The future of card-based payments in a real-time world: What banks can do to stay ahead

For decades, card-based payments have sat comfortably at the heart of financial services. They’ve been dependable, secure, and universally accepted - shaping how we shop, make payments, and interact with the digital economy. Cards played a vital role in steering us away from cash and towards a more digital-first mindset, and for that, they deserve credit.

The rise of Real-Time Payments (RTP)

However, that dominance is no longer guaranteed. A quiet revolution is underway, and it’s being led by Real-Time Payments (RTP) - systems that enable the instant transfer of funds between bank accounts, 24/7, with settlement occurring within seconds. Globally, infrastructures like SEPA Instant in Europe, FedNow in the United States, Aani in the UAE, and Pix in Brazil are gaining momentum. Pix alone now exceeds 6 billion transactions per month, according to the latest Pix by the Numbers report - an astonishing scale that shows how rapidly RTP is reshaping the payments landscape.

These systems offer clear advantages: they are instantaneous, always available, and often significantly cheaper than traditional card payments. Much of the cost savings come from bypassing the intermediaries and complex fee structures associated with card networks, relying instead on direct bank-to-bank transfers.

Thanks to improvements in banking technology, regulatory frameworks that encourage innovation, and modernisation of payment infrastructures, the constraints that once made card networks the default option are starting to fall away. In fact, according to Statista, the value of transactions processed using RTP technology is projected to grow by a staggering 289 percent between 2023 and 2030, underscoring the dramatic shift underway in global payment ecosystems.

Coexistence, not replacement

Some might wonder if this spells the end for cards. I don’t believe so. What we’re witnessing isn’t the demise of card-based payments, but a shift in their role. RTP is quickly gaining ground in areas like person-to-person payments and lending models such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), where the reliance on cards is being stripped away. At the same time, cards continue to hold their ground in cross-border payments and e-commerce, where their global acceptance, fraud protection, and established networks still offer clear advantages.

The reality is that both systems - cards and RTP - are likely to coexist for the foreseeable future. But their relationship is changing. RTP is no longer a niche innovation; it’s becoming a serious contender, and this shift presents a challenge for traditional financial institutions. Many banks still operate on platforms that are fundamentally card-centric. These older systems are built around the assumption that every payment must be linked to a card, regardless of the channel. As a result, trying to plug RTP capabilities into these platforms can feel like forcing a round peg into a square hole.

Same old systems, new tricks

To work around this, some institutions have resorted to technical workarounds - creating virtual cards just to process payments that don’t actually require card networks, effectively tricking their systems into treating any payment token as a card transaction. Others have chosen to bypass their payment platforms entirely, connecting RTP infrastructure directly to their core banking systems or building entirely new layers on top. While these approaches can work in the short term, they introduce new complexities, operational risks, and long-term architectural headaches. What starts as a workaround often ends in chaos - an enterprise architecture that’s bloated, fragmented, and difficult to scale. Overlapping middleware layers, brittle integrations, and duplicated logic ultimately end up increasing technical debt instead of reducing it.

Free from the constraints of legacy systems, modern, lightweight platforms can be purpose-built for real-time use cases - whether that’s QR-based payments, open banking, real-time bill payments, tokenised transactions, or instant merchant payouts. These platforms can focus on narrow slices of the market and deliver slick, responsive services without having to worry about decades of technical debt. This is where fintechs have a significant edge.

The pivotal choice facing banks

Traditional banks, meanwhile, are at a crossroads. Over the next three to five years, they face a pivotal decision. They can either invest in transforming their payment architecture - moving towards platforms that are agile, cloud-native, and ready for real-time - or they can continue patching their legacy systems and increasingly rely on third-party providers to fill in the gaps. The first path requires upfront investment and bold thinking, but it puts banks back in control. The second path may seem easier, but it comes at a cost: reduced agility, diluted brand value, and a slide towards becoming a distribution channel for someone else’s innovation.

Cards are not disappearing, and RTP won’t fix every payment challenge overnight. But the direction of travel is clear. The future of payments will be fast, flexible, and real-time - and banks that want to stay ahead will need to do more than simply support new rails. They’ll need to rethink the very foundations of how payments are initiated, processed, and delivered.

Now is the time for bold decisions, not band-aid solutions. The institutions that act early and decisively will be the ones that define the next generation of payments - not the ones who are left adapting to it.