Emerging Payment Technologies
Exploring the frontier of financial innovation. As the digital economy evolves, so do the technological capabilities of both innovators and threat actors. The Bank of Thailand actively monitors, researches, and tests emerging technologies to ensure our national payment infrastructures remain secure and adaptable. Rather than waiting for future disruptions, the Bank of Thailand explores cutting-edge solutions today generating the technical blueprints and strategic insights needed to safeguard tomorrow's financial ecosystem.
Protecting the future of digital financial security.
The foundation of global financial security relies on cryptographic algorithms that protect everything from everyday payments to high-value central bank settlements. However, the rapid advancement of Quantum Computing presents a risk capable of breaking these current encryption and digital signature standards. To prevent vulnerabilities and ensure uninterrupted trust in the financial system, proactively exploring and preparing for Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) is a systemic prioritization.
To prepare the financial infrastructure for this transition, the Bank of Thailand is exploring PQC readiness across two parallel tracks:
1.1) Bank of Thailand Internal Preparation
A comprehensive approach to internal resilience. Preparing for the quantum era requires a full organizational effort across the Bank of Thailand. Through collaborative initiatives involving key stakeholders including the IT, Risk and other departments, the Bank of Thailand are undertaking a cryptographic inventory process across our systems, vulnerability assessments, and strategic planning to ensure all core internal infrastructures are PQC-ready.
PQC Migration Adopting Crypto Agility Approach
Recognizing that different systems have different technical constraints, there is no single migration pattern for PQC. To address this, the Bank of Thailand is implementing a comprehensive Crypto-Agile Approach enabling cryptographic algorithms to be replaced or upgraded with minimal disruption to business operations. The Bank of Thailand execute this through two complementary architectures:
1.2) External Collaboration
Securing the broader financial ecosystem. Because national payment networks are highly interconnected, quantum resilience cannot be achieved by any single organization alone. The Bank of Thailand continuously monitors and guides the financial sector's transition, including through seminars that build understanding and awareness of quantum risk among the boards and senior executives of financial institutions.
"Preparing for the quantum era is no longer optional, but it is the new standard for the security and stability of a resilient financial institution's systems."
— Vitai Ratanakorn
Governor of the Bank of Thailand
Quantum Board Awareness Seminar (18 March 2026)
FAQ
It is a new generation of encryption and digital signature algorithms designed to stay secure against attacks from future large-scale quantum computers. Today's widely used algorithms, RSA and elliptic curve, would be broken by such a machine. The majority of global organizations have aligned to adopt new standards approved by The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), including FIPs 203, 204, and 205.
First, encrypted data can be captured today and stored until a quantum computer can decrypt it, the method is called "harvest now, decrypt later" risk, which matters for information that must stay confidential for a decade or more. Second, replacing cryptography across a large financial system takes years of inventory, development, testing, integration, and vendor coordination, so the work has to start well before the threat arrives.
Crypto agility is the ability to quickly change, upgrade, or replace cryptographic algorithms without requring entirely new source code development or disrupting existing operations or infrastructures.