According to a survey conducted by TD Bank at last year’s Association for Financial Professionals Annual Conference, 90% of finance and treasury professionals believe blockchain technology will have a positive impact on the payments industry.
Over 7,000 people from various different financial backgrounds attended the conference held on November 5-6 in Chicago, Illinois. Of those attendees, 406 responded to TD Bank’s survey. Respondents included industry professionals as well as business end-users and financial and technology services organizations.
Another important outcome from the survey is the improvements the professionals believe digital ledger technology will bring to the table. Chief among them is stronger audit trails, which 29 percent of respondents said is blockchain’s top impact. This will go a long way to mitigate fraud in the industry, since fraud and cybersecurity risks topped 44% of the respondents’ list of concerns. Moreover, these concerns have been increasing 14% year on year.
In fact, 48 percent of respondents admitted that their company does not have any in-house cyber-fraud training. Rick Burke, Head of Corporate Products and Services at TD Bank, noted on this issue, “As global fraud and cybersecurity incidents continue to rise, corporations recognize the need to bolster their protective measures and improve employee understanding of how to safeguard finances. To achieve real success, organizations and their employees need to be better able to identify and deter fraud attempts. This should be a responsibility shared by businesses and their financial institutions, beginning with better education.”
Other positive outcomes of blockchain technology highlighted in the survey include faster payment processing (22%), improved efficiency of cross-border payments (21%), and reduced payment fraud (18%). All of these are intimidating obstacles in the constantly evolving commercial payments environment.
However, despite all the negativity, most respondents voiced positive views on the future. Sixty percent expect to see major growth in payment speed and efficiency. While some businesses are not well prepared for the plethora of risks and challenges ahead, many are turning to blockchain technology to help them forge ahead.
“Blockchain technology has broad implications for the commercial payments space, from speeding up settlements to securing cross-border transactions,” Burke said. “Even though much of the industry has a baseline understanding that blockchain can evolve and improve payments, the varied responses indicate that the technology’s specific capabilities and implications are still a great unknown for many finance professionals.”
Source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blockchain-evolves-from-buzzword-to-major-benefit-for-payments-td-bank-survey-finds-300790567.html, image from DevTeam.Space.
