As financial systems evolve, central banks face a dual challenge -modernising the infrastructure that works today while building the foundations for what comes next. This means making strategic choices around the future of digital money and settlement, wholesale and retail systems connectivity across borders, and the interoperability, liquidity and governance arrangements that underpin them. At the same time, an increasingly AI-enabled financial system is raising the bar for the safety, reliability and resilience of critical payment infrastructure. This panel will discuss the key building blocks for the next generation of payments and where deeper cross-border collaboration can deliver capabilities that individual jurisdictions cannot achieve alone.

Howard Davies, the chairman of Qivalis, will assess the state of play on stablecoin developments in the EU. Which companies are active? How does the EU regulatory framework compare with others? What use cases are envisaged, and how will they sit alongside the digital euro under construction by the European Central Bank?
Qivalis is an innovative new venture, owned by a large consortium of EU banks, offering a new approach to the marketplace. Having now received regulatory approval it expects to launch in Q1 of 2027.

Stablecoins have moved out of the regulatory grey zone and into a proper legal framework. That shift changes the question facing every institution, from whether to engage at all to exactly how. Regulators in different markets are setting the terms at different speeds, and institutions no longer have the luxury of waiting for global consensus before deciding. This discussion works through the practical choices on the table: issuing, distributing or custodying stablecoins directly, against the risk of simply watching deposits drift toward whichever option moves fastest. Participants leave with a sharper sense of where their own institution sits on that spectrum, and what waiting actually costs under the new rules. One key question the discussion will dive into: whether to issue, distribute or custody stablecoins themselves, or simply watch deposits migrate to them regardless.