How we’re working together to power cross-border payments for millions more customers around the world
Last year, Wise Platform launched a new partnership with Thought Machine, a leading cloud-native core banking provider, to provide banks, businesses and their customers around the world with Wise’s leading cross-border payment capabilities. Our partnership is helping to accelerate the digitisation of money movement across borders and bring fast, cheap, transparent and convenient international payments to more customers around the world.
Till Wirth, Product Director at Wise Platform, spoke to Brad Steele, Americas GM and MD Global Partnerships at Thought Machine, about our partnership, what it means for banks and their customers, and what it means to be cloud-native.
TW: Many banks are already choosing to migrate to Thought Machine and adopt cloud-native core banking. Before we get into the benefits, can you talk me through what cloud-native core banking actually means?
BS: Moving to the cloud, or to be cloud-native, gives banks the ability to run their services more efficiently – achieving a better cost-to-income ratio, reducing capital expenditure for on-premise hardware, and making a significant reduction to their carbon footprint. More banks and financial institutions are turning to cloud-native providers like Thought Machine to future-proof their growth, which can still be beleaguered by legacy infrastructure and outdated systems.
In order to take full advantage of cloud-native computing, it is key to use a core banking system, like Vault Core, that is built on a microservices architecture. This enables banks to have an elastic, highly available and flexible core banking system, which scales depending on load.
TW: So what are some of the benefits of Thought Machine’s cloud-native core banking technology for banks?
BS: First and foremost, Thought Machine enables banks and financial institutions to have full control over product logic, providing them with flexibility and control in the design and build of new innovative products, as well as replicating their existing back book. Not only can banks therefore build, launch, and maintain products faster and at lower cost than has ever been possible, they can launch almost any type of financial product, all on a single platform.
Secondly, Vault Core's real-time Ledger gives banks complete control over the management of data. Vault Core has been built to support any bank and any product on a single ledger. All data is transmitted in and out of the Ledger in real time, providing rich data streaming for AI and reporting. Transactions are processed in real time, with no batch processing. The Ledger is always available and accessible, and the rich data is streamed out via our Streaming API.
Overall, Thought Machine allows banks to scale, grow, and improve their offering, all while eliminating wasted infrastructure – making it both cheaper and greener to operate. Cloud-native is the inevitable path for next-gen systems, including the core.
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TW: Wise Platform and Thought Machine have been working together for over a year now. Can you take me back - what made you decide to partner with us?
BS: Our partnership with Wise Platform is a meeting of minds - two services looking to bring fast-paced innovation and a global outlook to banks around the world.
We choose to integrate products and services that we know banks will benefit from. In our globalised world, where many people and businesses are spread across a range of countries and continents, international payments are only becoming more important. Partnering up made complete sense - it allows our clients to better serve those customers who both want and need to send money across borders.
TW: What would you say are the main benefits of our partnership for banks and their customers?
BS: Firstly, alongside Thought Machine's Vault Core, Wise Platform empowers banks to offer customers access to cheaper and faster payments to 80+ countries and in 50+ currencies. In addition to this, both Wise and Thought Machine work with vendors across the payments ecosystem, including system integrators and delivery partners like EPAM, which can make implementation of our integration even easier.
Finally, and most importantly, Vault Core is a single core banking platform that can handle multiple lines of business and process transactions in real-time. Banks using Thought Machine's Vault Core can make use of the integration with Wise and are then able to pass on the fairest exchange rate to their customers. This in turn enables them to better retain and attract those seeking competitive exchange rates and access to foreign accounts. It is a key competitive differentiator in the market and empowers banks to offer truly international, innovative banking experiences for their customers.
TW: What has it been like to work with Wise Platform?
BS: It’s been a pleasure working with Wise Platform. As I said, Thought Machine and Wise share a similar set of values, which has made it easy to communicate and work together to provide the best possible solutions for banks.
TW: Before you go…aside from partnering with Wise Platform, what are you most excited for in 2023?
BS: 2023 is set to be another exciting year for Thought Machine. We will build on our successes to date, working with even more of the world’s leading banks and fintechs to enable them to modernise and launch innovative financial propositions to customers.
It will also be a significant year for Vault Payments, our cloud-native cards and payments platform which we announced in 2022. Vault Payments will allow any institution to run all payments for every method, scheme, and region worldwide.
The strength of our partnership ecosystem of key technology vendors, strategic consultants, delivery partners and cloud providers is an essential part of realising our vision. I look forward to how this will develop further in 2023.
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