Payments infrastructure in 2026: strengthening the core

As real-time payments scale, banks are reassessing core infrastructure for resilience, sovereign control, built-in security, and AI in 2026.

At Payments Unleashed EMEA, one theme stood out: payments infrastructure is no longer being discussed as back-office technology. It is increasingly viewed as critical national and economic infrastructure, alongside energy, cloud, and telecommunications. In her interview with The Paypers, Meredith Stowell, Vice President, IBM Z Ecosystem, argues that the market is shifting away from innovation for its own sake and towards resilience, trust, and execution at scale.

That shift matters because the systems often described as 'legacy' still sit at the centre of modern finance. Stowell notes that mainframes underpin 87% of credit card transactions and 70% of financial transaction value by volume. In that context, the strategic question for banks and payment providers is not simply whether to replace the core, but whether replacement is the right model at all.

Resilience and speed move to the forefront

As instant payments expand and fraud becomes more sophisticated, infrastructure is increasingly judged in milliseconds. Stowell points to IBM’s latest platform as capable of running more than 450 billion inferences a day at 1 millisecond latency, enabling AI models to operate where transaction data already resides. For payments providers, that is significant: fraud detection is only useful if it can be applied inside the transaction flow without adding friction.

Security, in this view, also becomes architectural rather than procedural. Stowell highlights pervasive encryption for data at rest and in flight as a built-in capability rather than an added control. The implication is straightforward: as transaction volumes rise, institutions need security that scales with the infrastructure rather than depending on manual intervention.

Sovereignty and efficiency reshape modernisation

The interview also reflects a wider change in infrastructure priorities. Confidential computing and hardware-protected enclaves are positioned as responses to growing data sovereignty demands, particularly where regulated data must remain protected even from privileged users. Combined with in-country deployment options, this approach speaks directly to institutions navigating tighter rules around control, transparency, and resilience.

Operational resilience strengthens that case. Stowell contrasts public cloud service levels of roughly three nines with mainframe certification at eight nines, equivalent to about 315 milliseconds of downtime a year. For essential payment services, that gap is not incremental; it is material.

There is also an efficiency argument. Stowell says that consolidating x86 workloads onto LinuxONE can reduce energy use by up to 75% and floor space by 67%. The broader conclusion is that modernisation need not mean ripping out the core. Increasingly, it means strengthening it, then building AI and new payment capabilities around it.

About Meredith Stowell

Meredith is the VP of Ecosystem for IBM Z and LinuxONE helping to build a vibrant, skilled community of clients, partners, job seekers, and influencers. She and her team work with clients, universities, students, professional developers and partners around the world to build critical IT skills needed in the marketplace by IBM and the broader ecosystem. She leads outreach activities, including datathons, user chapters, and trial programs, to increase awareness of the platform, and delivers ISV and GSI programs to build a diverse ecosystem of solutions supported on the IBM Z and LinuxONE platforms, as well as service partners supporting clients. She has worked with a broad range of IBM software solutions, and much of her background is in the analytics field where she worked as a business analyst, enterprise implementation consultant, program manager, and leader for Business Analytics technical and sales enablement.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.