Over the last year, the impetus for changing card IT platforms has shifted from a strategic possibility to a necessity for banks. The legacy systems banks have been operating for more than twenty years on a “patch and mend” basis are too expensive and risky to maintain.

According to the UK’s Financial Times, banks now spend up to 75% of their IT budget on maintaining legacy systems, leaving little to no scope for innovation.

While this situation is in itself unsustainable, it’s made worse by two compounding factors, the first of which is growing cyber-security risk and, by extension, increased regulatory demands to manage that risk. SQN Banking Systems report that the cost of protecting banking systems is rising by 14% on average every year, with smaller and medium banks spending disproportionately more as a proportion of revenue on managing cyber-risks compared with large financial institutions. Another big challenge is the incompatibility of legacy payments infrastructures with modern, digital technologies such as payments by digital wallet, Open API integrations, 24/7 operations migrating from batch to online application and transaction processing and more.

Our new report, “Options for Change”, examines not just where banks stand in their migration to new card platforms, but also looks at the different approaches banks should take to get there.

Find out more. Download the report now.