The first credit card was created by the company now known as Bank of America 53 years ago; the methods used to calculate interest are unchanged in 53 years, and according to Patrick Wright, chief technology and operations officer at the National Australia Bank (NAB), they're unlikely to change for another 53 years.
According to Wright, it doesn't make sense for a bank that's trying to stay ahead of the digital disruption curve to focus on something that isn't customer-facing, and does the job, despite it being half a century old.
"If I have a core system that works, that calculates interest and does good record keeping for my customers, and I can create APIs around it, why would I spend the time, effort, and money changing it?" Wright told ZDNet.
"I'm going to choose to innovate around my customer rather than become an internally focused company -- it's far better for me and it's better for my people, as they want to innovate around the customer, they don't want to go work on a backend system that's 53 years old.
"Honestly, it's not going to move the needle, what's going to move the needle is creating customer value propositions that are compelling and different and interesting, not changing how interest is calculated on a credit card."
Read also: NAB sinks more funding into innovation through NAB Labs[1]
Wright joined NAB in February [2] last year, leaving his tenure as global chief Operations & Technology at Barclays in the United States.
Speaking with ZDNet during the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Sydney Summit, he touched on the monolithic processes in place at the bank, revealing NAB wants