Mangopay research has found that automation in UK multi-party payments operations remains limited, with manual processes still widespread across fund reconciliation and allocation.
The findings, drawn from a survey conducted in March 2026 among senior finance and payments leaders at UK firms processing a minimum of 50 million transactions annually, suggest that automation has taken hold in isolated areas rather than across payment operations as a whole.
Reconciliation and fund allocation lag behind
The data points to a significant gap between the narrative around digital transformation and operational reality. In the UK, 85% of firms surveyed still rely on fully or mostly manual reconciliation processes. For multi-party payment flows, the picture is similarly uneven: only 35% of businesses use wallet or virtual account logic for fund routing, and 23% manage fund allocation entirely manually.
Cross-border payouts represent an area of comparatively stronger progress, with 61% of respondents reporting full automation. Notably, smaller businesses processing fewer than 250 million transactions annually were more likely to have fully automated cross-border payouts than larger firms handling over 500 million transactions, 100% versus 59%, respectively. The research does not offer an explanation for this disparity.
Moreover, FX cost visibility remains another weak point. In the UK, 39% of firms only see foreign exchange costs after settlement, meaning a substantial share of businesses lack real-time insight into one of their material cost drivers. The issue is more pronounced among US firms surveyed, where 47% face the same limitation.
Compliance and infrastructure concentration
According to the official press release, regulatory complexity is reinforcing reliance on manual processes. Some 40% of UK respondents identified country-specific payout restrictions as a significant operational challenge, reflecting the demands of cross-border operations within an increasingly complex compliance environment.
Infrastructure concentration also stands out. In the UK, 70% of platforms rely on a single provider for the majority of their payment flows, with only 29% distributing flows across multiple providers. In Germany, single-provider dependency rises to 75%. This degree of concentration limits operational flexibility and may constrain businesses' ability to adapt payment setups as they scale.
Despite these operational pressures, businesses appear to prioritise customer-facing capabilities when evaluating infrastructure investment. Around two fifths of UK firms would consider new infrastructure to improve control over refund flows (43%) or to support future financial services offerings (39%). By contrast, only 31% would make the same consideration for compliance simplification or faster settlement with improved fund visibility, indicating that front-end functionality carries more weight in procurement decisions than back-office efficiency gains.
Andy Wiggan, CPO, Mangopay, commented that, while AI and automation continue to dominate industry discourse, the underlying financial infrastructure at many firms has not kept pace, and that the platform economy is entering a phase where margins and financial control are taking precedence over growth metrics. The research suggests that the next phase of transformation may centre less on technology adoption and more on rebuilding payment infrastructure for greater control, transparency, and scalability.
