Jack Henry continued to prioritize its tech modernization strategy during its fiscal first quarter as it worked to bring its solutions onto the cloud-based Jack Henry Platform, creating consistency across its product offerings.  

The Jack Henry Platform “now provides us a place for us to do all of our new innovation as we’re developing products,” Chief Executive David Foss told Bank Automation News at Jack Henry Connect in Indianapolis in October. For example, Jack Henry’s new solution Financial Crimes Defender sits on the platform and its PayCenter solution sits on the platform.

“We’re essentially unbundling the core into components, those components are all being written in this environment,” he said. “The significance of that is now everything you get from Jack Henry sits on this consistent platform. It looks the same, it feels the same.” 

BIGGER PICTURE: As Jack Henry focuses on tech modernization, its clients, too, are implementing digital capabilities, Foss said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call Wednesday.  

Jack Henry’s digital suite had more than 10.5 million users at the end of Q1, and that number is growing by 200,000 users per month, Foss said.  

BY THE NUMBERS: Jack Henry reported in fiscal Q1: 

• Total revenue increased 8% YoY to $571,368 as revenue from cards, hardware and software grew; and 
• Operating expenses grew 12.9% YoY to $438,668 as research and development costs grew. 

NOTEWORTHY: Jack Henry has 40 clients live on FedNow, with more than 150 client contracts in the implementation queue, Jack Henry Chief Operating Officer Greg Adelson said during Wednesday’s earnings call. 

At present, all clients are receive-only on FedNow, but Jack Henry plans to add send capabilities by early to mid-2024, Adelson said. 

FLASHBACK: Jack Henry acquired payments platform Payrailz in Sept. 2022. Since the acquisition, Payrailz has been integrated into large portions of the Jack Henry “technology stack, into our culture and technology modernization strategy,” Adelson said.  

Over the next 18 months, Jack Henry plans to finalize the build-out of a single cloud-native API-first payment platform that will include Payrailz features, he said. 

STATE OF PLAY: Shares of Jack Henry [NYSE: JKHY] were down 0.49% from market open to $149.21 at market close. Jack Henry has a market capitalization of $10.9 billion. 

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Editor’s note: Bank Automation News incorrectly referred to Jack Henry’s solution as Financial Crimes Detector in a previous version of this story. The correct name is Financial Crimes Defender.