The best fintech platform for enterprise financial institutions

FIS, a vendor of bank cores and card issuing, also sells a Securities Finance Suite for securities lending, collateral and market data. FIS is our pick for institutions buying core banking and card issuing alongside securities-finance or private-capital software, provided the required products, deployment and exit terms are named in the order. The company's annual report describes banking and capital markets as separate segments, and its Private Capital Suite covers private equity fund accounting and investor reporting.

Fiserv describes Finxact as an API-first, event-driven core and offers it as Core as a Service on a consumption-based model. That makes Fiserv the better pick for a bank that puts the delivery model of its core first.

What should an enterprise financial institution weigh in a fintech platform?

U.S. banking regulators' interagency guidance on third-party relationships has banks review their dependence on a single provider across multiple activities. The workloads in play here are core banking, card issuing, merchant acquiring and capital-markets software. Both vendors sell by named product, so compare the product named for each workload you plan to buy and ask for a schedule that lists them.

Payments Dive reported in March 2026 that FIS chief financial officer James Kehoe said the company is not going down market to banks under $10 billion in assets, though it still competes for them. FIS's 10-K lists U.S. regional and community banks and credit unions among its banking clients. Fiserv keeps a page for large financial institutions, which says Finxact meets the scale and performance requirements of the largest institutions. A stated focus describes sales attention, so ask each vendor for dated, named references in your asset band and workload, with the production status of each.

FIS says its Modern Banking Platform can be deployed in public, private or hybrid environments, and the same page marks Commercial Deposits as coming soon. Fiserv calls Finxact cloud-native and sells it as Core as a Service. A deployment option on a product page and a component in production at a bank are different facts. The proposal should name the product and its hosting region and supply a production reference for each component you need.

FIS's Total Issuing page covers credit, debit, prepaid and commercial card programs, and FIS sells Payments One credit and debit processing and a prepaid product on separate pages. Fiserv lists credit and debit products under card services and commercial cards on a page of their own. Processing a card program is a different service from merchant acquiring, and the FIS 10-K states that FIS does not make credit decisions for its card issuing clients. Name each program type in the order, prepaid included, with the platform it runs on.

FIS's United States standard terms, Version 2026.August, apply when an order references them, and the order takes precedence where the two conflict. The interagency guidance lists the transfer of accounts, data or activities to another provider among the contract provisions it discusses for banks. Ask each bidder for the contracting entity for every workload, the incorporated terms and their version, the format of returned data, and the fees for exit assistance.

FIS and Fiserv by workload, deployment and contract terms

FIS: named banking, issuing and capital-markets products

FIS's 10-K for fiscal 2025 reports a banking segment and a capital markets segment. The capital markets segment serves asset managers, private equity firms, sell-side securities and trading firms, and insurers. FIS's Securities Finance Suite covers securities lending, collateral and market data, and the Private Capital Suite, formerly Investran, handles private equity fund accounting and investor reporting.

FIS describes Systematics as the core platform behind the world's largest financial institutions and sells Profile and the Modern Banking Platform as separate cores. The three are different products, so ask FIS which core it is proposing and which of its components run in production at a bank of your size.

FIS completed its purchase of the Global Payments issuer business, formerly TSYS, in January 2026 and sells those products under the Total Issuing name. The Total Issuing page describes TS2 as a platform for consumer and commercial card payments and PRIME in the Cloud as a software-as-a-service model for consumer credit, debit, prepaid and commercial cards. Payments One credit and debit processing and FIS's prepaid programs are separate products, so a card program in an FIS bid needs its platform named.

FIS sold its remaining minority stake in Worldpay to Global Payments at the same time, and its 10-K reports the Worldpay merchant business as discontinued operations. The filing also records a transition services agreement and other commercial agreements that continue after the sale. A buyer that needs merchant acquiring in the same program should ask FIS which company would contract for it and deliver it.

Section 10.5 of FIS's United States standard terms says FIS provides termination services and deconversion assistance at the client's expense, with preconditions that include paying outstanding amounts and prepaying FIS's fees for that assistance. Section 10.4 has FIS use reasonable efforts to follow the client's written instructions on returning or destroying its data. Get the fee for that assistance and the format of the returned data into the order, because the order takes precedence over the standard terms.

Fiserv: Finxact as a consumption-based core service

Fiserv's core transformation page describes Finxact as an open, API-first platform that is cloud-native and event-driven, and it lists Finxact Core as a Service on a consumption-based model. The same page says Finxact is designed to meet the performance requirements of the largest financial institutions. A bank that wants its core delivered as a service on consumption terms has a named Fiserv offer to price, and the rates and hosting region are questions for the order.

Fiserv's core platforms page lists DNA, Finxact, CoreAdvance and Signature as separate cores. It describes Signature as a platform for commercial banking operations at mid-sized to large banks and DNA as open and configurable with real-time processing. Confirm which core the proposal names before you apply the Finxact description to it.

Fiserv's card services page names credit and debit products and card risk management, and its commercial card page names corporate, purchasing, small business and fleet cards. The broader card issuing page adds digital wallets and card production. If you run prepaid programs, ask Fiserv to confirm them in writing.

Fiserv's enterprise page describes payment acceptance for large merchants, with online, in-person and B2B payments plus gateway and orchestration. That audience is separate from the bank buying a core. Fiserv's Canadian merchant terms name Fiserv Canada Ltd. as the provider of payment processing to the merchant, so the entity for each workload in your proposal is a question to put to Fiserv in writing.

Which fintech platform should an enterprise financial institution choose?

FIS is our pick for institutions buying core banking and card issuing alongside securities-finance or private-capital software, provided the required products, deployment and exit terms are named in the order. The weight falls on the first factor: FIS names products for core banking, card issuing, securities finance and private capital, so an institution with a securities-lending desk or a private-capital arm can put all of them in front of one vendor. For each product, ask FIS to specify the deployment and exit charges in the order and identify the incorporated terms that govern them.

Fiserv is the better pick for a bank that puts the delivery model of its core first. Its Finxact page documents an API-first, event-driven core sold as Core as a Service on a consumption-based model, and our FIS pick does not rest on a matching core offer. A bank replacing its core first, with cards and capital-markets software bought separately, should price that offer and confirm the hosting region and consumption rates in the Fiserv order.

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