Banks are increasingly coming to terms with the fact that systems that were very much designed for cards, point of sale and ATMs are not dependable in a non-physical world. CIOs now perceive legacy infrastructure as technical debt since many traditional payments systems run on aged hardware stacks that may be heavily customised.
How can banks modernise their payments systems while keeping the show on the road? Alongside promoting a holistic payments strategy inclusive of both retail and wholesale banking and amid increasing regulation and focus on resilience, how can banks ensure payments systems are always available?
Finally, how can banks remain viable competitors and innovate while keeping the core service highly available, highly scalable, and highly secure? The answer: understanding that a one-size fits model does not exist and rip and replace is not the best option.
Today, a successful model is one that services existing customers with existing channels, but also deploys new channels alongside them to launch new services, process new types of transactions and connect to new technologies.
Achieving such a strategy through modernisation and migration will significantly reduce the software footprint, removing redundancy, and simplifying maintenance. The result is a far more efficient environment, allowing greater profitability for the bank and the possibility of more investment into innovation than that allowed by the duplicity of multiple systems in place today.
However, it must be understood that payments strategy will always remain ‘payment is a payment’ - regardless of channel or business – retail and wholesale banks will all use the same payment infrastructure where they utilise common services.
Over time, functionality can be migrated from the old to the new in smaller chunks, or change by change, after results have suggested that the new channels are indeed more efficient.
This ‘assembly line’ model can support the coexistence of legacy and modern infrastructure, allowing the bank to wind down and spin up as required. Organisations are not beholden to modernising payments systems with one large refresh project, it’s best conducted in bitesize chunks to bolster business agility across the bank.
Sign up for this Finextra webinar, in association with ACI, to join the panel of industry experts as they discuss the following areas:
- Rearchitecting payments systems that were designed for physical transaction entry points
- The CIO’s responsibility for modernisation and overcoming legacy hardware burdens
- Managing regulation, resilience, competition, and innovation
- Implementing new technologies to run alongside legacy infrastructure
- Business agility and customising products and services
Speakers:
- Gary Wright - Head of Research Finextra [Moderator]
- Ray Lockwood - Head of Solution Consulting, ACI Worldwide
- Vijay Anand - Head – Product Management , Digital Payments & Payments Processing – APAC & MEA, Mastercard
- Timothy Mills - SVP, Emerging Payments, Regions Bank