The Green Sheet Online Edition
August 11, 2025 • 25:08:01
Why payment prep is the best defense against volatility
Markets crave certainty, and right now, it's in short supply. With President Trump's return to office resulting in sweeping new tariffs, global trade has entered a fresh cycle of volatility. The ripple effects are being felt: currency markets are reacting, supply chains are shifting and businesses are scrambling to adapt. In this new reality, the payments sector is vulnerable. The infrastructure that moves trillions across borders daily was built for stability, not for whiplash-inducing policy shifts. And yet, payments are the connective tissue of global commerce. When disruption strikes, they're among the first to feel the strain and the last to be forgiven for failure.
Now more than ever, firms need payment systems that can flex, absorb shocks and recover fast. Resilience is no longer a regulatory checkbox. It's a strategic hedge against uncertainty.
Policy change meets payment fragility
Tariffs aren't just about goods; they're about money in motion. When trade routes veer and import costs surge, currency markets lurch, transaction volumes seesaw, fraudsters spot openings and processing fees spike. For payments firms, those macro shocks roll together into a single pressure wave. Sudden exchange rate changes clog settlement pipelines and leave reconciliation teams chasing ghosts. Cross-border volumes can swell overnight or evaporate, overwhelming platforms architected for yesterday's traffic patterns.
Meanwhile, every jurisdiction writes its own rulebook in response to Washington's tariff regime, layering fresh compliance puzzles on top of technical strain. Consumers, feeling the jitters, either frontload big-ticket buys or slam the brakes entirely… twisting demand curves beyond recognition.
That turbulence converges on a network that must run in real time with near-zero tolerance for failure, conditions that demand a prepper mindset: anticipating volatility, embedding redundancy at every layer, and rehearsing responses long before the next policy shock hits.
Regulation is raising the stakes
Layer on top of this the evolving regulatory landscape. In the UK, the FCA's operational resilience regime echoes many of these requirements. Firms must demonstrate they've mapped their most crucial services, defined "impact tolerances" and proven their ability to stay within them during disruptions. The EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which came into effect in January, elevated expectations for how financial entities, including payments firms, manage risk, test for failure and protect their digital ecosystems.
While there isn't a single, direct U.S. equivalent to the DORA, the United States has its own set of regulations and frameworks aimed at ensuring the operational resilience of financial institutions, such as the FFIEC guidelines, NIST CSF and NIST SP800-53. In all jurisdictions, the message is clear: it's not enough to prevent failure; you must plan for it and demonstrate readiness in the face of real-world events.
Enter the prepper mindset
This is where payment prepping comes into play. The term "prepper" might conjure images of bunkers and freeze-dried meals, but during the pandemic, it was those with a plan who weathered the chaos best. They had fallback options, clear protocols and the flexibility to adapt when others were caught flat-footed. That mindset—rooted in preparation, not panic—is exactly what payments firms now need. Today, resilience isn't just about having backups. It's about building continuity into every layer of operations. If one provider fails, another must pick up the load instantly and invisibly. That means understanding exactly who your upstream vendors are, how critical they are and what happens if they go dark.
But awareness alone isn't enough. Crisis response must be rehearsed, not improvised. Playbooks should be tested under pressure, with clear roles across compliance, communications, recovery and customer service. When the unexpected happens, every team must know what to do, and how fast.
Resilience also needs to cut across silos. This isn't a technology problem, it's an organizational one. Operations, engineering, risk, legal and support all have a stake in keeping services online when systems are strained. Coordination across teams must be practiced well before the pressure is on. Payment prepping isn't worst-case paranoia; it's strategic foresight. It's about building the capacity not just to bounce back, but to stay running through volatility and change.
Supply chains and systems are intertwined
Instability triggered by tariffs and trade policy doesn't just affect goods in transit; it affects data, too. A manufacturer rerouting a supply chain from China to Mexico or Vietnam may also reroute its payments partners, payment types, currencies and timelines. That introduces new partners, systems and rules, many of which need to be onboarded quickly and securely.
If your payments system can't onboard new partners fast, support different payment rails, or adapt to regional compliance, you're leaving yourself exposed. And in a world of rolling economic shocks, from tariffs to tech failures to geopolitical tensions, agility is resilience.
Amid this turbulence, some firms are still stuck in compliance mode, treating resilience as a checkbox for regulators. But the most future-ready companies see resilience as a trust enabler. Because when times are uncertain, customers remember who stayed online. They remember who didn't miss payroll, who settled their invoice and who protected their funds. Resilience builds trust and trust builds business. It's that simple.
Preparing for the next disruption
So, what does payment prepping look like in practice?
- Audit your dependencies: Identify every external service you rely on, from cloud providers to KYC vendors. Know who they rely on, too.
- Map your tolerances: What level of downtime or degradation can you tolerate for critical services? What are you doing to stay within those limits?
- Run real-world tests: Tabletop exercises are useful, but live simulations and red-team scenarios are better.
- Modernize where it counts: Legacy systems can't flex. If your core infrastructure can't scale or shift with market needs, it's time to invest.
- Train your people: In a crisis, your team is your greatest asset or your weakest link. Make sure they know the playbook and can execute under pressure.
Resilience is the strategy
In a world where tariffs can reshape supply chains overnight, and a single point of failure can cost billions, resilience is no longer optional. It's foundational. Regulators are demanding it, markets are testing it and customers are expecting it. Payment prepping isn't about surviving disruption, it's about thriving through it by building systems, teams and cultures that are ready for whatever comes next. In today's global economy, preparedness isn't just protection – it's power. 
Robin Anderson is head of product management at Tribe Payments, https://tribepayments.com/acquirer-solutions. Contact him via LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/robincanderson.
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