Sibos 2026: Finastra's Radha Suvarna on Modernising Core Payment Infrastructure

Quick Summary

As the financial landscape evolves, institutions are reaching a turning point where legacy infrastructure can no longer be ignored. Radha Suvarna of Finastra explains at Sibos 2026 how the industry is shifting its focus from front-end solutions back to the core, leveraging cloud-native platforms and artificial intelligence to prepare for a new era of cross-border and instant payments.

What key payments trends will shape banks' priorities in the coming years?

There are three primary trends currently influencing bank strategies. First, there is a significant appetite for upgrading legacy platforms. After years of focusing on client-facing solutions, banks are now investing in core banking and payment platforms to reduce the total cost of ownership and ensure their business models are forward-compatible. Second, the rise of alternative payment models is challenging traditional rails. This includes capabilities like Mastercard Move and Visa Direct, as well as digital assets and tokenised payments. Finally, the integration of AI to solve specific business problems within payment operations is becoming a central pillar of modern strategy.

How is Finastra enabling this transition to modern infrastructure?

The foundation of this transition lies in building simpler, modular, and forward-compatible systems. Finastra has developed platforms like Global Pay Plus and Payments to Go to be cloud-native and API-first. The latest version of Global Pay Plus is fully microservices-enabled and supports over 35 clearings globally. This modularity allows banks to add new payment rails, such as digital assets, without a significant technical lift. For example, a partnership with Circle has enabled a tokenised payments interface, allowing banks to experiment with different digital assets through a single interface rather than via hardwired connections.

What is the role of AI in improving payment operations?

The guiding principle for AI at Finastra is maintaining a human in the loop, particularly for mission-critical operations where results must be deterministic rather than probabilistic. The focus is on addressing customer pain points, specifically in payment repairs and investigations. While 98 percent of payments may process straight through, the remaining 2 percent can create significant manual workloads. Finastra has launched an operator-assist repair module using a natural language chatbot. This tool helps staff identify what went wrong with a payment and how to fix it, potentially improving efficiency by 20 to 30 percent. This allows staff to focus on value creation rather than repetitive manual tasks.

How can the industry drive more value from instant payments?

While the first phase of enabling instant payments rails is largely complete in many markets, the industry is now entering phase two: driving actual customer value. Banks have historically focused on the ability to receive payments, but there is a need to develop more sophisticated use cases. These include emergency payroll, last-minute bill payments, and improving cross-border payments. A common friction point in international transfers is the delay between the money reaching a destination country and being credited to the beneficiary. By connecting cross-border rails to domestic instant payment schemes, often referred to as one-leg-out, the end-to-end experience becomes seamless.

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The shift from front-end aesthetics to back-end substance is a necessary evolution for the banking sector. As Radha Suvarna notes, the delay in core modernisation was a logical choice for a time, but the complexity of modern digital assets and the demand for real-time processing make legacy debt a primary risk. Finastra is positioning itself as the bridge between these eras, using AI not as a replacement for human oversight, but as a tool to manage the inevitable friction of global commerce. For banks, the message is clear: modernisation is no longer a project with a finish line, but a permanent organisational principle.