Jason Nadler is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at EML Payments Limited (ASX: EML) (S&P/ASX 200). With a background in business and technology, he understands complex technical problems and solutions in the market. He translates this into how best it equates for the FinTech’s current and future customers. To enable accelerated growth through scalability, security, and automation, his team utilises the company’s global reach to provide reliable systems with innovative, market-leading strategies. In the following conversation, Jason reveals that ”we are a Microsoft shop.”

What makes Microsoft Azure attractive to a FinTech CTO?

”We develop and run our technology stack in Microsoft technologies. Specifically, we use the .NET Framework, which is a Microsoft programming language. All of our programmes, applications, and everything we develop runs in data centres known as on-prem or on-premises data centres. We physically rack and wire up the machines our technology runs on instead of simply uploading to the cloud where that level of interaction isn’t needed. We could have considered the other main competitors in the space, but since we already had a strong connection with Microsoft, it made sense to stay. We were already developing in Microsoft technologies and using them for our corporate infrastructure. So, the terminology and system understanding was already engrained within all of our offices. It’s a seamless integration to Microsoft Azure.”

What are you doing to help EML’s Accelerator Strategy succeed?

”We’re giving our 3 primary regions, North America, Europe and Australia, a more consistent experience for our clients worldwide. We’re excited to serve an enhanced developer experience. What does that mean? When companies want to use our technology, they have their ‘techies’ or developers investigate the functionality we offer. 40 years ago, you might have been lucky enough to have received a tri-fold pamphlet about a product! Today, techies can simply check out our APIs for themselves to see how we offer our technology to companies around the world to help enhance their business. It’s easy to connect to our developer portal, integrate our technology, test it and experience how seamless we’ve made the entire process. We’re using Microsoft and the toolset in Azure to accelerate this and our other go-to-market capabilities.”

What does embracing the cloud look like?

”As you know, our production systems are in on-prem data centres and on equipment that we manage. Moving forward, our new development will have more of a cloud-based foundation. We’ll also migrate many existing systems to the cloud. The benefit is the ability to scale in an expedited fashion. With Microsoft Azure, we’ll no longer have to decide what equipment to buy, place orders, or wait for arrival, then configure and migrate. We can instantly

procure additional infrastructure with the click of a mouse and move applications to it to go live the same day.”

What has been your most memorable day at EML?

”EMLCON2019 in Sydney was incredible. The ability to get our clients from all over the globe into one collective space and to see our business partners connect on how they utilise our technology and how it enables their businesses to succeed and grow was an exciting time. EMLCON2020’s virtual event was an enormous success, and I’m looking forward to EMLCON2021 later this year.”

What motivates you?

”Growing up, I went to huge schools, so I had to work extremely hard to have a chance to succeed. That work ethic from a young age gave me an edge in laser focusing on what it takes to propel an idea forward. My family were small business owners, and I also saw how dedicated they were to working hard to succeed. Additionally, there’s great motivation in helping people out and giving someone a kickstart to get them safely on their journey or life path. I looked up to Bill Gates when I was a boy. He’s one of the giants of technology. Not only has he revolutionized technology, but he used his success to drive humanity forward.”

Finally, when Jason was a young kid, he dreamed of being an FBI Agent. Not surprisingly, in his role as CTO, he is super focused on security protocols. ”That’s one of the major benefits of Microsoft. All of the different tools provided within Azure help secure our systems, and we love to examine the insights we gain from the analytics.’