Aqua Global research shows continued reliance on manual processing and legacy systems is keeping real-time payments out of reach for most banks
Aqua Global, the financial messaging hub built for payments, treasury and securities processing, today released new research revealing that real-time payments remain out of reach for most banks. The findings show that over-reliance on manual processing and legacy systems is holding progress back, with almost a third of banks (29%) admitting it typically takes more than a day to resolve reconciliation issues.
The survey of 150 European banking IT leaders – including 75 UK-based respondents – found widespread agreement that automation is essential for the future of payments. However, full automation remains the exception, not the rule, leaving many banks exposed as payment volumes, regulatory pressure and customer expectations rise. Key findings include:
- Banks know automation can give them a competitive edge: 85% believe automation will determine which banks remain competitive in cross-border payments, while 78% warn that institutions failing to modernise risk falling behind on customer experience. 73% say unified messaging, matching and reconciliation capabilities are no longer optional for banks that want to scale.
- Manual processes are blocking real-time payments: 74% of banks identify manual payment handling as the biggest obstacle to real-time processing. Three-quarters (75%) believe upcoming regulatory changes will penalise institutions that continue to rely on manual workflows, while 69% say dependence on spreadsheets and workarounds is actively increasing operational risk.
- Full automation remains rare across core payment functions: Across ten core payment functions, an average of just 13% of banks report full automation. Payment orchestration is the most automated process, yet only 23% of banks have fully automated it. For liquidity and cash position monitoring, that figure falls to just 7%.
- Human intervention is still commonplace: Across the same ten core processes, one in five banks remain mostly or fully manual. One in four (25%) say fraud and sanctions investigations remain mostly or fully manual. Reporting and audit preparation (22%) and securities trade matching (21%) also continue to rely heavily on manual intervention.
- Legacy infrastructure is making modernisation harder: Legacy system limitations remain the biggest barrier to automation. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of banking IT leaders still depend on outdated messaging formats and systems that should already have been retired, while 72% believe legacy infrastructure will make future Swift changes more difficult and expensive to implement.
“Real-time payments cannot be built on yesterday’s infrastructure,” comments Cian Fernando, CEO of Aqua Global. “Banks are under pressure to move money faster, improve customer experience and keep pace with regulatory change. Yet too many are still managing critical payment functions with manual processes and legacy messaging systems. This operational lag increases risk and leaves institutions exposed as volumes, complexity and expectations rise. Manual processes were not built for a real-time payments world, and banks that delay modernisation risk being held back by the very systems they should already have retired.”
The operational consequences of delaying modernisation are already being felt. 71% of respondents admit they lack visibility across the full payment lifecycle, making it harder to identify and resolve issues before they escalate. Meanwhile, 51% report rising operational costs linked to inefficiencies across payment operations.
While 81% of respondents believe data quality is becoming a greater competitive differentiator, many banks are still struggling to get the basics right. Legacy systems are creating challenges much earlier in the payment lifecycle, particularly around data collection and quality, with knock-on effects further down the payment chain. This indicates many reconciliation issues originate long before a payment reaches the reconciliation stage.
Almost one in three banks (29%) say reconciliation mismatches typically take more than a day to resolve, with the top three causes directly related to data:
- Poor-quality or incomplete data from upstream systems
- Breaks caused by multiple versions of the truth
- Messy legacy systems that do not speak the same data language.
As a result, 65% of banks spend more time repairing payment data than producing it, suggesting that inefficiencies are being perpetuated rather than resolved.
“For years, banks have been papering over the cracks in their payments infrastructure and automating around the edges while the underlying fragmentation becomes harder to manage,” comments Nick Fernando, Co-founder and Director of Aqua Global. “These findings show that those cracks are widening. Legacy processes are no longer just a back-office efficiency issue; they are directly affecting payment visibility, data quality, operational resilience and the ability to compete in a real-time market.
“Modernisation does not have to mean ripping everything out and starting again. Banks need a practical, incremental path to automation – one that improves visibility and control across payments, reconciliation and exception handling, while reducing reliance on manual and fragmented systems. That is how institutions move from firefighting to leading, and from managing the cost of legacy technology to realising the value of what comes next.”