- India-based fintech Intellect Design Arena introduced its AI-first payments platform, Intellect Payments, this week. The announcement is part of the firm’s continued expansion into the US.
- The new offering will help banks and financial institutions take advantage of a US real-time payments market that analysts expect to be worth $2 billion by 2030.
- Intellect Design Arena made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025. The company was founded in 1993 and serves more than 500 customers in 60+ countries.
Intellect Design Arena has launched its AI-first payments platform, Intellect Payments. Part of the Indian company’s US market expansion, the new offering integrates with existing core systems, channels, and operations to allow for incremental modernization rather than large-scale replacement. The technology relies on a low-code/no-code composable framework, making it easy to quickly deploy new payment rails as institutions scale. Intellect Design Arena’s Purple Fabric AI intelligently validates and enriches payments before they enter the flow, using real-time anomaly detection and exception prediction as transactions route, execute, and settle via a centralized control plane.
“Banks face a binary choice: lead the payment transformation or risk becoming outpaced by competitors,” Intellect Design Arena’s Manish Maakan said. Maakan is Executive President & Group Chief Revenue Officer and CEO of Wholesale Banking. “As real-time payments scale, incremental upgrades are no longer sufficient. Banks need AI-first payment platforms designed specifically for the realities of regulated banking—platforms that combine speed, resilience, and operational intelligence without adding complexity. American banks need partners who understand their infrastructure, their competitive pressures, and their growth ambitions. That is exactly what we are focused on delivering in the US market.”
Intellect Payments is built on eMACH.ai principles—eMACH.ai is the company’s comprehensive, composable, and contextual open finance platform, launched in 2023—and purpose-built Pay9 architecture. The platform’s AI models work at pre- and in-flight decision points to support anomaly detection, exception prediction, and operational decisioning. The new solution delivers a single orchestration layer across major US payment networks, including TCH RTP, FedNow, ACH, Fedwire, and SWIFT.
Intellect Design Arena’s offering comes at a time when banks and other financial institutions are pursuing opportunities arising from the growth of instant payments. Analysts estimate that real-time payments in the US could reach $2 billion by 2030, with an annual growth rate of 40%. And while a sizable number of businesses have indicated an interest in instant payments—with a growing minority of them willing to switch banks to secure this functionality—many banks, nearly two-thirds of them according to analysts, have yet to join instant payment networks.
Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Chennai, India, Intellect Design Arena made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025. At the conference, the company demonstrated its no-code platform that empowers banks to quickly build and launch role-based digital journeys for corporate customers. Intellect Design Arena’s suite of solutions ranges from wholesale and consumer banking, treasury, capital markets, and insurance to help banks and other financial institutions modernize their operations, lower costs, and remain competitive. With 500+ customers in more than 60 countries, Intellect Design Arena counts six out of the top 10 North American banks, five out of the top 15 Middle Eastern banks, seven out of the top 10 Southeast Asia and ANZ banks, nine of the top 10 European banks, and 13 out of the top 15 Indian banks among its clients.
Intellect Design Arena’s new product and US expansion announcement comes just days after the company announced a multi-year partnership with Canada-based, independent mutual fund dealer and national MGA Carte Financial Group. The partnership will integrate Intellect Design Arena’s Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) platform—powered by Purple Fabric—into Carte’s regulatory, onboarding, and governance workflows. This will enhance speed, transparency, and accuracy.
“Securing this flagship partnership with Carte Financial Group is a defining win for Intellect as we expand our footprint across North America, specifically into Canada,” said Banesh Prabhu, CEO of IntellectAI; Insurance, Wealth & Capital Markets, a division of Intellect Design Arena. “This milestone reflects our strong alignment with Carte’s vision of transforming compliance into a strategic advantage and showcases the confidence they have placed in our technology and approach.”
