Regulators in the G7, the US, and Switzerland have introduced mandatory requirements for financial institutions to transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). This shift aims to protect financial systems against future quantum computing capabilities that could compromise current encryption methods.
The G7 Cyber Expert Group released a roadmap in January 2026 outlining a three-stage migration: planning through 2027, risk assessments until 2029, and full implementation by 2034. A Swiss survey indicates that currently, fewer than 8% of institutions have a formal PQC strategy in place.
In the US, Executive Order 14412, issued on June 22, 2026, requires federal agencies to adopt NIST standards. Key establishment algorithms must be implemented by December 31, 2030, and digital signature algorithms by December 31, 2031. In August 2026, the US Treasury formed a Quantum-Readiness Task Force to oversee this transition.
Switzerland’s regulator, FINMA, issued Guidance 05/2026 in July 2026, requiring supervised institutions to have board-approved PQC strategies by mid-2027. These regulations follow the finalization of NIST standards FIPS 203, 204, and 205 in August 2024, which include algorithms like ML-KEM and ML-DSA.
While current frameworks focus on traditional financial infrastructure, they do not explicitly address blockchain networks. Most major protocols, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, rely on elliptic curve cryptography, which is vulnerable to quantum decryption via Shor’s algorithm.
