The advancement of quantum computing forces organizations to reconsider cryptographic foundations of digital trust. Scaled quantum computers may threaten public-key cryptography used for communication, authentication, data exchange, and transaction processing. Migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is more than an algorithm upgrade. Organizations must locate quantum-vulnerable cryptography across ecosystems and develop migration plans. Yet, PQC readiness is limited. A Trusted Computing Group (2025) survey of 1,500 cybersecurity professionals found 91% reported no formal PQC roadmap, while 81% said current cryptographic libraries and hardware security modules were not migration-ready. IS research is examining PQC migration, including banking-focused work highlighting variation in strategies, resources, and timelines (Brettschneider & Mendling, 2025). We build on prior work by focusing on FinTech ecosystem readiness, especially digital payments. Atlanta’s “Transaction Alley” illustrates why this context matters, as roughly 70% of global financial transactions pass through companies headquartered in metro Atlanta (Georgia Department of Economic Development, n.d.) amounting to 300 billion transactions worth $49 Billion generated by 10 public FinTechs alone (Fintech Atlanta, n.d.). Digital payments rely on cryptographic trust across merchants, gateways, processors, wallets, APIs, and cloud services. Since many FinTech firms use payment infrastructure they do not fully own, PQC migration is a challenge in coordinating ecosystems and digital trust governance. This research investigates how FinTech organizations govern PQC readiness across interdependent digital payment ecosystems. We ask how firms identify cryptographic dependencies, assess vendor preparedness, coordinate migration across partners, and preserve trust in high-volume transaction environments. Through exploratory interviews, we aim to develop a FinTech PQC readiness framework that explains how firms move from awareness to dependency discovery, vendor assurance, migration coordination, and trust preservation. The study extends IS research by explaining readiness-building when security infrastructure is invisible, distributed, transaction-critical, and externally dependent. This research will also help leaders structure governance, vendor assessments, and migration roadmaps for quantum-era resilience in digital payments.
The advancement of quantum computing forces organizations to reconsider cryptographic foundations of digital trust. Scaled quantum computers may threaten public-key cryptography used for communication, authentication, data exchange, and transaction processing. Migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is more than an algorithm upgrade. Organizations must locate quantum-vulnerable cryptography across ecosystems and develop migration plans. Yet, PQC readiness is limited. A Trusted Computing Group (2025) survey of 1,500 cybersecurity professionals found 91% reported no formal PQC roadmap, while 81% said current cryptographic libraries and hardware security modules were not migration-ready. IS research is examining PQC migration, including banking-focused work highlighting variation in strategies, resources, and timelines (Brettschneider & Mendling, 2025). We build on prior work by focusing on FinTech ecosystem readiness, especially digital payments. Atlanta’s “Transaction Alley” illustrates why this context matters, as roughly 70% of global financial transactions pass through companies headquartered in metro Atlanta (Georgia Department of Economic Development, n.d.) amounting to 300 billion transactions worth $49 Billion generated by 10 public FinTechs alone (Fintech Atlanta, n.d.). Digital payments rely on cryptographic trust across merchants, gateways, processors, wallets, APIs, and cloud services. Since many FinTech firms use payment infrastructure they do not fully own, PQC migration is a challenge in coordinating ecosystems and digital trust governance. This research investigates how FinTech organizations govern PQC readiness across interdependent digital payment ecosystems. We ask how firms identify cryptographic dependencies, assess vendor preparedness, coordinate migration across partners, and preserve trust in high-volume transaction environments. Through exploratory interviews, we aim to develop a FinTech PQC readiness framework that explains how firms move from awareness to dependency discovery, vendor assurance, migration coordination, and trust preservation. The study extends IS research by explaining readiness-building when security infrastructure is invisible, distributed, transaction-critical, and externally dependent. This research will also help leaders structure governance, vendor assessments, and migration roadmaps for quantum-era resilience in digital payments.
Quantum computing threatens the security foundations of global financial systems, exposing long-lived data and signed digital assets to “harvest-now, decrypt-later” attacks. While the timeline for cryptographically relevant quantum computers remains uncertain, regulatory signals from the USA, UK, EU, Canada, and Australia converge: financial institutions and payment infrastructures must begin migrating to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) now to preserve confidentiality, integrity, and systemic stability. This paper maps emerging standards and roadmaps, contrasting binding requirements like the EU’s DORA crypto-agility provisions with non-binding guidance from NIST, ENISA, and ETSI. Despite a shared intent to secure high-risk use cases by 2030–2031 and complete migration by 2035, divergences in enforcement and milestones create uncertainty for cross-border banks and financial market infrastructures. In parallel, technical adoption is advancing: major browsers, cryptographic libraries (OpenSSL/BoringSSL), and CDNs (e.g., AWS CloudFront) have deployed hybrid PQC key exchange in TLS 1.3, proving confidentiality defenses are viable at internet scale. The paper synthesizes historical transition lessons, sector-specific regulatory drivers, and operational constraints in payment infrastructures to derive a new, principle-based migration: crypto-agility, risk-prioritized scoping, hybrid deployment, vendor and supply-chain alignment, independent testing, and proactive supervisory engagement. Acting now reduces long-tail exposure and ensures readiness for imminent compliance and interoperability deadlines.
The advent of scalable quantum computing poses a significant threat to the cryptographic foundations of digital trade, cross-border payment systems, and global financial infrastructures. Current public-key cryptosystems—widely used in digital transactions, payment authorization, and inter-bank messaging—are vulnerable to quantum-based attacks such as those enabled by Shor’s algorithm. This review analyzes the emerging domain of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum-resilient protocol design within the context of international trade and payment gateways. Key themes include the migration of legacy payment and settlement protocols to quantum-resistant formats, the integration of lattice-based key encapsulation mechanisms, stateless hash-based digital signatures, and hybrid classical–quantum key distribution (QKD) within financial messaging standards, as well as system-level design considerations for trade platforms that emphasize forward secrecy, long-term data confidentiality, and regulatory compliance across jurisdictions. By synthesizing standardization efforts and industry transition case studies, this paper offers a roadmap for financial institutions, technology vendors, and regulatory bodies to orchestrate a coordinated shift toward quantum-safe digital trade ecosystems.
Quantum computing is no longer a distant concern for cybersecurity planning. Its progress has raised serious questions about the long-term reliability of widely used public-key cryptographic systems, especially RSA, elliptic curve cryptography, and related key exchange mechanisms that currently protect digital communication, cloud services, financial transactions, government systems, and enterprise information assets. The main concern is that powerful quantum algorithms could weaken the mathematical assumptions on which these systems depend, creating future risks for encrypted data, digital signatures, identity systems, and secure network protocols (Shor, 1994; Mosca, 2018). Post-quantum cryptography has therefore become a major cybersecurity readiness priority, not only as a technical replacement for vulnerable algorithms, but as a broader organizational migration challenge. Effective preparation requires cryptographic asset inventory, risk classification, crypto-agility, vendor coordination, interoperability testing, and phased deployment across complex information systems (Kumar, 2022; Campbell, 2025). This article examines the cybersecurity implications of quantum computing and reviews the major post-quantum cryptographic algorithm families, current standardization efforts, enterprise migration barriers, and strategic readiness measures needed for the quantum computing era. It also discusses the importance of aligning post-quantum migration with existing cybersecurity governance, information systems management, and long-term digital resilience planning. By emphasizing early preparation, structured migration, and continuous cryptographic governance, the article argues that organizations can reduce future quantum-related exposure and strengthen the security of critical digital infrastructure before large-scale quantum attacks become practical (NIST, 2024; NCCoE, 2025).
Financial institutions depend on RSA, elliptic-curve cryptography, and Diffie-Hellman key exchange for authentication, transaction integrity, and confidentiality: algorithms a sufficiently large quantum computer would break outright rather than merely weaken. No cryptographically relevant quantum computer exists yet, but the harvest-now-decrypt-later threat means data intercepted today remains at risk once one does, and financial data's long retention obligations make this a present-day planning problem rather than a distant one. This paper assesses the readiness of financial institutions in Africa to adopt post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and develops a framework for transitioning to quantum-resistant cryptographic systems. Five specific objectives drive that work: examining PQC awareness among African financial institutions, assessing current cryptographic exposure, identifying technical, financial, organizational, regulatory, and skills-related adoption barriers, evaluating the suitability of finalized PQC algorithms for financial applications, and developing a readiness and migration framework fitted to African constraints. The study's design is literature-based and conceptual: it synthesizes verified secondary evidence rather than reporting original fieldwork, and no institution was surveyed or interviewed. Its contributions include an integrated Technology-Organization-Environment/Diffusion-of-Innovation model with crypto-agility as a mediating capability, a six-dimension readiness instrument, and an algorithm-evaluation framework. The central contribution, a six-phase migration framework addressing three gaps found in every existing precedent, is paired with an adapted risk-based prioritization matrix. Headline recommendations call on institutions to name a single accountable owner and begin scoped discovery now, on regulators to extend draft cybersecurity guidance to address cryptographic agility explicitly, and on future research to empirically test the proposed model against real institutions.
The rise of quantum computing introduces a profound threat to existing digital security frameworks, particularly those that underpin modern payment systems. Current cryptographic standards, such as RSA, ECC, and ECDSA are susceptible to being broken by quantum algorithms like Shor's and Grover's, jeopardizing the confidentiality, authenticity, and integrity of transactions across financial networks. This study presents a comprehensive investigation into the design, feasibility, and architecture of a universal quantum-safe payment platform capable of processing all types of digital transactions, ranging from mobile money and bank transfers to blockchain-based and card payments through existing delivery channels on a decentralized infrastructure. The research synthesizes current developments in post-quantum cryptography (PQC), including lattice-based, hash-based, and code-based algorithms, and evaluates their suitability for real-time financial systems. The proposed platform incorporates a permissioned distributed ledger, API-level compatibility with legacy financial protocols, and an identity-governed, modular architecture that enables cryptographic agility and policy compliance. Through architectural modeling and critical analysis, this research provides a forward-looking blueprint for building quantum-resilient financial infrastructure. It concludes that while performance and governance hurdles remain, quantum-safe payment networks are both technically feasible and urgently necessary. This work aims to equip stakeholders, especially fintech firms, banks, and regulatory bodies, with a detailed roadmap for transitioning to secure, interoperable, and scalable payment systems in the quantum era.
Abstract: As digital payments become the backbone of economies in South Asia, quantum computing threatens to break the cryptography that secures modern financial systems. This paper explains in straightforward terms how cryptography ensures trust in digital payments, and why emerging quantum technologies could render widely used encryption methods such as RSA and ECC vulnerable. It explores the concept of "quantum risk," showing how payment systems require urgent upgrades to prevent future breaches. Focusing on developments in India, the paper reviews the country's regulatory structure, technical innovations, and efforts to build quantum-safe digital infrastructure. It assesses India’s preparations in comparison to the FATF guidelines and international best practices, comparing the nation’s roadmap with steps already taken by global leaders, including China, the EU, and Singapore. The study highlights the progress made in India and also points out critical challenges in regulation, talent, cost, and cross-border interoperability. A practical set of recommendations is provided for India’s path forward, including cryptographic agility, mandatory RBI standards for quantum-safe algorithms, deeper collaboration between government, fin-techs, and academic institutions, & strict alignment with NIST and ISO global standards. The paper emphasizes that India, with its active fintech sector and huge transaction volumes, must accelerate its quantum-proof encryption transition to safeguard consumer trust and financial stability, and sets out clear steps for policymakers and industry to future-proof the payment ecosystem in the coming quantum era. Keywords: Quantum Computing, Quantum Threats, Quantum-Safe Cryptography, Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), Digital Payments JEL Classification Number: O33, K39