Admin INCAT

African Banking Is Becoming an Ecosystem Game. Is Your Core Ready?

For many years, banking transformation in Africa was discussed mainly through the lens of financial inclusion: how to bring more people into the formal financial system, how to reduce cash dependency, and how to extend services beyond urban branches. That conversation is still relevant - but it is no longer sufficient.

African banking is entering a new phase. The market is no longer shaped only by traditional banks, branch networks, and account-based products. It is increasingly shaped by mobile money operators, fintechs, agent networks, telcos, instant payment systems, digital wallets, cross-border payment platforms, embedded finance providers, alternative lenders, merchants, and regulatory digital public infrastructure.  In other words, banking in Africa is becoming an ecosystem game. This shift has major implications for core banking technology. A core system can no longer operate as a closed back-office ledger that processes accounts, balances, and end-of-day transactions. In an ecosystem-driven market, the core must become a real-time, API-first, scalable platform that enables banks to connect, partner, launch, reconcile, monitor, and adapt at speed.  The strategic question for African banks is no longer simply: “Is our core system old?” The more important question is: “Is our core ready for ecosystem banking?”

African banks are no longer competing only with other banks. They are competing with wallets, fintechs, telcos, agents and every digital experience that has changed customer expectations.

 

Africa’s banking market is growing - but competition is changing

The African banking sector has become one of the most dynamic financial markets globally. According to McKinsey, African banks delivered an average return on equity of 19% in 2024 and 17% in 2025, well above the global banking average of around 10%. The same analysis indicates that African banking revenues reached approximately $99 billion in 2024 and an estimated $107 billion in 2025.  This performance confirms the strength of the market. But it also hides an important structural challenge. Growth is increasingly coming from digital adoption, new payment behaviours, SME demand, financial inclusion, non-interest income, and partnerships - not only from traditional lending and deposit-taking. McKinsey also points out that African banks still face persistent challenges around access, infrastructure, trust, macroeconomic volatility, and operational efficiency. African banks’ cost-to-asset ratio remained around double the global average in 2024, which suggests that technology modernization and operating model transformation still have significant room to create value. This is where core banking becomes strategic. In a high-growth but increasingly complex market, banks that cannot launch products quickly, integrate partners efficiently, process transactions in real time, or use data intelligently will struggle to convert market potential into durable growth.

In Africa, the next wave of banking growth will not be won by institutions with the largest branch networks, but by those with the most connected, scalable and ecosystem-ready infrastructure.

 

Mobile money has changed the benchmark for banking

One of the most important forces reshaping African financial services is mobile money. Globally, mobile money reached 2.3 billion registered accounts in 2025, with more than $2 trillion flowing through mobile money wallets during the year. GSMA notes that it took the industry around 20 years to pass $1 trillion in annual transaction value - and only four more years to double that figure.  Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world’s most active mobile money region. GSMA reported that most new registered and active mobile money accounts in 2025 came from Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2024, the region was also described as the world’s leading mobile money region, driven by growth in East and West Africa. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 data further confirms the scale of the shift. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest level of mobile money account ownership globally, with 40% of adults having a mobile money account in 2024. This matters because mobile money has reset customer expectations. Users expect instant transfers, simple onboarding, low-cost transactions, high availability, intuitive interfaces, and services available outside traditional banking hours. They are increasingly comfortable accessing financial services through wallets, agents, USSD, apps, merchants, and partner platforms. For banks, the competitive benchmark is no longer only another bank. It is the speed of a wallet, the reach of an agent network, the usability of a fintech app, and the interoperability of modern payment rails. A bank with a legacy core may still hold the customer’s account. But if the customer’s daily financial life happens elsewhere, the bank risks becoming infrastructure in the background rather than the center of the relationship.

The core is no longer just a ledger

Historically, the core banking system was primarily viewed as the system of record: the place where accounts, balances, interest, fees, postings, and customer data were maintained. That role remains critical. But in ecosystem banking, it is not enough.  A modern core must also act as a system of integration, orchestration, and product innovation.

 

The core banking system is no longer just the ledger of the bank. It is becoming the operating platform for partnerships, payments, products and growth.

 

It must be able to connect with mobile money schemes, national switches, card processors, payment gateways, AML and KYC systems, credit scoring engines, agency banking platforms, digital onboarding tools, regulatory reporting systems, customer channels, and third-party fintech services.  It must support real-time transaction processing, not only batch-based posting. It must expose secure APIs, not only rely on file transfers or custom point-to-point integrations. It must allow banks to configure and launch new products quickly, not wait months for vendor-level customization. It must provide clean, usable data for risk, analytics, personalization, compliance, and operational monitoring.  In practical terms, ecosystem banking requires the core to support several capabilities at once:

Real-time account and balance management

API-first integration with external platforms

Event-driven transaction processing

Flexible product configuration

Multi-channel and partner-based distribution

Scalable transaction volumes

Strong reconciliation and auditability

Embedded AML, KYC, fraud, and compliance workflows

High availability and operational resilience

Support for cloud, hybrid, or multi-cloud deployment models

Without these capabilities, ecosystem participation becomes expensive, slow, and risky.

Instant payments are becoming part of the financial infrastructure layer

Another major shift is the development of instant payment systems across Africa. AfricaNenda’s 2025 SIIPS report highlights the growing role of instant payment systems in advancing digital payments, inclusion, and digital public infrastructure across the continent. The report includes case studies such as Egypt’s Instant Payment Network, Ethiopia’s EthSwitch, Mozambique’s SIMO, and Nigeria’s NIBSS Instant Payment system.  This is not just a payments story. It is an infrastructure story. Instant payments create new expectations for settlement speed, transaction visibility, availability, interoperability, dispute handling, and reconciliation. They also create new opportunities for banks to build services around salary payments, merchant collections, SME payments, remittances, government disbursements, and low-value high-volume transactions. But banks can only capture this opportunity if their core infrastructure can keep up. If the core operates in batches, relies on manual reconciliation, struggles with 24/7 availability, or requires complex custom work for every new payment integration, the bank becomes constrained by its own technology.

Real-time payments require real-time banking infrastructure. Batch-based systems were not designed for a world of instant transfers, 24/7 channels and always-on customer expectations.

 

In a real-time payments environment, legacy architecture becomes more than an IT problem. It becomes a business model limitation.

Ecosystem banking creates new product opportunities

The ecosystem model is not only about connecting systems. It is about creating new revenue streams.  African banks are operating in markets where demand for financial services is broad and diverse. SMEs need working capital, invoice finance, collections, and business accounts. Consumers need savings, microloans, remittances, salary-linked products, insurance, and low-cost payments. Merchants need acquiring, cash management, instant settlement, and embedded credit. Governments need digital disbursement and collection mechanisms. Diaspora communities need cross-border transfer and account services.  McKinsey projects that lending will remain the largest African banking revenue pool and could grow to almost $52 billion by 2030, while SME lending is expected to grow rapidly as specialized SME lending products expand. This is a major opportunity. But it requires product agility. A bank that needs six to nine months to launch a new SME lending product will move too slowly. A bank that cannot price, configure, test, and deploy new digital savings or credit products quickly will lose ground to fintechs and mobile-first competitors. A bank that cannot integrate alternative data sources into onboarding, scoring, or risk monitoring will miss opportunities to serve thin-file customers. Modern core banking platforms should therefore act as product factories. They should allow banks to define products, rules, limits, fees, interest logic, repayment structures, customer segments, workflows, and integrations with far greater speed and flexibility. In African banking, speed to market is not a luxury. It is becoming a competitive requirement.

Legacy core systems make ecosystem participation expensive

Many banks already understand the need to participate in ecosystems. The challenge is that legacy core systems make this participation difficult. The typical symptoms are familiar:

 New integrations require heavy custom development.

  Product changes depend on vendor queues or core-level code modifications.

 Reconciliation between wallets, channels, cards, and accounts is manual or semi-manual.

 Data is fragmented across systems and difficult to use in real time.

Batch processing creates delays in customer visibility and operational control.

  Scaling transaction volumes requires costly infrastructure expansion

  Digital channels depend on middleware workarounds

Compliance reporting involves manual extraction and spreadsheet-based processes.

Downtime risk makes modernization politically and operationally difficult.

These constraints directly affect growth. They slow down partnerships. They delay product launches. They increase cost-to-serve. They weaken customer experience. They complicate compliance. They reduce the bank’s ability to compete in high-volume, low-margin digital finance. In an ecosystem economy, the cost of legacy is not only maintenance. It is opportunity loss. This is exactly the challenge BOS was built to address — a core banking platform designed for African and MENA markets, combining real-time processing, API-first architecture and modular deployment, so banks can modernize progressively rather than replace everything at once

The African market requires architecture built for coexistence

Core modernization in Africa cannot be approached as a simple replacement project. Banks operate in complex environments with regulatory dependencies, existing customer bases, active channels, legacy products, regional payment networks, and operational continuity requirements.  This is why modernization must often be progressive. A modern core strategy should allow coexistence between old and new systems. Banks should be able to launch new digital products on modern infrastructure, migrate selected customer segments, integrate with existing channels, and gradually reduce dependency on legacy components without interrupting the business. This approach is especially relevant for African markets, where banking transformation often needs to balance innovation with stability, compliance, cost discipline, and operational resilience. Progressive modernization allows banks to move faster while reducing risk. It enables new products and ecosystems to be built around modern architecture, while critical legacy functions are migrated in controlled phases. For many banks, the best path is not “big bang replacement”. It is building a modern core foundation that can coexist, integrate, scale, and gradually take over more of the bank’s operating model.

Core modernization should not force banks to choose between innovation and stability. The right architecture allows them to transform progressively while continuing to operate.

What an ecosystem-ready core should deliver

For African banks, an ecosystem-ready core banking platform should deliver more than standard account processing. It should support the bank’s ability to operate as a digital financial platform. At a minimum, this requires six architectural principles. First, it must be real-time. Customers, partners, regulators, and internal teams need accurate transaction and balance information when events happen — not only after batch updates. Second, it must be API-first. Ecosystem banking depends on fast, secure, governed integration with internal and external services. Third, it must be configurable. Banks should be able to launch and adjust products quickly without deep code-level dependency. Fourth, it must be scalable. Digital finance in Africa can involve large numbers of low-value, high-frequency transactions. The economics only work if the platform can scale efficiently. Fifth, it must be resilient. As financial services become embedded in everyday life, downtime becomes a direct business and reputational risk. Sixth, it must be data-ready. Modern banking depends on clean, accessible, and actionable data for compliance, personalization, credit decisioning, fraud detection, and management insight.  These principles are not abstract technology preferences. They determine whether a bank can participate effectively in the next phase of African financial services.

An ecosystem-ready core is not defined by one feature. It is defined by the bank’s ability to connect, launch, scale and adapt without rebuilding its operating model every time the market changes.

 

Ecosystem banking will separate platform banks from product banks

The next generation of African banking leaders will not necessarily be the institutions with the largest branch networks or the longest history. They will be the banks that can operate as platforms.  A product bank sells accounts, loans, cards, and payments through its own channels. A platform bank does more. It distributes products through partners. It embeds finance into external journeys. It connects to payment ecosystems. It uses data to personalize services. It launches fast, scales efficiently, and collaborates without losing control of risk and compliance. This is where the core banking system becomes a strategic asset. If the core is closed, rigid, batch-based, and difficult to integrate, the bank is forced to operate like a traditional product institution. If the core is open, real-time, modular, and API-first, the bank can participate in the ecosystem on its own terms. The difference is not only technological. It is strategic.

The ecosystem is already here

African banking is not waiting for the future. The ecosystem is already here. Mobile money has reached mass scale. Instant payment systems are becoming part of national and regional financial infrastructure. Fintechs are targeting profitable niches. SMEs are demanding better digital financial tools. Regulators are pushing inclusion, interoperability, resilience, and transparency. Customers are comparing banks not only with other banks, but with every digital financial experience they use. For African banks, this creates a clear choice.
They can continue to build digital services around legacy infrastructure, accepting complexity, delay, and rising operating costs. Or they can modernize the core and turn it into the foundation for ecosystem banking. The winners will be the banks that understand a simple truth: in Africa’s next phase of financial services, the core is no longer just the system that records the business. It is the platform that enables the business to grow. The banks that ask this question early are the ones still asking it on their own terms. Let's talk about what a ready core looks like for you - talk to our team.

***
Sources:

• McKinsey & Company — "From Potential to Performance: A Snapshot of African Banking" (March 2026)
  https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/from-potential-to-performance-a-snapshot-of-african-banking
• GSMA — "State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2026" (24.03.2026)
  https://www.gsma.com/sotir/
• World Bank Global Findex 2025
  https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/globalfindex
• AfricaNenda Foundation — "State of Inclusive Instant Payment Systems in Africa 2025" (SIIPS 2025, listopad 2025)
  https://www.africanenda.org/en/siips

---

by Admin INCAT

Join us at Unchain Fintech Festival in Romania

---

by Admin INCAT

Just Two Weeks to Go — Meet INCAT at Pay360 in London

---

by Admin INCAT

The Hidden Cost of Legacy Core: Why African Banks Lose 12-18 Months Per Product Launch?

While fintech competitors launch products in weeks, traditional African banks face a different reality: 12–18 months from concept to deployment. This isn't a technology problem—it's a business crisis. According to KPMG's 2025 analysis, legacy system maintenance now consumes up to 64% of IT budgets at African institutions, leaving minimal capacity for innovation. The real cost? Market opportunities lost to agile competitors, revenue streams that never materialize, and customer relationships that migrate to platforms offering immediate, personalized experiences.

Legacy system maintenance now consumes up to 64% of IT budgets at African institutions, leaving minimal capacity for innovation.

Three Critical Bottlenecks Costing African Banks Millions

Every Product Change Requires Custom Development

Want to launch a salary advance product with automated fee waivers? On legacy cores, this triggers a 6-9 month development cycle: backlog prioritization battles, custom coding, comprehensive regression testing, and deployment during restricted maintenance windows. Nigeria's open banking framework exposed this perfectly—banks discovered that implementing Central Bank regulatory requirements meant multi-month development programs rather than simple configuration changes. By the time products launch, competitors have already captured the market.

Integration Architecture That Can't Scale

NCBA Bank Kenya's transformation tells the story. Operating on a legacy core banking platform, their M-Shwari mobile banking service served 35 million customers but struggled with peak loads and business development speed. In November 2020, they migrated to a cloud-native, microservices architecture. Results: system performance jumped from 60 to 420 transactions per second, they migrated 60 million accounts in one day with zero downtime, and gained the capability to expand across Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Ghana—operationally impossible on the legacy platform. The difference? Modern API-first architecture versus point-to-point integrations that turn every new partner into a mini-project.

Case Study Banks

60 → 420 TPS performance improvement                                    306% YoY payment volume growth

System performance jumped from 60 to 420 transactions per second—a 7x improvement that unlocked international expansion.

 

Batch-Era Design in a Real-Time World

Egypt's Instant Payment Network (IPN) and South Africa's PayShap demand 24/7 real-time operations. Banks on batch-oriented cores face a painful reality: customers initiate transfers expecting instant confirmation, but see delays because backend posting occurs on overnight cycles. The operational burden is crushing—support call volumes spike, complex reconciliation workarounds multiply, and fraud exposure windows expand. Meanwhile, banks on modern platforms post transactions immediately, provide instant confirmations, and avoid the operational complexity entirely.

What Market Leaders Are Doing Differently

If time-to-launch doesn't compress from quarters to weeks, the transformation is cosmetic.

 

The BOS Advantage: Built for African Banking Reality

BOS (INCAT) addresses exactly these challenges through architectural choices proven across African markets. Product configurability eliminates the development bottleneck—business teams define products through parameters, not code. API-first integration enables rapid ecosystem participation, from national payment switches to fintech partnerships. Cloud-ready deployment scales dynamically without infrastructure delays. Operational safety patterns ensure that faster delivery doesn't create risk exposure.

The practical impact: African banks implementing BOS shift from quarterly release cycles to continuous deployment, treating product launches as routine configuration changes rather than major programs. They participate effectively in real-time payment infrastructure—Egypt's IPN, South Africa's PayShap, Nigeria's instant payment rails—without operational compromises. Most critically, they compete on innovation velocity, launching products in weeks while legacy-constrained competitors remain trapped in month-long development queues.

The Strategic Choice: Transform or Fall Behind

The 2024 African Banking Digital Transformation Report surveyed 150+ banks across 35 countries and found that 60% have digitally transformed most operations. This creates a growing capability gap: modernized competitors iterate products weekly while legacy-constrained institutions wait quarters for deployment windows. With 76% of African banks ranking digital transformation as a top-three priority, the question isn't whether to modernize but how quickly transformation can occur given competitive pressures.

Every month of delay represents market share permanently ceded to faster-moving competitors.

 

Legacy platforms, regardless of historical success, increasingly prevent rather than enable competitive responsiveness. Every month of delay represents market share permanently ceded to faster-moving competitors. Modern platforms like BOS exist to unlock the innovation velocity that contemporary banking demands—transforming core banking from operational constraint into competitive advantage.

Key Statistics

12-18 months: Typical product launch timeline on legacy cores
64%: Portion of IT budgets consumed by legacy system maintenance (KPMG 2025)
60 → 420 TPS: NCBA Kenya's performance improvement post-modernization
76%: African banks ranking digital transformation as top-3 priority (Deloitte 2024)
306% YoY: Access Bank's digital payment volume growth (H1 2024)

 

BOS supports banks by enabling faster product configuration and rollout, providing a platform mindset that integrates cleanly with digital channels and external ecosystems, and supporting transformation paths that can be staged to reduce risk. The goal is straightforward: help banks move from “outdated core as a constraint” to “modern core as a growth engine,” while protecting continuity, trust, and compliance. If you're looking to migrate your core, explore how BOS can be the foundation of your success. Contact us to learn more! 

***
References and Sources

1. Central Bank of Egypt (2022). Instant Payment Network Implementation Guidelines. Retrieved from official CBE documentation.
2. Central Bank of Nigeria (2023). Open Banking Framework and Regulatory Guidelines. Official regulatory publication.
3. Deloitte Africa (2024). Unlocking Africa's Banking Potential: Core Banking Modernization Imperatives. Industry research report.
4. EY South Africa (2024). Digital Adoption and the Next Wave of Transformation in South African Banking. Industry analysis.
5. KPMG East Africa and West Africa (2025). Modernising Core Banking Systems: Navigating Challenges to Achieve Resilient Transformation. Thought leadership publication.
6. African Banker and Backbase (2024). The African Banking Digital Transformation Report 2024. Comprehensive survey of 150+ banks across 35 African countries.
7. South African Reserve Bank (2023). PayShap Implementation Framework and Market Guidelines. Official regulatory publication.
8. TechCabal (2024). Nigeria's Tier-1 Banks Will Spend ₦82bn on Core Banking Software in 2024. Industry research and analysis.
9. Huawei Enterprise (2020). NCBA Invests in Inclusive Finance: Kenya's First Distributed Core Banking Deployment. Case study documentation.
10. Access Holdings Plc (2024). Annual Report and Financial Statements. Corporate disclosure documents.
11. McKinsey & Company, Forrester Research, and various industry analysts (2024-2025). Multiple reports on digital banking transformation, core system modernization challenges, and African fintech ecosystem development.

---

by Admin INCAT

Core Banking in African Banks: Why “Outdated Core” Is a Growth Constraint?

Across Africa, banking demand is rising faster than many core platforms can evolve. Customers expect instant, mobile-first experiences; regulators push for stronger controls and reporting; ecosystems expand through payment switches, mobile money rails, agency networks, and fintech partnerships. In that environment, the core banking system stops being “just the ledger” and becomes the operating foundation for product speed, integration, resilience, and trust.

Yet many institutions are still running legacy cores that were heavily customized over years, layered with workarounds, batch jobs, and brittle integrations. The result is a technology stack that may still “work,” but increasingly works against the business: it slows launches, increases operational risk, and consumes budgets that should be funding growth.

The most visible legacy symptom: speed collapses as complexity rises 

When legacy core platforms become overly complex, launching a new product can take 12–18 months—a timeline that’s simply misaligned with today’s competitive, digital-first market. These delays are typically driven by years of accumulated customizations, reliance on costly on-premises infrastructure, and manual back-office processes that reduce agility and weaken the customer experience.

This “time-to-market tax” matters more in Africa than in many mature markets because customer segments are diverse and fast-moving: SME lending, micro-savings, payroll loans, agent banking, cross-border remittances, and tailored fee/interest models often need rapid iteration. If every change demands long development cycles, risky releases, and extensive regression testing, the bank’s ability to compete becomes structurally limited.

 

When legacy cores become overly complex, new product launches can take 12–18 months.

Budgets get trapped in maintenance, not transformation

 

Over 64% of banks’ global technology budgets may be spent maintaining existing legacy technology, leaving a minority for growth and transformation. 

 

The African-specific twist: ecosystem integrations are not optional

In many African markets, digital banking is inseparable from external rails and partners: national payment infrastructure, card switches, mobile money operators, agency networks, alternative data providers, KYC/AML utilities, and fintech product layers. When the core isn’t designed for API-first interoperability and near real-time processing, banks are pushed toward tactical add-ons, nightly batches, and manual reconciliation. Over time this increases fraud exposure, weakens data quality, and makes regulatory reporting harder—especially when data lineage spans multiple systems.

Industry surveys across the region underline the same strategic implication: banks want to use data to deepen relationships, improve targeting, and grow share of wallet, but legacy infrastructure remains a major obstacle to digital transformation. A pragmatic path many institutions follow is to modernize integration first—exposing core capabilities via APIs so new applications can share data and connect to third parties faster—while progressively upgrading the underlying core capabilities.

 

Banks want to use data to deepen relationships, improve targeting, and grow share of wallet, but legacy infrastructure remains a major obstacle to digital transformation.

The transformation paradox: everyone wants modernization, but nobody wants downtime

Core modernization is unavoidable—but it’s also high-stakes. Customers judge banks harshly for outages, failed transactions, and inconsistent balances. That risk is very real: when institutions migrate to new core platforms, transitions can be disrupted by service interruptions and system downtime, which quickly frustrate customers and erode trust.

That’s why modernization strategies in Africa increasingly favor staged migration, coexistence patterns, and rigorous resilience engineering rather than “big bang” replacements—unless the legacy platform is no longer viable.

What African Banks Actually Need From a Next-Gen Core

Modern core transformation programs succeed when they are anchored in business outcomes, not vendor features. In practice, the needs are remarkably consistent across regions and bank types.

Modernization must strengthen—not weaken—controls.

Real African Transformation Examples

Equity Bank (East Africa region): scaling multi-country operations and standardizing customer experience. Equity publicly described a core upgrade aimed at enabling seamless customer transactions across multiple countries and supporting faster rollout of offerings and new business lines. The bank positioned this as a way to improve customer experience while operating consistently across geographies.

 

Bank of Kigali (Rwanda): aligning core modernization with a digital-first customer vision. The bank has communicated its multi-year digital journey in a way that ties modernization to customer outcomes. In one official update, CEO Diane Karusisi described a vision “to give anyone, anywhere the best customer experience through digital,” reflecting how core capabilities underpin channel expansion, automation, and service design.

 

 

Guaranty Trust Holding Company / GTCO (Nigeria): delivering seamless, connected experiences across touchpoints. In public statements around its modernization program, Group CEO Segun Agbaje emphasized the strategic goal of enabling “seamless and connected experiences across every customer touchpoint,” linking core transformation to agility, scalability, and a digital future shaped by customer preferences for secure and convenient channels.

 

 

NBS Bank (Malawi): future-ready scalability and ecosystem integration. NBS Bank ran a formal initiative for implementing a new core system, signaling the strategic weight of the program. In a separate communication reflecting customer expectations, CEO Temwani Simwaka highlighted that clients “need seamless solutions, privacy, speed, and support they can count on,” which is exactly the bundle of outcomes core transformations are expected to unlock. 

 

FirstRand (South Africa): accelerating product launches and strengthening digital channels. Reporting on the group’s modernization direction has emphasized goals such as accelerating product launches and enhancing mobile and internet banking capabilities—an example of a large institution treating the core as an innovation engine, not merely a back-office platform.

 

These cases share a pattern: the trigger is rarely “technology for technology’s sake.” It’s usually a mix of customer expectations, product speed, operational resilience, and the need to integrate efficiently into a broader financial ecosystem.

A Modernization Approach That Fits African Reality: Transform Without Pausing the Bank

The most successful core programs typically combine ambition with controlled risk. That means doing the hard work in three areas that legacy platforms tend to obscure:

Data discipline.

Migration fails when institutions underestimate data quality issues, account history mapping, and reconciliation requirements. A modern core requires clean reference data, consistent product definitions, and robust audit trails.

Operational readiness.
A next-gen core is not only software—it changes processes, exception handling, and how frontline and back-office teams operate. Without redesigning workflows, banks simply “carry workarounds forward,” and the new platform inherits old inefficiencies.

Resilience engineering.
African customers are highly digital and increasingly unforgiving of outages. KPMG’s CX research in West Africa explicitly highlights how disruptions during transitions can frustrate customers and risk trust—so availability, safe cutovers, and rollback strategies have to be designed in from day one, not added near go-live.

BOS as the Platform for Practical Core Transformation

At Incat, we approach core transformation as a business acceleration program, not a single IT replacement project. BOS (Banking Operating System) is our core banking platform designed to help institutions modernize in a way that supports real-world constraints—regulatory demands, integration complexity, customer expectations, and the need to keep services running.

BOS supports banks by enabling faster product configuration and rollout, providing a platform mindset that integrates cleanly with digital channels and external ecosystems, and supporting transformation paths that can be staged to reduce risk. The goal is straightforward: help banks move from “outdated core as a constraint” to “modern core as a growth engine,” while protecting continuity, trust, and compliance. If you're looking to migrate your core, explore how BOS can be the foundation of your success. Contact us to learn more! 

---

by Admin INCAT

5 Technological Foundations Every Fintech Should Master

The fintech revolution has entered a new era. The first wave — driven by design, user experience, and the “banking made simple” narrative — has evolved into a far more technical reality. Today, the ability to succeed is not determined by how sleek your app looks, but by how resilient, scalable, and intelligent your technology foundation is. 

Fintechs and digital banks across Europe, the Gulf, and Asia have already proven that the right tech strategy can make the difference between growth and gridlock. Below are five key technological areas that every emerging fintech must understand deeply — with examples of who did it right and why it worked. 

1. Data Architecture — Turning Real-Time Information into Market Speed 

In financial services, data is not just a byproduct — it’s the business itself. But data has little value unless it can be turned into real-time, actionable intelligence. 

The most successful fintechs — from Revolut in Europe to Tamara in Saudi Arabia — have built architectures that allow data to flow continuously across every layer of their systems. These are not just analytics dashboards, but event-driven ecosystems, where every transaction triggers insights and every insight drives a decision. 

In practice, this means moving beyond simple batch data warehousing toward streaming data pipelines and event processing. For instance, Revolut’s internal architecture uses Kafka-based streaming to power instant updates across millions of user wallets. This enables real-time fraud detection, personalized offers, and product testing with immediate feedback loops. A robust data architecture gives you control, speed, and foresight — the essential traits of a fintech built to last.

 

Data isn’t just the fuel of fintech — it’s the steering wheel. Without real-time intelligence, even the most innovative products drift off course. 

Source: Gartner

2. Architecture Agility — Designing for Change, Not Perfection 

Every fintech begins as an experiment. But only those that can evolve their technology without collapsing under the weight of growth manage to survive. 

Early-stage fintechs often build minimum viable products quickly, but they pay a heavy price later if that MVP rests on a monolithic architecture. Once users multiply and product lines diversify, that architecture becomes a bottleneck. 

Modern success stories prove that microservices-based architecture is not just a trend, but a survival mechanism. Each product component, from customer onboarding to payments and lending, exists as an independent module that can be scaled, upgraded, or replaced without touching the rest. 

At Monzo, over 1,500 microservices handle everything from card transactions to compliance reporting. That’s how the bank could expand to millions of customers without a single day of downtime. 

Similarly, D360 Bank, which operates on INCAT’s BOS system, embraced modular architecture from day one. The flexibility of BOS’s microservice structure made it possible to deploy updates frequently while keeping system stability intact.

For fintech founders, architectural agility means designing systems not for what you need today, but for what you can’t yet predict tomorrow. 

 

In fintech, agility is the new stability. If your system can’t change quickly, it will fail quietly.

Zdzisław Grochowicz, Chief Product Officer, INCAT

 

3. Compliance-by-Design — Transforming Regulation into a Competitive Edge 

Regulation is the most underestimated innovation driver in financial technology. The most forward-thinking fintechs treat compliance not as a constraint, but as a design principle. 

Embedding compliance at the system level — rather than bolting it on later — enables speed, scalability, and trust. Zopa in the UK and Starling Bank are excellent examples: they automated AML and KYC checks as integral parts of their onboarding process. Instead of slowing growth, compliance actually accelerated it — investors saw resilience, and customers saw reliability. 

In the Middle East, the stakes are even higher. Fintechs must align not only with financial regulations, but also with religious and ethical frameworks, such as Shariah principles. D360 Bank and STC Bank, both regulated by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), adopted compliance-by-design models from inception. By integrating Shariah governance rules directly into their product and transaction layers, they ensure every product — from savings to financing — automatically adheres to Islamic finance standards. 

In BOS, this principle is embedded at the core level. Compliance modules and rule engines are configurable, meaning fintechs can adapt to different jurisdictions or religious frameworks without re-coding their entire stack. 

When done right, compliance-by-design doesn’t limit innovation; it legitimizes it.

Compliance is not paperwork — it’s architecture. When regulation lives inside your code, innovation becomes unstoppable. 

Piotr Hanusiak, CEO of INCAT

4. Ecosystem Connectivity — Building Growth Through Integration 

No fintech thrives in isolation. The age of open banking has proven that connectivity is the currency of growth.  Fintechs built billion-dollar valuations by turning integration itself into a product. Their APIs connect banks, merchants, and consumers — not because they create new services, but because they enable collaboration. 

For emerging fintechs, API-first development should be non-negotiable. It allows seamless integration with payment gateways, KYC providers, fraud systems, and even national regulators. More importantly, it opens the door to partnerships that accelerate distribution and customer acquisition. 

Middle Eastern fintechs understand this shift deeply. D360 Bank’s BOS-based architecture, for instance, exposes a secure open API layer that connects easily to third-party systems — from digital identity verification to telecom billing services. This openness is a key factor behind its rapid ecosystem growth in Saudi Arabia, where collaboration across sectors (banking, government, telecom) is driving digital innovation at unprecedented speed. 

Fintechs that embrace open integration don’t just scale faster — they create value networks that grow around them. 

5. Core Banking System — The Technological Heartbeat 

Last but not least: your core. 

It’s tempting for fintech founders to see the core system as a back-office engine — invisible, static, something to “deal with later.” That mistake is often fatal. The core banking system defines how fast you can launch products, how flexible your pricing can be, and how easily you can expand across markets. 

Traditional cores, built for legacy banks, are slow to change and difficult to integrate. Fintechs need the opposite: cloud-native, API-driven, event-based systems that can evolve continuously. 

This is where platforms like BOS by INCAT stand apart. BOS was designed specifically for digital banks and fintechs — built with modularity, configurability, and regulatory adaptability in mind. The system supports multi-product portfolios, subscription-based pricing, and Shariah-compliant product structures, all on a single, scalable cloud environment.

Fintechs that underestimate their core architecture eventually face costly rewrites and technical dead ends. Those that choose scalable, flexible systems early, build the freedom to innovate for years to come. 

Your core is not your engine room — it’s your brain. It defines how you think, how you grow, and how your business learns. 

Kamil Orzechowski, Business Analyst, INCAT

6. What’s next?  

The next decade of fintech innovation will not be won by the fastest-growing startups, but by the most technologically disciplined. 

To succeed, founders must master five foundations: 

• Data as a real-time feedback loop,
• Architecture that adapts faster than regulation,
• Compliance embedded as code,
• Open connectivity as a growth multiplier, and
• A core system that turns vision into execution.
   

These are not theoretical ideals — they are proven success factors for global players and regional leaders.  

At INCAT, we see this transformation every day: fintechs that invest in smart technology foundations don’t just build digital institutions— they build financial ecosystems of the future. 

***

BOS by INCAT offers more than just a next-generation core—it delivers a methodology and a team equipped to handle the entire journey from legacy to modern banking. For banks ready to make the leap, BOS provides the architecture, flexibility, and support needed to transform with confidence. The question isn’t whether your bank should migrate—it’s whether you're choosing a partner that can take you where the future is headed.
If you're looking to migrate your core, explore how BOS can be the foundation of your success. Contact us to learn more! 

---

by Admin INCAT

Join us at Singapore Fintech Festival 2025

---

by Admin INCAT

Can You Build a Banking Product Like a Puzzle?

In a world where agility is the name of the game, financial institutions can no longer afford to spend months — or even years —designing and launching new products from scratch. The ability to rapidly configure, test, and deploy financial products has become a critical competitive advantage. But how is this possible in a domain as complex and regulated as banking? 

Surprisingly, the answer lies in something as simple and powerful as modularity—or, to use a more relatable metaphor, building with puzzles.

What If Banking Products Were Modular? 

Imagine if instead of crafting every detail of a banking product by hand, product managers could assemble it from pre-defined, reusable components, simply just like a puzzle. In the BOS platform, that’s not a fantasy—it’s the everyday reality.

A Different Approach to Product Design 

In BOS, when defining a new product, you don’t design the entire process from scratch. Instead, you assemble it using existing functional widgets. It’s not just about setting product parameters like interest rates or maturity dates. You’re actually shaping the product’s logic and service flow by selecting the right components—such as repayment plans, disbursement methods, pricing models, customer notifications, etc. 

This approach allows banks and fintechs to: 

Launch new products in days or weeks, not months 

Ensure consistency and compliance across product lines 

Reduce development and operational costs

Quickly respond to market or regulatory changes . 

 

But how does this modularity actually work in the real world? That’s where Task Producer comes into play.

 

In BOS, when defining a new product, you don’t design the entire process from scratch.
Instead, you assemble it using existing functional widgets.  

 
The Engine Behind the Scenes: Task Producer

Think of the Task Producer as the orchestrator of your modular banking product. In BOS, products are not hardcoded—they are assembled from ready-made components. Each product line leverages a Task Producer that supplies predefined tasks and events, allowing the product to be built from modular widgets rather than the other way around.

For example: 

Opening a new loan? The Task Producer generates tasks for credit scoring, KYC verification, contract signing, and disbursement.

Updating a savings account? The Task Producer kicks off tasks like balance recalculation, interest rate application, and customer notification. 

Because the Task Producer operates based on pre-configured templates, it ensures that every instance of a product follows the correct logic and that all required actions happen at the right time.  It’s like having a conductor for an orchestra of banking microservices —each instrument (module) knows when to play its part, and the result is a harmonious, compliant, and efficient service. 

Real-Life Case: Subscription-Based Loan Product 

Let’s take a real example from a BOS client: a digital-first bank wanted to launch an innovative loan product that allowed customers to pay a monthly subscription fee instead of traditional interest. The goal was to attract a younger, digitally savvy audience looking for simple, predictable financial products. 

Instead of developing a new system, the bank used BOS to:

Select modules for loan origination, subscription-based pricing, and dynamic repayment schedules 

Configure rules for early repayment, temporary payment holidays, and auto-renewals 

Use the Task Producer to define the processing logic—triggering tasks such as monthly billing, payment validation, customer communication, and contract renewals

The entire product—from concept to launch—was live in under five weeks. 

The Benefits of Building with Puzzles

By combining modular design with the orchestration power of the Task Producer, BOS enables banks and fintechs to: 

Prototype new ideas faster than ever before 

Maintain a library of reusable business logic blocks 

Isolate changes to specific components without disrupting the entire product 

Scale products across geographies and customer segments with minimal changes

Can you build a banking product like puzzles? With BOS, the answer is a resounding yes. 

Can you build a banking product like puzzles?
With BOS, the answer is a resounding yes.

In a time when fintech challengers and evolving customer expectations demand speed, flexibility, and innovation, modularity is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. And platforms like BOS, with its component-driven architecture and powerful Task Producer engine, are helping banks of all sizes move from complexity to clarity.  

So the next time someone asks how you plan to innovate in banking, tell them: “We build with puzzles.”

---

by Admin INCAT

We’re on the Polish Fintech Map 2025 – again!

The latest edition of the "Polish Fintech Map" by Cashless.pl is out, and we’re happy to be part of it once more.

We’re proud to be listed in the "Software Providers for Fintech" category — alongside many of our partners and friends, including companies such as:

• Verestro
• Efigence
• ITCARD
• Basement and more.

The map highlights the most active players in Poland’s fintech scene – from startups to big tech providers – and it’s great to see our name among them. For us, it’s a sign that the work we’re doing with banks, lenders, and fintechs is making an impact.

At INCAT, we build tools that help financial companies move faster, launch new products quicker, and stay flexible as they grow. Our BOS core banking system is all about making complex things simpler – whether it’s integrations, pricing models, or scaling new services.

Big thanks to Cashless.pl's team for putting this together – and kudos to everyone featured. Always interesting to see how the Polish fintech landscape is evolving.

You can view the full map here: Polish Fintech Map

---

by Admin INCAT

BOS at Money 20/20 Europe: Supporting Fintech Growth Across Europe

From June 3 to June 5, the BOS team will be at Money 20/20 Europe in Amsterdam, showcasing our core banking system at booth 8A92. It’s one of the key events for fintech in Europe, and we’re looking forward to connecting with people who are building the future of finance.

Why visit us?

Because we’re not just offering another core system — we’re offering a smarter way to build financial products. Whether you’re launching a digital bank, reshaping your existing tech stack, or just exploring new ideas, our team is here to talk options.

What we’ll be showing?

At our booth, you’ll get a closer look at the BOS core banking platform — modular, API-driven, cloud-ready. We’ll walk you through how it supports:

• Current, savings and loan accounts
• Subscription-based pricing models
• Flexible fee configurations
• Real-time data flows and open integrations

We’ll also share a few real-life examples, like our work with Payman Group in Bulgaria. With BOS, they’ve been able to move fast, stay compliant, and grow in a competitive market.

Let’s talk

If you’re looking for tech that keeps up with your ambition, come see us. We’ll be at booth 8A92 every day of the event. Or you can schedule a dedicated meeting: BOOK A MEETING

📅 Date: June 03–05, 2025
📍 Venue: RAI Amsterdam
🤝Booth: 8A92

Looking forward to seeing you in Amsterdam!

---

by Admin INCAT