By Francisco Marambio, Chief Commercial Officer CLAI PAYMENTS® Technologies
Today, although payments are increasingly digital, the platforms that support them are not always so. Many banking systems still operate with nightly batch processes, legacy infrastructures that no one dares to touch, and integrations that have accumulated like layers of an onion over the years. There is a popular saying that sums up the premise of many financial institutions: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and under this vision, we have postponed modernization year after year.
But the rules of the game have changed. According to the Global Payments Report 2025, powered by Worldpay, cash usage in Latin America has fallen to 36% of point-of-sale transactions, with a continued decline projected through 2030. Meanwhile, account-to-account (A2A) payments are growing steadily: they are estimated to represent 24% of total transactions in 2030 and 36% of e-commerce in the region. Cases such as Pix in Brazil or Mercado Pago wallets illustrate this progress, but behind every intuitive experience lies a monumental challenge for institutions: reconciliation, traceability, interoperability, and security.
Modernizing a payment platform is not about pulling down the curtain, making a plan, and rolling it out. It’s like changing the engine on an airplane in mid-flight. Business areas demand speed to outperform the competition and improve the customer experience, while technology responds with a “no” or, at best, a “maybe in the next maintenance window.”
According to the Modernizing Payments report published by KPMG in January 2025, 57% of financial institutions identify the integration of multiple systems as their main challenge, followed by implementation costs and the difficulty of upgrading without disrupting operations. And it’s not about implementing technology for the sake of it: it’s about simplifying, streamlining, and focusing platforms on what matters most, the user.
At CLAI PAYMENTS ® Technologies, we believe that the path forward is based on three fundamental principles. First, having simpler architectures that leave behind the labyrinths of integrations that end up creating more dependencies than solutions. Second, we must commit to modularity, so that adding or removing features is like adding Lego pieces, not rebuilding the entire building. And third, we must cultivate a shared vision between the business and technology areas, where both speak the same language, align priorities, and work toward common goals.
The good news is that transforming this scenario is possible. At CLAI PAYMENTS ® Technologies, we have seen it firsthand. Hybrid and modular architectures, supported by APIs, reduce the time needed to enable new channels by 40%. Digital issuance and tokenization drive up to 35% more card activation. The adoption of cryptography as a service reduces operating costs by up to 50%, freeing up resources for innovation. Automated testing reduces risks and accelerates deployments, while the intelligent use of operational data facilitates faster and more accurate decision-making.
The digital transformation of payments is not just a technology project: it is a cultural transformation. It requires empathy, thinking about users such as the elderly person who pays for their medication at the pharmacy or the entrepreneur who sells online, and it demands an infrastructure capable of supporting that change. Because, in the end, it’s not just about modernizing: it’s about continuing to fly higher, faster, and safer.
