By Barry Tarrant, Director, Product Solutions, Fiserv
Financial institutions continually balance competing demands for investment in technology maintenance, compliance, innovation and the delivery of value-added services. Delineation between the “need to have” and “nice to have” is difficult when everything feels like a “must have”. For many institutions, outsourcing strategic services such as payments can enable them to strike a better balance of their investment pool, by enabling more efficient operations that allow for more investment to be focused on rapid delivery of new capabilities and innovation that adds incremental value.
Shifting focus to innovation
Financial institutions are facing change on multiple fronts. Customers have quickly come to expect continual product innovation and a consistent experience across multiple channels. And the industry is experiencing structural changes, such as the convergence of payments.
We are witnessing challenger banks and fintechs fully embracing digital tools, such as the cloud, to optimise operations and create transformational customer experiences. Increasing choices available for customers to initiate payments across card and non-card payment rails are leading to further demand for innovation and change. As a result, many financial institutions are reviewing the costs and operational effort required to maintain payments technology in-house and considering how new innovations can be implemented.
Financial institutions have an opportunity to leverage shared innovation to stay ahead of this competition. This can come in the form of payments-as-a-service (PaaS). PaaS can also bring additional benefits such as savings in capital costs, opportunity costs, compliance costs, as well as reduction in one-off costs associated with infrastructure or technology upgrades.
The case for PaaS
Outsourcing payments to a PaaS provider can allow a financial institution to focus more time and effort on customer innovation and experience that drive incremental value. It could also lead to other financial benefits associated with reduced capital expenses, such as increased free cash flow. This is particularly important as financial institutions navigate the current environment and capital investment is being analysed under a microscope.
Another benefit to outsourcing to a PaaS provider is the ability to leverage its expertise. While investing in a robust platform is one of many areas for financial institutions to consider, it is the primary business for PaaS providers. Therefore, it is in the provider’s interest to continually invest in the platform and recruit qualified personnel to support and innovate the technology.
Geographical scale can also provide further opportunities to add value. A PaaS provider with clients around the world enables them to deliver innovation on a global scale, and this can be redeployed elsewhere quickly and at a lower cost than custom developments. Additionally, a global payment processing network enables providers to gather useful insights, such as new payment types, changes in consumer behaviour, and threats, which could then be used for further innovation.
As payments become more commoditised, and traditional payment revenue streams decrease, the case for retaining payment processing in-house may become narrower. By adopting PaaS, financial institutions can benefit from significant cost savings, maximise retained payment margins, and rebalance their resource and investment pool, which can be used to focus on more strategic and valuable activities.
Clearing misconceptions
While the business case for financial institutions to adopt PaaS is compelling, some remain reluctant to do so due to certain ‘industry myths’. For example, there are concerns that outsourcing data is inherently risky, however, the reality is quite the opposite. PaaS providers have the scale, resources, and practices to invest in key areas such as cybersecurity, whereas keeping operations in-house could in fact lead to greater risks around data security, especially if resources are limited.
Aside from costs, experience and expertise in delivering transformation of payment technology should also be considered as part of the decision to adopt PaaS. Most IT managers within financial institutions are likely to have delivered few major transition projects in their entire career. However, teams at a PaaS provider will collectively have likely overseen many. They also develop and update a range of specialised skillsets and toolkits to provide additional expertise and a seamless service. The ability to deliver transformation effectively is critical to benefits realisation and PaaS providers are likely to be better equipped to do so.
Innovate and differentiate
The current pandemic has shifted payments innovation into the spotlight. To fully understand how changes can be made and implemented that respond to this shift, a comprehensive assessment of existing technology, and how it will affect business in the long-term, will be needed. Adopting PaaS brings a wealth of financial and operational benefits, enabling a financial institution to be agile and strategic, so that it can devote more resources to innovation, provide services and experiences that customers want, and differentiate from the competition.
