Thought Machine

Thought Machine is a British banking technology vendor founded in London in 2014 by Paul Taylor. It builds cloud-native core banking and payments software for banks that need to launch and run products without depending on decades-old mainframe systems. The company raised a 160 million USD Series D in 2022 at a 2.7 billion USD valuation, employs more than 500 people, and works from London, New York and Singapore.

The platform has two products. Vault Core is a core banking engine in which every product, from current accounts to cards and mortgages, is defined by a smart contract written in Python that the bank authors and version-controls itself; over 200 preconfigured product templates ship with it. Vault Payments covers card issuing and processing on the Mastercard network. Customers include JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds Banking Group, ING, Standard Chartered, SEB, Intesa Sanpaolo, Zopa Bank and BCA Syariah in Indonesia. Gartner named the company a Leader in its 2025 Magic Quadrant for Retail Core Banking Systems.

1. Vault Core: Cloud-native core banking ledger that runs retail and SME products on one platform.

2. Smart contracts: Each product is Python code the bank writes, tests and version-controls without a vendor release cycle.

3. Product library: Over 200 preconfigured templates for accounts, cards, loans and mortgages.

4. Vault Payments: Card issuing and processing on the Mastercard network alongside the core ledger.

5. Tier-one references: Deployed at JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds Banking Group, ING, Standard Chartered and Intesa Sanpaolo.

6. Asia delivery: Singapore office and live Southeast Asian implementations including BCA Syariah in Indonesia.