Boost banking agility with innovative cloud payment capabilities with AWS Marketplace

Traditional financial institutions are facing new challenges with rapid technological advancements and changing customer expectations. This is due to the continuous evolution of the banking landscape. To address these challenges, executives are partnering with specialized FinTech companies like Very Good Security (VGS), utilizing their solution from AWS Marketplace. These companies help modernize core systems, adopt open banking practices, and enhance digital customer experiences.

Delivering cutting-edge financial products has its own set of complexities, such as regulatory compliance, data security, legacy system integration, and talent acquisition. Overcoming these barriers can be time-consuming and costly.

Cloud banking and payment platforms offer a solution to those challenges and complexities. This allows financial organizations to move away from inefficient legacy workflows and embrace a modern approach with emerging technologies. By harnessing the cloud’s scalability, flexibility, and agility, banks can streamline operations, reduce costs, and explore new growth and innovation opportunities.

I recently led a webinar spotlighting how FinTech organizations can boost banking agility with innovative cloud payment capabilities. Naveen Gurijala, AVP of Data Strategy & Architecture at CardWorks Servicing, LLC (CWS), shared his company’s journey implementing solutions from Very Good Security (VGS) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to improve data management and security. He discussed the benefits of tokenization for centralizing data, along with the scalability and efficiency achieved.

This post highlights key takeaways including real-world case studies and advice for embarking on your digital transformation journey. It also includes the trends shaping the banking and payments landscape.

Agile banking and payments innovation trends

Financial services leaders face challenges in balancing regulatory compliance, growing customer demands, and security threats.

A Forbes survey revealed 62 percent of respondents expect increased compliance costs and greater regulatory scrutiny. Cybersecurity risks will significantly impact the banking industry, with costs growing from $8 trillion in 2023 to $10.5 trillion by 2025 (Cybersecurity Ventures).

Customers expect seamless banking and payment experiences. This including access to faster payment rails, innovate tools, and value-added services (Bankrate). Banks are burdened by legacy infrastructure, with 70 percent of their IT budget dedicated to maintaining existing systems (McKinsey), leaving little room for innovation.

Future state of banking and payments

Despite these challenges, banks will adapt and expand their cloud-based solutions. Finance leaders will utilize automation for operational efficiency and data-driven approaches to deliver frictionless experiences (Gartner). They must familiarize themselves with data and analytics concepts to collaborate with IT teams and drive modernization (McKinsey).

New security approaches, such as biometric technologies, will replace traditional passwords and PINs. Banks will adopt sophisticated alert systems and analytical tools to detect suspicious activities (Gartner). A unified orchestration layer across payment types will provide agility, speed to market, cost-effective operations, and regulatory compliance (McKinsey).

Real-world case studies

These case studies illustrate the trends in action:

Appian helps create a unified technology solution

Global Screening Services (GSS) aimed to improve financial institutions’ ability to accurately screen transactions for sanctioned persons. Banks block 5–15 percent of international payments due to regulations, losing $40 billion in payment volume yearly, with 99.6 percent of alerts being false positives.

GSS worked with Appian to support transaction investigations, providing outcomes for sanction checks when automatic disposition was impossible. The GSS Alert Management Tool offers an integrated, configurable user experience for managing alerts across teams and investigation levels. This leads to enhanced productivity, prioritization, quality reviews, and evidence management, while minimizing friction for financial professionals.

Finxact delivers a foundation for the future

Finxact helped Primis Bank deliver breakthrough technology and digital banking experiences, increasing their digital presence and expanding their footprint. By using Finxact’s open APIs, Primis Bank integrated with other FinTechs, creating a unique tech stack for their mobile-first experience.

Primis Bank grew beyond its branch network, serving more customers and reducing customer acquisition costs. They added over 13,000 new accounts worth nearly $1 billion in six weeks, expanded to all 50 states, and won the 2023 IDC Real Results Award for Deposits Transformation.

VGS helps CardWorks Servicing (CWS) transform with AWS cloud services

CWS, a client-centric financial services company, faced challenges managing customer data integrity across entities while moving to the cloud. Consolidating, transforming, and securing data in multiple formats proved difficult.

CWS partnered with VGS and AWS to implement a centralized payment tokenization solution. VGS provided scalable tokenization, secure data sharing, and on-the-fly data transformation. The solution automated data inputs, shielding sensitive information, and streamlining tokenization for different data types.

AWS served as the central platform, enabling secure data replication and two-way data flow. The partnership resulted in secure and scalable infrastructure, streamlined compliance, improved customer privacy, increased operational efficiency, and seamless integration and expansion. This allowed CWS to transform its data management processes, enhancing security, compliance, and customer confidence while unlocking growth opportunities.

About AWS Marketplace and next steps

AWS Marketplace has a wide variety of solutions that help financial services solutions modernize and transform their core systems, adopt open banking practices, and improve digital customer experiences.

AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalog that makes it easy for customers to find, buy, deploy, and manage third-party software, services, and data. It offers quick, easy, and secure deployment, flexible consumption, contract models, and streamlined procurement and billing operations. Over 330,000 organizations, large and small, use AWS Marketplace monthly to accelerate digital transformation and improve efficiencies across their enterprises.

Independent research from Forrester estimates it takes half the time to find, buy, and deploy solutions through AWS Marketplace compared to other sales channels.

How can you begin addressing your own transformation challenges? AWS Marketplace has a broad selection of banking and payment solutions like Appian, Finxact, and VGS that offer support for teams seeking increased agility in delivering banking innovation across the globe.

Visit Financial Services Solutions in AWS Marketplace to learn more about banking and payment cloud solutions available in AWS Marketplace.

Watch Boost banking agility with innovative cloud payment capabilities on demand for the full discussion, which includes a Q&A session.

Conclusion

Financial services organizations that embrace the cloud and adopt innovative payment capabilities can transform their operations, as demonstrated in the featured case studies. By partnering with the right fintech companies and using cloud-based solutions, banks can enhance security, streamline compliance, and deliver cutting-edge experiences. While digital transformation presents challenges, the benefits outweigh the obstacles. This enables banks to accelerate, reduce costs, and unlock growth opportunities while delivering better customer experiences.

About the author

Shaheen Kanda is the Financial Services and Insurance Leader for AWS Technology Partnerships. Before joining AWS, she founded two FinTech startups and spent a decade working as a leveraged finance banker in New York City.