Interview: How Opus is leading the financial services sector forward to a more sustainable future
In a period of macroeconomic upheaval and disruptions, the global payments landscape continues to demonstrate impressive resilience.
As the drivers of payment growth are shifting, the leading global provider of niche payments technology, Opus, is creating new opportunities for incumbent banks and disruptors to build innovative solutions, win customers, and gain market share.
TM Praveen, Opus CEO: “The way I see it, the fintech landscape has never looked better.”
FinTech Futures recently sat down with TM Praveen, CEO of Opus, to talk about the changing role of digital banking and payments in the broader financial ecosystem and how fintechs are setting new standards of excellence in this space.
As payment infrastructures are being revamped and banks are making structural changes to their core systems, what is in store for payments in 2023 and beyond?
Fuelled by technological advances, rising competition, and evolving customer expectations – the payments industry is witnessing a dynamic transition.
In fact, with the Big Tech companies looking for a piece of the payments pie, the industry is touted for significant growth over the next five years. Today payments are increasingly convenient, instantaneous, and ubiquitous. In the days to come, we can expect to see innovative payment solutions that will be more appealing to the digitally sophisticated audience of early adopters. As emerging shifts are forcing banks to reconsider operating models, open banking will set the stage to accelerate the digital payments revolution further and reshape the financial services landscape.
What do you believe are some of the key priorities for the growth-focused players in the banking industry?
Most banks today have gone past their initial struggle with modernisation and are making tremendous progress in transforming their underlying systems. Financial institutions are tapping into improved digital enablement capabilities to build their own solutions and add new values for their customers. We are likely to see more banks prioritise infrastructural upgrades to their core systems to better align with evolving customer expectations and thrive in today’s competitive landscape. Banks are also looking to deploy blockchain technology to improve operational efficiencies and facilitate cross-border payments.
Cloud-native core banking providers will come to the forefront as financial institutions are looking to re-architect their internal systems, become more data-centric, and deliver a rich set of business capabilities across digital and physical touchpoints.
What are the top trends driving the growth of payments?
Among many other lessons, the pandemic has taught us to be aggressive on the digitisation front. “Digital as a foundation” will be key to delivering an unparalleled payment experience. While next-gen offerings like digital wallets, real-time payments, and buy now, pay later (BNPL) are rapidly gaining share – we are likely to see more disruption coming from Metaverse payments. We are also stepping into an era of decentralisation where trends like open banking and embedded finance will take centre stage.
The confluence of exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and hybrid cloud has reduced operational costs and unlocked massive potential for platform-based business models. There is also a greater focus on enabling payments innovation with integrated DevOps.
What’s your take on the booming fintech space?
Fintechs are a catalyst for the entire digital economy. As the appetite for Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) grows, so will the innovative partnerships between banks and finfechs. The way I see it, the fintech landscape has never looked better. There will also be a growth in the “as-a-Service” subscription model owing to the myriad of benefits it provides banks that are looking to leverage solutions from specialist fintechs rather than developing them in-house.
As key players in the financial services space expand into new verticals, having dynamic perspectives to draw from will be invaluable. Bringing together disjointed systems and channels through ecosystem partnerships is imperative to stay ahead of rising market expectations and create payment experiences that fit seamlessly into the lives of customers.
How is Opus helping its clients harness technology transformation and drive new value propositions?
Now is the time for payment players to build the agility that makes continuous payment innovation possible. On the banking front, there is a dire need to offer a comprehensive and integrated suite where customers have access to end-to-end banking services in real time.
Backed by a rich legacy of 25 years, Opus is among the world’s most trusted names in modernising payment platforms and delivering transformative banking solutions. As a managed services provider, our expertise lies in platform migration and management, Testing-as-a-Service, building high-availability processing solutions across networks, and end-to-end product engineering.
With our team of domain experts and global delivery models, we re-engineer products to be more agile, offer value-acceleration solutions that will speed up the time-to-market journeys, and help our clients outgrow the competition by simplifying money movement and commerce.
Our advanced automation capabilities and ready-to-deploy solutions in the cloud are helping key industry players remain relevant in an ever-evolving digital marketplace.
Given our technological and industry-specific expertise, we are well-positioned to drive digital transformation and lead the financial services sector forward to a more sustainable future.
Sponsored by Opus
