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Already processing USD 9 billion worth of payment volumes a quarter, PayPal is the online payment services provider the banks often accuse of encroaching on their turf. Brent Bellm, vice president and general manager, PayPal Europe, sets the record straight on why he believes PayPal complements the payments infrastructure already established by the banks, and alludes to an expanded role for the online payments provider in the area of international remittances.

Avoiding nasty surprises. As the pressure to automate services drives firms to embrace service-oriented architecture, Dr. Giles Nelson warns that they also need to adopt automated runtime governance to ensure they can keep tabs on what is actually happening across the entire operation.

Forget the debate over whether ERPs are better than specialist systems, writes Denise Bedell. In looking to improve automation firms should first identify the job that needs to be done, then find the system or combination that best fits (photo of Francois Masquelier, RTL Group).

State Street FX Connect, part of the Global Link platform, was well ahead of the field when it started in the mid-1990s. Simon Wilson-Taylor, worldwide head, Global Link, explains how it is capitalising on its first-mover advantage through a strategy of continual innovation.

As treasury director at Hewlett-Packard, Sarah Jones witnessed first hand the inefficiencies that exist in most companies' supply chains. Now as the newly appointed CEO of SCF Capital, a company co-founded by Apple Computer's former CEO, John Sculley, she is spearheading the development of financial products to free supply chains of funding constraints.

Thwarting history. US exchanges face losing out to more efficient trading venues. This is why they are so keen to acquire strategic technology by taking over European exchanges, says Frédéric Ponzo.

On the 'buses'. An ESB is adequate for many SOA applications, but companies with complex transformation requirements should consider a heavyweight integration infrastructure, says Steve Craggs.

Rise of the hybrids. With derivatives on the rise, Sunil Chadda predicts that the asset class will transform global financial markets.

ACE Software’s ‘intelligent payment platform’ Pelican uses artificial intelligence to flexibly route and automatically repair payments messages.

Another year has gone by and IT directors will be thinking about how they can spend next year’s IT budgets. To help them along we have asked four industry commentators; a vendor, a consultant, a banker and an analyst to give us their insights into what areas they anticipate will be focusing the minds of IT directors in 2007. Operational risk, enhanced reference data management and digitising paper are still high on most firms’ agenda. But in a new development, which we are likely to see more of in the coming months, greening the data centre is likely to preoccupy banks as regulators clamp down on carbon emissions.

In our inaugural Leaders in Innovation Awards, financial-i acknowledges the companies (banks, software and hardware vendors) that are delivering business solutions which are interoperable, relatively easy to implement, enhance customer service levels and connectivity, and help financial institutions achieve the levels of speed, transparency and automation required to survive in today’s heightened regulatory and competitive environment. This is how we have defined product innovation.