SaaS Powered Banking Is The Future, Nymbus Co-CEO Says

We spoke to attendees at Money 20/20 to ask them their views on payment trends, predictions for the coming year and what the ideal payments ecosystem looks like.

Here’s our interaction with Alexander Lopatine, C0-CEO at Nymbus.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BIGGEST TRENDS YOU SAW IN 2015?

AL: We are the only modern core processing platform in the cloud-built-for-the-internet age and a true SaaS product so I think, in a way we are setting the trend as so far we are the only ones with a SaaS core. So our approach is one turnkey SaaS product with pre-integrated services and we are the only channel as core, which means the channels are built in such as online banking, mobile banking. So it’s a one platform-one app. We are going to see a lot more companies converting to a SaaS core.

So I think this is the trend. The financial institutions especially the smaller ones need new IT infrastructure because otherwise they will not be able to compete with larger banks. With new revising financial technology, we will not only connect the traditional FIs, but also community banks and credit unions to the fintech ecosystem who are unable to compete with larger banks and all those Fintech companies.

PYMNTS: TAKING THAT AS YOU THINK AS AN EMERGING THEME OF THESE FIS UPGRADING THEIR INFRASTRUCTURE, WHAT DO YOU THINK A MAJOR THEME WOULD BE IN 2016?

AL: Of course, blockchain is very interesting in the space. All those fintech startups will continue to come up with interesting solutions for different points and so it’s interesting for us to see what will happen to blockchain technology. Will it become regulated or not — that’s quite important. We are thinking of using this technology as well. If we built a network of banks in the cloud, it’s natural that we would connect them. Blockchain might actually be a good fit as our goal is to build a solid network.

PYMNTS: HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE AN IDEAL PAYMENTS SOLUTION?

AL: Today, there’s no ideal solution. We still like credit cards, we are still talking about mobile wallets. I think it’s over rated as there’s always the hype cycle and then the adoption cycle. We need to wait until the adoption cycle, but meanwhile it’s interesting to talk about the hype. However, I am more interested in the adoption. Today it is still credit cards, so we have to wait and see, especially talking about banks, credit unions and regulated entities as they cannot just become early adopters of some interesting technologies. But we as an infrastructure company are in a position to enable them to use new technologies. We will be able to do that.

The traditional FIS will otherwise just disappear. That’s happening today because they are being held hostage by legacy vendors. It all happens because the traditional FIs are unable to compete technologically and they are not able to come up with proper UX for their employees not only their clients as they don’t have the budget. They have to rewind on the legacy vendors package. Whenever they want to innovate they have to pay for the API, they have to pay integration, they want to hire people in-house who would be able to do vendor management and enable them to innovate otherwise they would just get it from one company and what those companies are offering today is less than good. And so that’s why all the ecosystem of startups that’s trying to bridge the gap between the consumer and client needs what the traditional FIs are offering today and we might be able to bridge that and enable the traditional FIs to compete with startups or create one ecosystem to link the banks because the fintech ecosystem still needs the banks in many cases.

Alexander Lopatine works as the President and C0-CEO of NYMBUS, a Miami, FL based fintech company that offers banking software, a suite of applications, hardware and network infrastructure to power it all.