Payments are at the epicentre of financial innovation, with an estimated 35 per cent of financial technology firms active in the payments arena, a report by McKinsey & Co has found.Showcased at SWIFT's Sibos conference in Singapore yesterday, McKinsey said that global investment in financial services-related startups "soared from US$3 billion in 2013 to US$12 billion in 2014, a growth rate three times the rate of overall venture capital investment."The McKinsey report, Global Payments 2015, also cited financial media analysis "that barely six months into 2015, financial technology startups had already raised over US$12 billion from venture investors, placing them on track to double the backing they received the previous year."McKinsey provided some context to this investment surge, with the firm's research identifying more than 400 payments firms emerging during the late 1990s dotcom bubble.Phillip Bruno, a managing director of the firm, said only ten of these survived, of which only one, PayPal, was prominent.Yet PayPal and the more recent tearaway from China, Alipay, now account for around seven per cent of global consumer payments, said Chris Ip, a director at McKinsey."You could argue this is hype and over-inflation," Ip said."We often hear from banking clients that the innovation that happens is all consumer. But the bulk of revenue comes from B2B. Innovation is encroaching into the corporate space. This is a trend that is there to stay."Companies are "beginning to demand equally convenient and secure services," he said.Patrick Maes, chief technology officer of ANZ put this more colourfully on one panel: "We are seeing the same pattern in wholesale as in consumer, the CFO wants to do his liquidity management from the golf course."