Alexandre Pinto, VP of Banking Products at Pismo, was a special guest on the Brazilian podcast Papo Cloud, which focuses on cloud computing. During the interview with podcast host Vinicius Perrot, Alexandre discussed the dynamic Brazilian financial services scenario, and how Pismo is helping financial institutions launch innovative products based on our banking and payments platform.
Regulation meets innovation
The Brazilian fintech industry has drawn the global financial sector’s attention for its innovation and competitiveness. According to Alexandre, in the last ten years, the Brazilian regulators left conservatism aside and established an agenda that enabled new players to compete in the financial market.
“Since 2013, the Brazilian Central Bank has managed to create a plan for innovation. It promoted competition to democratise financial services, which helped Brazilian regulations achieve a balance between maintaining the financial system’s integrity and enabling new players to enter the market,” he says.
Cloud computing brings agility
These regulation changes and the spread of modern technologies boosted financial inclusion in Brazil. This made the number of accounts and the transaction volume increase considerably.
“The Brazilian financial services industry is sophisticated regarding technology. But still, some local banks still rely on solutions developed 30 or even 40 years ago, and most established banks have their core banking systems running on mainframes. Pismo can help them by offering a modern platform based on the most up-to-date technologies,” Alexandre explains.
Pismo provides a unique product, comprising microservices and APIs that can be orchestrated to build financial products.
“This ensures agility and freedom for banks to innovate. Institutions with strong developer teams like using our platform because developing new products with their mainframe-based infrastructure would take much longer.”
A bridge to the future
Incumbent banks need agility to compete with fintechs and neobanks. However, it can be scary to leave their trusted legacy computing infrastructure. Cloud-based platforms like Pismo are a bridge to the future for these institutions. They can use Pismo’s platform to create new products without abandoning their legacy systems.
“It’s easy to plug our platform into other systems thanks to its APIs. This enables banks to innovate without abandoning their current infrastructure. Then hey can compete with new entrants without risking their regular operations,” he concludes.
The podcast is available in Portuguese. Click to listen below.
