The good news for travelers is that there is no single best time of year to travel to Japan — yet this makes it difficult to decide when to visit, as each of Japan’s seasons has its own special highlights.

Financial services, payments, streamlining inefficient processes is in our blood. So, it’s no surprise my colleague and contributor to this article, Nitin Gaur and his team, tackled the unthinkable four years ago by building a global payment network addressing remittance and interbank payments.

As if that wasn’t challenge enough, the team also designed it for the various regulatory and compliance requirements with robust payment operations, aiming to break all conventional mindsets to become more open and transparent.

The pandemic has forced many businesses and industries to reevaluate their strategies, customers, and teams. Our cross-border payment network, also known as IBM World Wire, was no different. We took a closer look at the landscape and strategic priorities of operationalizing a payment network and licensing. So, in late 2020, we shifted our focus from running a network to taking the learnings and applying it to our clients as service accelerators for our financial institution clients and payment providers.