75% of respondents to the new Global Payments Insight Study believe consumers want a broader choice of payment tools, prompting firms to consider investment in this area as an influx of new competitors leads larger financial institutions to fear for their market positions.

The research, jointly conducted by ACI Worldwide, a global business providing electronic payments for financial institutions, retailers and processors, and the leading market research and advisory firm Ovum, showed that 55% of participants stated that an enhanced customer experience is their key expected return on investment on any increased investment in their payment system.

The research took the form of an online survey designed to provide an insight into the payment perceptions among numerous firms including: financial institutions, scheduled billing and payment taking organizations such as higher education, consumer finance and insurance, and merchant retailers.

This increased investment was owing to 76% of the financial institutions question in the study believed that their payment services now face growing competition from new, smaller and more nimble players in the industry.

Such investments are clearly justified as 60% of the retailers questioned said that their payments provider does not offer the variety of services required to satisfy their customer demand.

Security ranks as the biggest concern with 53% of respondents believing it is the biggest impediment to payments innovation, whilst 37% cite customer protection requirements, which is a related issue. Cost is also a big factor as a further 41% believe the high cost of maintaining their existing legacy systems is the main factor behind a lack of payments innovation.