FSS Future-Proofs Middle East Payments with Scalable, Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure

Being a global leader in payment technology, we take pride in announcing the successful completion of a landmark cloud transformation initiative across the Middle East.

By migrating mission-critical customer platforms to a sovereign, enterprise-grade private cloud, FSS has fundamentally modernized its regional hosting infrastructure. This strategic pivot optimizes operational resilience and scalability while ensuring rigorous alignment with UAE data residency mandates, empowering clients to leverage a high-performance, future-ready, and cloud-native ecosystem.

Enabling growth with a modern, compliant cloud framework

As transaction volumes across the Middle East accelerate and regulatory expectations intensify, we identified the need to evolve beyond traditional on-premises infrastructure. Customers demanded greater uptime, rapid scaling capacity, and assurance that sensitive financial data remains securely hosted within the UAE.

To address these requirements and remove the constraints of physical infrastructure, our team undertook a region-wide modernization program, transitioning its platforms to a more agile cloud environment.

We have transitioned to a Next-Gen, high-availability architecture featuring a hardened, multi-tier security framework. By utilizing geo-redundant Equinox datacentres, we have decoupled our infrastructure to enable elastic scaling. This sovereign, cloud-native foundation ensures future-ready, mission-critical processing without compromising performance or regulatory integrity.

 Migration to a sovereign enterprise private cloud within UAE borders

FSS selected BIOS Cloud (part of ZainTech) as our cloud service provider, leveraging their enterprise private cloud architecture and robust local data-centre footprint. The migration spans:

• Primary Data Centre: Equinix Datacentre, IMPZ, Dubai
• Disaster Recovery Site: Equinix Datacentre, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi

This ensures that all customer data—including transaction and application data is stored and processed exclusively within UAE territory, aligning with UAE Central Bank guidelines and meeting customer-specific residency expectations.

The enhanced cloud architecture integrates high-availability configurations with built-in redundancy, providing a resilient hosting foundation for mission-critical payment services across the region.

Sandeep David Crasta, Sales Head – MENA Region at Financial Software & Systems, adds, “This strategic modernization removes infrastructure bottlenecks to accelerate our clients’ regional growth. By hosting transaction data exclusively within the UAE, we ensure full regulatory compliance with UAE Central Bank guidelines. Our customers now benefit from a future-proof foundation that combines absolute data residency with seamless scalability.”

Higher resilience, greater scalability, and future-proof performance

1) Improved availability & resilience

• High-availability architecture minimizes downtime
• Reduces risk of single points of failure
• Strengthens disaster recovery and business continuity posture

2) Scalability & performance

• Cloud resources can scale instantly based on demand
• Modernized infrastructure and upgraded database platforms improve system performance
• Supports future growth for high-volume financial institutions

This transformation ensures customers on FSS platforms to grow confidently without infrastructure limitations, benefiting from improved responsiveness, superior uptime, and a secure, compliant technology stack.

A future-ready hosting environment for Middle East financial institutions

With the transition to a sovereign private cloud now complete, FSS has established a scalable, resilient foundation tailored to the evolving digital payments landscape in the Middle East. Institutions across the region will now gain access to enhanced performance, stronger resilience, and a hosting environment engineered to meet both current and future regulatory expectations.

For our digital engineering teams, this transition means we can now innovate at the speed of the market, ensuring our Middle East customers benefit from a resilient, high-performance foundation engineered to meet both current and future regulatory complexities.

Anand Krishnamurthi, Head – Global Digital Delivery, Financial Software & Systems concludes, “By establishing cloud foundation, we are providing Middle East financial institutions with a secure, compliant environment that supports the high-volume growth characteristic of the region’s evolving digital landscape. We have moved beyond mere hosting to create a future-proof processing ecosystem where superior performance and absolute data residency are guaranteed.”