Most of the world’s biggest banks, government systems, and insurance companies still run on COBOL, a computer programming language from 1959. The problem? Almost nobody knows how to fix it when things break.
COBOL handles an estimated 95% of ATM transactions and 80% of in-person purchases worldwide. Your credit card swipe, Social Security payment, and airline reservation probably all touch COBOL code somewhere along the way. Despite powering trillions of dollars in daily transactions, the language is so old that most programmers have never learned it.
The Ticking Time Bomb
Companies are calling COBOL “the asbestos of programming languages” because it’s everywhere, potentially dangerous, and incredibly expensive to remove. Banks want to upgrade to modern systems, but replacing COBOL is like performing heart surgery on a patient who can’t stop running.
The average COBOL programmer is now over 60 years old, and when they retire, they take decades of knowledge with them. Some companies are paying retired programmers six-figure consulting fees just to keep their systems running. Others are stuck maintaining software that nobody fully understands anymore.
Making things worse, COBOL code often lacks proper documentation. Programmers in the 1970s and 80s wrote quick fixes and workarounds that became permanent parts of critical systems.
What Happens Next
Some companies are trying to automatically translate COBOL into modern programming languages using AI. Others are training new programmers in COBOL, despite the language being older than the internet. But for now, the world’s financial system depends on code that could legally collect Social Security.
