Credit Card Integration Following an M&A Deal
Leading capability buildout across four fraud, identity, and authentication products at the receiving bank as a credit card program moves between banks, preserving the cardholder experience.
- Program
- 24-month program
- Role
- Program lead at the receiving bank
- Scope
- Capability buildout across four products in fraud, identity, and authentication
A new bank behind the same card.
Following an M&A deal, move the card’s backend capabilities to the receiving bank while preserving the cardholder experience.
One card, supported by the previous bank.
Behind the card are capabilities that check for fraud, verify identity, and support authentication. An M&A deal means those backend capabilities need to move to another bank.
At a glance
Following an M&A deal, a credit card program is moving its backend capabilities from one bank to another. The receiving bank needs to build capabilities across its products so cardholders can continue to have the same end user experience they had with the previous bank.
I am the program lead at the receiving bank, leading delivery of that capability buildout across four products spanning fraud, identity, and authentication within a 24-month integration program. My focus is the roadmap, requirements intake, dependencies, delivery priorities, and a clear view of progress for leadership. The product and engineering teams own technical design and implementation.
The project
This is a complex bank-to-bank credit card integration. The backend services supporting the card are changing banks, while the goal is to preserve the existing cardholder experience. That requires the receiving bank to build and integrate the capabilities needed to support the incoming card program.
My workstream covers four products across fraud, identity, and authentication. Each product has its own capability requirements and delivery milestones, with dependencies connecting upstream and downstream products. The buildout, integration, and testing need to come together to support the transition.
My role
As program lead for the receiving bank’s four-product capability buildout, I lead cross-product delivery. My responsibilities include:
- Reporting workstream status to leadership.
- Creating a roadmap of activities and milestones.
- Hosting requirements intake and working sessions between upstream and downstream product groups.
- Organizing dependencies, navigating blockers, and helping teams prioritize delivery.
Day to day, I keep the work moving and give the teams and leadership a clear view of what needs to happen next.
A challenge along the way
Two sprints before a deployment deadline, a new integration dependency reached our team. We needed to connect with an upstream product to support accelerated testing.
I helped coordinate requirements intake, clarify the scope, and work with the team to size the effort. Together with the upstream technology team, we identified the minimum build needed for that milestone.
The technical priorities were API connectivity and contract testing: checking that the products exchanged requests and responses in the agreed format.
The teams also used header-based testing. The upstream product supplied a header that triggered a predefined mock response, allowing our product to receive the response and mock its own part of the interaction without waiting for every downstream product or vendor integration to be ready.
We coordinated execution daily with the upstream technology team to work toward the deadline.
What happened
The team met the testing-environment deadline. Defining the minimum build and maintaining daily coordination helped the teams focus on the work needed for that milestone.
This was one delivery milestone within the broader program.
The testing approach
The program's planned testing sequence includes internal testing, external testing, production testing, and a pilot with selected cardholders.
What I learned
A roadmap is only useful if you understand how the products connect. This work reinforced the importance of understanding data flows, dependencies, and each team's objectives when coordinating delivery.
It also broadened my understanding of product design, customer experience, fraud, and data. Understanding that context helped me make working sessions and delivery conversations more useful.