To Robert Mancini, head of payments at core provider Finastra, banks are only beginning to recognize the importance of integrating to the cloud for better payments and services.

Prior to his role at Finastra, Mancini worked at several global banks, including Wells Fargo and Bank of Montreal. In his current role, he helps develop cloud-based payments solutions for Finastra’s clients.

Finastra is beefing up the capabilities of its FusionFabric.cloud, an offering for financial institutions that allows clients to share customer data with third-party providers. It’s a sandbox approach intended to help banks and other client institutions take advantage of innovations developed by startups. Finastra is also helping its institutional clients underwrite customers based on its business intelligence stack, amassed from its anonymized analysis of client information.

Bank Innovation spoke with Mancini this week on the evolution of cloud and payments in 2020. The following has been edited for length and clarity:

Bank Innovation: Where do you see payments going in 2020 and beyond?

Robert Mancini: When you look at payments in the short term, I think it’s a broader play. It’s not just about payments, it’s about modernization of the [banking] infrastructure. Look at how banks are trying to bridge that gap with new customer expectations. A lot of banks are engaged in some new, digital transformational journeys for their customers, and payments is one of the core pillars.

See also: Centana’s Eric Byunn: The cloud is new territory for many banks

I think banking is going to move to a “driverless” banking experience. Your financial institutions should be able to provide a very seamless experience for you. The bank is taking care of you holistically. The challenge is: How does it get to that?

BI: Why do you think modernization is happening now?

RM: When I look at the banking industry, I look outside of the banking industry first because financial services banking, specifically, has always been a laggard. Look at mobile banking — there was a revolution around mobile banking, but it didn’t start in this industry, it started in other areas. Look at AI and cloud and other technologies that have been around. Banks are just now starting to get on that journey.

BI: How do you think banks will continue to transition to the cloud for payments?

RM: I think there’s three critical phases. The first phase is [banks] need the underlying technology to kind of get you to that level. [The Finastra platform] is enabling banks to be innovative and broaden the ecosystem. Getting those basic technology components, building blocks in place because [then banks can] start being able to drive value proposition to those customers.

The next phase is moving away from solutions to services. This is where the bank starts to flex outside of traditional banking services. Look at a hotel for example, what are the services that a bank would offer? The bank would have the point of sale and payroll. But what else can the bank be doing for the hotel to add value? There’s a lot more the bank can do to provide a holistic service to their businesses.

Then eventually, that’s going to lead to the ultimate transformation — where banks are going to throw away the baseline and just reimagine the banking experience.

BI: Why do you think banks have challenges integrating the cloud and AI for better payments, and how can Finastra’s solutions help banks get there?

RM: The current environment doesn’t support the future environment. The way that Finastra has approached solving that problem, or that challenge, is through the FusionFabric.cloud platform, and also through the way we integrate it within the bank. Finastra is not asking the banks to rip and replace. If it has a legacy core, Finastra can layer on top of that.

The other thing that is problematic for banks to move to real time payments is, they’re still looking at it from a business perspective. When the Clearing House came out with real-time payments, only some large banks went live. But bankers are starting to think differently. I was visiting a bank in California, and in the meeting I mentioned real-time payments. They said, “We’re really interested in moving to real time payments, because we’ve identified a series of use cases for the entertainment sector. How can we build solutions around that?” I was so delighted because a lot of banks are not looking at it that way. The mindset change is starting to take a foothold.

BI: How does Finastra enable banks to build an ecosystem to improve payments and keep up with new customer expectations?

RM: The way that our platform works, it’s really enabling the bank to innovate on their own. We’ve created an open platform, where banks can innovate within the ecosystem. Most of the innovation is not going to come from us, it’s coming from our ecosystem.