Banks across Asia Pacific are navigating a period of rapid change in the payment ecosystem.

Mobile wallets, digital commerce, and real-time payments have become part of everyday financial activity.

The shift toward alternative payment methods is accelerating, with Accenture estimating that up to US$13 trillion in transaction value could move away from traditional banking channels by 2030.

At the same time, cards continue to play a critical role in powering online transactions, digital wallets, and international payments. 

For many financial institutions in the region, however, innovation is constrained by legacy infrastructure.

Core systems that were originally designed decades ago remain central to daily operations, making large-scale technology changes difficult.

Instead of replacing these systems entirely, many banks are taking a more gradual path forward: modernising card management capabilities while keeping their legacy platforms in place. 

The growing complexity of card management

For many banks across Asia Pacific, the real challenge is not launching card products, but managing them within increasingly complex payment ecosystems.

Banks now must support a far wider range of payment instruments and customer journeys, including virtual cards, mobile wallet provisioning, multi-currency transactions, and embedded financial services.

Legacy systems are not only limiting flexibility, but also consuming a significant share of resources.

Accenture estimates that close to 70% of IT budgets in many banks are spent maintaining existing systems, leaving limited capacity for innovation or new product development.

At the same time, 76% of financial institutions acknowledge they still need to strengthen their capabilities to support more advanced digital payment models.

As transaction volumes grow and customer expectations shift toward real-time and embedded financial services, these constraints make it increasingly difficult for banks to respond quickly to market demands.

Meanwhile, Gartner‘s latest survey suggests that legacy infrastructure is no longer an operational inconvenience. It’s a direct barrier.

Following the survey numbers, 52% of CIOs mentioned that they are currently under pressure to reduce operational costs.

Gartner finds that CIOs who pursue clear financial outcomes from technology, especially AI, are 25% more likely to excel.

Legacy payments systems remain one of the biggest constraints on innovation for financial institutions, particularly when banks attempt to introduce new digital services.

Gartner survey suggests that launch of new products and services to become one of the most important strategic questions along the improvement of customer experience.

For card issuing teams, this often translates into several practical operational challenges.

Product launch cycles can become lengthy, as introducing a new card programme may require changes across multiple systems and teams.

Legacy infrastructure also limits flexibility, making it difficult for banks to support newer capabilities.

In many institutions, data visibility is fragmented, with card transactions, customer information, and risk controls managed across different platforms rather than through a unified view.

At the same time, heavily customised legacy environments can increase operational risk, as updates or system changes become more complex and difficult to implement without disrupting existing services.

These challenges are visible across fast-growing digital markets in Southeast Asia.

As digital commerce expands and consumers rely more heavily on mobile banking and wallets, banks need card infrastructure that can support new channels without creating additional operational complexity.

Why legacy card infrastructure creates real operational risk

Across Asia Pacific, financial institutions and national networks have faced service disruptions linked to technology limitations and growing transaction volumes.

As digital banking and payment ecosystems expand, outages in card issuing systems, payment gateways, or digital banking channels can quickly affect millions of customers.

In Singapore, OCBC Bank experienced multiple service disruptions in 2023 and 2024, affecting internet banking, mobile banking, and fund transfer services.

Customers were temporarily unable to access their accounts or perform digital transactions until the bank restored services later the same day. 

In Australia, Commonwealth Bank faced a major outage in 2025, preventing customers from accessing online banking services, ATMs, and payment channels.

Thousands of customers reported being locked out of their accounts or unable to complete transactions, leading to public complaints on social media and renewed discussions about banking system resilience. 

Even large-scale payment networks in India, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) experienced a major outage in April 2025, when transaction success rates dropped sharply for several hours due to system architecture limitations and excessive transaction verification requests from banks. 

For financial institutions, the consequences go beyond temporary inconvenience.

Service outages can trigger regulatory intervention, damage reputation, reduce customer loyalty and trust, and generate public backlash, particularly in markets across Asia Pacific where consumers expect banking services to be available in real time across mobile and digital channels.

A layered approach to modernising card infrastructure

For many financial institutions, the challenge is not whether to modernise their payments infrastructure, but how to do so without disrupting critical banking operations.

Replacing core banking systems entirely is rarely practical.

These platforms often support millions of customer accounts, payment transactions, and regulatory reporting requirements.

Large-scale system replacement projects can take years to complete which is good as a whole, but it is not without some operational risks.

As a result, many banks are adopting a more incremental approach to modernisation by introducing specialised technology layers that sit alongside existing systems.

In the context of card issuing, this often means deploying modern card management platforms that operate independently from legacy core banking infrastructure while still integrating with it where necessary.

This architecture allows banks to introduce new capabilities without requiring fundamental changes to their underlying systems.

With a more modular infrastructure in place, financial institutions can support a wider range of payment services, including virtual and physical cards, digital wallet provisioning, tokenisation, and multi-currency transactions.

New card programmes can also be configured and launched more quickly, reducing the time required to bring new products to market.

At the same time, separating card management from core banking systems can improve operational resilience.

By reducing dependencies between payment processing, digital channels, and customer account systems, banks can minimise the risk that a single technical failure disrupts multiple services.

AI-enabled platforms such as SmartVista, supports this type of architecture by enabling financial institutions to manage and launch complex modern card programmes while maintaining visibility across transactions, customer activity, and payment flows. 

For banks across Asia Pacific, this layered approach offers a practical pathway to modernisation, allowing institutions to expand digital payment capabilities while maintaining the stability of their existing infrastructure.

Examples of card modernisation across APAC

Across Asia Pacific, many financial institutions are already taking steps to modernise their card issuing infrastructure as part of broader payments transformation initiatives, and. introducing modern card management systems that allow them to expand digital payment services while maintaining operational stability.

In Cambodia, ACLEDA Bank modernised its payments infrastructure by migrating legacy systems to the SmartVista platform.

The initiative strengthened the bank’s issuing and acquiring capabilities and enabled support for debit, credit, and virtual cards across international and domestic payment schemes.

The transformation also supported rapid growth in card usage, with the bank’s debit card base expanding from around 1.4 million in 2021 to more than 2 million by 2024, a sharp 42% increase.

Similarly, in Myanmar, KBZ Bank modernised its issuing and acquiring infrastructure through a unified payments platform, enabling the bank to introduce MPU and UPI debit and credit cards while expanding its card portfolio significantly.

Following the deployment, the bank’s card base grew to more than 2.3 million debit cards, representing roughly 4% of the country’s population holding a KBZ-issued card.

In Vietnam, PVcomBank has taken a long-term approach to modernising its payments and card infrastructure through its partnership with BPC, migrating from legacy system.

The bank has migrated over 1 million cards to a modern SmartVista platform, strengthening its issuing capabilities with innovative debit, credit and prepaid card propositions and securing its payment operations to support the evolving demands of modern banking in the country. 

More recently, in Sri Lanka, Hatton National Bank (HNB) introduced debit card tokenisation for Google Wallet, allowing customers to use their cards seamlessly for contactless and mobile payments.

Leveraging next-generation SmartVista card management solution for quite a while, the bank was able to reach 2.5 million of cards in circulation.

The Google wallet integration builds on that momentum. HNB reports customer satisfaction at 87.4%, with digital users now at 2 million, a figure the bank expects to rise further as new payment functionality becomes available to more customers.

Together, these developments strengthen HNB’s position as a digital disruptor in Sri Lanka’s banking sector, enabling it to deliver faster, more seamless experiences while supporting broader participation in the digital economy.

Across the region, these initiatives reflect a broader industry trend.

Banks are modernising card management capabilities as part of wider payments transformation efforts, allowing them to support growing digital transaction volumes, integrate with emerging payment channels, and respond more quickly to evolving customer expectations.

A practical path forward

As payments ecosystems continue to evolve across Asia Pacific, banks will need to make strategic decisions about how best to modernise their technology infrastructure.

For some institutions, this may involve large-scale core system transformations, while others may choose more incremental approaches that allow new capabilities to be introduced alongside existing platforms.

Modernising card management capabilities has become an important part of this process.

By strengthening the systems that support card issuing, digital wallet integration, and payment processing, banks can expand their ability to deliver new products and services while maintaining operational stability.

As adoption of digital payments accelerates across the region, institutions that invest in flexible and scalable payment infrastructure will be better positioned to support emerging payment models, adapt to changing customer expectations, and participate in the next phase of growth in Asia Pacific’s digital economy.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Malaysia, based on image by BPC