Banking
Resilient technology is the most important factor for successful online banking services
Published
12 months agoon
By
admin
By James McCarthy, Director of Solutions Engineering, NS1
More than 90 percent of people in the UK use online banking, according to Statista and of these, over a quarter have opened an account with a digital-only bank. It makes sense. Digital services, along with security, are critical features that consumers now expect from their banks as a way to support their busy on-the-go lifestyles.
The frequency of cash transactions is dropping as contactless and card payments rise and the key to this is convenience. It is faster and easier for customers to use digitally-enabled services than traditional over-the-counter facilities, cheques, and cash. The Covid pandemic, which encouraged people to abandon cash, only accelerated a trend that was already picking up speed in the UK.
But as bank branches close—4865 by April of 2022 and a further 226 scheduled to close by the end of the year, Which research found—banks are under pressure to ensure their online and mobile services are always available. Not only does this keep customers satisfied and loyal, but it is also vital for compliance and regulatory purposes.

James McCarthy
Unfortunately, their ability to keep services online is often compromised. In June and July of this year alone, major banks including Barclays, Halifax, Lloyds, TSB, Nationwide, Santander, Nationwide, and Monzo, at various times, locked customers out of their accounts due to outages, leaving them unable to access their mobile banking apps, transfer funds, or view their balances. According to The Mirror, Downdetector, a website which tracks outages, showed over 1500 service failures were reported in one day as a result of problems at NatWest.
These incidents do not go unnoticed. Customers are quick to amplify their criticism on social media, drawing negative attention for the bank involved, and eroding not just consumer trust, but the trust of other stakeholders in the business. Trading banks leave themselves open to significant losses in transactions if their systems go down due to an outage, even for a few seconds.
There are a multitude of reasons for banking services to fail. The majority of internet-based banking outages occur because the bank’s own internal systems fail. This can be as a result of transferring customer data from legacy platforms which might involve switching off parts of the network. It can also be because they rely on cloud providers to deliver their services and the provider experiences an outage. The Bank of England has said that a quarter of major banks and a third of payment activity is hosted on the public cloud.
There are, however, steps that banks and other financial institutions can take to prevent outages and ensure as close to 100% uptime as possible for banking services.
Building resiliency strategies
If we assume that outages are inevitable, which all banks should, the best solution to managing risk is to embrace infrastructure resiliency strategies. One method is to adopt a multi-cloud and multi-CDN (content delivery platform) approach, which means utilising services from a variety of providers. This will ensure that if one fails, another one can be deployed, eliminating the single point-of-failure that renders systems and services out of action. If the financial institution uses a secondary provider—such as when international banking services are being provided across multiple locations—the agreement must include an assurance that the bank’s applications will operate if the primary provider goes down.
This process of building resiliency in layers, is further strengthened if banks have observability of application delivery performance, and it is beneficial for them to invest in tools that allow them to quickly transfer from one cloud service provider or CDN if it fails to perform against expectations.
Automating against human error
Banks that are further down the digital transformation route should consider the impact of human error on outage incidents and opt for network automation. This will enable systems to communicate seamlessly, giving banks operational agility and stability across the entire IT environment. They can start with a single network source of truth, which allows automation tools to gather all the data they need to optimise resource usage and puts banks in full control of their networks. In addition it will signal to regulators that the bank is taking its provisioning of infrastructure very seriously.
Dynamic steering
Despite evidence to the contrary, downtime in banking should never be acceptable, and IT teams can make use of specialist tools that allow them to dynamically steer their online traffic more easily. It is not unusual for a DNS failure (domain name system) to be the root cause of an outage, given its importance in the tech stack, so putting in place a secondary DNS network, or multiple DNS systems with separate infrastructures will allow for rerouting of traffic. Teams will then have the power to establish steering policies and change capacity thresholds, so that an influx of activity, or a resource failure, will not affect the smooth-running of their online services. If they utilise monitoring and observability features, they will have the data they need to make decisions based on the real time experiences of end users and identify repeated issues that can be rectified.
Banks are some way into their transformation journeys, and building reputations based on the digital services that they offer. It is essential that they deploy resilient technology that allows them to scale and deliver, regardless of whether the cloud providers they use experience outages, or an internal human error is made, or the online demands of customers suddenly and simultaneously peak. Modern technology will not only speed up the services they provide, but it will also arm them with the resilience they need to compare favourably in the competition stakes.
Banking
Are SaaS platforms challenging banks for a piece of the payments pie?
Published
3 days agoon
September 26, 2023By
admin
Attributed to: Ralph Dangelmaier, Global CEO of BlueSnap
The finance industry is at a tipping point with software firms on the brink of becoming banks. This may seem like a farfetched idea, but now that software platforms come equipped with payment capabilities, their SME customers may want to receive more financial products from these platforms.
This is part of the wider trend of ‘embedded finance’ – when companies which aren’t banks incorporate financial services such as lending, insurance, and payments into their product.
Software firms are particularly leveraging ‘embedded payments’ – where the ability to accept and process payments comes with the software itself. Think of a school consolidating all the payments a parent would make for their children – tuition, books, extracurricular activities – in one software platform. This trend has exploded in popularity because there’s a desire among companies, and their customers, for everything from products to payments to happen under one roof.
With the market value of embedded payments expected to reach £2.08 trillion by 2026 and customers becoming increasingly married to their software, let’s look at how we ended up at this turning point in payments.
How chasing convenience puts money in platforms’ hands

Ralph Dangelmaier
The growth of embedded payments is propelled by the need for ease, trust, and convenience. As platforms are selling payments hand-in-hand with their software, customers don’t need to integrate with additional service providers just to accept payments. And they’re already bought into using the platform for its other functions.
Not only is this kind of back-end reconciliation easy and convenient but it helps software platforms generate revenue too. That’s because software companies that embed payments become Payment Facilitators (a.k.a PayFacs) – allowing them to monetize transactions that happen within their platform.
By selling payments, software firms can see up to a fivefold increase in value per client. Rather than depending on software subscriptions alone, these platforms now receive a cut of every transaction that’s facilitated using their software too. This provides them and the businesses they serve with a mutual incentive – shared profits.
Software platforms are passionate about helping their customers create the most easy-to-use experience to drive a higher volume of transactions. Of course, there are many ways to launch new revenue streams, but why leave money sitting on the table when all you have to do is become convenience-obsessed?
Why finance teams want software and payments in one
As a payment expert who’s worked in a bank’s back office, I know how important a financial software stack can be. In its highest form, it can steer a business’ entire financial strategy.
Often these stacks are well curated, but the biggest drawback is the manual collection of data across platforms. Trying to build a financial picture of a business using your ERP, CRM, human resource and billing system can involve hours of laborious data entry.
For everyday finance teams, this isn’t an efficient use of time. They need to be able to pull data swiftly to advise their executives on financial strategies. CFOs are also under pressure to choose the right software stack to streamline processes and ensure payments ROI.
That’s why payment technology that removes the manual work for finance teams – to get from A to B more quickly – is growing in popularity.
Software firms using embedded payments are saving them hassle and time. Not only that, it helps the key financial decision makers of SMEs stay in a constant state of financial planning, where they can change their strategy whatever the market conditions may be.
The end of traditional banking for SMEs?
Increasingly, SMEs are struggling to get the payments support they need from traditional banks. The ‘higher risk, lower return’ view of the small business market among banks leaves software platforms in a ripe position for a takeover.
There are over 90,000 software companies in the UK alone. With nearly half of software platforms (48%) turning to embedded payments to gain a source of competitive advantage, this figure could represent a threat to corporate banking as we know it.
SMEs don’t have the deep pockets that multinational businesses have. The Amazons and BMWs of the world have long reaped the benefits of a corporate account with a large bank – and the round the clock support this offers.
But SMEs face high conversion fees and often receive minimal support chasing late payments, leaving them between a rock and a hard place. If these businesses can save money by moving from banks to software platforms, then banks are at risk of losing their position over the middle market.
Looming regulation
Until now banks have been able to defend their position because safety and security is key. Once platforms become regulated, then what? It won’t be long before regulators eye up the software industry as their next big focus.
But regulatory bodies like the FCA, PRA and more favour ‘controlled innovation’, so this will take time.
Currently, to process transactions in Europe, businesses must go down the lengthy and costly process of becoming Payment Service Providers (PSPs). That’s why many software platforms are choosing to partner with a licensed payment provider which sells the payment package to them, instead.
In fact, 89% of software platforms choose to work with PSPs rather than become a PayFac themselves. It makes sense when it’s taken more than a year for some platforms to begin processing payments on their own.
Given the sizable financial risk of processing your own payments and the administrative burden this brings, it’s no wonder software firms are looking to fintech for a better way.
After all, it’s not just about processing the payments. A partnership with a payment technology partner comes complete with support in onboarding, underwriting, compliance, risk, payouts and customer support.
In short, software platforms see the benefits of selling payments and are primed to become the next big financial players.
Not only is there revenue for the taking but their customers benefit as well. With software platforms ready to offer SMEs a banking alternative and a superior customer experience, they’re offering a truly win-win solution for all involved. And it’s payment technology partners that can help them make this vision a reality.
Banking
Emerging technology will power long-term sustainability within the UK banking industry
Published
3 days agoon
September 26, 2023By
admin
By Peter-Jan Van De Venn, VP Global Digital Banking at Hexaware Mobiquity.
Sustainability has been a big focus for the banking industry in recent years, with the issue becoming increasingly important for consumers. It’s no wonder that sustainability has become baked into the purposes of almost every bank, from Natwest to HSBC.
However, the economic uncertainty of the last year has led to many banks putting it on the back burner. Challenging market conditions have forced financial institutions to change their priorities to concentrate on protecting the bottom line. Our research found there’s been a significant drop in the number of UK banks saying that sustainability remains a key business strategy. 12 months ago it was a major priority for 100 per cent of banks, but now that number has shrunk to 60 percent.
Whilst it’s understandable that banks are feeling the pressure at the moment, there’s a risk that they will miss out if they hit the pause button. From cost savings brought by innovative digital products and services, to improved brand reputation and increased profitability, there are a lot of longer-term benefits they could be failing to unlock. So how can they keep moving forward?
Losing momentum
Emerging technology holds the key to their success, with the power to disrupt current behaviours and promote a more sustainable culture. Banks are already aware of this, with 76 percent using digital transformation to drive sustainability, but a lack of leadership has made it difficult to build momentum in the last 12 months. Currently just over half (54 percent) of banks have tasked an executive at board level with overseeing sustainability – way down from 83% just 12 months ago.
This lack of board authority means banks are struggling to engage the entire organisation to move ahead with sustainable initiatives. As a result, almost two-thirds of banks are seeing progress slow, admitting they are not actively taking steps to foster more sustainable behaviours throughout the organisation. Those that have taken their foot off the gas need to find a way to move forward again.
No time for standing still
Banks know that technology can drive sustainable behaviour. For instance, many of them are already encouraging their workforce to work remotely, as a way of reducing travel. This has two benefits – not only does it cut the costs of running physical offices at full capacity, but also reduces the bank’s carbon footprint. There has never been a better time to invest in technology to drive more sustainable behaviours.
New digital products and services can also extend the benefits beyond employees to encompass the wider customer base. A fair number of banks are already investing to make this happen. More than a third (35 percent) of banking organisations are using Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud and analytics to make digital services more easily accessible. Investment in these technologies will be critical as the number of physical bank branches continues to decrease, with figures from Which? showing this is taking place at a rate of 54 branch closures each month.
Hitting environmental and social responsibility goals
Emerging technologies can also help banks keep pace with tightening ESG rules and regulations. Banks are faced with demands for increasingly granular reporting and transparency on ESG – demanding a new approach. In line, 41% of them are developing data visualisation tools to improve stakeholder engagement and understanding of ESG risks and opportunities, while 37% are using machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify and track ESG risks and opportunities across a wide range of data sources.
More than one in three are also using the blockchain to improve transparency and traceability in supply chains, and implementing digital tools and platforms to collect, analyse, and report ESG data and metrics in a standardised and consistent manner. All these applications of emerging technology will put banks on track to address global environmental challenges and unlock a greener future.
Long-term sustainability
As the economic pressures hopefully start to subside, increasing numbers of banks will start investigating how they can use emerging technologies to provide engaging experiences and value-added services for customers, to drive greater revenue and efficiencies.
Whilst banks are right to focus on their revenue under difficult trading conditions, it’s important they don’t miss out on the long-term benefits that sustainability can bring. To capitalise on this, banks must keep pushing the boundaries and invest in emerging innovations to drive more sustainable banking behaviours, benefiting the planet and driving great digital experiences for customers.
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