Why every payments firm needs a prepper mindset

By Robin Anderson, Head of Product Management at Tribe Payments

In payments, trust is everything. People expect to move money easily, quickly, securely, and without fail. So, when that trust is broken by an outage, a delay, or a data breach, the damage goes far beyond inconvenience. It hits reputation, loyalty, and bottom lines.

That’s why resilience has moved from a technical issue to a board-level priority. With the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) now in force and the UK’s own regime maturing, payments firms must prove not only that they can recover from disruption, but that they’re ready for it before it happens. This calls for a mindset shift – one that frames resilience as a strategic advantage rooted in preparedness. Let’s call it: payment prepping.

Trust is built in the gaps

Payments are invisible when they work, only hitting the headlines when they fail. And every failure erodes confidence: people can’t pay rent, businesses can’t invoice, donations don’t land. The UK’s Treasury Select Committee reports more than 800 hours of downtime across the nine biggest banks in just two years. And how could we forget the global ripple effect of the 2024 CrowdStrike failure? That outage cost more than $1 billion in disruption and showed just how fragile our complex ecosystems can be.

Trust isn’t built in the everyday; it’s built in the gaps. In moments of crisis, customers notice who stays online, who communicates clearly, and who recovers quickly.

Regulation raising the bar

DORA, which came into effect in January, marks a new regulatory era – one that I hope will encourage a much-needed prepper mindset. It requires EU-based financial entities to implement robust risk management, resilience testing, and oversight of third-party vendors. Firms must document their systems, report incidents swiftly, and maintain service continuity even during severe shocks.

In the UK, the FCA’s operational resilience framework is similarly tough. Before March 2025, firms were required to demonstrate that they had mapped their critical services, set clear “impact tolerances,” and could stay within those thresholds in realistic scenarios.

Both regimes reflect a fundamental shift: regulators expect failure and firms should too. The question is whether they are ready for it.

Dependency is the new risk surface

Today’s payments firms depend on a wide network of external partners: cloud services, software vendors, data centres, and more. These interdependencies extend the firm’s risk surface and regulators are paying close attention. Both DORA and UK rules require firms to identify key vendors, test their resilience, and ensure continuity if those vendors go down.

Regulators now even have the authority to designate certain providers as “critical third parties” subject to direct supervision. The signal is clear: no one is exempt, and resilience must be ecosystem-wide.

Think like a prepper

So, what does ‘payment prepping’ look like in practice? I’m not talking about the caricature, but the strategic planner. They don’t panic. They anticipate. They map out risks, build redundancies, and drill their response before anything goes wrong.

That same mindset belongs in the payments industry. Start with a full audit of dependencies. Understand where vulnerabilities lie. But don’t stop there – stress test the systems, run realistic scenarios, and make sure playbooks are documented and ready to deploy.

Human readiness matters just as much. In the middle of an outage, communication and coordination are everything. A backup system is only useful if your team knows how to activate it under pressure.

Resilience as a competitive edge

Some still view resilience as a regulatory chore. But the most forward-looking firms see it another way… in a sector where trust is hard-earned and easily lost, resilience is a true differentiator. It signals stability, builds confidence, and attracts partners who value security and uptime.

As regulators turn up the heat, the winners will be those who go beyond compliance. Payment prepping isn’t about doomsday planning – it’s about being ready, fast, and reliable when it matters most.

The payments industry is being reshaped by trust and tested by disruption. DORA and the UK’s frameworks are setting new expectations. But it’s the firms who embed preparedness into their culture – who modernise, map, and rehearse – that will lead the pack.

In an always-on economy, outages are inevitable. Trust, however, doesn’t have to be a casualty. With the right mindset, resilience can become your firm’s strongest currency.