Who Thought Machine is
Thought Machine was founded in London in 2014, where it is still headquartered, to build a cloud-native core banking platform. Its Vault Core is a real-time core ledger in which each product's behaviour is defined in programmable smart contracts, and Vault Payments processes payments on the same platform.
Its clients range from large global banks to fast-growing fintechs, and Vault Core can be deployed across multiple clouds. When a client runs Vault Core as its book of record, our Ledger module works alongside it, which is why Thought Machine is one of the core banking systems it connects to.
What it does in your platform
Ledger
Vault Core stays the book of record, and its smart contracts decide how each product behaves. The module sends the platform's transactions to Vault Core, mirrors the resulting balances for your apps and keeps the two in sync.
How the connection works
One connector in the Ledger module sends postings to Vault Core through its synchronous postings API, and consumes the events Vault Core streams out.
A customer pays
A card payment or a transfer starts in your app, and the module sends it to Vault Core as a posting.
The smart contract applies
Vault Core processes the posting in real time under the rules of the product's smart contract, and answers the module straight away.
Vault Core books it
The account's balances change on Vault Core's ledger, the book of record.
Events stream out
Vault Core publishes the change as an event on its data stream, and the module consumes it.
The ledger mirrors it
The module records the movement as balanced entries and updates the balance your app shows. Any difference with Vault Core goes to a queue in the backoffice.
Next to other providers
With Vault Core as the core, the module's other connectors keep working: bank statements, processor files and blockchain confirmations are matched as usual, and your accountants get the numbers in the tools they already use.
If you move between Vault Core and another core, or let the ledger become your core, your apps keep talking to the same module and do not change.
When Thought Machine fits best
A strong fit when
- You are a bank or e-money institution that runs Vault Core, or is moving to it.
- You want product behaviour written as code in smart contracts, not set through fixed parameters.
- You need a core that runs on the cloud of your choice.
Also worth a look
- Mambu, a cloud core banking platform run as a service.
- The Ledger module itself as your core, when a separate core banking system is not needed.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your Thought Machine account and contract in place, or connect the Vault Core environment you already run.
The products
We map your Vault Core products and accounts to the module with your team, and agree which events it consumes.
The keys
The credentials the connector uses for Vault Core's APIs and event streams stay in your platform's secrets.
A full test run
The whole flow runs against a non-production Vault Core environment first, from a payment in the app to the mirrored balance.
