Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 47 - Live from MPE Berlin: Fixing Legacy Card Processing - The Cloud-Native Shift with Silverflow

Transcript

Ep. 47 - Live from MPE Berlin: Fixing Legacy Card Processing - The Cloud-Native Shift with Silverflow · The Payments Shed

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  Welcome back to another episode of the Payment Share podcast
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  live from MPE in Berlin, Germany 2026.
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  Today we are joined by Robert Krall, founder of Silver Flow.
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  Robert, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us today.
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  Thank. You for the information.
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  Nice to meet you can. You tell us a little about your
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  career in fintech, financial services and and what Silver
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  Flow do. Yeah, sure, sure.
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  I started my career in payments actually in the late 90s already
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  a small company called Bibbet, probably the first payment
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  company. We sold that in 2004 to Royal
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  Bank of Scotland. RBS at that point also acquired
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  a similar type of company focusing on the UK called
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  Worldpay. And obviously they merged the
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  two together. And yeah, after a number of
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  iterations, sort of it's the Worldpay that is today.
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  So that was my first entrance. I spent some time at Google as
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  well looking at their payments, launching a payment product in
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  in Europe. I was CEO for Triple U, which we
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  saw to dog data, dog data payments.
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  I still exist as well under a different name.
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  And then my old buddies from the Viva team called in and said,
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  hey, we're starting something new.
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  Would you like to join IGN? So I was the first CEO of IGN.
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  And within that, I'm also sort of the founder of the acquiring
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  division, their processing division, etcetera.
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  And obviously that is where the idea for self Flow came from at
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  the moment that you become an acquirer.
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  And we initially were focused on new acquirers.
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  You also need to think of how I connect to the card networks
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  technology behind it. And we said, OK, there's a gap
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  there. There are companies who do that,
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  but most of these companies are not really suited for these
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  modern service providers. So we said, OK, what would these
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  needs and that's what we built at Silver Flow.
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  And why do you feel that traditional banks in the market
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  are starting to turn to the fintech ecosystem to try and
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  help them with their own products?
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  Yeah, I think there's there's a very good reason for that.
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  So, so banks of course, they are specialized in all different
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  type of financial products and it could be international
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  cross-border transaction and cash bully and credit facilities
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  etcetera. But they have not been able to
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  show the in of its strength when it comes to accepting those
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  payments. And you see the whole other type
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  of companies run away with the technology.
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  So there are many very big payment service providers who
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  provide a very broad line of service, but you sort of have
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  this mix as a retailer. Do you choose for the technology
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  or do you choose for the financial expertise?
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  And we now see that those banks are sort of saying, hey, let's
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  combine the two, Let's work with a fantastic process platform
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  such as Overflow and combine it with our core expertise around
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  actually handling the money. And that is something that they
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  can do good, which most of the payment service providers cannot
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  do yet. So we're combining the best of
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  both air. And if you were to kind of break
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  down the the ecosystem at the moment, what parts of it do you
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  think are really quite broken that that needs some work, need
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  that kind of next evolution to help them move forward?
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  Well, I think that's, that's, that's a very important part is
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  that if you look at an average payment stack, there might be 5,
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  sometimes six different layers between the retailer before it
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  actually hits the card networks. And I'm not saying that all
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  those layers are broken, but the fact is that all those layers,
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  they take a base point here and there or a little sent here and
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  there. All those layers also act as a
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  filter, a filter from transactions going in from the
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  retailer into the cart network where the retailer essentially
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  wants, I'm sending you 100,000 transactions, send them on to
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  the cart network. So I don't want you to change
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  anything. I don't want you.
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  And you see that conversion skills could be by risk systems
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  or small bugs or glitches in the system, a temporary update, and
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  that skills conversion going from the retailer into the cart
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  networks. And it's also the other way
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  around. When data comes back from the
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  current networks, it also has to pass through all those layers
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  again. And every layer picks up the
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  data, does something with it, and passes on to the next layer.
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  But eventually the data the retail actually sees is quite
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  often a fraction of the data that they could get.
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  So what is broken? I think the whole idea of
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  stacking more layers on top of old infrastructure that that is
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  broken. And we want to talk to you today
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  about cloud native infrastructure and you know the
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  challenge I guess in the banking world of on Prem moving to cloud
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  native, like why is that cloud native approach so important for
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  these banks, particularly as they kind of develop?
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  I think that's that's cloud native systems are in general
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  easier and more stable to run than your own software.
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  You need to as a bank, you need to invest quite a little bit of
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  money in keeping your own on Prem the hardware and of course
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  it gives you a certain assertive that you have everything under
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  control. But suppose that as a bank you
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  spend whatever million on security infrastructure and
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  scalability. If you look to this cloud based
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  system that is the core. So they spend so much more in
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  making sure the system always runs, the system always secure.
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  And they've also set it up in such a way or at least we did it
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  with our cloud providers that our banks, they don't run on one
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  system. There are always 2 backups in
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  different regions with different flood level playing fields and
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  those type of things. So to assure the maximum of time
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  and maximum security and as a bank it gets more expensive to
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  do it now. So if you were to take your
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  experience and you're you're going and working with maybe a
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  more legacy player, what is your advice to them at the moment if
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  they could dealing with things like on Prem, migrating to cloud
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  native or or they're thinking about their future stack?
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  Like how do you guys lean into those conversations?
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  Well, I think as a bank you sort of need to to to 1st put your
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  stress to yourself. Do I want to be a player in
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  payments, Yes or no? And if the answer is, well we're
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  doing payments but it's not that important for us, yeah, then I
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  would look to outsource it, probably let somebody else work
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  with your licenses and do that on behalf of you.
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  But what we see is that more important, more banks are to
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  realize that it's not just about payments.
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  Payments is a door in to the bank for a lot of other
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  services. And if you close that door
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  because you kick out payments and you don't get the money in
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  your day-to-day running account, you lose a relation with the
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  retailers. If a retailer requires a credit
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  facility or they might not go to US and think so the banks start
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  to realize that it gets more important.
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  So how would we take that approach?
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  Well, first of our understanding how the bank looks at this, is
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  this important for them, yes or no?
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  There's not important for the bank.
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  We don't spend any time on them because it's it's uphill, that's
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  all. Do you think they hit that
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  intersection of like build versus buy as well?
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  We talk about a lot in the industry and in payments in
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  particular, like there is that kind of decision point where
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  brands decide are we going to build this in house, we can
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  outsource and payments is really collaborative industry by its
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  nature. I feel like maybe more brands
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  are starting to pivot towards the the buy and then trusting
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  third parties, the kind of this issue of bread and butter, you
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  go and help us to do this thing. I think that more and more
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  banks, I mean, in the past, we've seen several companies
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  building it themselves. So, so there are a few very big
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  banks. We've also seen in some cases
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  how much money has been poured into those projects and how much
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  time it actually costed. And by the time that it
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  delivered, it's actually was a little bit outdated already
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  simply because all projects took 567 years or so.
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  So it's gets more difficult for banks to set up projects,
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  technical projects that sort of run for five, 6-7 years with big
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  budgets. It's difficult for those people
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  to sign up. So we still see some banks doing
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  that, which is fair enough. But I think big budget lots of
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  time. But we also see that banks
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  essentially say, well, we've shown in the past, we've proven
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  in the past that quick innovation is not our core
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  strength. Our core strength is the
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  financial operation and and yeah, why wouldn't we just
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  buying the best software to be combined with that.
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  So can we can go much quicker into action and that's of course
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  the conversation we have with those banks.
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  And if we move from the banking world to your relationships with
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  PSP's, how the silver flow approach kind of PSP
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  relationships in the payments ecosystem?
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  Well, the PSP's by nature have slightly different culture in
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  most cases. So PSP's usually are technical
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  innovators themselves. So they're really on the front
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  end of having sort of the best tools already to the merchant,
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  whether it's around conversion or risk or so from a cultural
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  point of view, quite often they immediately understand what's
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  what's what, what we're building.
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  And it's easy to explain the benefits.
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  But also an integration project at payment search provider
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  typically runs for a couple of weeks, a couple of months maybe
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  we're at the bank, it could take 2, two years.
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  So the decision and the cost associated with that, it's
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  completely different and it's not because our integration is
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  different, it's more because those organizations will have
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  different decision mechanisms. So for the payment service
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  providers, it's usually it's, it's it's quite a quick
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  discussion. And when you're looking at, you
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  know, that first conversation that you guys have with APSP or
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  a bank and then the the progress towards a migration, how do you
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  guys, I guess project manage those sort of, you know, you're
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  talking about a two year project versus A2 week project?
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  Like you have to have completely different structures in place in
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  terms of how you're managing that internally.
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  Essentially the things that we need to do are the same.
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  So we need to request new bins and icons from the card
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  networks. We will configure them on our
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  platform of course. Well, that's our expertise.
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  We do the day-to-day. So that's that's both are
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  reasonably quick job. So in essence, within one or two
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  weeks as a new customer, you have a working system with your
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  app and live bin. So you could send transactions.
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  Then of course, you have integration from the system of a
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  customer. Well, it could be a bank, it
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  could be a payment service, but I'd have to integrate to us.
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  We use quite smart simple APIs if you just want to do a plain
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  vanilla authorisation, simple message, but there are a lot of
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  different type of messages. And you can also implement all
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  the the data elements that come back or the reports that come
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  back. So the broader you want
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  integration of course the more time it's it could take.
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  But if you sort of say, well, I don't need that at this moment,
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  then it can be Queens iterations, a quickest
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  integration have run in under 5 weeks and that was from picking
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  up the phone to the first live transaction.
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  On average I would say for a payment search provider, it'd
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  take like 3-4 months. With banks, it's not necessarily
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  always slower, but it goes a lot of part about the the the pre
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  discussions that we have in the sales cycle.
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  So we usually already somewhere during the shows like at the
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  moment that you sort of have this buy signal, yes, we're
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  going to do it. We just need some time to go
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  through all the the paperwork then we can already start.
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  So yeah, it's, but those are usually custom projects.
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  They're just very different customers, right, Banks to PSPS.
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  It's like you have teams that kind of focus on the two
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  different verticals or not. Well, what you see typically
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  with banks that they are much ended for the right reasons by
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  the way, but they, they of course are very big focus on
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  security, stability, compliance, operational excellence, but also
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  how you report it. So we decided that we want to
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  have shock to compliance and we have a few, few other of those
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  standards simply to showcase to the banks that's external people
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  have looked at it and they gave us this report.
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  So you can look at this report as well and see if this matches
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  your standards. But banks, they in general have
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  more people looking into that than payment service providers.
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  For payment service providers, they also do their due
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  diligence. They also look at these type of
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  reports, but they don't spend months on on, on sort of a
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  question. I get that.
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  So we're here at MPE in Berlin. It's one of the big events in
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  the payments calendar every year.
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  Why is it such an important event for Silver Flag?
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  For us, it's, it's an important event because pretty much
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  everybody who's here either as a customer or could be a customer.
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  And if not customers, they probably could be partners.
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  And with MPE is really focused around our target group of, of
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  customers, customer and partners.
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  If you go to another one, there's your money 2020, It's,
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  it's bigger, but there are also a lot of companies where, yeah,
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  they do something in payments, in finance, etcetera.
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  But there's not a real connection to what we do.
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  This is really our target audience.
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  So all the all the players that we want to talk to are, are
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  here. Yeah.
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  So we have a final section, every guest that comes on our
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  show called the show For Shame, where we ask our guest to
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  nominate something in payments or fintech business that really
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  grinds their gears that they if they could banish forever from
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  the industry. What would you nominate?
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  Well. I, I, I, I think adding layers
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  on top of layers, that is something that's that that keeps
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  amazing me. That's that you have sort of a
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  bad foundation. Let's build something on it and
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  it looks nice. Foundation is still bad and they
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  have other companies building something on top of that, and
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  you have other people willing something on top of that.
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  So I think that that is, for me, that is the biggest question
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  marks. Why do we still have all those
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  multilayer stacks where people sort of on the front and say,
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  yeah, that's not good enough and build something on top of it.
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  And that's for me. I think the English expression
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  is lipstick on the pic. That's the right.
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  One or not? That's that's, that's that's
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  amazes me. That's that's we still see
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  companies that are setting up those type of structures.
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  Yeah, now I'm perfectly happy to put that on the shelf.
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  For shame. I like that one.
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  Well, thanks for joining us today and enjoy the rest of the
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  event. Thank you so much.
• 11:55
  Cheers. Thank you.