98% of Banks Still Rely on Manual Payment Processes – Here’s How QE Can Fix This

The world of financial services has been transformed by digital innovation, yet one stubborn issue remains: 98% of finance and product leaders still report that some part of their payment operations is manual. That’s nearly every organisation admitting that spreadsheets, email-based approvals, and fragmented processes are still deeply embedded in their workflows.

As one expert during the recent “Modern Treasury, Payments at Scale webinar”, explained:

“At some part of the process of managing payments and complexity at scale, something is happening manually—people, email, spreadsheets, handoffs between systems.”

To put it bluntly, this is an efficiency and compliance nightmare! Relying on manual intervention means:

Increased risk of errors – Every handoff between systems or people introduces the potential for data discrepancies and errors.

Slower transaction processing – Payments get stuck in approval chains or require human oversight, delaying settlement times.

Higher operational costs – Employees spend hours per week performing routine, non-value-adding tasks instead of focusing on strategic initiatives.

In fact, McKinsey estimates that 70% of banks' IT budgets are consumed by “run-the-bank” activities, leaving limited resources for innovation and digital transformation. This number could be significantly reduced if more financial institutions embraced Quality Engineering (QE).

The Payment Operations Challenge: Why Manual Work Still Exists

Despite advances in technology, banks and financial institutions often find themselves working across 6-7 different payment systems, with 13% using more than 10 systems (Modern Treasury, Payments at Scale webinar). This fragmented ecosystem makes automation difficult, as organisations struggle to:

Consolidate legacy and modern systems – Many banks still rely on legacy homegrown solutions built decades ago, making seamless integration with modern platforms a challenge.

Ensure interoperability across payment rails – From ACH and wires to ISO 20022-compliant messages, ensuring seamless translation between systems without manual intervention is complex.

Maintain compliance while automating – Banks need to ensure that automated processes remain compliant with strict regulations, making them hesitant to replace manual controls.

As the webinar highlighted:

“We're not consolidating and bringing data together. We're still stitching together a lot of different, disparate systems.”

This patchwork approach is unsustainable, and forward-thinking financial institutions are turning to Quality Engineering to automate and streamline payment operations.

How QE Helps Banks Automate Payment Processes – Without the Risk

QE goes beyond testing; it plays a fundamental role in ensuring resilience, efficiency, and seamless automation across complex banking environments. Here’s how:

End-to-End Payment Testing – QE ensures that every component of the payment lifecycle (from initiation to settlement) is rigorously tested, eliminating manual work while preventing costly failures.

Data Quality and Validation – With ISO 20022 and real-time payments introducing richer data, QE ensures that systems can accurately process structured payment messages without manual intervention.

Process Automation Testing – QE helps banks safely replace email approvals and manual reconciliation with automated workflows that are fully tested for compliance and performance.

Interoperability Assurance – QE ensures seamless integration across multiple payment systems, reducing the need for manual handoffs and improving straight-through processing (STP) rates.

Regression Testing for Continuous Change – As banks modernise, QE ensures that new automation initiatives do not break existing systems, allowing for safe, scalable transformation.

By embedding rigorous testing and automation strategies into payment operations, banks can eliminate unnecessary manual work, reduce operational costs, and accelerate digital transformation—freeing up IT budgets for innovation instead of maintenance.

We recently helped a private banking client save 2 days per week by automating manual processes, allowing their team to refocus the extra resource elsewhere. Read the case study here.

Move Beyond Manual Processes – Let’s Talk QE

The financial sector is continuously evolving and needing to respond to more regulatory demands, as well as new technologies – excessive manual payment processes are simply no longer sustainable from a time or resource standpoint. If your organisation is still relying on spreadsheets, email approvals, and manual reconciliation, you’re leaving money on the table—and introducing unnecessary risks.

Our Quality Engineers help financial institutions eliminate manual friction, improve efficiency, and ensure seamless automated payment operations. With extensive experience in the financial services sector, we have helped clients achieve measurable efficiency, time, and cost savings. Where there are efficiency savings to be made, we deliver them.

Let’s talk. Contact us today and one of our Quality Engineers will be happy to discuss how we can help you streamline payment operations via a no-obligation consultation: ask@roq.co.uk