THE FINTECH INTERVIEW
The Apple Card partnership has handled billions of transactions. Vishal describes Apple Card as“ arguably one of the most successful card programmes in the history of card issuing”.
The company announced its CoreCard merger in July 2025, with completion expected shortly after the Money20 / 20 conference.
“ CoreCard combined with Ren gives us a comprehensive, robust, modern platform that can meet the needs of not only traditional banks but also fintech innovators,” Vishal says.
He uses a quadrant framework to explain Euronet’ s competitive positioning, with one axis representing platform maturity and the other representing modern agility.“ We are fortunate to be on the positive side of both, which puts us in a unique and differentiated space,” he explains.
Addressing the patching problem Many banks operate on technology platforms built 30 or 40 years ago, creating fundamental obstacles when launching products those systems were never designed to support. Short-term instalments, BNPL, digital wallets and tokenisation require capabilities legacy cores simply cannot provide.
Oscar observes that numerous organisations attempt superficial fixes by layering fintech solutions over outdated infrastructure.
“ The reality is that’ s only adding complexity to a problem already,” he says.“ The only real solution is that you have to have a path to migrating to a truly modern platform.”
However, migration cannot disrupt existing operations. For banks operating legacy platforms, Vishal recommends an adjunct approach rather than complete replacement. Institutions can launch new programmes or verticals on the modern platform, operationalise the new system, then gradually migrate existing card programmes.
“ There’ s an overwhelming desire to modernise, but also an overwhelming fear to modernise just because of what it takes to migrate out of a platform,” Vishal reveals.
“ Dip your feet in with a new platform, put a new programme on it, or a new vertical. Perhaps if you offer consumer cards through legacy technology, you could offer commercial cards through a new platform.”
The challenge intensifies for organisations managing substantial transaction volumes. Oscar uses a vivid analogy to describe the difficulty.“ Anyone can fix a highway that has no traffic. When no cars are passing, it’ s easy to fix it,” he says.
“ But when you have millions of transactions running to that highway and you need to fix it while you’ re creating new exits and new paths to modernisation, that requires different skills.”
Microservices enabling phased migration Euronet’ s microservices architecture enables targeted implementations without forcing clients to adopt comprehensive platform suites. The microservices span issuing solutions
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