Industry Perspectives: Financial Services and the Cloud
Several industry-leading guest speakers shared the insights at the Futurex Virtual Summit 2021, where we explored emerging trends, new technologies, and shared best practices — with a look at what’s ahead. One of the sessions, “An Insider’s Guide to Moving Payment Applications to the Cloud,” brought together people from near and far to share key takeaways, thoughts, and perspectives around financial services and payment trends in the cloud. Futurex’s Ryan Smith, Vice President of Global Business Development, and Adam Cason, Vice President of Global and Strategic Alliances, led the lively discussion.
Here’s a snapshot:
Sudhir Kalidindi, Senior Solutions Architect, AWS, discussed payment trends in the cloud including imaging, contactless payments, digital currency – including UK Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) – mobile point of sale, real-time payments, and card-on-file transactions. He stated, “There’s a significant change in the payment global landscape” and cited the importance of customer experience, with customers wanting more from their financial institutions, such as faster transactions. He went on to stress the importance of secure, reliable, and flexible infrastructures.
Adam Cason concurred: “It’s not just about the core technology, it’s about the flexibility and speed,.”
Jose L. Zapata-Petrov, Global Lead, Banking and Payments, AWS Partner Network, commented, “We see more and more financial institutions moving critical workloads to the cloud.” Ryan Smith agreed that many organizations have been “cloud curious,” lately.
Zapata-Petrov further explained the importance of being a digital native, as well as the importance of data residency and data localization. He outlined trends in open banking and open finance. Through everything, he emphasized the importance of security, “The level of security for the consumers’ PII is always front and center.”
Josefina Revilla, Engineering Lead, jPOS Software, presented the application providers’ perspective and stressed the importance of being flexible and nimble with the cloud and open-source software — especially appealing for all sizes of organizations. “Our advice is to think ‘cloud first’ and embrace open-source technology.”
Revilla elaborated: “What jPOS enables — and what VirtuCrypt, for example, accelerated — is the ability for those small financial entities to be on a level playing field with the top-notch Fortune 500 corporations.”
Bryan Bell, Principal Consultant, Foregenix, described the trends where more and more organizations are adopting cloud technology, and the importance of leveraging trusted service providers. “We’ve seen the move to the cloud for a number of years, but seeing it take that next step in that evolution in the payment space is encouraging.” When asked about trends, Bell also discussed the emergence of quantum computing, crypto-agility, and compliance. “I’m continuing to see a push toward zero-trust environments.”
Michael Samara, Business Development Engineer at Versasec, talked about access management and security solutions for managing digital identities. He stressed the importance of what’s needed to continue to progress with efforts and solutions. “Making it simple and super secure is really the goal for the end user.”
“An Insider’s Guide to Moving Payment Applications to the Cloud” is available on-demand, along with all of the sessions from the Summit. Visit: https://www.futurex-summit.com/on-demand-2021/
Learn more about Futurex’s cloud payment hardware security modules (HSMs): https://www.futurex.com/solutions/financial-cloud-hsms
