The servicing paradox: Why banks are building platforms through customer problems, not tech strategies
- Major banks are transforming into API-first platforms.
- But unlike the fintech noise of previous years, this shift is happening through deliberate infrastructure plays rather than flashy product launches.
While banks announce AI deployments and digital transformations, the real platform shift is happening through something more mundane: solving customer servicing headaches one API call at a time.
Banks have a servicing problem masquerading as a platform opportunity. You won’t read the evidence in their press releases, but you can see it in how they’re actually solving operational friction for business customers who want banking to work well.
American Express exemplifies this quiet evolution. The company’s “One Amex” servicing model isn’t pitched as a platform play, yet it functions exactly like one. Clients access corporate cards, working capital solutions, payment automation, and merchant services through unified touchpoints that span their entire business relationship. The platform emerged from customer need, not strategic planning.
The AI deployment reality check
The gap between platform marketing and platform delivery becomes obvious when examining banks’ AI initiatives. Major institutions like Bank of America, Citizens, and J.P. Morgan actively deploy generative AI tools for employee productivity, yet nearly 70% of AI use cases lack reported outcomes or measurable ROI.
The disconnect stems from familiar challenges: difficulty separating AI impact from overall growth, problems mapping cost benefits from internal efficiency gains, and an inability to translate technological capabilities into customer value. Banks deploy AI tools but struggle to demonstrate platform-level transformation.
Learning from digital banking’s platform evolution
The digital banking sector provides instructive lessons. Companies like Chime, SoFi, and Nubank took different approaches to becoming platforms, with varying degrees of success.
Chime built a platform around interchange fees and basic banking services, achieving profitability but facing questions about sustainable differentiation. SoFi expanded from student loans into full banking, recently experimenting with the Bitcoin Lightning Network for remittances. Nubank scaled to over 100 million customers across Latin America with a platform that prioritizes relationship depth over breadth.
Each approach reflects different theories about platform value creation, but all succeed by solving real customer problems rather than building technology for its own sake.
The most successful platform transformations happen quietly, through improved servicing rather than announced strategies. Banks with long-term ambitions are prioritizing pain points in the customer journey over technology theatrics.