New survey: are infrastructures fit for purpose?

We've recently had a lot of dialogue about interoperability and the difficulties of getting all the pipes and plumbing of payments to work together.

As one colleague recently said to me: "you have all this stuff coming in the front door, and all this other stuff going out the back door.  It's not just SWIFT but it's Faster Payments, SEPA, IBANs and BICs, Anti-Money Laundering Regulations ... you name it.  And the problem is that it's all coming out the back door too.  There's a linkage then between customer to bank to clearing system to bank to customer, and a whole end-to-end challenge about how you link these things between our systems, our bank counterparty systems and the ERP systems of the customer."

In other words, it's a complex goo of spaghetti that has evovled over the years, but is it fit for purpose?

Do the processors meet the challenges of the internet world of 2011?

To find out, we are launching a survey today that will run through the whole of March to see what the Finanser's readership think of SWIFT, EBA, Fedwire and the other clearing systems.

To take part in the survey just click this link.

By taking part, you are guaranteed to get a copy of the results when they are produced, and four readers will be drawn to win prizes of books or free membership of the Financial Services Club.

So that's worth five minutes of your time to answer just 19 questions about payments infastructures isn't it?