Cloud

Embracing the Cloud for Banking Innovation

fsstiprod — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 04:55:26 +0000

Embracing the Cloud for Banking Innovation fsstiprod Wed, 07/31/2024 - 10:25

Banks today face unprecedented challenges in meeting customer expectations, ensuring security, and staying competitive. Cloud technologies have emerged as a transformative force, offering banks the agility, scalability, and innovation capabilities needed to thrive in the digital age. For tech leaders in the banking sector, embracing cloud migration is no longer just an option—it's often a strategic imperative. Here's why.

Enhanced agility and innovation

Cloud platforms enable banks to rapidly develop, test, and deploy new services, dramatically reducing the time to market for innovative products. For instance, ING leveraged Kubernetes for container orchestration, allowing them to go from idea to production within 48 hours for some projects. This agility is crucial in today's fast-paced fintech environment.

Scalability and cost efficiency

Cloud infrastructure allows banks to scale resources on demand, optimizing costs while handling peak loads. HDFC Bank in India implemented a microservices-based application called "Governor" using Dapr, which allowed them to handle close to 750 million monthly transactions, scaling horizontally based on incoming HTTP traffic.

Improved security and compliance

Modern cloud solutions offer robust security measures and compliance tools. C6 Bank in Brazil adopted Orca Security for cloud security across AWS and GCP, improving visibility, threat detection, and compliance management for Brazilian and U.S. banking regulations.

Data-driven insights

Cloud-based analytics and AI capabilities help banks leverage their vast data stores. Atom Bank in the UK upgraded to Genesys Cloud, which provided them with real-time information and the ability to integrate advanced AI capabilities, driving service quality and employee experience improvements.

Operational resilience

Cloud architectures provide built-in redundancy and disaster recovery options. Rabobank in the Netherlands used Cilium for network security in their Kubernetes-based API platform, enabling self-service, zero-trust networking for 400 teams, significantly improving their operational resilience.

Modernisation of legacy systems

Cloud migration offers an opportunity to refactor and modernize legacy applications. China Minsheng Bank transformed its legacy C and Java applications to a Kubernetes platform, resulting in a 3-4x increase in delivery efficiency and doubled resource utilization.

Ecosystem integration

Cloud platforms facilitate easier integration with fintech partners and third-party services. Figo, a German banking service provider, migrated to a containerized infrastructure using Kubernetes, improving scalability and enabling better integration with fintech partners for developing new applications and services.

Customer experience enhancement

Cloud-native applications enable banks to deliver seamless, omnichannel experiences. Credit Europe Bank NV (CEB) implemented Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Integration, reducing customer onboarding time from two weeks to just 15 minutes and enabling fully digital account opening processes.

Automated workflows and processes

Cloud technologies facilitate the automation of complex banking processes. Bank11 in Germany implemented Camunda's cloud-based workflow automation platform, enabling faster credit processes for the automotive industry and achieving a high rate of automatic decision-making in lending.

Observability and monitoring

Cloud-native tools provide enhanced visibility into system performance. Banco BV in Brazil used Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Anthos, which offered improved observability and monitoring capabilities, helping them manage their microservices architecture more effectively.

These real-world examples demonstrate how cloud adoption in banking goes beyond mere infrastructure changes. It's a catalyst for comprehensive digital transformation, enabling banks to innovate faster, operate more efficiently, and deliver superior customer experiences. As regulatory environments evolve to accommodate cloud technologies, banks that delay migration risk falling behind more agile competitors.

For tech leaders in banking, the message is clear: cloud migration is not just about technology upgrades—it's about positioning your institution for success in an increasingly digital-first financial world. The diverse range of successful implementations across various banking functions and geographies shows that regardless of your bank's size or specific needs, there's a cloud strategy that can drive significant improvements in your operations and customer offerings.

Be cloud-ready with FSS BLAZE™

Most of the payments tech used today by banks and businesses runs on heavy, monolithic architectures. These systems face challenges in terms of scalability, complexity, maintenance and slow release cycles. It is because of these constraints that the current infrastructure might not be able to keep pace with the rising demand for digital payments.

Hence, what the banking and payments industries require is an agile, scalable and resilient technological framework. The tech stack of every bank needs an upgrade so that they are able to achieve their full potential.

This is where FSS BLAZE™ comes in.

FSS BLAZE™ is the payment platform for digital acceleration. A microservices based platform, it offers seamless growth, uninterrupted performance and effortless integration with modern day digital banking solutions. FSS BLAZE™ is built with the intention of offering technology that enables population-scale development and deployment of future-proof payment systems.

All FSS products are now upgraded to the BLAZE™ platform and run to enable unmatched scale and speed. The FSS Payment Gateway, for example, can process more than 10,000 transactions per second using the BLAZE™ architecture.

With FSS BLAZE™, banks, financial institutions and businesses can be ready for the next surge in digital payment transactions.

Learn more about FSS BLAZE™ here.

The Future of Payments Technology is in the Cloud

fsstiprod — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 13:09:51 +0000

The Future of Payments Technology is in the Cloud fsstiprod Fri, 06/21/2024 - 18:39

(A version of this article was first published in ET Edge.)

In December 2023, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that it is working on the establishment of a cloud facility for the financial sector in India. This proposal aims to enhance the security, integrity and privacy of financial data. According to the RBI statement, it also aims to facilitate scalability and business continuity.

RBI's proposal is a step in the right direction. Over the past few years, especially since digital payments have started to become the norm, we have seen numerous instances of data breaches. This has led to a heightened awareness of the importance of keeping customer data secure. This is where cloud technology plays a major role with its homogeneous architecture, centralized security and ability to guard against DDoS attacks.

Benefits of cloud technology

As we know, cloud technology offers a myriad of benefits that have revolutionized the way banks and financial institutions manage and store data. Let's look at a few.

On-demand resource scaling: One of the key advantages is scalability, enabling banks to easily adjust their computing resources based on demand. This flexibility ensures that banks can efficiently handle varying workloads without the need for significant upfront investments in hardware
Cost efficiency: Cloud services operate on a pay-as-you-go model, eliminating the need for banks to invest in and maintain expensive infrastructure. This democratizes access to advanced computing resources, allowing even smaller enterprises to leverage powerful tools and technologies that were once reserved for larger institutions
Enhanced collaboration and accessibility: Cloud technology facilitates real-time sharing and editing of documents from any location with an internet connection. This fosters seamless teamwork within different teams of a bank and improves productivity by breaking down geographical barriers
Robust data security: The data security measures that are possible with cloud often surpass what individual banks can implement on their own. Data backups, encryption, and authentication mechanisms are integral components of cloud services, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of information

In essence, cloud technology empowers banks to be more agile, cost-effective, and collaborative, driving innovation and growth in the digital era. At FSS, we have always believed in the power of cloud technology. Our experience of working with large banks and financial institutions for over 30 years has allowed us to witness firsthand the evolution of cloud technology.

Building the future with BLAZE^TM

We have seen the digital payments landscape change at a rapid pace and understood the importance of cloud to keep up to pace with these changes. We developed FSS BLAZE^TM as a cloud-native platform for this very reason. FSS BLAZE^TM is our new-age payments technology platform built on a microservices architecture. It embodies all the benefits of cloud technology we've discussed above. It promises speed, scale, security, stability and success.

BLAZE^TM is built on a robust infrastructure that promotes innovation at scale. The platform can be deployed swiftly and seamlessly on public or private cloud. This allows BLAZE^TM to offer an array of benefits to banks and merchants:

Open and secure architecture: To ensure ease of integration, rapid scalability, faster upgrades - all with minimal human intervention in secure manner
Rapid experimentation & testing: Faster speed to innovate and shortest time to market for every new piece of technology
Dynamic ecosystem: High compatibility and configurability to adjust to changing technological environments
Plug-and-play capability: Easy to integrate, off-the-shelf, fast deployment capabilities
Near-zero downtime: 24*7 availability and support with near-zero system downtown to support ongoing and growing payment load
Highly secure platform: Compliant with all data encryption, tokenization, storage, privacy and other global data laws to ensure end-to-end system security
Agile and flexible: Reduce complexity, promotes integration and allows services & systems to change at a faster speed
Cost-efficient solutions: Ensure business feasibility of the technology for businesses and customers for large scale adoption and success

Learn more about FSS BLAZE^TM here.

In conclusion

Coming back to RBI's proposal of a cloud facility, given that the facility will initially be operated by Indian Financial Technology & Allied Services (IFTAS), a wholly owned subsidiary of RBI, it will be truly beneficial to the Indian financial sector.

Since most of the data is either kept in-house or on external cloud, there is indeed a need for a structured and scalable facility for data storage and data processing. With RBI behind this facility, the regulatory framework and guidelines required will also be put into place. A win-win for all stakeholders involved.