Case Study
How a global telco modernized its payment ecosystem and unlocked $9M in annual savings
Migrating 40 million payment tokens and unifying agent operations across a new acquiring platform, without a single customer disruption.
Impact at a glance
OUR CLIENT
Our client is one of the largest telecommunications and media companies in the United States, serving millions of residential and business customers across broadband, cable, and digital services. Payment processing is core to customer operations, spanning web, mobile, AutoPay, kiosk POS, and customer service channels, at a scale that demands reliability, security, and zero tolerance for disruption.
THE CHALLENGE
A single-acquirer dependency was limiting performance, increasing cost, and blocking future payment flexibility.
The client’s payment ecosystem had been built around a single acquirer and CyberSource as its primary payment gateway and service provider. That architecture, once sufficient, had become a constraint.
- Higher cost and limited flexibility. Dependence on a single acquirer restricted the ability to negotiate terms, optimize authorization rates, or move toward a multi-acquirer model.
- Legacy infrastructure holding back scale. The existing platform supported multiple channels and payment types through complex, difficult-to-maintain integrations that slowed change and increased operational risk.
- A migration challenge with no margin for error. Millions of stored payment tokens and recurring billing profiles had to be moved to a new platform, without disrupting customers, breaking PCI-DSS compliance, or affecting settlement accuracy.
- An agent portal that was limiting productivity. The legacy EBC (Enterprise Business Center) portal in CyberSource had accumulated operational limitations that slowed agent workflows and complicated issue resolution across a large support team.
- Limited flexibility in Fraud detection mechanism. Customer was dependent on third party application for the fraud detection which was limiting the flexibility and scalability
The business case for change was clear. The execution risk was significant.
THE TRANSFORMATION
From a constrained legacy stack to a unified, scalable payment platform, migrated without disruption and built to grow.
UST led the end-to-end migration and modernization of the client’s payment ecosystem, transitioning from legacy platform to new commercial platform of Chase Merchant Services. The transformation covered every layer of the payment stack: token migration, recurring billing, settlement processing, compliance validation, monitoring, and reporting.
Zero-disruption token migration at scale
UST designed and executed the migration of more than 40 million customer payment tokens to the new Chase Payment Exchange (CPX) platform. The approach combined real-time monitoring, strong compliance controls, and a detailed rollback strategy, ensuring no customer faced a disrupted payment or billing experience during the transition.
A new unified acquiring platform
The modernized infrastructure enabled seamless payment processing across web, mobile, AutoPay, kiosk POS, and customer service channels. Improved authorization rates, faster settlement cycles, enhanced reporting, and stronger fraud and security controls became operational realities; not future aspirations.
Payment Exchange Portal (PXP) - built for agents, not systems
UST designed and implemented PXP, a purpose-built portal for the client's customer care agents. The platform consolidated transaction research, refunds, voids, and account management into a single interface, replacing the legacy EBC portal and eliminating the operational complexity that had accumulated around it. Over 400 agents were onboarded to the new system.
CyberSource decommissioning
By eliminating CyberSource from payment processing across all transaction types except Load Retail, UST simplified the payment ecosystem structurally, reducing vendor dependency, lowering operational complexity, and delivering the cost savings that made the business case for transformation.
THE IMPACT
Operational, financial, and workforce outcomes, delivered across a platform that now handles over a millon transactions a day.
Customer can now more easily support future digital payment methods, tokenized transactions, enhanced fraud mechanism and multi-acquirer expansion, on a platform built to scale.
See how UST helps enterprises modernize payment infrastructure and reduce operational complexity →
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