Keeping up with demand: building payments infrastructure for the real-time economy

From salaries and mortgages to business purchases and online retail, payments have to work. Society has become so dependent on the instant movement of money that when it fails, even for a brief moment, the consequences have a real impact. But to ensure that money not only moves, but does so safely and securely, the right infrastructure is essential.

While the card payments ecosystem has benefitted from decades of investment, account-to-account payments lag behind. Built for a different era, many of these systems were designed for batch processing rather than the real-time movement of money that we have come to expect.

Those poses a challenge for banks to keep up with customer demand. Regulatory initiatives across markets have increased the adoption of instant payments, but it is consumer expectations that are blazing the path to real-time payments as standard. We live in a digital world where people expect money to move in seconds, not hours or days, and this puts pressure on the banks and fintechs responsible for their customers’ payments.

For Tier One banks that have spent decades building their own organic technological infrastructure, the main challenge is modernising, while remaining compliant with regulation.

For fintechs and challenger banks that are built for fast payments from the get-go, the priority is maintaining the pace of innovation while being perceived as a trusted institution to rival banks.

While the environments may be different, what’s clear is that the pressure to respond to customer demand is real. And scaling payment processes to keep ahead of the competition can be complex and resource-intensive.

Modernising payments infrastructure by migrating payment flows to new platforms or providers feels daunting.

With many concerned about onboarding processes or the risk of disruption, progress can be stalled by caution.

To navigate this challenge, resilience must be the core priority of both the bank and their payment architecture provider. Reliable payments depend not just on regulation, but also on having the right technology.

In practice, this means multi-cloud infrastructure, hybrid architectures and the use of alternative or backup service models, all of which deliver a meaningful defence in the face of potential outages. Reducing dependence on any single point of failure, payments keep moving, even if one cloud goes down. Because while payments need to be fast, they also need to work.

Discover how Form3 has revolutionised payment technology for banks and fintechs.