Fit-for-Purpose Cloud Infrastructure Puts Payments in the Digital Fast Lane

Digital business solutions aren’t a one-way street; they are an HOV lane.

Digitizing network operations facilitates greater collaboration and data sharing between key stakeholders across ecosystems, helping to drive business growth forward.

Increasingly, the biggest transformations within today’s payments landscape are often taking place in the cloud.

“Moving to the cloud provides a medium to change the way we communicate, the way we share data in a compliant way,” Deepak Sevak, vice president of payments infrastructure products and program management office at Discover® Global Network, told PYMNTS.

“By leveraging the cloud as a facilitator of data, networks can reduce the number of hops to improve a customer experience, and the cloud provides the ability to move money with greater resiliency between players in the payments ecosystem,” Sevak added.

The two most important advantages, he said, are the cloud’s inherent scalability and its resiliency.

However, it is important to note that while cloud providers play a critical role, the responsibility for the payment ecosystem lies with the network itself.

By adopting a cloud-based infrastructure and leveraging data and analytics, businesses benefit from improved compliance governance and can experience improved growth and customer experience.

The key lies in creating a fit-for-purpose architecture that meets the unique needs of different markets and partnerships. This allows for innovations in digital data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI, driving the enablement of the digital ecosystem.

“That’s the beauty of the cloud,” Sevak said. “You can add capacity on demand, which is something that could take months in a traditional on-premises data center environment, and it allows for the integration of new technology capabilities on demand as well.”

“One of the most important things is it also drives interoperability, which creates standardization,” he added. “From a customer perspective, we all want a ubiquitous ability to transact in any way, any form and anywhere.”

Driving Growth in the Payment Industry With Cloud Infrastructure

Cloud infrastructure is emerging as a key foundational component in today’s rapidly evolving payment industry, offering businesses the tools they need to navigate compliance and regulatory challenges while driving growth and innovation in the digital ecosystem.

But that doesn’t mean firms should jump headfirst into migrating their operations over to the cloud.

“Organizations need to view a cloud migration through the lens of a fit-for-purpose exercise,” Sevak said.

He explained that there are three key factors firms need to take into consideration before embarking on their cloud journey: observability, cost and data.

“The ability to monitor not just the cloud environment, but all the integrations across the customer journey, is key to the value proposition of going to the cloud,” he said. “Understanding the costs and understanding how to manage and eliminate waste is key. A lot of firms that move to the cloud scale up a lot of data and have a lack of understanding of their costs. Lastly, the planning to manage security, to manage the latency, and data movement is super critical and super important.”

That’s because the accessibility of cloud data, and the ability to exchange data, can be leveraged for solving various business use cases, including pricing, market intelligence, consumer behavior analytics and fraud prevention.

Cloud infrastructure, when designed with fit-for-purpose, can create interoperable payments ecosystems, enabling seamless payments across different platforms and even across borders.

Resiliency, Security and Interoperability Are Key Focus Areas

Resiliency, security and interoperability are the three key focus areas of a cloud-based payments ecosystem that supports the business growth and desired outcomes of network stakeholders.

That’s why Sevak highlighted the importance of creating a fit-for-purpose architecture and partnerships to achieve successful transformation.

“Recognizing the needs of the different markets is key to how [Discover® Global Network] creates a fit-for-purpose architecture through partnerships to achieve those results,” he said. “We have done this by creating cloud infrastructure to scale volume in different locations based on the partnerships that we have, by improving on the downtime through resiliency and scalability.”

With continued dialogue with cloud providers and a focus on innovation, the payments industry can embrace the next generation of payments and create a seamless, secure and interconnected digital ecosystem.

Sevak said he believes cloud infrastructure “is truly driving the enablement of the digital ecosystem,” and that the next transformation will come from generative AI being used to streamline payments by “creating greater interoperability across the payments ecosystems around the world.”