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Growth Potential COBOL, the dinosaur on our back end

With a BCP Loan nne Willem de Vries, co-founder and CEO

of payment processing platform Silverflow,
sent us the following warning about contin-
A ued use of COBOL:

"From the outside, it looks as though the payments
industry has enjoyed plenty of modernization and in-
novation," de Vries wrote. " And, to some extent, this
is true: in the past decade or so disruptors like Square,
Stripe and PayPal have made huge technological im-
provements to the front end. This has resulted in easy-
to-use, sophisticated solutions that enable merchants to
leverage the latest payments options on the market.

"However, very little has been done to improve payment
processing's back end, which runs on technology that is
older than most millennials. The global financial system
hums on an unlikely engine: COBOL, a programming
language relic of the 1960s. It powers everything from
ATM transactions to stock trades. While it has served us
well, handling trillions of dollars in transactions with-
out major system failures, its ongoing prevalence has
begun to pose a serious threat to our financial future.

"COBOL is an innovation dead-end. Integrating it with
new technologies like Open Banking, blockchain or AI
is nearly impossible. This stifles creativity and makes
it difficult for financial institutions to implement mod-
ern features that would help to meet rapidly changing
customer demands. Its age also makes it a security risk.
Vulnerabilities discovered decades ago remain ripe for
exploitation. Modern languages offer robust anti-fraud
and security features that COBOL simply can't match."
BOCA After noting that university students rarely learn CO-
CAPITAL BOL anymore, compounding the problems, he contin-
PARTNERS ued, "The COBOL crutch we lean on is starting to wob-
ble, and ignoring the issue won't make it disappear. ...
We need a coordinated, industry-wide effort to migrate
critical financial systems away from outdated technolo-
Get a loan from $100,000 to gies. As technology providers, we have a duty to show
$5,000,000 for your ISO today people that there is no need to rely on legacy systems
anymore by creating accessible, functional alternatives
that are genuinely fit for the future."
Back-end solutions?
Call Now: 844-531-4957 What technology solutions do you see replacing CO-
bocacapitalpartners.com BOL to improve the security, speed and sustainability
of our financial system? Tell us at greensheet@greensheet.
com.
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