Technological flexibility: a bank’s dream come true

Without doubt, banks have come to the realization that a technology-driven strategy is essential for operational efficiency.

Most of the industry’s giants went digital long ago in terms of the user experience with apps and portals. That’s crucial for their UX – in terms of how their customers see them.

But being truly technologically inclined runs much deeper, and is mostly prevalent in gateway technology, back office systems, integration capabilities, and having an additional flexibility layer to cater to new and non-standard payment interactions. Banks often lose business time, because the integration period for onboarding new merchants is too lengthy. With an additional flexibility layer, they can quickly integrate with the merchant through their external provider while they complete their own integration. This would allow them to profit from the business opportunity almost instantly.

Most bank R&D departments are tied to rigid long-term planning, and by the time they complete development for new technology, it is already obsolete and/or resources have run dry. That could mean they don't have the budget - or manpower - to provide solutions outside of their designated plans.

Therefore, when non-standard requirements arise from certain customers, they often find themselves declining opportunities which not only hinder the customer's growth, but their own as well.

When faced with these opportunities for non-standard requests that banks simply do not want to turn down, they have two options. The first is to expand their R&D departments, which requires onboarding and training new employees - and making large investments if they don't want to use old systems to create new solutions. The management of such projects do not end upon development, as there are constant upgrades and ongoing maintenance. This option does not allow banks to concentrate on what they do best: banking. Therefore, a smarter solution would be to partner with an external provider whose expertise and focus is in financial technology. The same goes for merchants that have great potential, and the bank wants to start profiting from the partnership immediately.

Financial platform providers, such as Payneteasy, can provide that flexibility layer, so merchants can be on-boarded especially fast. They have designed their infrastructure to be configurable from the most primary layer. This means that when a bank partners with Payneteasy, they have the flexibility that allows them to introduce new integrations, services and products in a matter of days. They can offer the latest payment methods, such as card-to-card payments that fully support MC Money send and Visa Direct, including merchant payout services. Integrations to third party partners such as providers of the very in-demand face recognition software, KYC, fraud / chargeback prevention providers (such as Maxmind or Ethoca) is performed in no time at all, without having to dedicate their own power to the project.

To summarize, banks, especially the larger ones, have set protocols and well-planned pipelines. However, in this ever-changing dynamic world of online payments, partnering with an external provider whose core essence revolves around positioning banks as technology industry leaders is the smart and cost-effective approach to business growth.