• Mike Walters, CEO & Co-founder at Form3


• 01.07.2026 09:36 am

Interview with Mike Walters, CEO & Co-founder of Form3

At Money20/20 Europe 2026, Financial IT caught up with Mike Walters, CEO and Co-founder of Form3, to discuss the forces reshaping payment infrastructure — from cloud-native architecture and instant payments to agentic AI and the rise of stablecoins.

Financial IT: What's the biggest shift you're seeing in payment infrastructure today?

Mike Walters: We're seeing significant changes in payment infrastructure, largely driven by the growing need for systems that are always available, fully resilient, and capable of operating in real time.

From an infrastructure perspective, the best way to achieve this is by leveraging the powerful capabilities offered by cloud technology — from modern data centres to scalable computing resources.

Two major trends stand out. First, we're seeing the mass adoption of cloud infrastructure in payments, which is fundamentally changing how financial institutions build and operate their systems. Second, there's an increasing convergence between cloud infrastructure, distributed ledger technology, and the evolution of stablecoins.

Together, these trends are transforming the payments landscape in profound ways.

Financial IT: Moving core payment infrastructure to the cloud is a big decision for any bank. How does Form3 make that transition less daunting?

Mike Walters: Moving something as critical as payment infrastructure into the public cloud is a major strategic decision, especially for regulated businesses.

At Form3, we've built our entire company around cloud-native payments. We've been operating for 10 years and now process around 5.5 billion transactions annually. That experience has taught us what it takes to make cloud migration successful.

A key priority is maintaining strong API integrity. Our platform is designed to be easy to use, integrate, test, and develop against. That simplicity reduces complexity for our customers.

The second key element is service management. Cloud infrastructure isn't just about technology — it's about ensuring the entire operational experience is reliable and well-managed. When incidents or challenges occur, customers need confidence that the provider can respond quickly and effectively.

Our focus is not only on making integration seamless but also on ensuring that, once live, the infrastructure simply works — securely, reliably, and consistently.

Financial IT: Instant payment volumes are growing fast across Europe and beyond. How does Form3's platform scale without compromising on speed or reliability?

Mike Walters: Instant payments are scaling rapidly across multiple markets, and this creates significant demand for highly scalable infrastructure.

One of the biggest advantages of cloud-native architecture is scalability. At Form3, we invest heavily in infrastructure testing, performance optimisation, and continuous load simulations to ensure we understand exactly how our systems perform under pressure.

In practical terms, this means processing thousands of transactions per second while maintaining speed, reliability, and security.

Scaling isn't only about handling higher volumes — it's also about optimising performance at every stage while ensuring the platform remains safe and resilient.

As real-time payments continue to grow, our responsibility is to ensure we're ready for any level of demand our clients place on us.

Financial IT: What's the standout theme at Money20/20 this year, and how does Form3 align with that trend?

Mike Walters: This year's agenda really breaks down into two conversations.

The first is Agentic AI and Agentic Commerce, and the potential impact these technologies could have on payments. While this is still in the early stages within account-to-account payments, it's clearly becoming an important conversation across the industry.

Form3's role isn't necessarily to build the front-end customer experience. Our role is to ensure that as businesses innovate with AI-driven products and services, they're building on infrastructure that is robust, resilient, and always available.

The second major theme is stablecoins and tokenised deposits. This is especially prominent in treasury and payments discussions across Europe.

There are still open questions around the role of stablecoins in high-volume retail and business transactions, but it's clear this will remain a major focus over the next five to ten years.

Our commitment is to support customers as these payment models evolve — including enabling reliable on- and off-ramps for tokenised deposits and integrating new payment types into our platform.

These trends are here to stay, and Form3 is well positioned to help regulated financial institutions maximise the opportunities they create.