Instant payments can reach millions of the unbanked—but only if the economics work for everyone building the rails. Around the world, national real-time payment systems are proving that speed and inclusion can coexist, yet many struggle to balance universal access with commercial viability. Getting that balance right is now a defining test of payments strategy.

You will learn: how to design instant payment schemes that serve the underserved without eroding sustainability; which governance and pricing models drive long-term adoption; and what lessons successful national roadmaps offer to markets still building theirs. Miss this session, and you risk designing a system that scales in usage but never in value.

What separates leading banks is not how many models or agents they deploy, but whether they can safely scale their own intelligence in core production at controlled cost. Models will keep changing; banks must stay in charge of how that intelligence is built, operated and evolved. This session unpacks the architecture behind it: open architecture and open source for freedom to choose; full-lifecycle Token management for controllable cost; knowledge and engineering assets for faster reuse; and an Agent marketplace with Skills for business-led assembly.

Smart economies are beginning to make decisions and act across transport, energy, commerce and finance. Banking’s next shift may follow: AI agents could move from advising customers to initiating transactions, coordinating services and managing financial outcomes on their behalf. That prospect raises a structural question: can systems built around human instructions, batch payments and familiar forms of accountability support finance conducted at machine speed? The answer depends on more than a smarter interface. It requires new architecture, agentic compliance and risk controls that preserve human oversight where it matters. Banking 5.0 sets out the case for that transition and what separates structural change from a chatbot layered over legacy systems.