Connected Finance: Unleashing the True Potential of Finance with Technology

Evolution in technology has made customers more demanding, and at the same time, created new opportunities for financial institutions. The meteoric evolution of technology has prompted customers to look for quick and convenient ways to carry out banking needs, making mobile and online services popular. Financial companies need to make sure that they can deliver these services independent of location in a secure manner. It has also become compulsory to accommodate mobile payments and virtual payments in the connected finance ecosystem, resulting in a complex IT landscape.

Enterprises in the financial industry recognize the importance of delivering these needs to remain competitive; however, the challenge is to build a real-time system that centrally connects everything. Services and APIs are used to seamlessly connect the various backend components to build a robust connected ecosystem.

Asanka Abeysinghe, VP of Solutions Architecture at WSO2, recently authored a white paper - Connected Finance Reference Architecture - in which he discusses the significance of creating a connected finance system. He also explains how a middleware platform can be used to address each and every challenge faced at implementation.

Here are some highlights from this white paper.

The connected finance architecture will primarily facilitate regular, day-to-day functionalities, as well as call center-type functionalities, virtual payments, credit card payments and payment gateways. It will also make the vast amounts of data centrally accessible, allowing decision makers to gain business insights via customized reports and dashboards.

Given the sensitive nature of the industry, this aspect is important and needs to be addressed properly. For this, the architecture should connect all the systems and ensure all security measures have been incorporated. Each and every transaction should be closely monitored while ensuring all transactions flow through the same layer allowing the company to  monitor, manage, and govern financial transactions.

In addition, Asanka explores the role of event-driven architecture (EDA) in the connected finance ecosystem along with an architectural pattern for monitoring gateways. He discusses how WSO2’s complete cloud architecture enables enterprises to implement a hybrid deployment that complies with the tight regulations of the financial industry.

For any financial company, becoming a connected business will help to provide customers a better service as well as enable them to become more efficient and profitable overall.

For more details on the Connected Finance Reference Architecture, download and read the white paper here.