Celent has issued a new report, entitled Decoding Card Issuing and Processing Solutions: Partnering for Success in Payments.
This concludes the series of reports Celent published over the last few months on card issuing and processing market, which also included:
- Very detailed profiles of 27 solutions published across 4 different editions, totalling nearly 600 pages
- Moving the Needle with Digital Cardholder Engagement: From Features to AI-First Experiences, which zooms into the current state and developments in digital cardholder engagement.
Card rails – a hotbed of innovation
The card issuing and processing market has changed dramatically over the last decade. Despite the growth of competing alternatives – from real-time payments to Buy Now Pay Later offerings – cards remain a key payments method beloved by users in many markets around the world. More importantly, cards refused to become “a stale and mature product”; instead, card rails have become the hotbed of innovation, making use of technology advances (e.g., tokenization, AI, digital assets) and new business models (e.g., embedded finance) to propel rapid change in the industry.
Much of that change to-date has been driven by a new breed of issuers – fintechs and other innovative players in the market – which keep uncovering new and sometimes unexpected opportunities to leverage cards to benefit their business. Banks are trying to keep up but many are hampered by aging technology platforms, either developed long time ago in-house, bought from a vendor, or outsourced to an established scale processor. Financial institutions increasingly recognise that this is no longer sustainable: 84% of retail banks that took part in Celent’s global survey in 2026 said that they intended to invest into card issuing and processing systems.
The good news is that card issuers willing to invest in upgrading their technology platform now have options. The question then becomes how to decide between various potential partner options, and this series of Celent reports is written to help issuers answer that question. The comprehensive analytical framework designed by Celent aims to capture the essential inputs into the issuer’s decision-making process and help highlight differentiation between potential partners.
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Report key takeaways include
Bareisis concludes that card issuers should:
- Assess their current platforms against best practice approaches and differentiated capabilities highlighted in this report.
- Have honest conversations with their current vendors to understand how their roadmaps intend to close any of those gaps, and
- Consider exploring alternatives in the broader market.
Target audience:
- Retail banks, especially Heads of Cards/ Issuing and Digital Channel Leaders
- Card issuing and processing vendors, systems integrators
- Investors, consultants
Further information on how to access the full report is available via this link
