Is your card management system doing you a disservice?

Legacy system replacement isn’t an easy decision for FIs. Especially when the system being replaced is core to your infrastructure and tech stack. The risk, the cost, the internal politics and the inconvenience are all huge deterrents. However, in a world that is increasingly embracing alternative payments and modern technological principles, running a business on a platform built for yesterday’s payment methods is undeniably illogical. You wouldn’t use a Nokia 8110 as a SoftPOS, so why use a card-based platform to run today’s payments business?
 
Many payment platforms and auxiliary systems still have cards at their core, however, such architectures are increasingly inadequate as a means of engaging with today’s diverse payments environment. Adopting a card-centric approach won’t work at a time when anyone can be a merchant, every device can be a payments acceptance point and most consumer identifiers can be a payment method, including phone numbers, bank account details and e-mail addresses. A platform focused on cards is unable to adequately represent the objects and functions of a modern payment environment and cannot interact effectively with other systems in a service-oriented architecture, nor function properly in a dynamic cloud environment. Most importantly, these platforms do not enable the rapid development and launch of new non-card based products, because card-based platforms have to take modern payment methods and convert these into “fake cards” to trick the old system into behaving like it was built for today.
 
If relentlessly refurbishing your underlying payments platform by adding layers of complexity, multiple points of failure, and confusion, is what your future looks like - seriously consider re-evaluating your modernisation strategy and engage with payments experts for advice on the variety of options available to you. System replacement doesn’t need to be big bang or rip and replace and a decent analyst firm or platform vendor should be more than able to offer transparent advice on the routes available for your FI, your vision and your strategic requirements.