Earlier this year, Celent surveyed senior payments executives at banks across seven of the largest European markets: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Nordics, Spain, and the UK. The Celent survey of European Banks featured only executives with senior leadership responsibility for payments technology investment, with either their own technology budgets or direct influence on technology budget prioritisation.

Celent sought to explore two major areas:

• Executive attitudes to market developments, e.g., how they view certain regulatory and competitive developments, what they expect to have the biggest impact on their business, who is likely to benefit the most, and their views on the payments market growth.
• Payments in their organisations today and investment priorities, e.g., how banks view and manage payments today, what is driving technology-related projects in payments this year and in the next few years, areas in which they expect to make the biggest investments, and where they are in the modernisation cycle for some of their key payment systems.

The European payments market is undergoing tremendous amount of change. Celent has been exploring the regulatory and competitive forces driving that change and how those might shape the European payments market over the next 5-10 years in several recent reports, such as:

• A Future of European Payments: Getting Ready for a Seismic Shift in Commerce
• Rethinking Your Digital Wallet Strategy: From Payments to Identity and Agentic Commerce
• Ding Ding, Round Three: PSD3 and the PSR1 Take Shape

While those reports were informed by Celent’s research and regular dialogue with the market participants, it was also keen to capture the voice of bank executives more formally and directly.

What keeps European payment executives awake at night: key takeaways include:

• The European banks expect regulatory changes to have the biggest impact on the payments market over the next five years. Of those, banks identified the third Payment Services Directive (PSD3), Instant Payment Regulation (IPR), and digital euro as the top three regulatory changes shaping the market.
• While 44% of banks view the upcoming regulation as an opportunity, there are significant differences in attitude based on size, type, or geography.
• 50% of banks say that their payments business margins are becoming harder to maintain, although only 22% have a good handle of their P&L.
• Open banking payments and account-to-account digital wallets top the banks’ investment agenda for the next two years, with much of that investment already underway.
• 48% of banks intend to upgrade their credit card issuing platforms in the next 1-2 years.

Details on how to access the full report is available via this link.