The very nature of fund flows between accounts and across platforms is changing. Moving money may be routine, but adding value to that motion is anything but. As FIS Global Head of Money Movement Jon Briggs told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster, “the conversation used to be about speed.”
Now, speed is merely the starting point for what comes next.
For years, the defining challenge was whether systems could move money in real time. That has changed. “Those questions aren’t gone,” Briggs told Webster, “but they’re no longer the only goal.”
Every transaction, he said, carries a story, tied to who’s paying whom for what, when and why. The story is told through data, and when harnessed correctly, that data “becomes a foundation for building ecosystems that can better serve your clients.”
He described the shift as one from moving money to building ecosystems, turning payments into a strategic asset that offers actionable insights. That insight helps banks serve clients more effectively and unlock the value embedded in every transaction.
Resilience, Intelligence and Compliance
Today, modernization conversations often begin with resilience and intelligence. “Payments equal deposits for banks,” Briggs said. “Payments equal the lifeblood of business activity for their clients.”
Resilience now extends beyond uptime. Banks expect systems to handle or endure a regional outage, cyber attack or transaction surge without disruption. They ask, Briggs said, “When it does go down, how quickly are you going to recover?”
The second driver, intelligence, means treating payments data as a strategic asset. Banks want platforms that “can learn, adapt and improve over time,” he said. “This involves leveraging new programming languages like AI to predict fraud before it occurs or optimize payment routing based on cost, speed and customer preference.”
Behind all of that innovation sits a highly regulated foundation. FIS supports more than 50 different payment schemes, Briggs said, which by necessity brings “a lot of different regulatory regimes to the table.” Compliance, he said, is inseparable from scale: “It’s about architecting systems that are resilient, secure, but also flexible enough to adapt as the industry evolves.”
Both Sides Now
Briggs has seen both sides of the ongoing transformation of money movement, first as a banker at KeyBank and now as a technologist helping those banks rethink their infrastructures. “Sitting on this side of the table,” he said, “has given me a far better appreciation of the complexities of being able to deliver in those environments.”
As for the banks, “a lot of the technology they’ve been using has been around a long time.”
Modernization of the banks’ technology stacks, he said, “has become table stakes.” Everyone talks about it, but for FIS, the work goes beyond “a cloud migration strategy or API enablement.” The goal is to build platforms banks can actually adopt without ripping and replacing everything built over decades.
That approach centers on interoperability and reduced disruption. “We’re building what I believe to be the future of money movement platforms,” Briggs said of FIS’s Money Movement Hub, a plug-and-play system designed for smaller institutions constrained by aging infrastructure, regulatory pressures and thin margins.
The company’s strategy, he said, is to deliver a hyper-modern piece of technology that allows them to consolidate all of their payment activity and in that process modernize it. The payoff is a foundation to leverage for the future of money movement, one centered on data and AI.
“It’s about better understanding your business as a bank and your customers,” Briggs told Webster. “You can’t do it without a strong, modern foundation.”
Connecting the Ecosystem
As banks adopt FIS’s Money Movement Hub, the question becomes not just which rails to connect but how to extend those connections into FinTechs, merchants, ERPs and other banks. “Connected platforms are essential because they enable interoperability,” Briggs said. “Financial institutions can’t afford to operate in silos anymore.”
He added that embedded payments remain the future of customer experience. Consumers and businesses want payments to happen in the background and as frictionlessly as possible. End customer expectations require FIS to deliver the APIs and SDKs that let developers embed payment functionality into applications.
The opportunity ahead, Briggs said, is data monetization. Institutions that harness data to deliver personalized experiences, predict customer needs and optimize operations will have a competitive edge.
Building a Long-Bench Ecosystem
Still, technology is just one piece of the puzzle. “You also have to have the right mindset,” Briggs said. “That mindset drives changes in processes within institutions and in the talent required to build these future business models.”
Modernization, he added, is a long-bench effort. “It’s not one thing,” he said. “It’s many things that have to happen to have it go right.”
From his vantage point, the next inflection point will integrate connected platforms, embedded payments, and data monetization into a cohesive strategy. FIS, he said, “wants to be at the center of all of it.”
