Eight years ago, Daniela Binatti co-founded Pismo with the mission of providing more agile core technology to the financial services industry. In January, credit card titan Visa bought the core banking fintech for $1 billion.
Binatti, who serves as chief technology officer of Pismo, has helped build the company's platform for financial institutions and payments clients since its launch in 2016. After two decades of experience in tech, Binatti said she signed on to help found the fintech because she saw a need to replace outdated technology with cloud-native core banking and card-issuer processing services.
"The whole financial service industry understands that the solutions in use are outdated, and the maintenance cost impedes continuing as it is," Binatti said. "But I don't believe in throwing everything away and starting from scratch. I think the best and most effective way is to choose platforms that provide the tools to transform systems piece by piece."
She added that it's "a matter of when, not if," banks will replace their core infrastructure, as many of them currently don't have platforms capable of managing emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. Binatti added the widespread adoption of modern solutions will take resilience and business leaders stepping out of their comfort zones.
Still, she said the financial services industry is "in evolution" as customers' expectations for their banks grow.
Although she said starting Pismo was the most challenging project she's taken on, she believes that from its first lines of code, the company has increased "agility, cost reduction and flexibility" to help banks compete. Binatti added that she's proud of the fintech's contribution to expanding accessibility to financial institutions by creating lower-cost options for bank products.
The company's latest milestone was its acquisition by Visa. Binatti was involved throughout the negotiations, but her mandate was to show the credit card company how it could use Pismo's modular platform to meet new clients globally. Although her fintech started a new chapter under different ownership, Binatti will remain in her role steering technology development.
