- Industry leaders highlight payments modernization and how banks should innovate and collaborate to meet future demands
Finastra, a global leader in financial services software, showcased its leadership in payments modernization at Sibos last week, hosting two panels that addressed the urgent need for banks to innovate and collaborate in a rapidly evolving financial landscape.
This year’s event highlighted trends such as the rise of stablecoins, the importance of agentic AI, and the impact of industry partnerships on the evolution of payment systems. Finastra experts advised banks to modernize their payments stack by adopting microservices and composable modules, to increase their competitiveness, customer value, and ability to embrace new technologies such as AI.
Finastra CEO Chris Walters spoke on The Future of Payments: How Modernization and GenAI Are Reshaping the Industry, emphasizing why banks must modernize to stay competitive and how Finastra is helping customers accelerate their transformation journeys.
Radha Suvarna, CPO, Payments at Finastra, joined the panel Redefining Cross-Border Payments – Building the Future, Now, where he outlined how financial institutions can adapt to shifting market demands, highlighting Finastra’s new Intelligent Routing module and its stablecoin partnership with Circle as key enablers of choice and efficiency.
Key insights from the panel included discussions on how banks must innovate at scale to operate in real-time, respond to new regulations and standards, and meet customer expectations despite the challenges of legacy infrastructure. Also highlighted was how cloud, microservices, digitization, AI and APIs are essential for efficiency, resilience, and growth and that institutions should modernize at the pace and scale that fits their business needs.
Emphasis was placed on how success depends on mapping a clear “north star”, understanding business goals and customer needs. Optionality in payments, including access to stablecoins and multiple cross-border providers, is key.
Banks need to clearly define what to build, buy or partner on. Ecosystems and co-opetition are now the industry standard, making collaboration essential and compliance, continuous upgrades, and embedding AI into solutions remain non-negotiable. AI enables banks to extract more value from software while enhancing customer experience.
