The EPAA has released a report on quantum threats to Asia Pacific payments, highlighting the urgent need for coordinated action before quantum computers crack current encryption.
Following this announcement, the new report is entitled ‘Quantum safe payments: Why the payments industry must act now’ and it was developed to provide clear steps banks and payments providers must take to prepare, and forms part of the overall EPAA's industry-wide strategy to ready the region for quantum computing.
In addition, across the region of APAC, digital wallets, Open Banking, and real-time payment systems are widely used and deeply integrated. However, these types of payment systems have yet to incorporate resistance to types of quantum computing attacks.
More information on the EPAA’s newly launched report
According to the official press release, common challenges mentioned in the publication include legacy cryptographic weaknesses, migration complexities, and the overall need for coordinated strategies in adopting quantum-resistant cryptography.
In addition, EPAA’s officials said the payments industry could not afford to delay its response. At the same time, quantum computing also has the potential to deliver improved breakthroughs in healthcare, climate modelling, and scientific research, but in the wrong hands, it poses serious risks and challenges in the industry. Furthermore, scammers are already collecting encrypted data, waiting for quantum computers to break it.
In addition, the process of responding to quantum threats is represented by complex steps and requires several coordinated industry-wide actions in order to manage technical, regulatory, operational, reputational, and compliance risks.
EPAA has convened workshops in the regions of Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and online, bringing together 200 participants from across the payments ecosystem in order to shape the response to quantum threats. When asked how aware they believe senior stakeholders are of the quantum threat to current cryptography, only 20% of workshop participants answered that they are very familiar and actively tracking developments and risks, while 44% answered that they are not very familiar or not familiar at all with the overall threat to current cryptography.
