The race to lead in digital payments and achieve exponential growth requires banks and retailers to scale operations rapidly. In this blog, Product Manager Joan Mangokoane discusses whether it is possible to maintain stability and trust when you’re moving fast.
The global payments industry has experienced remarkable growth in contactless payment methods, open banking, and now cloud-native payments. The growing demand for instant, seamless payments has challenged banks and retailers to process unprecedented transaction volumes in real-time. But what is the key to optimising processing at scale whilst maintaining speed to market and trust?
Typically the term ‘processing at scale’ is understood as the technical ability of systems to handle high-volume transactions or operations efficiently and reliably as demand grows. However, scalability goes beyond infrastructure; - it encompasses business logic and human capital. Trust is dependent on these factors operating in sync.
Processing at scale is a non-negotiable
- The regulatory landscape is changing: Payments are the backbone of any economy and the inability to process at any level, let alone at scale, has ripple effects that undermine the trustworthiness of the financial system.
The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is modernising the payments ecosystem, focusing on reliability to safeguard the system and foster innovation to advance socio-economic goals. This includes integrating with infrastructures like the proposed Public Payments Utility. With regulators promoting instant peer-to-peer (P2P) and peer-to-merchant (P2M) payments, businesses must prepare for a future of high-volume, high-speed transactions.
- Consumers are expecting more: Transaction delays and system outages are no longer forgivable by consumers. Delivering seamless, multi-channel, secure and high-speed transaction processing is a capability that is essential to achieving the best customer experience that is built on trust.
Within the current South African economy, achieving sustained profit growth while enhancing customer satisfaction is vital. It is therefore in the best interest of economic stakeholders to understand and commit to a synchronous level of processing at scale where the output and benefit for both business and consumer increases.
Achieving the balance through cloud-native processing
Traditional, on-premise infrastructure simply wasn’t designed with scalability in mind. Upgrades take years and leave an organisation unable to respond swiftly to changes and surges in demand.
Cloud-native technology offers the flexibility to scale and maintain the integrity of processing systems. At a high level, benefits include:
- Consistent performance through maintained high-speed processing
- Elasticity to expand and shrink resources as needed
- Reliability and faster (more sustained) uptime
These benefits result in speed and security and are why consumers place their trust in the digital economy - emphasising the importance of the migration to cloud-native processing.
More is needed to be a market leader
By viewing payments as a utility, banks and retailers have the opportunity to focus on their core offerings and strengthen the competitive edge that makes them market leaders. In both industries, innovation cannot be decoupled from the need to process at scale - in the cloud.
Processing at scale in the cloud is a critical lever to balance speed and stability as two competing but highly connected forces for banks, retailers, and other players. Achieving both requires the right technology, focus, and people.
A winning strategy includes leveraging a cloud-native partner such as Electrum that understands payments processing and regulation in the South African context. Combined with understanding your business needs, this allows you to focus on what’s most important and what truly sets you apart.
Contact us today to build your future-fit, cloud-native payments strategy.
