Managing high transaction volumes is one benchmark for leading institutions to measure their market capabilities. Whether your business is in banking, e-commerce, or peer-to-peer payments, you need to handle growing transaction numbers without a drop in performance or reliability.
What does scalability mean for payment systems?
Put simply, scalability defines a system’s ability to manage a rising number of inputs, outputs, data, or users without adversely affecting its performance and productivity.
Scalable architectures enable a system to adjust and expand as demand increases and contract when it decreases. Without this ability, a system risks slow response times, errors, and potentially complete failure.
Read more: Why scalability matters: key benefits for banking systems
Flexibility, customisation, transparency, and adaptability characterise scalable payment systems. Dynamism is the name of the game here, with a system able to connect on the fly with your existing architecture and quickly create benefits through business continuity.
Another critical advantage of scalable systems is their impact on costs. Complex architectures can lead to higher development, maintenance and operational costs. Scalable systems can accommodate increased demand without the need for significant infrastructure upgrades.
A practical and scalable platform also features streamlined processes and interfaces to reduce complexity. Companies like Pismo build their platforms on APIs and microservices to enable simplified integration and reduce time-consuming manual processes. These can result in cost savings of up to 50-60%.*
*Pismo internal data
Related: How Pismo built visibility into our microservices ecosystem
Deploying a scalable solution: How to get started
Define objectives
Organisations should set key objectives they want to achieve with a new system. Is it lowered latency, greater capacity, or cut operating costs? Perhaps it’s all three, but knowing what you’ll be measuring before your journey begins is essential.
Identify pain points
Where is your current system struggling? What are your frustrations and those of your team? Are your customers unhappy with the responsiveness or experience of your legacy platform? Seek out and underline factors that will be a change priority.
Measure performance, assess trade-offs
It’s useful to create performance metrics you’ll use to measure the success of your new system. At the same time, consider the benefits and trade-offs of this kind of change, especially if it involves more dramatic changes or migration. This will be important when you select the right provider. Identify the acceptable impact on your revenue, customer satisfaction, and staff.
Pick the right partner
There are many software vendors on the market today promising a next-generation system. Financial institutions can use easy criteria to sift through the noise and pick the right technology partner.
Scalability is a feature most cloud-first and API-driven providers offer, but few can prove that scale. Look at the customer account numbers and footprints of a vendor’s clients and measure that against the company’s central claims.
Has the provider worked with large institutions, like Tier 1 banks or members of the Fortune 500? Are their projects limited to greenfield and smaller institutions, or are they proof-of-concept operations held at arm’s length from their parent banks? These indicators can be valuable in assessing the actual scalability of a vendor’s product.
Equally important is the provider’s ability to provide a streamlined migration process. Organisations should look for a partner that values transparency and communication, who can provide real-time data on the migration’s progress or even direct access to metrics and overviews for their key stakeholders.
Related: See how Pismo stacks up against the competition
Test and validate
Sandboxing is the first step many Pismo clients take towards complete migration. It enables process testing and is vital to ensuring a pain-free switchover. Spend the majority of the implementation phase here.
A sandbox enables banks to explore new functionality, upskill their developers, and create new applications. It includes access to the Pismo platform and integration tools. Plus, it offers high-quality, well-documented APIs and essential next-generation architecture connectors.
Your partner should work with you to discover errors, issues, or bugs. Time is spent assessing any roadblocks and ensuring the problem cannot be replicated in a live environment. Data is gathered, processed, and deployed in a sandbox environment across collaborative phases.
Equally important is creating a sense of trust and alignment between teams on both sides of the migration—forming a well-oiled machine confident and ready to address any hiccups in the deployment phase.
Evolve after go-live
Congratulations on deploying a new scalable payment system. The work isn’t finished, however. Following go-live, you should continue to monitor and touch base with your provider, ensuring that all aspects of the transformation are complete and all lights are green.
A practical implementation team from your partner should organise a handover to your account management team, who will become your point of contact going forward and work hand-in-hand with you as you make the most of the new platform.
Read more: How to develop and deploy a low-friction banking system
