By Papuna Lezhava, Co-Founder & CEO, Keepz
Banking has already changed more in the past ten years than it did in the fifty before. Contactless cards, one-click checkouts, and mobile apps that manage everything from savings to crypto. On the surface, things feel seamless. But behind every transaction, there’s still a world of complexity – one that banks, fintechs, and regulators are only beginning to untangle.
Tap your card at a restaurant or click “Buy Now” online, and the transaction seems instant. In reality, it passes through a chain of systems including banks, card networks, and payment gateways. Each of them is working off different systems, standards, and time zones that all have to line up just right to move money from point A to point B. These systems mostly work. But they weren’t built to work together. And when they don’t, things break down quietly. A perfect example is the blackout in Spain and Portugal that left businesses and customers without means to pay with cards.
Beyond complexity, legacy systems are highly costly. Each local card transaction costs on average 2% to a merchant. While in case of cross-border transactions fees can go as high as 7-8% when factoring in the FX differences.
A Patchwork System Under Pressure
After nearly two decades in banking and financial regulation, from the National Bank of Georgia to the World Bank, I’ve seen firsthand how resilient today’s financial systems are. But I’ve also seen how hard they’ve had to work just to keep up. Many institutions have modernised in isolation, layering new tools on top of older infrastructure. The result is a payments ecosystem that’s functional, but fragmented.
SWIFT, card networks, ACH systems, and crypto rails each play by their own rules. That lack of shared language means every party has to interpret data differently. This results in delays, high costs, failed settlements, data mismatches, and poor visibility for merchants.
The impact extends beyond finance teams. Regulators and compliance officers are left trying to stitch together incomplete pictures. Inconsistent data leads to delays in reporting, missed red flags, and, at times, regulatory penalties for issues that could have been avoided with cleaner systems.
And in the age of growing cyber threats, these gaps are dangerous. Every handoff between systems that weren’t built to work together creates a new potential vulnerability. Slow or incomplete data flows make it harder to detect anomalies, investigate fraud, or shut down bad actors in real-time. Security, compliance, and performance are all compromised when systems don’t speak the same language.
Fix the Rails, Not Just the Ride
Innovation needs to happen at the core, not just the edges. When banks, wallets, and merchants build slick front-end payment flows, they need to consider the rails underneath them. We need to focus on bringing coherence to the entire payment stack, aligning infrastructure, standards, and data flows. Only then can merchants, banks, and regulators operate with clarity instead of guesswork.
In many ways, legacy banking systems have done their job well. They’ve moved trillions of dollars securely, reliably, and at scale. According to McKinsey’s Global Banking Annual Review report, in 2023, the global financial system intermediated $410 trillion in assets. But the world has changed. Businesses now operate across borders, across currencies, and across platforms, from traditional banks to crypto wallets. The next stage of banking has to reflect that.
What does the future look like?
It starts with interoperability. The future of banking is about building systems that talk to each other clearly and securely, regardless of whether they’re rooted in traditional finance or decentralised platforms. It’s about ensuring data doesn’t just move, but moves with context. That’s what we’re building at Keepz: an interoperability layer that works across crypto, bank, and card, so the system doesn’t just process payments, it understands what’s happening at every stage.
More importantly, the future of banking needs to be smarter. Not just in terms of speed, but in decision-making. A system that can detect anomalies as they happen. One that helps users understand what’s behind a transaction, not just process it. A platform that offers clarity, context, and control in every interaction. That’s the real evolution.
We’re seeing signs of this already. Banks are increasingly open to collaborating with fintechs. Regulators are exploring how to create frameworks that encourage innovation while protecting stability. In markets across the world, we are seeing a huge appetite for systems that make payments simpler without sacrificing compliance or trust.
The next generation of banking will be defined not by who moves money fastest, but by who does it with the most clarity, flexibility, and intelligence.
