Banks and credit unions are facing a familiar modernization dilemma: commercial clients want faster, more visible digital payment experiences, while the institutions serving them still depend on legacy cash-management infrastructure. CheckAlt’s second consecutive appearance on the 2026 Datos Insights Fintech 50 highlights one approach to that problem—adding cloud-based receivables capabilities around existing banking systems rather than replacing them wholesale.

Modernizing commercial payments is rarely as simple as moving from paper to digital.

Businesses still send and receive money through a mixture of checks, electronic payments, lockbox services, remote deposits and online payment channels. For banks and credit unions, supporting those payment types while providing a consistent view of incoming funds can require multiple systems and workflows.

CheckAlt is targeting that fragmentation with its Integrated Receivables platform, which has earned the company a place on the 2026 Datos Insights Fintech 50 for the second consecutive year.

The annual report profiles 50 financial-technology vendors that Datos Insights identifies as aligned with its commercial banking and payments trends for 2026.

CheckAlt’s inclusion centers on its Integrated Receivables technology, which combines lockbox, electronic lockbox, online payments, remote deposit capture and other receivables capabilities within a cloud-based platform.

The broader significance is less about an industry award and more about the infrastructure problem behind it.

Commercial customers increasingly expect their banks to provide visibility into incoming payments regardless of how those payments arrive. A company may receive checks from one group of customers, ACH payments from another and card or online payments from a third.

If those transactions sit across separate systems, the corporate treasury or accounts-receivable team can end up with fragmented information.

Integrated receivables platforms attempt to consolidate those processes.

Modernizing around the core

For financial institutions, replacing a legacy cash-management system can be expensive, disruptive and time-consuming.

That has created a market for technologies that sit alongside existing infrastructure and extend its capabilities.

Datos Insights Strategic Advisor Benjamin Nestor said commercial clients increasingly expect greater visibility and control even as many banks and credit unions continue to operate legacy cash-management systems.

That creates a middle path between doing nothing and replacing the entire technology stack.

CheckAlt’s platform is designed to support that approach by connecting different incoming-payment channels and providing financial institutions with a more centralized view of receivables activity.

The architecture is particularly relevant to community and regional banks, credit unions and other institutions that need to compete with larger financial institutions and fintech providers but may not have the resources to rebuild their payment infrastructure from scratch.

The same pattern is appearing across financial technology more broadly.

Banks are increasingly adopting API-based platforms, cloud services and specialist fintech applications that can improve individual capabilities without requiring a complete replacement of core systems.

Companies such as Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud have helped accelerate the broader enterprise shift toward cloud infrastructure, while specialist fintech providers are applying those architectural principles to payments, lending and treasury.

Fintech is already embedded in commercial payments

The competitive pressure is not coming only from other banks.

Datos Insights reports that 86% of large and midsize U.S. organizations already work with a fintech provider for payments or cash-management services.

That statistic points to a structural change in commercial banking.

Businesses are increasingly comfortable using specialist technology providers for individual financial workflows. A bank that does not offer competitive digital payment and receivables capabilities may therefore find that its commercial clients supplement—or eventually shift—parts of their financial operations to third-party platforms.

For banks, the issue becomes one of relationship ownership.

Payments and cash management are important parts of commercial banking because they generate recurring interactions between a business and its financial institution. If payment workflows move outside the bank, the institution risks losing visibility into those relationships.

That helps explain why integrated receivables technology is becoming strategically important.

Rather than treating check processing, electronic payments and deposit capture as disconnected products, banks can use a common platform to provide a more consistent experience.

Checks are not disappearing overnight

There is also a practical reality behind the modernization push: digitization does not mean paper payments immediately disappear.

Commercial businesses operate across different industries, customer bases and payment preferences. Some counterparties continue to rely on checks, while others have shifted toward electronic payments.

For financial institutions, supporting both environments remains necessary.

That is why the idea of integrated receivables matters. The objective is not necessarily to eliminate legacy payment methods but to bring them into a more unified operational framework.

This can allow a bank to modernize the user experience while continuing to support the payment channels its commercial customers already use.

The approach is similar to the broader modernization strategy being adopted across financial services: preserve the parts of the existing infrastructure that still work while introducing modern technology at the layers where customers and employees interact with the system.

The enterprise adoption question

For banks evaluating receivables technology, the most important consideration is unlikely to be whether a platform has the newest interface.

Integration is more important.

Financial institutions need to determine how a new receivables platform connects with core banking systems, general ledgers, treasury applications, payment networks, fraud controls and customer-facing channels.

Security and data governance are equally important because receivables platforms handle sensitive financial information and transaction data.

Cloud deployment can provide scalability and faster product development, but it also introduces questions around third-party risk, resilience, data location and regulatory oversight.

Those considerations become increasingly important as financial institutions build technology stacks from a combination of internal systems and fintech providers.

CheckAlt’s recognition by Datos Insights therefore fits into a wider industry trend: banks are increasingly looking for modular technologies that can modernize specific areas of commercial banking without forcing a complete core replacement.

For commercial customers, the payoff is potentially straightforward—a more unified view of incoming payments and fewer disconnected processes.

For banks and credit unions, the strategic benefit is bigger. Better receivables infrastructure can help them remain competitive in a market where fintech companies are increasingly embedded in the payment and cash-management workflows of corporate customers.

The future of commercial banking may not be defined by a single replacement platform.

It may instead be shaped by how effectively financial institutions connect the systems they already have with the specialized technology they need next.

Market Landscape

Commercial payments are becoming a major battleground between banks and fintech companies.

Large enterprises increasingly expect real-time visibility, automated reconciliation, multiple payment options and integrated cash-management capabilities. Yet many financial institutions continue to operate technology stacks built around systems introduced years or even decades ago.

This creates an opportunity for fintech infrastructure providers.

Rather than replacing the bank’s core, modern platforms can provide additional functionality for receivables, payments, fraud detection, treasury and reconciliation while connecting to established systems through APIs and other integration technologies.

The market includes established financial technology companies such as FIS, Fiserv and Jack Henry, alongside specialist fintech providers focused on particular parts of the commercial payments lifecycle.

The competitive question is increasingly whether a platform can provide modern capabilities without introducing another disconnected system.

For enterprise technology teams, interoperability therefore becomes a critical purchasing criterion. Banks need to evaluate implementation requirements, integration depth, security controls, data architecture, scalability and the ability to support both legacy and emerging payment methods.

CheckAlt’s positioning around integrated receivables reflects that broader market direction.

Top Insights

• CheckAlt has been named to the Datos Insights Fintech 50 for a second consecutive year, highlighting its role in commercial receivables modernization.
• Its Integrated Receivables platform combines lockbox, electronic payments and deposit capabilities, helping financial institutions consolidate incoming-payment workflows around existing infrastructure.
• Datos Insights says 86% of large and midsize U.S. organizations already use fintech providers for payments or cash management, increasing competitive pressure on banks.
• Cloud-based receivables platforms offer banks a modernization path that can extend legacy systems without requiring immediate wholesale replacement of core banking infrastructure.
• For commercial banking technology teams, integration, security, interoperability and support for multiple payment channels are becoming key criteria when selecting fintech infrastructure.

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