In Q1 2026, NEACH met with leading third-party providers to explore the latest trends and developments in the payments landscape. Alex Campbell, FVP, Chief Payments Officer at COCC, shared valuable insights on the evolving nature of payments and what to expect in the year ahead. What follows is a summary of our conversation.
NEACH: What do you see as the next major shift in payments that banks and credit unions should watch for in 2026? Why?
COCC: The most critical shift for 2026 is the need for financial institutions (FIs) to compete aggressively in the small business (SMB) money movement space. SMBs are the backbone of local economies, and their payment needs are evolving rapidly. According to the Federal Reserve’s 2024 Report on Payments: Findings from the 2023 Small Business Credit Survey, nearly 80% of small business employers reported challenges with payment speed and cost. High card processing fees, ranging from 2% to 3%, and delayed settlement are cited as major pain points. These issues directly affect cash flow and profitability.
Why does this matter? Small businesses increasingly expect faster, lower-cost, and integrated payment solutions. If community institutions don't address these needs, SMBs will migrate to fintechs and large processors offering instant settlement and embedded financial tools.
To address these needs, FIs should consider the following strategic imperatives:
- Expand instant payment capabilities for SMB disbursements and collections to improve liquidity.
- Offer automated invoicing and reconciliation tools to reduce administrative burden.
- Develop pricing strategies or alternative rails to mitigate card-fee pressure.
- Integrate value-added services like payroll, payables, and cashflow analytics into digital banking platforms.
Payments are no longer just a utility; they serve as a strategic tool for SMB acquisition and retention. Institutions that offer speed, transparency, and operational efficiency will strengthen relationships and safeguard core deposits in a highly competitive market.
NEACH: The competitive landscape for FIs continues to evolve. How can your customers “win” in today’s banking environment? What role do payments play in that strategy?
COCC: To succeed in today’s banking environment, financial institutions must help their customers/members operate more quickly, efficiently, and with greater certainty, especially SMBs and commercial clients. Increasingly, differentiation is defined not just by products but by how smoothly money flows.
Payments are no longer just a back-office task. They now lie at the heart of the customer/member experience and directly impact loyalty, efficiency, and growth.
Here are key strategies for financial institutions to consider:
- Deliver real-time and instant payment capabilities that align with customer/member expectations for speed, liquidity, and availability beyond traditional banking hours.
- Implement modern settlement strategies that enable quicker, more cost-effective value transfer, especially for cross-border and after-hours use cases. Pilots using tokenized and stablecoin-based settlement by large networks indicate where future infrastructure could develop.
- Embed strong risk controls by design. As new rails emerge, institutions must pair speed with AI-driven fraud detection, transaction monitoring, and strong authentication to maintain trust.
Payments play a central role because they influence almost every customer/member interaction, from payroll and supplier transactions to digital wallets and cross-border transfers. Institutions that combine speed, affordability, security, and layered fraud screening in their payments strategy help their customers/members compete more effectively and boost their own relevance in a crowded market.
NEACH: As innovation accelerates, is there a minimum of services FIs “must” provide? If so, what are they and why? If not, why not?
COCC: Yes. While innovation will continue to differ by institution and market, there is now a baseline of capabilities that customers/members consider essential. These services do not provide a competitive advantage on their own, but failing to deliver them poses immediate competitive risks.
Consider the following:
- Instant payments (send and receive): FIs need to fully understand how to send instant payments. Today, FIs do not offer wire capabilities to all customers and members. They should apply this same consideration to instant payments. Nonetheless, FIs need to remove friction as they work to satisfy customers and members.
- Modern ACH with same-day capability: Same Day ACH is not just for emergency payroll. Institutions of all sizes should consider leveraging the intraday distribution windows to expedite payments.
- ISO 20022-ready wires: Fully implement ISO 20022 standards, which contain more data than the legacy FAIM format.
- Digital wallet enablement: Activate tap-and-go and position your institution’s card at the top of the wallet, making it easier for cardholders to choose your card over traditional competitors and emerging fintechs.
- Advanced AI-powered fraud tools: Consider a layered approach to fraud detection and mitigation that includes AI, which is essential. Do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket?
Together, these capabilities reflect customer/member expectations for speed, convenience, and security as check and cash usage continues to decline. Innovation in 2026 focuses less on launching individual features and more on building a robust foundation to support ongoing change.
NEACH: Fraud remains a top challenge, and as increasingly sophisticated schemes and attacks proliferate, it’s a primary concern for all FIs. What are you advising your clients to do to enhance their mitigation efforts? What’s new or different for 2026, such as specific trends, collaborations, and industry developments?
COCC: While fraud remains a persistent and growing issue, the overall patterns stay the same, and common practices can help reduce many of the related risks.
We continue to emphasize that financial institutions should prioritize educating their customers/members and staff about fraud risks, since vigilance remains the most effective countermeasure, especially when dealing with social engineering attempts. Often, users are coerced into well-meaning actions because of a sense of urgency: a business partner needs to change where ACH transactions are sent, or a customer/member shares passwords or MFA approvals with an unverified caller posing as a trusted party. In these situations, adopting a “trust but verify” approach can make a significant difference, even when the controls are relatively simple. Security awareness training and easily accessible educational resources remain invaluable.
From a technology perspective, we highly recommend that institutions continue investing in controls that verify identity in a mature and capable manner while minimizing friction. Technologies such as push notifications and passkeys help reduce the risk of unauthorized account access and mitigate threats like credential stuffing. When setting up first-time access, strong identity verification can also help address the growing risk of adversaries using stolen personal information to fabricate synthetic identities and open accounts.
To combat business email compromise (BEC), newer email security platforms now evaluate conversational context and sender legitimacy, providing an additional layer of defense before fraudulent transactions occur. Machine learning also plays a crucial role in modern fraud detection platforms, and we expect the continued growth of ML and AI to further strengthen detection capabilities as schemes become more complex.
NEACH: Using AI for fraud prevention, operations, and internal data analysis is becoming more common. How are you applying pattern recognition and other AI technologies in the solutions you offer or support?
COCC: Several of our platforms already use machine learning and AI to detect fraudulent email conversations, unusual account activity, and indicators of synthetic account information, all aimed at reducing the overall impact of fraud.
These capabilities enable institutions to recognize patterns and anomalies that may not be immediately apparent through traditional rules-based controls, improving both detection accuracy and response time. As fraud tactics continue to evolve, these tools offer an important layer of support alongside established operational and security practices.
We continue to enhance these platforms as part of our product roadmaps heading into 2026, with a focus on strengthening pattern recognition, improving signal quality, and enabling more proactive monitoring. In parallel, we offer clients open integration options, allowing them to connect to third-party AI and fraud solutions they may explore while maintaining flexibility within their broader technology ecosystem.
NEACH: On the instant payments front, we’re seeing growth on the receive side, but there’s still slower traction on the send side. What are you noticing among your clients? What’s holding them back from making the leap, and how are you addressing those concerns?
COCC: We see continued momentum on the receive side of instant payments, while adoption of send capabilities remains more measured across the industry. This is consistent with how financial institutions typically approach new payment rails, prioritizing risk management, operational readiness, and customer/member education before expanding outbound use cases.
Among COCC clients, more than 40% have adopted and enabled instant payment receive capabilities today. The gradual pace on send is less about a lack of interest and more about careful consideration around fraud exposure, customer/member entitlements, liquidity controls, and exception handling.
This phased approach mirrors the evolution of other major payment innovations. Card payments, for instance, expanded gradually, building confidence through successive stages before broadening access. We see instant payments on a similar trajectory: receive establishes familiarity and operational confidence, while send follows as institutions align governance, controls, and client readiness. This kind of phased adoption is not unique to real-time payments. Card processing evolved the same way, from early charge cards to credit, then debit, followed by signature, PIN, and PIN-less transactions, each step deliberately building trust, scale, and institutional confidence before expanding access.
Our role is to support institutions in progressing at the right pace by providing the tools, guardrails, and education needed to expand send capabilities confidently when they’re ready.
NEACH: As a core provider, how are you responding to the rapidly shifting demands of today’s payments landscape? How are your products and services evolving to help FIs remain competitive?
As the payments landscape continues to evolve, our focus is on providing community banks and credit unions with the flexibility, resilience, and confidence to adapt without compromising governance, security, or long-term stability.
We are investing in foundational capabilities that enable institutions to respond to change as it happens and thoughtfully integrate new technologies over time. These key areas of focus include:
- Open, real-time architecture for instant rails and fintech integrations.
- ISO 20022 data capabilities across channels.
- AI-driven fraud detection and service tools.
- API frameworks for embedded experiences.
- Investing in SMB payment capabilities through strategic partnerships.
- Creating a digital banking ecosystem that makes it easier to connect and plug in third-party solutions.
- Evaluating use cases that lend themselves to leveraging stablecoin.
Our goal is to help community institutions innovate while balancing modernization alongside strong governance, security, and operational continuity.
NEACH: As FI/fintech collaborations become more common, how are you supporting your customers in adopting the high-tech solutions they choose? How does that differ from a year or two ago (if it does)? Similarly, we have had a history of fintech as the enemy, then as a frenemy, and then as a partner: Is that cycle reversing, or is collaboration accelerating?
COCC: As FI/fintech collaboration becomes a core part of how financial institutions evolve, COCC actively works to make those partnerships successful in the real world, not just viable on paper. Community banks and credit unions want flexibility and choice, but they also need a core partner that understands the operational, regulatory, and human implications of adopting new technology.
COCC’s platforms are designed to support interoperability, but the differentiator is how that technology is applied. COCC’s Integration Team works closely with both clients and fintech partners to ensure integrations are implemented thoughtfully, align with existing workflows, and can be supported over the long term. That hands-on involvement helps institutions move beyond basic connectivity toward reliable, scalable, and sustainable solutions.
Earlier integrations often required significant customization and ongoing intervention. Today, COCC brings repeatable integration frameworks, deeper partner experience, and a more proactive approach that reduces friction and accelerates time to value for clients.
The industry’s shift from viewing fintech as a competitor to a partner continues, but with higher expectations. Financial institutions are no longer interested in experimentation for its own sake. They want partners that can execute consistently. In that environment, COCC’s combination of premier core technology, integration expertise, and long-standing client relationships positions it as a trusted enabler of innovation rather than a constraint on it. The result is an ecosystem where community banks and credit unions can adopt new technology with confidence, knowing they have a core partner invested in both integration and outcomes.
NEACH: What recent or forthcoming product rollouts do you have that FIs should explore?
COCC: As expectations around speed, data, and security continue to rise, financial institutions should turn to their core provider for innovations that strengthen their foundational capabilities while enabling future flexibility. The most valuable advancements are those that expand existing platforms rather than add operational complexity.
Key capabilities institutions should evaluate include:
- Instant send capabilities.
- A robust access and identity management platform.
- An integrated SMB ecosystem to better support AP/AR, invoicing, and cashflow analysis.
- Activating COCC’s Treasury and Cash Management functionality within our consolidated digital banking platform.
Together, these capabilities enable institutions to compete more effectively in a real-time, data-rich payments environment, while maintaining the governance and operational consistency required at scale.
Alex Campbell, FVP, Chief Payments Officer
Alex Campbell, FVP and Chief Payments Officer, has been a dedicated COCC employee since 2007 with over 20 years of experience in the financial service industry. Alex was able to develop his skills through various service teams including: ATM deposit processing, item processing customer service, cash management and electronic banking. In his current role, Alex is responsible for a number of electronic banking channels and application platforms including EFT, payments, telephone banking, image technologies and mobile app delivery.