Finpace has announced Halcyon, an AI solution delivered alongside the Finpace core banking platform to help financial institutions across Africa modernise faster and run change as a controlled, repeatable capability rather than a backlog heavy engineering cycle.
Banks, microfinance institutions, and payment providers are scaling digital services while managing complex operating realities.
Institutions often need to support multiple rails and schemes, agent and merchant networks, cross border flows, multi currency operations, and frequent policy updates driven by risk and compliance. In this environment, the limiting factor is often not product ambition. It is how long it takes to translate business intent into production grade system behavior.
Halcyon introduces a new operating model for the Finpace core. It places an AI layer at the center of core operations, connecting directly to enterprise data and workflows so the system can interpret intent, orchestrate actions, and evolve as products, policies, and customer needs change.
Instead of hard coding every new capability into rigid backend services, Halcyon enables institutions to introduce, refine, and extend functionality through AI driven orchestration with clear governance.
Many institutions already use workflow and orchestration tooling such as BPMN engines, based on Business Process Model and Notation.
BPMN is widely used to model and execute processes, but it typically still depends on specialist design work, manual updates, extensive testing, and coordinated releases to adjust flows as the business evolves.
Finpace’s vision with Halcyon is that AI can deliver the same orchestration outcomes faster and more effectively, while offering greater flexibility in how change is expressed and executed.
Rather than building and maintaining every workflow primarily as a diagram and a ruleset, teams can express intent in business terms, and Halcyon can translate that intent into governed actions across the Finpace core and integrated systems.
This approach is built for the everyday change that African institutions must deliver. Teams frequently need to adjust onboarding and servicing journeys, limits and controls, pricing and fees, collections workflows, exception handling, dispute processes, and agent and merchant operations.
Traditionally, these changes become a pipeline of specifications, development, testing, and release coordination across multiple systems.
Halcyon is designed to reduce that dependency by shifting routine change from code first delivery to controlled orchestration, while preserving oversight and accountability.
“Across Africa, institutions are innovating quickly, but core change often remains the bottleneck,”
said David Kerr, Head of AI Solutions at Finpace.
“Halcyon is delivered with our core banking platform to remove that bottleneck. It helps teams execute change materially faster, with governance built in, so products and policies can evolve in step with the market.”
Halcyon is designed to support phased modernisation. Many African institutions need to run new digital propositions alongside incumbent cores and third party processors during transition.
Halcyon can be introduced with the Finpace core in a defined domain first, then expanded as integrations mature. This helps institutions deliver visible outcomes early while reducing transition risk.
Key capabilities include
• Intent driven orchestration that connects business objectives to approved system actions
• Context awareness through direct connectivity to enterprise data and operational workflows
• Governance mechanisms that support regulated delivery, including role based access, approvals, and auditable traces of actions and decisions
• Integration support to coordinate workflows across the Finpace core and existing systems during coexistence and transition
• A change model designed for continuous improvement as product constructs, policies, and customer needs evolve
Halcyon is particularly relevant for institutions building and scaling propositions such as retail and SME banking, microfinance lending, wallet and account programs, agent banking, merchant services, and multi country rollouts.
These programs succeed when institutions can iterate quickly while maintaining consistent operational control and clear accountability.
Availability
Halcyon is available immediately as part of Finpace core banking implementations and modernisation programs for African institutions.
Teams can start with a focused scope such as onboarding and account servicing, lending workflows, or operational controls and reporting, then extend coverage as new services, rails, and markets come online.
Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Africa, based on image by thanyakij-12 via Freepik
