At Sibos 2026 in Miami, one session put a stark question to the financial industry: what happens when quantum computers can break the encryption that protects global money?
Speaking in a session titled "The quantum tipping point", QuSecure CEO Rebecca Krauthamer outlined the threats a post-quantum world holds for banks, payment providers and market infrastructures.
Her central warning was about timing. The tipping point, she argued, arrives when an institution's migration to new cryptography would take longer than the time left before a working quantum computer appears.
That gap matters because most digital security in finance depends on public-key cryptography. A capable quantum machine could, in principle, unravel that maths, exposing transactions, records and data moving between institutions.
Krauthamer called for the industry to take responsibility and mobilise, describing quantum risk as a direct threat to data in transit.
She illustrated how quickly the danger is growing. In 2019, breaking digital encryption was estimated to require 20 million qubits. By March this year, that estimate had fallen to 26,000.
Nobody can say exactly when "Q-Day" will come. It might be two years away or thirty. But Krauthamer said the date itself is beside the point; what institutions can know is how long their own migration will take.
The message aligns with the conference's wider agenda. Under the theme "Digital finance for AI-driven economies", Sibos 2026 framed post-quantum cryptography as a baseline requirement for securing tokenised assets and autonomous, AI-driven transactions.
Swift also used the event to discuss building a quantum-safe future, while consultancies explored how quantum and AI together are reshaping risk, fraud detection and payments.
For financial services, the conclusion is clear. Quantum readiness is no longer a distant research topic. It is a present-day migration project, and institutions that delay risk discovering they started too late.
