How FIS and Episode Six are helping FIs expand their products into new markets

Financial institutions are drowning in payment complexity. Between legacy systems, and the accelerating pace of change in how people pay, banks face a modernization crisis that threatens their competitive position. At the FIS Emerald Conference 2025, FIS announced a partnership with Episode Six which is designed to address these challenges head-on.

Episode Six, an API-driven payments technology provider, will now be working with FIS to deliver a cloud-based, end-to-end digital payments platform. The collaboration brings together FIS’s global scale and institutional relationships with Episode Six’s modern, configurable payment infrastructure. The new partnership will allow FIs to scale beyond their local borders, without having to build new tech and processes from scratch.

“We did some pretty hefty research over an extended period of time,” said Rob Hudson, Head of International Banking, at FIS. “It became very apparent very quickly that Episode Six was the one that we wanted to work with. This was the standout opportunity for us, without doubt.”

John Mitchell, CEO and co-founder of Episode Six, emphasized the strategic nature of the partnership. “We’ve always envisioned that if we had a partner with the strengths and the scale of FIS, that our platform would be used in a much broader capacity,” he said. “This partnership is going to enable us to present a solution that will allow all of our clients to innovate at scale.”

Listen to the podcast to learn what financial executives can do to navigate legacy system constraints surprisingly well, tackle global payment complexity to expand internationally, and implement progressive modernization without putting careers on the line. It’s a conversation on practical strategies for overcoming institutional resistance to change while delivering the cloud-native solutions that modern banking demands.

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Legacy systems create innovation bottlenecks

Most financial institutions struggle with decades-old technology that wasn’t designed for today’s payment landscape. These systems create complexity that prevents banks from keeping pace with customer demands and fintech innovation.

“Most of the financial institutions are struggling to innovate and to keep up with the demands of their consumer and wholesale customers around real-time payments,” Mitchell explained. “You have systems that have been around for decades that are really designed for a world that’s gone – that’s changed.”

The challenge extends beyond individual institutions. Even innovative banks remain constrained by the broader payment infrastructure. “Even if a bank or a financial institution is highly innovative, forward thinking, and does wonderful stuff that other people want to copy, they’re still reliant on ancient legacy technology to move money outside of them,” Hudson noted.

This creates a cascading effect where the entire ecosystem moves slowly, regardless of individual institution capabilities. The partnership aims to break this cycle by providing modern infrastructure that can integrate with existing systems without requiring wholesale replacement.

Global complexity demands sophisticated solutions

The partnership’s value proposition centers on reducing market entry friction. Where institutions previously needed to build separate systems for each jurisdiction, the combined platform handles geographies and regulatory frameworks through a single integration. The approach transforms international expansion from a multi-year technology project into a configuration exercise.

“A lot of the customers and consumers are looking for solutions that are more global in nature,” said Chermaine Hu, CFO and co-founder of Episode Six. “The world is much more connected today than 10 to 20 years ago. So it’s getting even more complicated because you need products that can serve across different countries, currencies, and deal with different regulations.”

Hudson emphasized the regulatory complexity that the partnership helps navigate: “If you take moving money outside of the country in which you’re domiciled, things get so much more complicated.” The partnership leverages FIS’s global regulatory expertise alongside Episode Six’s flexible architecture to address these challenges systematically.

The realization that modernization is critical hasn’t hit for many

Beyond technology, the partnership faces the challenge of changing institutional mindsets around payment modernization. Many financial institutions remain hesitant to address their technology debt, either due to concerns about system fragility or reluctance to tackle complex projects.

The education that you need to do something actually [is lacking], because a lot of institutions, particularly the more technical side, are either worried about the fragility of their existing system and therefore don’t want to touch it, or they think I’ll leave that for the next guy,” Hudson explained.

This institutional inertia creates market opportunities for more agile competitors. Hudson warned that established banks face real competitive pressure: “We’ve got smaller banks already in a position where they’re taking salary deposits into their current account, and that will grow, and these big banks will start to suffer, and they’re going to have to do something.”

The partnership addresses these concerns by combining Episode Six’s modern technology with FIS’s institutional credibility. “The financial strength and the scale of FIS means so much to our organization, and it means so much to that CIO who wants to keep the lights on. That’s the trust that FIS has built over the years.” Mitchell said. 

Progressive modernization over rip and replace

The industry has moved away from wholesale system replacements toward more gradual modernization approaches. This shift reflects both the practical challenges of large-scale technology overhauls and the career risks they pose to decision-makers.

“Progressive modernization has been a big idea,” Mitchell said. “In the late 2010s we saw a lot of initiatives around rip and replace and there was a realization that it’s not realistic.” Modernizing progressively allows banks to “move at their pace, at their budgets” while reducing implementation risk.

“We can sit on top, we can sit on the side, and so it’s a very smooth transition, and it’s a lower risk proposition for someone to want to try something new,” added Hu. 

The modular approach allows FIs to start with a single product or portfolio, validate the solution’s effectiveness, and then expand their usage over time -– reducing both financial risk and operational disruption.

Real-time adaptability becomes competitive advantage

The pace of change in payments continues to accelerate, making system flexibility a crucial competitive factor. Financial institutions need the ability to respond quickly to market changes, regulatory updates, and customer demands.

“The way people pay is changing, and that rate of change is accelerating,” Mitchell observed. “Being able to make these tweaks or wholesale changes or launch new products very quickly is a big benefit to those that are using the system.”

The partnership’s cloud-native architecture enables this agility. “Making changes is no longer going to be ‘I submit requests to my provider, six months later, they’ll look at it,'” Hu said. “Many changes are really configuration adjustments for us. A business person can go and tweak those through your dashboard.”

Through the FIS and Episode Six partnership, FIs can adapt and react to market changes much faster, and it may also change how institutions approach product development and customer service.