Infrastructure as Code and Observability Automation for Payment Systems in Cloud-Native Environments

Abstract

The rapid adoption of cloud-native architectures has fundamentally transformed the deployment and operation of payment systems, necessitating automated approaches to infrastructure management and system monitoring. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enables the declarative definition and version-controlled management of computational resources, while observability automation provides real-time insights into complex distributed payment workflows. This review examines the convergence of IaC and observability automation in modern payment infrastructures, analyzing their combined impact on system reliability, compliance, and operational efficiency. The integration of IaC frameworks with observability platforms addresses critical challenges in payment system management, including deployment consistency, security compliance, and performance optimization. Through systematic analysis of recent literature, this paper synthesizes current approaches to automated infrastructure provisioning, distributed tracing, metrics collection, and log aggregation within payment processing environments. The review identifies emerging patterns in declarative infrastructure management, automated monitoring configuration, and intelligent alerting mechanisms that collectively enhance the resilience of cloud-native payment systems. Findings indicate that organizations implementing comprehensive IaC and observability automation achieve significant improvements in deployment velocity, incident response times, and regulatory compliance adherence. This paper contributes to the understanding of how automation technologies reshape payment infrastructure management and provides insights into future research directions for autonomous system operations.