Because it provides banks with the speed and flexibility consumers want in today's digital environment, cloud-native core banking and payments infrastructure is important. Banks can now swiftly introduce new products, process payments instantly, and remain robust even during periods of high demand thanks to cloud-native platforms, which replace outdated systems that are expensive, sluggish, and difficult to upgrade. Customers will benefit from quicker transactions, more individualized care, and fewer annoying holdups. Without this cutting-edge base, banks run the danger of lagging, product launches take longer, outages are more frequent, and consumers could just switch to rivals who provide a more seamless, intelligent experience. Thought Machine, a trailblazing fintech business that provides cloud-native core banking and payments technology, can help with this.

About Thought Machine

In the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Retail Core Banking Systems for 2025, Thought Machine has received recognition for its ability to execute and its completeness of vision. Thought Machine believes that this recognition is a testament to the progress the company has achieved in recent years and the ongoing development of Vault Core, its next-generation cloud-native core banking technology that is trusted by institutions all over the world.

Banks have total control over the development and operation of any financial product or payment system they want, thanks to the Vault platform. Since we created both systems from the ground up, Thought Machine clients have complete control, flexibility, and choice.

Their cloud-native core banking technology, Vault Core, was created from the ground up to operate in the cloud. Because it is cloud agnostic, banks have complete freedom to select the hosting solution and supplier that best suits their requirements.

Banks may operate whatever product they want with Vault Core, giving them complete choice over how they implement their strategy. Current and savings accounts, credit cards, loans, and mortgages are just a few of the things it may duplicate from a bank's current back book.

Banks have introduced goods from our Product Library, which is a collection of over 200 preconfigured financial products, or created their own products, including offset mortgages, buy-now-pay-later plans, and a combined debit and credit card.

The Thought Machine cloud-native payments processing platform, Vault Payments, was created to give banks the ability to handle all payment kinds for all international methods, schemes, and geographical areas.

Vault Payments gives customers total control over the payment's life cycle while dynamically and smoothly integrating both new and pre-existing financial products into the payment platform. When Vault Payments first began, the Mastercard network supported both card processing and issuance.

A Single Cloud-Native Platform for Contemporary Payments and Banking

Vault Core

Using smart contracts written in developer-friendly code, Vault Core, Thought Machine's cloud-native core banking platform, acts as a Universal Product Engine that lets banks create, implement, and oversee an infinite number of financial products, whether they are replicas of legacy products or cutting-edge new offerings like multi-currency accounts and bundled services. By separating product logic from the underlying platform, this architecture gives banks complete control over financial functions without requiring changes to the platform.

More than 200 prebuilt smart-contract-based goods, including current accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, loans, mortgages, Islamic banking, and BNPL, are included in the system's extensive Product Library. These products may be rapidly deployed using APIs and customized using parameters. The platform's architecture, micro services, AI, analytics, and reporting capabilities, as well as its real-time ledger and streaming data via APIs, API-first, cloud-agnostic, ensure flexibility, scalability, integration ease, and rapid time-to-market.

Vault Payments

Thought Machine created Vault Payments, a cloud-native payments processing platform that enables banks and other financial organizations to manage all payment kinds—across schemes, methods, and geographical locations—in a single, highly flexible system. Vault Payments' modular design enables customers to specify custom payment flows and rules, including merchant types, fraud checks, currency use, routing, and more, without changing the platform code. When the platform first launched, it supported the issuance and processing of virtual, physical, and tokenized cards on the Mastercard network. It also integrated with plug-and-play models for card manufacture and authentication services.

Dynamic account routing, which separates the funding source from the payment instrument, is a notable feature. This allows for more intelligent fund management and customized flow control, such as allowing a consumer to pay with a loan rather than overdrawing a current account. Vault Payments uses intelligent matching, automatic retries, and repairs to guarantee high straight-through processing (STP) throughout the payment lifetime. In order to monitor and address problems, it also provides a real-time user interface (UI) with full visibility and search capabilities over payment history.

Vault Payments functions as a Universal Payments Engine at scale, combining various payment methods into a single platform and providing real-time streaming of ISO 20022-compliant payment data for integration and analysis. While maintaining consistency and performance, this foundation facilitates the quick onboarding of new schemes and methods, such as immediate bulk clearing, RTGS, and cross-border payments.

Vault Payments may be used independently or in conjunction with Thought Machine's Vault key to connect key banking and payment features, allowing innovations such as e-wallets, buy-now-pay-later, and other composite financial products.

Notably, the French public investment bank Bpifrance implemented Vault Payments in April 2025, coming online in six months to enable TARGET2, SWIFT, SEPA Instant Payments, SEPA Credit Transfers, and Direct Debits. The implementation improved overall operational control, real-time processing in milliseconds, automation, compliance with EU settlement standards, and better analytics using ISO 20022 data. In a similar vein, Payset and Thought Machine expanded their collaboration in the middle of 2024 to incorporate Vault Payments, establishing a single cloud-native stack that encompasses cards, products, and account-to-account orchestration. The rollout of virtual cards, tokenization, customer portals, and multi-country services is also planned.

In conclusion, Energizing Banking's Future

Thought Machine's cloud-native solutions, Vault Core and Vault Payments, are revolutionizing the financial services industry. It allows banks to quickly build, implement, and manage cutting-edge products and smooth payment experiences by providing them with total flexibility, scalability, and control. Thought Machine, which has been widely adopted, offers banks the cutting-edge infrastructure they require to remain competitive and provide the digital-first services that consumers today want.

“Our world-class engineers apply themselves to developing core banking and payments technology that is truly unique in the scale of its ambition.”