Industry
Banking
Banking Services Transformation: Unlocking Exponential Value
Highlights
- Real-time payments (RTP) are transforming dispute management by compressing response timelines and increasing fraud risks. Financial institutions must modernize systems to stay secure, compliant, and customer focused.
- With platforms like UPI, PIX, and Zelle, financial inclusion is rising—but so are operational risks. Smarter automation, AI-led fraud controls, and regulatory agility are now essential to manage disputes effectively.
- Agentic AI enables autonomous detection, decision-making, and resolution. By shifting from manual processing to intelligent workflows, banks can enhance speed, trust, and resilience in a ‘real-time payment’ world.
Overview
To thrive in a real-time payment’s world, banks must embed AI and cyber resilience into dispute workflows, fraud controls and compliance operations
The rise of mobile wallets and instant payment platforms such as India’s UPI, the UK’s Faster Payments Service (FPS), and the US’ Zelle signals a global shift toward real-time, always-on transactions. These systems meet consumer demand for speed and convenience but introduce new challenges. Limited windows for fraud detection, integration with legacy systems, and operational inefficiencies add complexity. Technologies like blockchain are emerging in various regions to enhance transparency and security. However, dispute resolution remains a concern, especially for misdirected or unauthorized payments. Many systems still lack the agility to provide immediate remediation, highlighting the need for adaptive, intelligent infrastructure in real-time payment ecosystems.
Possibilities ahead
Real-time payments (RTP) offer a transformative opportunity to enhance customer experience, improve efficiency, and drive financial inclusion.
Countries like South Korea, Singapore, and India have seen widespread adoption, with platforms such as UPI, FAST, and M-Pesa improving access and lowering operational costs. In the US, Zelle processed over 1.7 billion transactions in H1 2024, while Europe’s SCT Inst and initiatives like FedNow and Brazil’s PIX continue to set global benchmarks. As RTP adoption accelerates, financial institutions must embrace AI and intelligence-led systems to manage complexity, improve oversight, and stay competitive. Regulatory bodies are also evolving frameworks to support secure, real-time governance. However, these gains come with rising cyber risks, demanding continuous monitoring, proactive controls, and adaptive infrastructure.
Fixes and gains
To unlock the full potential of real-time payments (RTP), financial institutions worldwide are adopting intelligent, AI-led solutions to manage fraud, reduce errors, and enhance operational efficiency.
Countries like Australia have demonstrated success with AI-driven fraud detection in high-speed payment environments. In the US, AI is streamlining dispute resolution, improving accuracy and reducing turnaround times. The UK’s Faster Payments Service (FPS) is setting global standards for secure, real-time operations with integrated compliance controls. Meanwhile, banks in India, Brazil, and across the EU are exploring AI for real-time risk monitoring and dispute handling. The emergence of Agentic AI adds a predictive, self-learning layer that can autonomously detect, decide, and act transforming RTP ecosystems globally.
Way forward
To fully capitalize on RTP, a comprehensive overhaul of infrastructure and adoption of advanced technologies is essential.
Despite progress, many financial institutions continue to rely on outdated infrastructure that struggles to meet the speed and integration demands of real-time payments (RTP). Early implementations, particularly in markets like the U.S., exposed system limitations legacy platforms caused processing delays, increased security vulnerabilities, and drove up operational costs. Incremental upgrades have proven insufficient, as fragmented systems remain exposed to cyber risks.
To fully capitalize on RTP, a comprehensive overhaul of infrastructure and adoption of advanced technologies is essential. At the same time, future protections must be embedded across three pillars: robust quality assurance to ensure system performance; enhanced regulatory oversight to align with evolving technologies and sustained consumer education to raise awareness on safe, secure transaction practices in a real-time environment.
Conclusion
Agentic AI brings autonomous decision-making, enabling systems to detect, act, and learn driving smarter fraud prevention and faster, context-aware dispute resolutions.
Real-time payments (RTP) are reshaping the financial ecosystem with instant, customer-centric transactions but they also introduce new challenges in fraud risk, dispute resolution speed, and system integration. To stay ahead, financial institutions must shift from traditional processing to AI-powered, real-time intelligence. More than just automation, Agentic AI brings autonomous decision-making, enabling systems to detect, act, and learn driving smarter fraud prevention and faster, context-aware dispute resolutions. When embedded with mobile wallets, blockchain, and cloud-native platforms, this intelligence creates a foundation for scale, security, and trust. To unlock RTP’s full potential, banks must center their dispute strategy around AI backed by regulatory alignment, robust assurance mechanisms, and proactive consumer education to ensure secure, compliant, and future-ready operations dispute management in the real-time era.
