The CEO of Opus, Praveen TM, recently spoke with FinTech Futures on the changes in the financial sector and how Opus's open collaboration platform helps banks, payment service providers, merchants, and fintechs create creative solutions.

The financial services sector is evolving quickly. Innovations seem to be appearing out of nowhere all the time. How far do you think this trend will go?

You are 100% correct in this assertion! Studies have indicated that the financial services sector has been at the forefront of technology adoption. In order to stay up with client expectations, the financial sector has continuously changed, ranging from being digital to cloud-first to AI-first.

Fintechs deserve recognition for raising the bar for service performance in the sector. They demonstrated to the client what can be achieved with technological advancements, and conventional banks are being compelled to catch up.

We think that this tendency will go on in the next years. To accommodate the most recent advancements in data and AI, the foundational infrastructure for payments and banking has been updated. Financial institutions' management teams are aggressively exploring AI as a means of increasing income, improving efficiency, and providing customer-focused goods and services. The groundwork has been done, and in the near future, we will begin to see the results of AI innovation.

What role does Opus play in the industry's broader digital and artificial intelligence revolution as a provider of technological services?

Opus has been a technological enabler for the payments and banking sectors for the past 26 years. Opus has been at the forefront of enabling financial services to keep up with the newest technological advancements, from cards to ATMs to digital transformation.

With AI, the narrative is still the same. Our IT specialists have seen via ongoing customer interactions that banking institutions are having trouble using AI. The main causes of a sluggish adoption include a lack of IT skills, the requirement for large investments, and a lack of openness on return on investment (ROI) expectations.

In order to address these issues, Opus introduced FinGeniusAI Solutions. It's an open innovation platform designed to collaborate with Opus by bringing together a variety of stakeholders, including partners, clients, and IT specialists. The goal is to comprehend the particular issues that each of our clients has, offer a workable plan of action, construct viable proof of concepts (POCs) on a tight budget, and demonstrate possible returns on investment.

We are reducing the barriers to AI adoption for banks and other financial institutions across all markets by bringing together all the stakeholders and providing a viable proof of concept to address the ROI question.

Which AI use cases are currently being worked on by your team?

The FinGeniusAI team has been actively collaborating with many banks and credit unions to develop proofs of concept since the company's January debut. Certain use cases, such intelligent payment routing, AI-enabled payment enrichment with auto-repair, and ATM cash forecasting, are highly specialized to the banking sector.

We are utilizing use cases like document analysis and contextual search for information libraries to introduce the potential of generative AI to the banking industry.

What additional developments, beyond artificial intelligence, will impact the banking and payments industry in the near future?

Without a doubt, AI is the most fascinating trend in any field at the moment. The use of open banking and integrated finance will also have a big influence on how consumers and companies send and receive money.

The use of real-time payments has proven quite successful. We are seeing increased adoption rates with FedNow.

Additionally, there are minor changes like ISO 20022 that will have a significant impact on the sector. The deadline for switching over to ISO 20022 is drawing near. This modification will facilitate better data interchange between companies and speed up and simplify domestic and international processes.

What role does Opus play in the other trends' adoption?

Opus has introduced the Paysemble platform thanks to our extensive knowledge of the market and the difficulties that banks and other financial institutions encounter. It is a collection of accelerators designed to make the integration, migration, and adoption of technology easier. Our goal with Paysemble is to provide a streamlined collection of data models, processes, and user interfaces that guarantee quick development and implementation.

The Paysemble platform's message translator, workflow orchestrator, and interface module have all been integrated to do this. These layers may be configured to accommodate a wide range of use cases, including ISO 20022 migration, retail payments, cross-border transactions, and real-time payment integration.

For a specific use case, the predefined processes are set up to guarantee efficient data transmission, compliance, and security. Paysemble's microservices and cloud-based design allow for easy integration with current IT systems, facilitating quicker solution delivery.

In a financial environment that is always changing, how can you make sure that your team is prepared to embrace innovation?

Indeed, the sector is keeping up with the rapid evolution of technology. The only way to thrive in this cutthroat environment is via innovation. Since the beginning, innovation has been the method by which we address an issue and provide our clients with a workable answer.

We never stop growing and learning. Our frequent and in-depth conversations with consumers teach us a lot. As their strategic technology partner, we collaborate with them to generate ideas and then use our knowledge to develop a solution. We also work along with leading companies in the growing technology space. Through these partnerships, we are able to gain a thorough grasp of the underlying frameworks that may be used to develop solutions for the payments and banking sectors.