Microsoft, Marvell, and Utimaco have launched Azure Payment HSM v2, a cloud-native payment security platform for financial institutions.
According to the official press release, the service is intended for banks, payment processors, and other financial institutions seeking a hardware-backed, compliant foundation for securing payment transactions, without having to deploy or operate physical HSM infrastructure themselves.
A managed alternative to on-premises HSM infrastructure
Azure Payment HSM v2 is delivered as a fully managed service through Microsoft Azure. It is designed to let financial institutions and payment providers secure payment transactions, protect sensitive payment assets, and maintain control over cryptographic keys, while meeting PCI security, compliance, audit, performance, and operational requirements. According to the companies, the platform removes the cost and complexity associated with deploying or managing dedicated payment HSM infrastructure, which has traditionally required hardware housed in customer-owned data centres.
Regulatory pressure and scaling demands
The companies cited growing regulatory obligations, including PCI PIN Security and PCI HSM requirements, together with regional data sovereignty rules, as factors driving demand for the new platform. Rising transaction volumes and fraud risks have also exposed limitations in traditional payment HSM deployments, which the companies described as costly, operationally complex, and difficult to scale across regions.
The offering brings together three components. Utimaco's Atalla Payments Module provides cryptographic software supporting card issuance, PIN translation, mobile payments, and key management, and is deployed across global payment networks. Marvell's LiquidSecurity HSMs are built for high transaction throughput in dense, multi-tenant cloud environments. Microsoft Azure delivers the combined offering as a managed cloud service, allowing customers to scale capacity according to demand.
Company statements
Representatives from Marvell, Microsoft, and Utimaco said the collaboration responds to demand for cloud-scale payment services. They said the arrangement is intended to reduce the operational burden associated with managing payment-specific HSMs and to bring the three companies' technologies together within Microsoft's multi-vendor HSM infrastructure on Azure.
Azure Payment HSM v2 entered public preview on 17 September 2026, in the Western US and Western Europe regions. The companies have not disclosed a timeline for general availability or expansion to further regions.
The launch reflects a broader trend among payment infrastructure providers toward cloud-based, managed security services, as financial institutions face mounting compliance obligations alongside pressure to modernise legacy, hardware-dependent systems.
