Payments software provider Episode Six will launch in the U.S. soon, according to its co-founder and CEO John Mitchell. Though he could not disclose a timeline, Mitchell noted he’s currently visiting New York City to lay the groundwork for the launch.

“We are hiring in North America and raising growth capital at the moment,” Mitchell told Bank Innovation. “We are a profitable company with millions of consumers using our products in Asia, and we see a lot of opportunity for us in the U.S. right now.”

Based in Tokyo, Episode Six was founded in 2015 and is a software platform provider for payment companies, financial institutions and core processors. The platform uses open source code, which allows for easy integration with any system, Mitchell noted. It uses APIs for this integration without requiring the FI to overhaul its existing IT infrastructure, making it appealing for larger banks that still operate on legacy systems and core-processors, he explained. Once integrated, the FI can use the software to customize their payment product from end to end, including design, experience and back-end processes.

While fairly unknown in the U.S., Episode Six has a strong presence in the Asian market. One of the fintech’s customers is SBI Group, one of Japan’s largest financial institutions, as well as the country’s largest digital-only bank, SBI Sumishin Net Bank. Other major customers that Mitchell said he could disclose include DNP and Oceania Banking Services.

Recently, Episode Six formed a partnership with Microsoft. The platform sits on top of the Microsoft Azure cloud, leveraging the Azure Database for MySQL, Microsoft’s open-source relational database management system. This can be used by Microsoft’s FI clients to design and customize their payment products.

Modernizing payment offerings is, indeed, a hot topic for banks in the U.S. right now. In fact, at the Bank Innovation Ignite conference in Seattle last March, Deva Annamalai, Head of Payment Solutions Consulting at Fiserv, noted the importance of faster payments as a differentiator that could drive customer loyalty for a bank.

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However, the U.S. has a long way to go to keep up with digital payments in Europe and especially in Asia, Mitchell noted. “In Asia, the idea of a digital wallet serving as your core banking account has been integrated into the day-to-day lifestyle. In China, particularly, people use their phones to pay for everything,” he said. “It’s not the case in the U.S., but it’s only a matter of time. And we are seeing that even among larger FIs and core processors, that they want to modernize their payments system.”