I have a rusty old bicycle tucked away in the back of my garden house. I look at it with warm affection, remembering those bygone days when it carried me around the heather-scented countryside of Brittany in northern France as a teenager.
I dream of pumping up the tyres and hitting the road again, but in reality I know the brakes won’t really work, the pedals will make an awful grinding noise, and the chain will slip across the gears as I push down on each stroke.
Legacy payments systems are a bit like my old bike. They will get you there, and you know what grinding noises you’re likely to get along the away, even if you do need a team of staff along the route to retrieve the wheels as they come off rolling down the hill unaccompanied, the wheels can be put back on again and your destination will eventually be reached.
Many legacy systems will endure in this manner simply because everyone is comfortable with them and they know when they do; they’ve built up and invested in a team of expert developers and enhancers who know how to fix them. They spend so much time fixing and retrofitting mandates that there’s never enough time left to innovate or provide what business is desperate for them to do. The system and the resources in the organisation can become almost indispensable as a core cog in the large machine. In the end the service offered to their end-users and consumers loses its edge and new disrupters come into the market threatening their very existence ...
Read the full article by OMniPayments VP, Craig Lawrance:
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