A new white paper from Compass Plus Technologies asks a pertinent question often overlooked in discussions around payments business legacy system replacement: in an industry that is increasingly embracing alternative payments, should FI’s continue to run their businesses on platforms that were built to serve a card-based world?

The last 20 years have been instrumental in shaping the payments industry today.

A landscape once monopolised by brick-and-mortar institutions has been transformed by the digital revolution; bringing forth change in the form of innovation and disruption driven by technology, consumer demand and a host of new, agile payments players.

In the white paper, Compass Plus Technologies discuss how advances in telecommunications and computing have led to the creation of new consumer payment methods, and explore whether an FI can truly take full advantage of these modern technological breakthroughs if their businesses are built on payments platforms designed for yesterday’s world.

Discussions around the age and shelf-life of payments platforms are nothing new.

A truth universally acknowledged in the industry is that system replacement is associated with risk, cost and inconvenience, not to mention internal politics.

However, the need to compete with a deluge of younger players who have built their businesses on newer technologies is an increasing burden.

The dexterity of the competition twinned with the intensifying demands of the digitally native “generation now” have led to the proliferation of quick fixes and wraparounds, whereby in order to remain relevant, FIs add layers of complexity to their systems.

However, these sticking plasters are losing their grip and instead of offering a viable solution to competing in this fast-paced environment, they are ultimately introducing multiple points of failure.

The decision to keep running businesses on a house of cards is a delicate balancing act between living the past technologically whilst still trying to cater for the future in terms of business products.

Rather than make large, costly transformation decisions, many banks actively decide to remain seated with the technology hand they’ve been dealt.

Even more surprisingly, when actively given the go-ahead to replace underlying systems in-house or to migrate to a new processor, FIs continue to opt for card-based platforms, albeit of a more modern nature.

In Are you banking on a house of cards?, Compass Plus Technologies explain why placing card-based technology at the core of any payments business is akin to taking a step backwards in terms of system modernisation, and why non-card-based platforms are the future.

Download a free copy of the new white paper from Compass Plus Technologies, “Are you banking on a house of cards?” now.