Payments go beyond the transfer of money, and financial institutions can customize each step of the process through vendor selection. 

“In the whole journey of a payment, a payment is not just transferring money from one place to another,” Sachin Torne, senior vice president of global payments transformation at Citi, said June 27 during Volante’s “From mandates to modernization: Payments as a service strategies for European banks” webinar. 

In fact, a payment journey has up to nine steps, or “blocks,” it must travel through before the payment is complete, he said. 

The blocks are: 

Payments-as-a-service

With the payment process broken down, any of these blocks “can be picked up and be offered as a service,” Torne said. 

Tech providers can offer a service for any of these blocks, he said, noting that this is where the payments process can be customized 

“Banks have the luxury to choose multiple providers to see which is the right [step] they want to outsource,” he said. Or banks can join together four or five blocks in one package with one service provider, depending on preference. 

Or, if a bank has a solid foreign exchange strategy but a slow onboarding process, the bank might put more of a focus on selecting a vendor for onboarding, he said. 

For example, in December, Citi selected Icon Solutions to modernize its core payments capabilities globally. KeyBank selected payments platform Qolo in May to launch its virtual account management solution. 

Selecting the right vendor for each payment-as-a-service offering is based on what each bank wants to accomplish, creating a customized payments experience, Torne said. 

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