Latest opinions that Laura Francis has shared on Finextra

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Laura Francis

Head of Brand and Marketing

Form3

Member since

14 Mar 2019

Location

London

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Laura's opinions

How microservices are changing the game for operational resilience and cyber security in payments

Cloud adoption among banks has accelerated exponentially in recent years with views now pivoting towards seeing cloud as central to resiliency challenges. Unlike cloud-based systems, legacy technology cannot be easily patched and upgraded. As a result, weaknesses can remain in a system for a significant stretch of time. It is not surprising that 6...

04 August 2021 /security /payments The Payments Business

Why Cloud Payment Processing is the answer to scaling challenges at banks

The global impact of Covid on payments has seen a surge in the use of contactless cards and account-to-account transactions, creating a giant pressure point for payment processing. Banks and financial institutions must adapt if they are to cope with substantial increases in payment volumes but also more effectively and efficiently handle the inevi...

27 July 2021 /payments /cloud Platform Payment Technology

Why Enterprise Banks Must Adopt Innovations in Payment Technologies

The global rise of digital banks, including Monzo, Starling, N26, Volt, Airwallex and Revolut, has continued at pace and as a result, all have successfully managed to acquire sizable customer bases since their respective launches over the past ten years. Their success can be attributed to a mixture of extraordinary customer service, perfect timin...

30 June 2021 /payments /cloud Platform Payment Technology

Minimising the Risk of Transforming Core Payments Technology

Implementing technical change will always incur risks. But, by putting the right measures in place will ensure that these are kept to a minimum. In their latest report, the Financial Conduct Authority looked into why change related incidents are consistently one of the top causes of failure and operational disruption and highlighted the key ingre...

04 May 2021 /payments /cloud Banking Strategy, Digital and Transformation

Is Open Banking all it claims to be?

Open banking is becoming more widespread. The UK’s OBIE (Open Banking Implementation Entity) reported that the number of open banking users doubled from January to September 2020. With the EU looking to introduce open banking in the coming years, some reports claim that open banking has ‘delivered on every count’. But despite its impressive growt...

23 April 2021 /payments Open Banking

Why financial institutions are banking on cloud-native technology to stay competitive

Digital banking has exploded, fueled by growing digital confidence, technology advancement and new, agile challenger banks but also a global pandemic creating an almost overnight shift in how both businesses and consumers move money. Pre-Covid, digital transformation was already gaining importance among UK and European Banks as a strategic necessit...

17 November 2020 /payments /cloud Cloud Banking out of the Box

Future-proofing your payments infrastructure

Any chief technology officer (CTO), in any financial institution big or small will tell you that the challenges in payment processing are the same. After all, a payment is a payment and people want them to be fast, really fast. Speeding up payment processing is one thing but being able to handle the complete, end to end payments journey from first ...

23 September 2020 /payments /cloud Payments strategies 2015-2020-2030

The future of payments is in the cloud

Why now is the time to move away from legacy payments infrastructure Technology is moving at a remarkable pace – by the time something has been built and launched it already feels outdated. So it may come as a surprise that many European banks are still using systems originally implemented several decades ago. The introduction of open banking (PSD2...

13 July 2020 /payments /cloud The future of Payments in Europe

SME banking in times of uncertainty

How Covid has accelerated the Fintech/Bank collaboration model to become the new normal In these uncertain times, it is no secret that SMEs are some of the hardest hit by the economic impact of COVID-19. But help is at hand. Financial services providers are working to help SMEs navigate the current wave of uncertainty but are they doing enough? a...

22 June 2020 /payments /covid-19 Banking Strategy, Digital and Transformation

The New Reality: Directly connect to SEPA Instant without the need for a Central Bank

What do a Fintech, a Tier1 bank and a non-bank PSP have in common? The committment and drive to make payments faster, easier and more cost effective for the global financial community. This includes non-banks. The possibility of collaboration between these parties was once thought impossible but today, by utilising close partnerships with Tier 1 b...

05 May 2020 /payments SEPA and European Payments