The payments industry has advanced considerably in recent years, to the benefit of the consumers and businesses that rely on it, allowing them to enjoy the kind of seamless customer experience that would have been unfathomable only five or ten years ago.
Such is the level of progress, that the expectation now is to have access to payment avenues that allow organisations to send and receive funds from anywhere immediately. In fact, the ability to survive in the payments industry is dependent on being able to deliver cross-border payments with speed and ease.
However, for some financial institutions, particularly traditional banks, this is easier said than done. Legacy technology underpinning their systems often means that traditional avenues for sending payments internationally are limited.
The build, buy, or partner debate
The legacy technology holding banks back is not a new topic of conversation. As such, there has been much discussion about whether organisations would be better off building or buying the infrastructure and solutions they need to improve user experience. Any financial institutions that have the budget, time, environment, and skills to invest in designing and developing a bespoke solution, should certainly give it serious consideration – especially if cross-border payments aren’t their core offering.
In a sector moving as quickly as payments, however, speed is crucial. The time needed to not only develop platforms and bring services to market, but to evolve them to meet changing requirements all adds up and has a substantial impact on user experience. In many cases, a more effective way of speeding up cross-border payments is by working with an expert payments bank. Ideally, one that has a newly developed and completely cloud-based platform.
Partnering with a payments bank for more flexibility, scalability, and expertise
One of the biggest advantages for banks that choose to work with a payments bank is the access to expertise. Building up that kind of talent pool in-house is expensive, and will take a long time – not only to find the right people, but to bed them in. When working with a payments bank, that team already exists, and crucially, they are focusing solely on the creation of the project at hand.
It’s also important to remember that it’s not just a case of building something that meets today’s standards and expectations. A new solution needs to be future-proof, and when partnering with a payments bank, you’re working with people whose job it is to stay up-to-date with new innovations and always be ahead of the curve. A platform needs to be constantly evolving to meet new requirements and make use of the latest technologies, so partnering with a leader in this area can help ensure innovation does not stagnate.
When that partner also uses cloud-based infrastructure, there’s the benefit of greater flexibility and scalability too. With ever-evolving requirements and with customer demands constantly changing, a cloud-based approach allows for quicker adaption.
Aside from the agility they offer, partnering with a payments bank also means access to world class security and compliance, and the benefits of working with a regulated bank, their strict regulations providing customers with assurance and peace of mind in their banking.
From the perspective of the payments bank, a decoupled cloud infrastructure makes it possible to update individual segments seamlessly without affecting their clients’ workloads, meaning new features can be introduced, all whilst delivering the quality of work expected.
In today’s digital age, accelerating cross-border payments and improving user experience has to be a priority. In situations where financial institutions are restricted by legacy technology, partnering with a payments bank can help to achieve this, providing access to the most advanced, purpose-built payment rails around, whilst also being able to save considerable costs on developing a solution in-house.
