You may have the articles last week quoting Visa’s CEO, Al Kelly that real-time payments are not going to see wide-spread adoption. One such article is here. Is this view driven by the fact that the card company doesn’t want to see a new payments rail encroach on their territory? Or is Visa dismissing rival Mastercard’s purchase of VocaLink, a technology provider deeply involved in the development of real-time payments platforms around that world and with The Clearing House here in the U.S.? Mr. Kelly clarified his comments by saying that real-time payments won’t take off and won’t cannibalize card transactions due to a lack of reliability and also recourse (or clear recourse) in the event of misdirected transactions or fraud:
“I’m not convinced that these are going to take off like crazy,” Kelly said Wednesday at an investor conference in New York. “Does the consumer really need the funds that much faster?”