In September 2025, Alexandre Tombini, Chief Representative of the BIS for the Americas, highlighted the rapid evolution of payment systems across the region, noting that more than 15 jurisdictions in Latin America and the Caribbean had already adopted instant payment systems. These include Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica and, more recently, Colombia with Bre-B.
That matters because it shows that payment transformation is not centered on a single technology or limited to a handful of markets. The region is adopting multiple ways to move money faster, while other alternatives such as digital wallets, account-to-account transfers and QR-based payments continue to expand.
For financial institutions, this creates a challenge that goes beyond simply adding a new payment method. Infrastructure must be able to support a market that continues to add new alternatives without requiring the operation to be rebuilt every time another one emerges.
A New Payment Option Should Not Require a New Architecture
Every payment model can introduce its own rules, connections and technical requirements. The challenge begins when those specific requirements are replicated across multiple layers of the infrastructure.
An institution may launch a new service and initially address its integration needs successfully. But if every new alternative requires similar capabilities to be built from scratch, maintaining the operation becomes progressively more complex.
Architecture therefore becomes a strategic consideration. A modular structure can separate the specific characteristics of each service from the capabilities that should remain shared, making it easier to introduce new options without unnecessarily disrupting what already works.
This is particularly relevant as faster payments continue to gain adoption. The question is no longer only which alternative to introduce, but how prepared the infrastructure is to accommodate the next one.
Diversity also requires a common operating logic
The evolution of the market does not mean that each new payment method will immediately replace those that came before it. Over the coming years, multiple payment instruments are likely to continue coexisting, each serving different needs.
That increases the importance of having a layer capable of managing this diversity.
An orchestration layer, or payment hub, can move capabilities such as intelligent transaction orchestration out of the banking core. The challenge is no longer simply to connect systems. It is to determine, in real time, how each transaction should be processed, which route it should follow, which rules should apply, what contingency mechanism should be available and what service level must be maintained.
The core can then remain focused on the functions it was designed to perform, while the orchestration layer manages an ecosystem that evolves at a much faster pace.
The advantage is not centralization for its own sake. It is avoiding a model in which every new payment alternative creates an independent structure around itself.
This allows the introduction of a new service to remain primarily a business decision, whether the goal is to address a new customer preference or enter a new market, without making that decision dependent on modifying multiple layers of the existing infrastructure.
Preparing for What Does Not Yet Exist
The evolution of payments will not stop with the systems we know today.
The BIS has indicated that the future of the financial system will be shaped by greater digitalization, deeper interconnection and, potentially, developments such as tokenization. In its March 2026 analysis, the BIS highlighted initiatives designed to connect tokenized commercial bank money with central bank reserves to enable new possibilities in cross-border payments.
This does not mean that financial institutions should adopt every new technology that enters the market. It means their architecture should be capable of adapting when a clear business opportunity emerges.
In this context, flexibility does not mean having every possible option available. It means being able to introduce a new one without requiring every decision to trigger a redesign of the existing infrastructure.
Orchestrating for Continuous Evolution
AZ7® is built around this principle as an orchestration platform that enables institutions to connect and manage different components of a payments operation through a modular architecture.
The objective is to allow new capabilities to be introduced through a common structure while keeping the specific requirements of individual services and connections appropriately separated.
At CLAI PAYMENTS® Technologies, this is precisely the approach we have developed around AZ7® as a Payment Orchestration Hub: not to force institutions to replace everything they already have, but to create a layer capable of connecting, governing and evolving the existing environment.
From a resilience perspective, this can have a significant impact. Institutions can implement alternative transaction routes, active-active architectures and contingency mechanisms while reducing the potential scope of disruption when a failure occurs.
In other words, the institution gains not only greater flexibility, but also reduces how often it must modify the core of the operation in order to innovate.
For organizations operating across multiple products, markets or payment models, this capability can make a meaningful difference. It enables new alternatives to be assessed according to business priorities rather than allowing existing infrastructure to become the primary constraint on adoption.
The next wave of payments is unlikely to arrive as a single technology that replaces everything that came before it. It will more likely take the form of an increasingly diverse ecosystem of alternatives, each with different levels of adoption and different use cases.
Being prepared does not mean knowing exactly what comes next. It means having an architecture capable of incorporating it when it arrives. If your organization is looking to build that capability into its payments infrastructure, complete the form below and one of our specialists will contact you.
