IBM Acquires Canadian FinTech Expertus

IBM has acquired Montreal-based FinTech Expertus Technologies, according to a press release, in a bid to boost its hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) tech as well as its digital payment strategies.

Expertus works in cloud services for the financial industry with over 1,000 banks, credit unions, regulatory agencies and corporates, which process around $50 billion daily from around the world on its platform, the release stated. It’s also one of the largest Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions (SWIFT) North American services bureaus, which work to help manage money transfers and treasury transactions.

With the acquisition, IBM will gain consulting experience from Expertus on addressing new challenges in payments coming in the next several years, the release stated. In addition, it will broaden IBM’s ability to deal with complicated integrations of technologies, people and processes, building on last month’s acquisition of TruQua, an SAP partner that also helped with IBM’s cloud modernization.

Mark Foster, senior vice president of IBM Services, said the acquisition would be a great assistance to adapting to the world’s various changes.

“Financial institutions must balance greater demand for secure digital solutions while complying with rapidly evolving regulation,” he said in the release. “Expertus’ payment-as-a-service solution expands our hybrid cloud-based payments offerings, transforming payments and treasury management with AI to give financial institutions the flexibility to rapidly innovate and stay competitive as consumer demands evolve.”

Cloud solutions are seeing a boost in the online banking world, with IBM’s cloud services finding usage from Mexico’s Banco Sabadell to develop its digital platform, PYMNTS reported. Banco Sabadell works primarily with small businesses, and IBM will aid it in creating seamless digital channels for those businesses to use.

Turning to the cloud to help meet customer needs can help to diversify a bank’s portfolio, particularly for older legacy banks that up until recently had been firmly entrenched in older paper-based or manual processing made outdated by the pandemic.