SWIFT is now working on protecting payments data, but it’s hard to prepare for a risk banks can’t see.

Quantum computing, once the domain of academic speculation, is fast becoming a central concern for the global payments industry. The sector’s leaders now warn that the rise of quantum capabilities will fundamentally challenge the cryptographic foundations underpinning every financial transaction.

The risk is not just theoretical: it is an urgent readiness challenge that is rapidly climbing the agenda of boardrooms, regulators, and technology strategists. Those risks are technical, but they are also reputational, and at some point will become regulatory.

Camilla Bullock, CEO of the Emerging Payments Association Asia, recalls that only two years ago, attempts to raise the issue of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) were met with skepticism. “Many questioned if it was even relevant to the payments sector,” she said. “It’s no longer a theoretical risk, it’s a readiness challenge.”

Ray Harishankar, IBM Fellow, explains that quantum computing is not about replacing classical computers, but about introducing a radically different paradigm. Quantum machines excel at problems like factorization, the mathematical process at the heart of today’s encryption. Where a supercomputer might take a million years to factor a complex number, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could do it in days or hours. “Quantum is not a bad thing,” Harishankar said. “Encryption is just one use case. But it will have an impact on everything we do”.

Each transaction involves not just a single encrypted message, but a web of them: 20 to 30 messages between sender and recipient, each requiring its own encryption key.

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