Spotlight On: Soft Space, a New Principal Participating Organization

Welcome Soft Space, a new Principal Participating Organization (PPO) at the PCI Security Standards Council! In this special spotlight edition of our PCI Perspectives Blog, Soft Space Chief Technology Officer Nicholas Lim introduces us to his company and how they are helping to shape the future of payment security.

Tell us about your company.

Founded in 2012, Soft Space is the world’s leading SoftPOS player headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Soft Space offers a modern full stack fintech payment platform for financial institutions and neo banks worldwide aimed at transforming and providing innovative payment solutions for global merchants. 

Why did your company decide to become a Principal Participating Organization?

Our decision to become a Principal Participating Organization (PPO) is driven by our desire to be strategically involved in shaping new standards. This will help Soft Space align our core objectives and real-world practices as a leading payments provider to global merchants worldwide. As a PPO, we are also able to contribute our knowledge by leveraging on our diverse use cases and experience. We would like to ensure that the standards developed take into account unique operational nuances and security concerns, resulting in more effective and adaptable solutions.

We also believe that we can foster a more collaborative spirit amongst members as this early exchange of diverse perspectives allows us to refine standards so that they will be more robust and versatile, reducing the need for interactive adjustments at later stages. Our commitment to a real-world focus will help to ease implementation by aligning standards to be more closely tuned to day-to-day challenges faced by today’s businesses.

Which benefits are you most looking forward to as a Principal Participating Organization?

As a PPO, we look forward most to gaining a comprehensive understanding of the evolving security landscape and staying updated with the latest developments, methodologies, and frameworks from a security point of view by engaging with industry experts.

We also look forward to fostering collaboration and sharing best practices with fellow industry professionals, providing and receiving feedback on ideas and insights, including what works and what doesn’t. Finally, we would like to harness this collective knowledge to help craft standards that cater to varying needs of corporations and merchants of different sizes.

Why is it important for companies to get more involved with the PCI Security Standards Council, especially at the Principal Participating Organization level?

Being at the forefront of standards development helps Soft Space understand and manage potential risks while ensuring compliance right from the start. This also helps us to shape policies and protocols that align with operational realities and helps us prepare for the future by anticipating future industry shifts.

What are some payment security topics that you’re interested in collaborating on?

We are interested in a wide array of emerging technologies such as: 

• The need for Quantum resistant Cryptography in a Post Quantum Computing era.
• Decentralised Identity Verification: Its pros and cons compared to centralised systems.
• Adaptive AI-Driven Fraud Prevention:  How to harness AI to detect anomalies and perform real-time risk assessments based behavioural contexts.
• How the security standards can help rapid adoption of new payment technologies while giving the assurance and confidence it has robust protection and high security capabilities.