FinTechTalk: Real-time payments – ensuring your legacy infrastructure can keep up 

On 30 September 2025, FinTechTalk host Charles Orton-Jones was joined by Jimena Santillán, Product Director, Freelance; and Dr Ritesh Jain, Founder, Infynit. 

  

Views on news 

QNB Group, a Qatar-headquartered bank announced Monday that it now uses JPMorgan’s Kinexys Digital Payments system to handle dollar payments for business customers in Qatar. The new setup lets payments go through in minutes at any time of the day, including weekends.

 

As the biggest US dollar clearing bank globally, JPMorgan wants to grow the platform by opening the network to other financial institutions to reach companies that don’t bank directly with them. Blockchain allows banks with legacy systems to adopt services such as real-time payments and risk and prevention systems.

 

However, the question arises whether financial institutions are ready for adoption. While the EU has the mandate that all transaction be settled within ten seconds, institutions are struggling with implementing the necessary infrastructure, challenges including fraud detection, interoperability and  liquidity – for real-time payments banks must build up a liquidity pool.   

 

Fraud detection in real-time payments 

Covid pushed banks to build partnerships with fintechs to have real-time data required for fraud detection. Open banking and close collaboration between European banks have also helped banks reduce fraud, as legacy systems weren’t designed for 24/7 millisecond fraud detection.

 

While in 2022, the messaging protocol for payments underwent a digital transformation globally, some financial institutions still haven’t upgraded their systems, which has become mandatory in 2025. There have also been some failures where banks’ move to the cloud caused major disruptions and resulted in hefty fines.  

 

Digitally transformed core banking systems enabled by AI can now support state-of-the-art banking capabilities through banking-as-a-service and roll out new payment or credit products in 15 days. High fees for international money transfers have always been a problem. That’s why customers keep looking for other options.

 

To get the best offers, individuals now tend to bank with multiple institutions and use the ones that offer the best terms for a particular financial service. Banks also have difficulties recruiting talent with the right level of digital skills, which they try to address by recruiting externally, as well as with internal training and upskilling.  

 

The panellists’ insights 

Even fintechs in Europe can be inefficient with tasks such as preparing ready-to-download tax returns, which can take as many as 10 days.  Meanwhile, in India, a tax return submitted at 11pm can get a response about a tax refund at 2 am next morning.  

 

Payment technology develops in cycles of divergence  - when a dizzying number of new technologies emerge on the market – and consolidation.  

 

While Europe is ahead of the US in terms of digital payments technology, India (UPI) , Brazil (Pix) are far ahead of both.