Closing the Gap: How Fintechs Can Level Up Without Starting Over

Most fintech platforms don’t fail because of missing features.

They fail because of friction in design, onboarding, integration, upgrades, and support. And that friction usually comes from needing to close what we call the practice gap – your team’s competency in modern UX, architecture, continuous releases, and their willingness to adapt.

At Praxent, we recently analyzed over 500 reviews of top fintech platforms. One pattern stood out:

The best platforms didn’t just ship features. They removed friction.

They delivered:

• Interfaces teams wanted to use
• Faster updates
• Easier onboarding
• A balance of out-of-the-box and customizability
• Fewer support tickets

The good news? You don’t have to rebuild from scratch to get there.

You just need to close the gap between potential and experience.

What the best teams are doing to close the gap:

• Refactoring key workflows off legacy front-ends (jQuery, ASP.NET, AngularJS) without tearing down the full stack. Removing the UI friction that slows adoption and compounds support costs.
• Moving high-value integrations to microservices, starting with an isolated area of the tech stack like third-party integrations and areas prone to change, enables you to isolate risk and define best practices for future migrations.
• Outsourcing UX for leverage, not just design polish. The best teams bring in partners (like Praxent) who can establish a modern UX foundation:
  • User + stakeholder research
  • Scalable modern design systems
  • Modular UI components
  • Visual consistency across front office and admin tools
• Allocating ownership to UX from day one, whether in-house or through a trusted partner, because when no one owns design, it decays.
• Embedding configurability into common use cases—so clients can adapt the platform without vendor tickets or change orders.
• Improving release hygiene with feature flags, sandbox environments, opt-in rollouts, and better documentation—lowering the burden on internal and client-facing teams.

Where it’s heading: AI-Enhanced Core Modernization

For many platforms, closing the gap starts at the architectural layer.

Praxent engineers are helping fintechs accelerate modernizing legacy systems using AI-enhanced code analysis to:

• Identify buried business logic
• Detect edge cases in legacy code before they break
• Accelerate code mapping and dependency resolution
• Prevent regressions that slow down stakeholder sign-off

The outcome?

Modernization without rework.

Velocity without breaking trust.

The takeaway:

You don’t need a total rebuild.

You need to fix the friction.

Fintech platforms that win in 2025 won’t just have more features. They’ll be the ones that feel fast, configurable, transparent, and trustworthy—everywhere the client touches them.

Download the full whitepaper: What Sets Market-Leading Fintech Platforms Apart

Want to identify the friction points in your platform? Let’s talk.