD Bank Head of Corporate Products and Services Rick Burke in a statement.

While 42 percent said their businesses are at least three years away from implementing paperless payments processes and while these professionals largely expect the threat of payments fraud to rise, nearly half of those surveyed said real-time payment processing capabilities are critical to their organizations.

A similar portion, 47 percent, said that real-time payments are not essential. Meanwhile, nearly three-quarters said self-service and mobile commercial finance capabilities are essential for their companies.