3 Realistic Priorities for Payments Modernization

Originally published on BAI.org, Jason Schwabline, Alogent's Chief Strategy Officer, explores the need for a payments modernization strategy and 3 strategic priorities to optimize the payments infrastructure. 

A bank’s success is synonymous with their pace of innovation. In the formidable quest to optimize the payments landscape, banks have no shortage of options available to secure customer loyalty, drive engagement and innovate their transactional ecosystems. Yet, legacy systems and aging processes can’t keep pace with new channels and devices, evolving customer expectations and the emergence of new competitors in the banking landscape.

Sustainable success requires continuous reinvention, adaptation and a willingness to innovate where users engage the most: mobile and digital channels. Everchanging institutional goals present a breadth of unique challenges, but the bottom line remains: Payments modernization requires digitalizing and streamlining operations to support your bank’s or credit union's goals, drive engagement and provide customers with memorable, personalized user experiences, while adding to your bottom line.

Outlined below are three strategic priorities for optimizing payments infrastructure:

Deploy a common infrastructure

Traditionally, financial institutions have implemented different solutions across each channel that deliver similar capabilities, but are tailored to a specific point of capture and managed by separate teams across the organization. Resulting data inconsistencies, a lack of transparency and limited cross-channel user journeys depreciate the user journey, obstruct views into the transactional ecosystems and hinder new product offerings.

Single-API image acquisition across all full- and self-service channels can eliminate data silos and promote interdepartmental data sharing. At the same time, it can deliver consistency for all end users with streamlined workflows and a uniform user experience – treating every document or transaction the same, irrespective of how or where it is captured.  By maintaining only one environment, banks benefit from a faster time-to-market for new offerings, while empowering staff with newfound freedom to build upon their trusted relationships with customers.

Consider an omni-channel strategy

Customers expect to transact seamlessly whether they are banking online, from a smartphone or at the teller. Omni-channel banking satisfies dynamic customer needs by meeting demands for 24/7/365, unhindered access to their accounts without the need for multiple sets of credentials and UX’s for each channel.

Aided by a modern tech stack and robust fraud mitigation tools, banks can deliver feature-rich capabilities, premium payment experiences and enhanced, hyper-personalized user journeys. What’s more, enabling consistency across all touchpoints, along with the same functionality and UX, provides continuous engagement by delivering customers the same look, feel and familiarity they’ve come to expect from their bank – no matter where or how they transact.

Maintain a data-first approach

A bank’s lasting, measurable success and profitability relies on their ability to aggregate, analyze and interpret massive volumes of transactional data. Leveraging data associated with customer behaviors, trends and user journeys renders insights critical for personalization, or enterprise-wide decision-making around product offerings, service messages, campaigns, and even solution improvements. Streamlined, centralized data visualizations empower staff with information vital for their roles, translating again into better customer services.

When effectively utilized, data powers hyper-personalized experiences, positioning your bank as an ally in the customer journey, while differentiating your institution as one that understands users on a deeper, granular and holistic level.

With insights like login and enrollment data, feature trends adoptions and solution drop-offs, banks have an arsenal of resources capable of boosting engagement levels, driving loyalty, and standing out by catering to customer needs and wants with precision.

Read the original article here on BAI.org.

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