Paradigm-shifting breakthroughs tend to take a while.However, nearly three months into 2025, some of the world’s biggest technology companies have announced quantum computing advances that would have been unbelievable a few years ago.Amazon introduced Thursday (Feb. 27) a prototype for its first quantum computing chip, Ocelot, following similar releases from Microsoft and Google.“In the future, quantum chips built according to the Ocelot architecture could cost as little as one-fifth of current approaches…,” said Oskar Painter, director of quantum hardware for Amazon Web Services (AWS), in announcing the chip. “Concretely, we believe this will accelerate our timeline to a practical quantum computer by up to five years.”Quantum computing, unlike classical computing, harnesses the properties of quantum mechanics, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform complex calculations at unprecedented speeds. This capability could be particularly valuable in the financial sector, where traditional process optimization can require massive computational power.In payments, this could translate to faster transaction processing, better predictive analytics for fraud prevention, and highly efficient clearing and settlement processes.But how close is this potential commercial quantum reality?Read also: How the Math Powering Payments Adds Up in the Quantum EraThe Quantum Leap in Computational CapabilitiesCommercial quantum computing technology is steadily advancing, but even the companies behind the most promising marketplace advances say the financial services landscape remains anywhere from a handful of years to more than two decades away from practical and cost-effective quantum computing.The quantum ecosystem is in what insiders call the NISQ era (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum). Quantum computers have a fixed number of qubits — the quantum bits used to process information in quantum computers — and are prone to errors and require noise correction. Moving from hundreds of qubits to thousands or millions will ultimately be necessary for practical applications.Still, tech giants are vying for leadership in the quantum computing arena, each taking distinct technological approaches

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