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Banking
Payments
Digital payment
solutions, the
modern way
Rethink your payment platform, operations and CX with new technologies and innovative products.
Speed has never been more important
The pressure is on to simplify and standardize payments. Speed has never been more important—for implementing hubs and platforms, and for getting to market fast with digital payment solutions.
Achieve end-to-end transformation
Rethink your payment platform, operations and CX with new technologies and innovative products.
Be future-ready
Create intuitive design and sustainable business operating models, so you’re ready for what’s next.
Move quickly and cost effectively
Our accelerators get you to market fast, and our domain experience helps lower implementation costs.
Payment modernization: take a holistic approach:
By taking a big-picture view of payment hub modernization, providers can leave behind the piecemeal approach and shape a future-ready strategy.
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Every payment provider is looking for payment nirvana, but few have found it—and there’s a reason for that. The ideal payment hub is a significant undertaking. To blend integration and scalability with a sleek, modern customer experience, providers must tackle a range of major initiatives, from microservices-based architectures and open banking to real-time payments networks and ISO 20022 migration. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture—yet the big-picture view is key. Closing in on the goal of payment hub modernization means zooming out from a piecemeal, project-oriented strategy and adopting a comprehensive, holistic approach. By understanding the strategic role of payment hubs and the trends that will impact modernization, banks and payment providers can shape a holistic approach that’s ready to succeed.
The strategic role of modern payment hubs
Payment hubs—centralized platforms that connect multiple payment systems and channels— enable faster, cheaper, and more secure transactions. For payment providers, modernization has become a hot topic because payment efficiency and security impact a wide range of people and institutions, from consumers and businesses to financial services, regulators, and policymakers. Modernization also brings big benefits, including the following: Reduced operational costs and complexity as a result of consolidated payment systems and processes. Increased scalability and flexibility of payments (through the enablement of easy integration and adaptation to new markets and regulations).
Improved compliance and security.
The benefits for businesses and customers are also extensive. Modern hubs’ seamless, convenient transactions greatly enhance customer experience with a wide array of options, faster processing, and lower fees. In addition, management of multiple payment systems and channels is simpler and more cost-effective.
Drivers and trends in payment hub modernization
Payment hub modernization doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Trends impacting it include:
Higher availability and scalability or cloud migration instead of cloud-based hubs. More payment providers are adopting cloud-native payment processing solutions to leverage cloud’s advantages in scalability, flexibility, reliability, and cost. Cloud-based hubs also enable faster and easier integration of new payment methods and technologies such as artificial intelligence.
Real-time payments. Improved cash flow, liquidity, and transparency are just a few of the benefits that attract payees and payers to real-time payment solutions. Payment hubs can accelerate adoption of real-time payments through ISO 20022 rails and by connecting to payment networks and systems such as TCH-RTP, FedNow and Zelle.
Open banking. Open banking’s application programming interfaces (APIs) enable customers to easily share their financial data and access a range of financial services. Product APIs allow for the externalization of payment data and services, acting as intermediaries that enable banks to share information with fintech companies and customers. The upshot? Collaboration facilitates tailored financial solutions that cater to the unique needs of different customer segments. What’s more, open banking allows providers to offer greater choice, convenience, and value-added services.
Transforming large monolith applications or microservices-based architecture. Faster development, deployment, and scaling of complex applications are key outcomes of microservices-based architecture, as are improved fault tolerance and resilience. In the payment industry, advantages include reducing the complexity and maintenance costs of monolithic payment systems that are often hard to modify and test. In addition, the ability to deliver new features and update faster and more frequently helps meet customer demands and regulatory requirements. Choose the approach that works for your organization A holistic approach to modernizing payment systems can take many forms. Every bank, non-bank, fintech, and merchant needs to determine the approach that best fits its goals.
Hollow the core. This strategy abstracts the core functionalities of hubs and divides them into three manageable components:
Channel orchestration: Managing various customer interaction channels efficiently.
Payment process orchestration: Streamlining and optimizing the payment processing flow.
Standardized messaging integration: Ensuring seamless communication with downstream systems and clearing and settlement mechanisms (CSM) such as FedNow and SWIFT.
This division enhances the system’s modularity, making it easier to implement upgrades and integrate new features without disrupting the entire architecture. By abstracting core functionalities and leveraging cloud-native solutions, financial institutions can achieve greater agility and performance. Despite the challenges, the strategic benefits make hollowing the core a compelling choice for future-proofing payment infrastructures.
Replace the core. Replacement consists of two options.
Buy cloud-native. On the buy side, the industry is increasingly adopting cloud-native payment hubs for their enhanced scalability and flexibility. These platforms offer the benefits of ISO 20022 compliance, microservices-driven architecture, and comprehensive feature sets.
Yet cloud-native systems also bring challenges in several areas that payments providers need to be aware of, including feature integration (ensuring that new features are incorporated into the product backlog and delivered on time; modernization (aligning with the platform’s own modernization roadmap); and cost of ownership (managing the financial implications of transitioning to and maintaining a cloud-native payment processor).
Build from scratch. Another strategy is to build a “challenger” core—a modern cloud-based tech stack to which payment processing capabilities are migrated incrementally. For example, a single new payment rail like FedNow is migrated to the challenger core to establish the new platform’s stability. Once the platform is stabilized, additional payment rails are moved over, and the legacy core is sunset.
Achieving the ideal payment hub
Watershed moments like the convergence of instant payments, open banking, and new business and technology models bring challenges and opportunity. In exchange for a careful strategy and holistic approach, banks, payment companies and non-banks gain a path to the ideal payment hub that provides flexibility and cost-effectiveness—and a payment processing platform ready for what’s next.
Segments
- Card issuers and acquirers Gain a competitive edge with cardholders and onboard merchants faster. Create the platforms, tools and infrastructure needed for seamless, secure transactions.
- Networks and processors Transform your payment network and processing ecosystem. Launch new products with faster time to market and self-service capabilities for merchants and partners.
- Fintechs Move payment processing engines to the cloud and expand capabilities for new payment rails and alternative payment methods.
- Banks and credit unions Whether your goal is improved fraud detection, end-to-end payment infrastructure services or top-notch CX, our team is ready to help.
Digital payment services
Advisory and consulting
- Business and product consulting
- Product strategy and roadmap
- Build vs. buy analysis and product selection
- Cloud strategy
- Portfolio rationalization
Build and implementation
- Platform engineering
- Product development and implementation
- System integrations
- Data, analytics and AI
- Cloud enablement
- Product migration and upgrades
- Quality engineering and assurance
Operate and run
- Infra provisioning and operations
- Payment operations and investigations
- BPO services
- Security services
- Application support and maintenance
Offerings
Payment modernization
Create more value for customers and stakeholders with a flexible platform that connects and integrates multiple payment systems and channels.
RTP fraud detection
Build fraud-resilient real-time payment capabilities. Keep your transactions secure and ready to integrate with new RTP clearings.
Gen AI
Put gen AI to work where you need it most, from boosting customer service and advisor proficiency to systems development capabilities and process efficiency.
Business process services
Combine AI, data and human ingenuity for game-changing value. Our payments BPS enables organizations to adapt to market disruptions and create seamless customer experiences.
Case studies
The challenge
Teach For America (TFA), a U.S-based educational non-profit organization founded in 1990, aspires to confront educational inequalities in underserved areas. To support its mission to advance children’s education, TFA builds strong donor relationships that provide the necessary financial support for its program. With a network of 64,000 teachers and alumni, TFA serves in more than 9,000 schools across the U.S. Despite TFA’s rapid growth, the internal infrastructure of the educational non-profit is not well-equipped to process incoming donations. The existing TFA gift-payment processing solutions involve several internal and external systems for handling different payment types. Although the standalone systems are fit for their designated tasks, they lack integration and automation. The result is lengthy learning curves for gift processors and time-consuming revenue accounting, which increase both the chances of human error and the need for additional data cleanup.
The lack of an end-to-end payment processing solution led TFA to reach out to Cognizant for help. The organization also wanted a solution that would reduce manual effort and enhance resource utilization.
Our approach
RVT Groups started by mapping TFA’s payment technology and business processes with a goal to design a donor payment solution that would simplify and streamline the current donor payment processes. Working with the non-profit’s executive sponsors and strategists we set guiding principles and identified opportunities to improve donor experiences. Our proposed processing solution architecture will increase processing speed and accuracy and reduce system complexity. This gift-processing portal will also ensure improved reporting and analytics, with access to dashboards and insights for both TFA and its donors. While employees will be able to view donation trends and match donor profiles with incoming payments, donors will be able to register and view payment histories. The proposed platform will reduce processing time and manual interventions as well as provide comprehensive data analytics and real-time snapshots of payment status. The gift-processing portal will act as a unified and simplified integration source for all payments. It will also enhance security and accountability while accommodating current and planned payment types. In addition, it will provide extensibility to future payment modes such as digital currency.
RVT Groups charted two implementation routes for TFA’s process transformation to help the non-profit manage its costs and resources. The first route speeds TFA to the new gift-processing platform within a few months, while the second route takes a phased approach that still delivers quick wins as TFA continues to assess and balance its priorities and resources.
The challenge
Tyl by NatWest is the payment technologies arm of NatWest, a leading UK high-street bank. It has produced a raft of innovative solutions designed to make life easier for the UK’s small business owners. Tyl by NatWest launched with just a 10-person team, but was soon experiencing high demand for its simple, frictionless services that allow business owners to take card payments on the web, on a handheld terminal or on a smartphone, and receive the cash in their accounts the next business day. With transaction volumes escalating to two million per week, Tyl by NatWest needed expert, on-demand help across all aspects of its digital and data engineering activities—from designing new products to integrating with third-party payments services and streamlining its merchant acquisition processes.
Our approach
Tyl by NatWest chose to work with Cognizant for our fintech experience and hard-to-find expertise in emerging technologies, as well as for our flex capacity and ability to support Tyl cost-effectively from our offshore delivery center in India using an agile distributed delivery model. Our engineering expertise and fintech ecosystem partnerships allow us to seamlessly support Tyl on the co-creation, engineering, rollout, support and maintenance of a wide range of technology products and features—from digital onboarding to mobile integration and innovative “tap to pay” services. Throughout our partnership, we have worked closely with Tyl and its partners to propose suitable ways of working and technology solutions to optimize service design and delivery.
Take the first step
Serving customers by looking forward as well as back is a big promise, but the power of today’s new digital capabilities is vast and growing.
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