Sibos 2026: Daniel Hurst and Antoine Cuypers on payment observability

Quick Summary

The transition from back-office data storage to front-office business intelligence is a primary focus for modern financial institutions. Daniel Hurst of FIS and Antoine Cuypers of Vyntra Global met at Sibos 2026 to discuss how their partnership is enabling banks to treat payment data as a real-time strategic asset through the Enterprise Payment Insights platform.

How is the management of payment data shifting?

The conversation highlights a significant move away from traditional methods where data was primarily used for basic archiving. Daniel Hurst explains that the industry is moving toward a model where institutions can observe transactions in real time, identifying problems in flows as they occur. This evolution involves several stages:

• Improving the efficiency of data archiving.
• Implementing real-time transaction visibility to monitor flows and identify bottlenecks.
• Utilising dashboarding to gain insights across the entire estate.

This infrastructure effectively acts as a search engine for the payments world, allowing for rapid indexing and retrieval of information. One client has already utilised this capability as a primary repository to feed data into regulatory reports for European authorities, demonstrating how a streamlined data environment simplifies compliance processes.

What does observability mean for a payments business?

Antoine Cuypers notes that being a leader in the market requires recognition from established players like FIS, and the partnership focuses heavily on the concept of observability. Rather than treating payment data as a purely technical or legal archive matter, the solution allows banks to see their business from a commercial standpoint in real time. This includes understanding which corporate or retail segments are most active and where specific attention is required.

By feeding transactions into a system that provides enterprise-wide visibility, banks can transform an IT-enabled topic into something that provides genuine business value. This shift allows different parts of the bank to understand what is moving, what has changed, and how to better serve their clients based on actual payment behaviour.

How will AI and natural language processing change the user experience?

The next phase of the collaboration involves the Enterprise Payment Insights platform, which is designed to unlock pragmatic AI use cases. Antoine Cuypers describes a vision where corporate or high-value payment customers can query their own data using natural language through a bank portal. Key benefits of this approach include:

• Providing a single version of the truth across the enterprise.
• Allowing customers to request specific reports or data points without manual intervention.
• Creating a competitive advantage through superior data accessibility.

Daniel Hurst concludes that the goal is to expand this technology across the client base to uncover more use cases. By opening up the data, the partnership aims to move closer to a future where AI-driven insights are a standard part of the payments ecosystem.

FF NEWS TAKE:

The collaboration between FIS and Vyntra Global represents a crucial step in the digitisation of the payments value chain. By moving beyond the buzzword phase of AI and focusing on tangible outcomes like natural language data queries and real-time observability, they are addressing the core needs of modern treasurers and bank operators. This shift from data as a liability to data as a source of competitive intelligence is likely to become the benchmark for enterprise payment platforms moving forward.