Edition: June 2025
Insights, data and commentary on the fast‑moving world of payments, brought to you by Curzon Consulting.
Instant rails are reshaping settlement economics. 2025 YTD volume is up 38 % as regulators from the Fed to the EU mandate near‑real‑time clearing. For the card industry, the pivot to account‑to‑account creates both cost pressures and opportunities to monetise overlay services such as fraud guarantees and data APIs.
Global Card Volumes
US$39 trn
+9 % YoY
Contactless Share
63 %
+6 pp YoY
BNPL Market
US$229 bn
+28 % YoY
The payments ecosystem is at an inflection point. Real‑time, data‑rich and increasingly software‑defined, the rails we have known for decades are morphing into cloud micro‑services. Yet one constant remains: trust. In my travels from fintech basements to boardrooms, I see a renewed focus on security, identity and purpose‑driven finance. In this month’s edition we unpack the macro signals and drill down into practical strategies you can deploy today.
Whether you’re modernising an issuer stack or chasing embedded‑finance adjacencies, remember that technology is the easy part—governance, culture and client empathy are the differentiators. Our team at Curzon Consulting stands ready to partner on that journey.
Payments growth remains buoyant despite macro‑headwinds. New data from the Bank for International Settlements shows a 9 % increase in global card‑payments value over the past 12 months, while Tap‑to‑Pay transactions jumped +42 % as small merchants embraced soft‑POS solutions. Meanwhile, buy‑now‑pay‑later (BNPL) continues to expand, albeit at a moderating pace.
Card‑on‑file tokenisation has cut fraud by up to 40 %; the next frontier is using rich device and context data to drive one‑to‑one offers at the point of sale. By linking network tokens to cloud‑based preference graphs, issuers can enable merchants to bypass generic coupons in favour of contextual micro‑discounts—think 3 % off if you’ve visited a competitor in the last week. Privacy‑preserving techniques such as differential privacy ensure compliance.
Early pilots in Australia show a 17 % lift in basket size with no measurable increase in chargeback risk. 2025 will see broader rollouts as network specifications mature.