Couchonomics with Arjun

How One Platform Went From 5,000 Cards to Powering Global Banks

Dec 3, 2025
Guest
Vishal Dalal
In this insightful discussion, Vishal Dalal, Global CEO of Pismo, delves into the evolution of core banking. He shares how Pismo transitioned from a pilot program in Brazil to serving banks globally. Vishal highlights the critical importance of resilience in banking infrastructure and the challenges of migrating from legacy systems. He also explores the impact of digital assets and AI on modern financial systems, emphasizing the need for banks to adapt to new payment complexities while ensuring safety and efficiency.
Ask episode
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
ANECDOTE

Humble Beginnings To Large-Scale Proof

  • Vishal recounts Pismo's origins in São Paulo and how the CTO re-wrote the platform inspired by Pismo Beach.
  • They proved capability with a 5,000-card pilot that later scaled into millions of accounts with Itaú.
INSIGHT

Core Banking Is Critical Infrastructure

  • Modern core banking must scale to 100–200 million accounts and handle 3x peak transaction spikes automatically.
  • It must be treated as critical infrastructure with instant failover and no data loss across regions.
ADVICE

Choose Cloud-Only Market Focus

  • Avoid on-prem deployments if you require rapid global scale and stick to public cloud where regulators permit.
  • Prioritize cloud-only deployment to keep margins and focus, but accept some markets will be out of bounds.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Get the app