Coexisting in Payments: How Middleware Forges Alliances Among Smaller FIs, Core Providers, and Fintechs

Small and medium-sized banks, short on the resources to rebuild their infrastructure and long frustrated by the slow pace of innovation by some core banking service providers, are benefitting from a shift in tactics. Those providers are increasingly partnering with financial data providers and other third-party fintechs to give client banks access to technological prowess they can’t necessarily scale on their own. These connections, provided through middleware solutions that wrap around banks’ core services, allow for smooth communications between systems and allow those smaller FIs to offer customers more features and better experiences.

This Javelin Strategy & Research report will lay out the growing network of partnerships among FIs, core banking providers, and financial data aggregators. It will discuss which companies are involved and what they provide and make the case for why these partnerships are crucial for financial institutions, especially those with limited resources.

Key questions discussed in this report:

• What is middleware and how does it work with a financial institution’s core banking service?
• How are middleware solutions allowing smaller and medium-sized banks to compete with larger institutions?
• What are the leading providers of middleware solutions and how do they differentiate themselves in the marketplace?

Companies Mentioned:

Boomi, Chase, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Core 10, FedNow, First Data, FIS, Fiserv, Goldman Sachs, Jack Henry & Associates (JHA), JPMorgan, Mastercard Open Banking (Finicity), MuleSoft, MX, Plaid, PortX, Venmo, Visa, Worldpay