Partnering for payment modernisation

Building new partnerships

The payments ecosystem is undergoing a fundamental shift, driven by rapid digital change, evolving customer expectations, and the emergence of AI‑enabled and embedded commerce models. For banks and retailers, payment modernisation is no longer a back‑office exercise, but a strategic priority tied directly to relevance, trust, and growth. Organisations that fail to adapt, risk falling behind as legacy infrastructure struggles to keep pace with new rails, methods, and experiences.

Partnering for payment modernisation explores how leading banks and retailers are responding to this disruption. Based on insights from 1,000 banking and retail executives globally, the report highlights three priorities shaping progress: building strong partner ecosystems, innovating around customer needs, and embedding agility into payment strategies, infrastructure, and operations. Leaders are no longer modernising in isolation — they are collaborating across ecosystems to accelerate innovation, reduce complexity, and unlock new sources of value.

The report serves as a call to action for organisations seeking to unlock the future of payments. By focusing on partnership‑driven modernisation, customer‑led design, and flexible, future‑ready platforms, banks and retailers can move beyond incremental change toward lasting competitive advantage in an increasingly dynamic payments landscape.

Partnering for payment modernisation

How leading banks and retailers are unlocking the future of payments

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Key findings and insights

Executive summary

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What our people have to say

Payment transformation is no longer about upgrading infrastructure; it’s about rethinking the experience. Start with the customer. Build with partners. Operate with agility. That’s how you move from payments as a function to payments as a growth platform.

Marco Vassallo

Partner, Digital Solutions

KPMG in Malta

In an increasingly complex and fast evolving payments ecosystem, sustained competitive advantage will be defined by the strength of collaboration. Banks and retailers that prioritise strategic partnerships are better positioned to accelerate modernisation, unlock innovation, and respond decisively to shifting market dynamics. Embedding agility across payment strategies and operating models is fundamental to achieving resilience, scalability, and long term relevance. Equally critical is an uncompromising focus on customer outcomes. By placing trust, reliability, and seamless experience at the core of payment design, organisations can reinforce their role as trusted stewards of the global payments infrastructure.

Ryan Farrugia

Associate Director, Financial Institutions

KPMG in Malta

Three key actions for banks and retailers based on the survey

Prioritise partnerships

To keep pace with rapid technological change and shifting customer expectations, banks and retailers must build dynamic ecosystems that bring together partners to accelerate modernisation and create competitive advantage.
Focus on the customer

Leading organisations start by deeply understanding customer needs and expectations, using those insights to rapidly shape and deliver payment options that are simple, relevant, and trusted.
Create agility

As the payment ecosystem continues to evolve, embedding agility into payment strategies, infrastructure, and operations is essential to enable future flexibility, scalability, and ongoing evolution.

Methodology

KPMG International surveyed 500 banks and 500 retailers between the 8 September and 30 October 2025, to assess their progress on payment modernisation, as well as their motivations, objectives, investment expectations and challenges.

Our survey asked respondents to rate their levels of progress against a range of modernisation pillars, and we used their responses to calculate their overall maturity with respondents in the top 20th percentile ranked as ‘leaders’ and those in the bottom 20th percentile ranked as ‘beginners’. In both the banking and retail sectors, the leaders tended to be those with revenues greater than US$10 billion. In the banking sector, neobanks reported the highest proportion of leaders and in the retail sector, it was e-commerce platforms that were most likely to rank as leaders.

Forty percent of retail respondents were based in Asia Pacific, 35 percent in the EMEA region and 25 percent in the Americas. The banking sample represented 36 percent of respondents from the Americas, 34 percent from the EMEA region and 31 percent from Asia Pacific.