If your business is still reliant on legacy systems to deliver and manage payment services, you could be at a serious disadvantage to your competitors.

Here are five of the most compelling reasons to make the transition from outdated technology to a modern, unified transaction processing platform...

Delivering omni-channel

Delivering a consistent, coherent and convenient experience across various channels provides clear benefits in terms of customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and potential revenue opportunities.

Giving people the freedom and flexibility to start a product application on their mobile device and complete it in-branch or on a desktop computer is just one example of how omni-channel engagement can help businesses and their customers. The rapid development of technology and emergence of new channels means consumers are showing greater expectations for this sort of seamless experience.

To meet these demands, financial institutions need to move away from legacy transaction solutions – which are traditionally silo-based and inflexible – and adopt a modern alternative.

Responding to new fraud threats

Combating the threat of fraud and achieving the highest standards of security is a key priority for all providers of payment services.

With criminals constantly evolving their methods and coming up with increasingly sophisticated attack strategies, you can't afford to be held back by technologies that are slow to respond and expensive to update.

One of the strongest advantages of modern payment solutions is the level of control they allow. With a fully flexible and customizable platform to rely on, you can respond to changes in the threat landscape and ensure your transaction workflow is tailored to detect fraud in real time.

Collaborating in the age of APIs

Open banking could prove to be one of the most influential concepts in the current era of financial services.

Regulations such as Europe's PSD2 have provided the blueprint for an industry focused on collaboration, data-sharing and unprecedented choice for consumers. Application programming interfaces (APIs) – the technology that enables connections between separate organizations and software applications – are playing a central role in this trend.

Firms whose core systems and working methods are stuck in the past could find themselves at risk of becoming irrelevant in this new age.

In an article for Finextra, Hans Tesselaar, executive director at the Banking Industry Architecture Network, warned that "banks operating on legacy architecture will find it increasingly difficult to compete in an API-driven business environment."

Keeping up with the competition

The payments industry is being steadily transformed by the arrival of new, innovative competitors that know how to turn technology to their advantage.

Established financial institutions must move with the times and leverage solutions that allow them to be more agile and responsive to change. Those still entrenched in the old way of doing things will be left behind.

According to the EY Fintech Adoption Index, consumers are "drawn to fintech services because propositions are simpler, more convenient, more transparent and more readily personalized."

Businesses that don't want to lose customers to the competition should recognize the importance of these qualities.

Rolling out new services

Rolling out new services is vital if you want to keep your payments offering fresh and show investment in your customers.

In the past, the introduction of a new product or technology would have been expensive and time-consuming, owing to the inflexibility of legacy systems. Businesses faced a choice between costly custom development of their existing payments infrastructure, or investment in a new platform to run alongside the old.

Today, the solutions are available to work new functions and stages into your payments workflow with maximum speed and efficiency. But in order to fully realize these benefits, legacy payment processing needs to be well and truly left in the past.­­

To discover additional payments insights, ideas and strategies that make your job easier, visit our new payments portal at https://www.ncr.com/financial-services/payments-transaction-processing/payments-processing-strategy.