The world is being pushed toward a new paradigm where simple, everyday tasks and functions, often taken for granted, are becoming increasingly cumbersome. This is partly due to the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic and its role in forcing essential operations into the realm of digital. But this is a paradigm we’re already familiar with. It’s been on the horizon for years, thanks to the continued technological advancement of our world.
Rapid time to market and scaling to meet increased real-time consumer demand requires lean infrastructure operations and elastic, cloud-based infrastructure. Some financial institutions are no strangers to the benefits of cloud technology, and those who made the switch from on-premises infrastructure early-on are poised to step into a post-COVID world stronger than ever.
Yet, despite its obvious benefits, the top global banks continue to fall behind when it comes to cloud adoption and are now finding themselves further behind as more nimble technology players adapt to new digital environments.
Why Cloud Now?
Maintaining on-premises infrastructure is challenging—not to mention expensive when taking into account staffing, hardware, and maintenance—leading banks and financial institutions to move more slowly than other industries when rolling out new features and upgrades. With the expansion and maturation of cloud technology over the past decade, these firms are now faced with the option to either adopt more agile, cloud technologies or be left behind by their competition.
While some financial institutions are leveraging cloud solutions in some capacity, many firms remain hesitant when it comes to undertaking a full-scale digital transformation due to the customer-sensitive data they deal with on a daily basis. Cloud technology and security has significantly improved, and there’s no longer a reason for customers’ financial data to live on aging legacy systems that are inflexible and expensive to support.
If there’s one thing we can learn from the pandemic, it’s that we need improved solutions. The global economic crisis proves that full-scale cloud solutions are up to the task. In fact, Microsoft recently reported significantly increased usage of cloud services in regions with enforced social distancing in place. Now, cloud-based technologies are considered essential to any business wishing to survive the pandemic—and keep up with rapidly changing consumer demands.
Consumers today are digital-first—for example, ordering an Uber and getting to their destination with a few taps on their phone—and expect their banking services to be as well. Unfortunately, today’s global payments infrastructure has more in common with the outdated postal system than with this generation’s need for speed. RippleNet’s Cloud solution provides banks and financial institutions with a new platform to meet these demands.
The Future of Banking Is RippleNet Cloud
With RippleNet Cloud, banks and financial institutions can maximize their business benefits with minimal effort and more flexibility. RippleNet Cloud allows customers to send and receive payments with one integration and a common Ripple Payment Object (RPO) amongst all customers on RippleNet—meaning less friction and more standardization when customers are ready to scale.
Using Cloud, customers can go live on RippleNet five weeks faster than on-prem customers and avoid hardware requisition or staffing to get started—speeding up payments for the end consumer. RippleNet Cloud also makes it easy for financial institutions to add alternative settlement through On-Demand Liquidity. Cloud customers can also maintain and make new connections more easily, through one API for all of their RippleNet connections.
Cloud solutions are also cheaper to deploy and manage than on-premises solutions. Ripple’s Operations team handles infrastructure maintenance and upgrades, which saves customers money that they can pass along to consumers in the form of lower costs and more competitive rates. Additionally, RippleNet Cloud saves financial institutions on hardware and staffing management expenses, and even more significant benefit during today’s shelter in place requirements, because RippleNet Cloud leverages Ripple’s Operations and Technical Services teams for 24/7 monitoring and support.
Taken together, the benefits of speed and efficiency enable those leveraging Cloud to compete more effectively, and our customers are taking notice—including some of the largest members of RippleNet, who have chosen to migrate their existing on-premises deployments to Cloud.
The world as we know it is unrecognizable, but with this unexpected change comes the opportunity to adapt and create better, more seamless ways of doing things. Despite this global pandemic, global payments should be instantaneous to ensure that day-to-day life continues undisrupted, no matter what.
The banks and financial institutions that provide these agile digital methods will be well-positioned as innovators and leaders beyond this current crisis. If you’re a financial institution interested in moving from on-prem to RippleNet Cloud’s solution, contact us.
