Insights & Analysis

Payment insight from the Optima team.

Most payments commentary is either vendor marketing or a recycled press release. Ours starts from the work: the benchmarking we run, the scheme invoices we audit, the regulation we read so you do not have to. We have been in payments since 2007, and we write about what we can actually see in the data. Expect a clear view, the numbers behind it, and a sense of what to do next.

The Mobile Banking App Review.

Our flagship study, now in its eleventh edition, tracks 26 German banking apps across six years. Next edition due Autumn 2026, reach out so you’re the first to know when it lands.

Read the latest edition ->

The Payments Association.

Mark O'Keefe, our founding director, is an Ambassador for The Payments Association and leads its Open Banking Working Group. He has featured on the Association's Insights Podcast, speaks at PAY360, and judges the PAY360 Awards. A good deal of his recent work on open banking and Pay by Bank has been published through the Association, so it is a useful place to see where our thinking sits in the wider industry debate.

If you want to understand the Association, or how to get involved, get in touch with Mark directly.

Email Mark

Papers

CASS: A decade on (industry perspective)

A decade on, is the Current Account Switch Service driving real competition, or just rewarding savvy switchers chasing cash incentives? Our summer 2024 paper looks behind the net-gain headlines at who is actually switching, and why it matters.

Read the report ->

Videos

At PAY360, our founding director Mark O'Keefe gets under the bonnet of card pricing: what merchants are really paying for, why the big retailers can negotiate it down while smaller businesses usually cannot, and whether open banking and proper competition can finally shift a model that has barely changed in 70 years.