The Architecture of Modern Neobanking: Why Legacy Cores are the Biggest Barrier to Financial Inclusion

The traditional banking system is gradually hitting a technological wall. This isn’t due to market competition or regulatory factors. The stumbling block is organizations’ outdated IT infrastructure, unable to meet the needs of modern users.

Thus, most traditional banks continue to operate on Legacy Cores. These are banking cores that were developed 20 or more years ago. They were designed for a bygone era. Back then, there was a need to ensure batch processing of transactions, overnight clearing, and limited business hours.

Today, people live in a 24/7 environment year-round, and they expect the same from the financial sector. Unfortunately, banks are unable to provide this.

The problem isn’t rooted in the mobile app interface. Unfortunately, legacy financial systems don’t support full-fledged real-time settlement. Consequently, their architecture isn’t adapted to the ISO 20022 standard, which is becoming a fundamental requirement for the efficient operation of international payment systems.

Statistics show that by early 2026, over 80% of global interbank messages will already be transitioning to the ISO 20022 standard. Banks that fail to modernize their core systems are forced to find complex workarounds. This increases operating costs by 20-30% and slows down the launch of new products.

Global changes in the world of technology are driving innovation in the banking sector. Large banks spend millions of dollars annually maintaining their legacy systems. The launch of a new cloud-native banking infrastructure allows for a 30-50% reduction in operating costs thanks to automation, scalability, and the elimination of physical data centers.

As real-world experience shows, Legacy Core is the main barrier to financial inclusion. The system cannot process micropayments in real time or efficiently handle different asset types. It is also unable to serve new client categories, namely freelancers, migrants, and digital businesses.

The problem of asset fragmentation

Today, the profile of a modern client is characterized by the following elements:

• separate account for fiat funds;
• separate account for international transfers;
• separate platforms for storing other financial instruments;
• separate systems for corporate liquidity.

This fragmentation creates delays, increases operational risks, and complicates treasury management. Every capital movement between systems creates additional clearing fees, commissions, and even introduces the risk of new errors.

For businesses, such complexities directly translate into a loss of cross-border payment efficiency. Estimates for 2025 indicate that the average international settlement time in traditional systems was up to two banking days. Digital models can reduce this time to minutes and even seconds.

The best solution is to launch a unified digital core. It can consolidate all capital flows into a single ledger. This is not only a convenient servicing mechanism but also a fundamentally new foundation for an effective banking architecture.

Technological solution: the next generation of banking cores

A modern neobank is an engineering system built on the principle of API-first architecture.

This model assumes the following key principles:

• each function is available through a standardized API;
• modules can be easily integrated with fintech services;
• new products are launched in weeks, not years.

However, the foundation is not the frontend, or even the API.

The challenge for emerging neobanks is the underlying ability to handle multi-asset ledgers in real-time. To bridge this gap, many institutions are now turning to next-generation digital banking cores that allow for the seamless integration of various asset classes into a single ledger. This architectural shift enables faster settlements and more flexible treasury management.

The next generation of banking cores is being built as a cloud-native banking infrastructure with support for:

• multi-asset registries;
• real-time transaction processing;
• automated business logic;
• scaling without stopping the system.

This is the basis for the development of programmable finance. This is a system where payments are made automatically when certain conditions are met (e.g., product delivery, contract fulfillment, KPI achievement, etc.).

Today, all major financial groups are already migrating their treasury operations to digital multi-asset ledger systems. This allows for a 40-60% reduction in internal payment approval time and a significant reduction in the number of manual checks.

Compliance and security policy as the foundation of a new banking architecture

No innovation can be effectively implemented without regulatory compliance. This is a self-evident fact. Neo banking architecture doesn’t add KYC/AML as a separate module. It embeds these mechanisms directly into the source code.

Options such as client verification, transaction monitoring, and risk limits are a necessary foundation for implementing automated business logic. A transaction cannot be executed if it violates the specified rules.

This logic illuminates a new approach to Security by Design, which includes:

• control of sanctions lists is fully automated;
• all suspicious transactions are blocked in real time;
• the audit is generated automatically thanks to full transaction tracing.

According to consulting firms’ estimates, by early 2026, the automation of AML processes in digital core systems will reduce the number of false positives by 30-40%. This will help reduce operating costs in the banking system and improve the speed of customer service.

Thus, the new architecture does not conflict with the regulations. Rather, it complements them and makes them more effective.

Conclusion

Until 2026, the traditional banking sector was essentially a place where money and assets were stored. But today, in the era of active digital transformation, it is moving to a new technological level that facilitates the movement of capital and value.

Banks that choose to keep their legacy cores running risk being slow and inefficient payment gateways.

Companies that are already actively investing in modern cloud-native banking infrastructure, API-first architecture, and multi-asset ledger systems are experiencing undeniable advantages.

Namely:

• ensuring full-fledged settlements in real time (Real-time settlement);
• increasing the efficiency of cross-border payments (Cross-border payment efficiency);
• scaling of programmable finance models;
• automation of compliance policies without increasing costs.

Financial inclusion means more than just access to an account with assets. It’s a new mechanism for implementing a fast, transparent, and integrated financial architecture. Today, a full-fledged banking transformation begins not with a sleek mobile app, but with the core banking infrastructure.