‍QAI Ventures has published its white paper Quantum in Finance - based on literature research and interviews with banks, consultancies, academia, regulators, and quantum startups, and presented at The Economist's Commercialising Quantum event in London and at AI for Good in Geneva.

zerothird CEO Felix Tiefenbacher contributed to the research as an interviewee. Our multi-year work with Erste Group is featured as the paper's primary reference case for what a real quantum security transition looks like in the financial sector.
‍

What the paper finds

The white paper draws a clear distinction between post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum key distribution (QKD) and where each belongs in a financial institution's security architecture.

PQC is the immediate priority: a broad, software-based transition that must be underway now, with regulatory deadlines from NIST and national agencies converging around 2030–2035. QKD is positioned as a niche complement - not a replacement for PQC, but the appropriate solution for high-assurance communication links that cannot be fully controlled: data centre interconnects, central bank infrastructure, cross-border connections, exchanges.

That distinction matters. It means QKD is not relevant everywhere - but where it is relevant, the security guarantee is of a fundamentally different nature. It is grounded in physics, not in mathematical assumptions that erode as computing power grows.
‍

The Erste Group reference case

The paper draws on the zerothird–Erste Group collaboration as its concrete illustration of what this transition looks like in practice. The key findings from that case:
‍
- The process has spanned five years, beginning with executive education and exploratory pilots, with PQC and QKD pursued in parallel - not as competing bets.
- The integration challenge was larger than anticipated. Post-quantum security requires changes across the entire technology stack: switches, routers, servers, databases, applications.
- Working with physics-based systems was described by Erste Group teams as "a totally new area" - not a cryptographic upgrade, but a shift in operational domain.
- Close collaboration with zerothird allowed Erste Group to move faster, access senior expertise directly, and build deep organisational knowledge between the two teams.

The broader lesson the paper draws: quantum security is not only a technical challenge but also a cultural one. Institutions must overcome inertia and prepare IT professionals to operate at the intersection of cybersecurity and quantum physics.


Why this matters

Third-party research confirming the specific, narrow, and critical role of QKD in financial infrastructure is meaningful. Independent validation - built on rigorous interviews across the industry - is rarer still.

At zerothird, we have built our approach on exactly this framing: entanglement-based QKD deployed where the stakes are highest, integrated with PQC as a complementary layer, and delivered through our Quantum-Key-as-a-Service (QKaaS) model to reduce the operational burden on customers who should not need to run quantum hardware themselves.

The window for starting this transition is not open indefinitely. Organisations that begin with executive education and early pilots today are compressing future risk. Those that wait for the technology to become easier are compressing their own timelines instead.
‍

Read the full white paper
‍
‍Quantum in Finance by Dr. Tobias Denzler and Fraser Levick (QAI Ventures) is available here