Project FuSSE

Financial systems play a critical role in ensuring the smooth and safe transfer of money and assets. As digital payments grow rapidly worldwide, new technologies, the surge in artificial intelligence (AI), and fintech innovations are pushing these systems to handle more transactions, adapt to new demands, and stay secure. At the same time, advances in quantum computing pose risks to the cryptography that protects financial systems, requiring proactive preparation.

Project FuSSE (short for Fully Scalable Settlement Engine, pronounced "fyooz") explores a proof of concept (PoC) for how future payment systems can be designed to be flexible, scalable, and secure to handle these challenges. The project tested a prototype system to see how open-source tools and modular designs could improve financial systems.

Current financial systems face many challenges, including:

The project explored three key qualities that next-generation payment systems need:

The FuSSE prototype used a modular, microservices-based design using cloud-native design patterns including containerisation, stateless processing and event-driven messaging. Instead of building a single, tightly connected system, it broke the system into smaller, independent parts (microservices). These parts could be scaled, updated, or replaced individually without affecting the entire system.

For example, cryptographic services (which secure transactions) were separated into their own module. This allows the system to adopt new cryptographic methods, like post-quantum cryptography (PQC), without needing a complete overhaul.