In payments, the complexity is often the product itself. The systems that move money across banks, networks, processors and merchants have been built over decades, and while newcomers often portray legacy infrastructure as outdated baggage, quickly CEO Justin Benson He argues that the reality is much more nuanced.
Speaking during a PYMNTS “What’s Next in Payments” interview that focused on infrastructure, Benson said the industry often positions legacy technology as something to escape from rather than something to help build modern commerce in the first place.
“I think older infrastructure is always an advantage,” Benson said.
This perspective runs counter to the common fintech narrative that legacy payments systems automatically pose a barrier to innovation. Instead, Benson argued that many incumbent providers have been able to survive precisely because they have solved some of the toughest problems in payments.
“When you think about payments, you think about things like security,” Benson said. “You think about things like availability of scale. You think about things like data and insights.”
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He pointed out that the real tension does not arise from the infrastructure itself, but from the business models built around it.
Control versus simplicity
Benson described payments as a constant struggle between control and simplicity. Merchants want easy-to-use payment systems, but they also want more authority over how their payment groups work.
This tension has helped create a payments orchestration market, where platforms like Spreedly exist between multiple merchants and payment providers to help route, optimize and manage transactions without forcing businesses into a single ecosystem.
“The curators have fundamentally challenged this assumption that simplicity is a trade-off for control,” Benson told PYMNTS.
He pointed to the rise of companies like Stripe, Square and Braintree, which initially gained traction by simplifying payments into streamlined, integrated services. But as merchants expanded globally and became more sophisticated, many wanted greater flexibility in terms of routing, service providers, and economics.
This shift has created a space for format providers that promise traders simplicity and optionality. The format works with legacy infrastructure rather than replacing it, removing complexity while allowing merchants to maintain more direct control over their payment processes, Benson said.
Why do startups compete differently?
Benson also noted that newer companies often gain advantages because they are not burdened by older business expectations.
He said legacy providers often operate from a defensive position because they have already established revenue streams, profitability targets and investor expectations to protect.
In contrast, startups can price aggressively and simplify offerings because they are not constrained by legacy operating models.
“There’s a running joke that some of the highest-paid engineers work on COBOL systems,” he said. “These systems are highly flexible, tested and reliable.”
This dynamic means that the so-called “legacy problem” is often less about technology and more about competing priorities within the executive group, he said.
“It might actually be a CRO problem or a CFO problem or a CEO problem,” Benson said.
The impact of artificial intelligence on legacy infrastructure
Artificial intelligence can reshape this debate.
AI has the potential to reduce one of the biggest historical advantages for newer fintech companies: easier integrations and cleaner developer experiences, Benson said. AI tools may allow merchants to overcome outdated interfaces and documentation that made older providers difficult to use.
“There may be a renaissance for legacy providers,” Benson said.
Meanwhile, AI systems rely heavily on large amounts of high-quality data, an area where established payments companies may have significant advantages due to their size and transaction history.
However, Benson warned that AI will not eliminate trade tensions around ownership, monetization and risk.
He pointed to agent trade as an example. Technically, independent agents can already work on top of existing payment paths, he said. The bigger questions include responsibility, economics and control of transactions.
“The whole question is who owns the deal,” Benson said. “What happens if there is a chargeback? How will I be able to monetize this?”
Ultimately, Benson argued, incumbents may underestimate the extent to which innovation depends on commercial reinvention rather than pure technological substitution.
“Incumbents may be focusing too much on the technology gap and less on the business relationship gap,” he said.
For an industry obsessed with replacing legacy systems, Benson’s message was markedly different: the infrastructure itself may already be good enough. The real challenge is determining how to modernize the business models that lead them.
“Old infrastructure is very valuable,” Benson said, describing it as “usually useful.”
