Addressing the Payments tech skills gaps

In July 2021 we spoke to 600 CTOs and CIOs at Banks, FinTechs and Payments businesses across the UK, DACH, and Benelux regions. Published in a new white paper: Futureproofing Payments Tech: The challenges facing CIOs and CTOs, the results revealed the challenges faced by tech decision-makers in 2021.

Despite being generally optimistic about the future, the CIO and CTO respondents were less confident that their organisation is ready to take on the future in terms of recruitment. This lack of confidence is a concern because 60% of our respondents hope to increase the size of their payments IT team in the coming year.

One motivation behind taking on additional employees is the need to plug skills gaps. 

The most common gap was in Cloud skills, where 60% of FinTechs and PSPs lack experienced team members. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) were close behind at 53%. Interestingly, though, when we asked which were the most crucial skills for their teams in the next year, just 39% of PSPs and FinTechs included Cloud skills in their top three; the same percentage cited AI/ML. 

Organisations recognise their weakness in these areas, but they are not rushing to fix the issue, suggesting that they may not fully appreciate the opportunities the technologies can provide for boosting performance and improving customer experience.

Working in partnership with external providers like Banking Circle can help fill these skills gaps can, utilising third-party expertise rather than through in-house recruitment. Digitalisation is achieved far more quickly and without the need to build a new team or infrastructure, helping organisations remain competitive whilst reducing stress on any one individual or team.

To discover more of the survey findings, download the white paper here.