ACI Worldwide, Finextra to Host Webinar on Risks of Incremental Payment Modernisation
Finextra Research will host a webinar in association with ACI Worldwide on Thursday, 7 May 2026, focusing on the challenges banks face as real-time and near-real-time payments volumes continue to rise in the US.
Titled “Patch and Perish: The Hidden Risks of Incremental Payment Modernisation,” the session will examine how payments modernisation has evolved from a technology refresh or regulatory requirement into a strategic capability that affects revenue growth, customer trust, operational resilience and participation in an always-on economy.
The webinar will bring together industry experts to discuss where current payment platforms may begin to fail as transaction volumes scale beyond their original design limits, and how financial institutions can modernise without depending on incremental fixes that may add complexity and risk over time.
According to Finextra, systems originally built for batch processing or early-stage pilot volumes are now under pressure from 24x7x365 settlement, real-time liquidity demands and customer expectations for immediate processing. While tactical upgrades may help banks meet immediate RTP or FedNow requirements, the source warns that such approaches can create fragility at scale.
The risks highlighted include real-time liquidity pressure, manual and opaque exception handling, and outages that can have immediate customer and supervisory consequences. The source also notes that stress is likely to emerge in areas that were never designed for always-on operations, including liquidity orchestration across rails, real-time reconciliation and posting, out-of-hours controls and resiliency under continuous load.
Finextra said many institutions that entered real-time payments through compliance-driven or interim solutions are now seeing rising total cost of ownership, technical and operational debt, limited flexibility for new use cases, and increasing operational and liquidity risk. Beyond a certain point, the source suggests, additional patching may deepen exposure rather than reduce it.
The webinar will also address how banks can sequence and govern large-scale, multi-rail modernisation while balancing speed, resilience and regulatory readiness. The discussion is expected to focus on how institutions can build elasticity to support higher volumes, maintain availability expectations and reduce manual intervention in compliance processes.
Bridget Hall, Leader, real-time payment US at ACI Worldwide, will speak on the panel. Sharon Kimathi, Researcher at Finextra, will serve as moderator.
The session is open for registration online. Finextra describes the event as an opportunity for banking and payments leaders to consider how to modernise architecture in a way that supports growth without creating additional operational strain.
Industry Analysis
The theme of the webinar reflects a broader challenge facing the payments industry: modernisation is no longer just about keeping pace with regulation or adding new rails, but about building infrastructure that can sustain real-time demand at scale. As more banks adopt RTP and FedNow capabilities, the focus is shifting toward resilience, liquidity management and long-term architecture decisions. Institutions that rely on short-term patches may meet near-term deadlines, but they could also increase the risk of outages, inefficiencies and reputational damage as transaction volumes continue to accelerate.
