Five key trends shaping the future of payments and global money movement

Real-time payments as the new normal — and scaling fast

As instant payment rails operate continuously, with transaction volumes projected to hit $575 billion by 2028, infrastructure must support always-on availability, near-zero latency and new approaches to liquidity management. 

Cross-border payments are being fundamentally redesigned

The global adoption of ISO 20022 messaging standards, combined with the growing interconnection of domestic real-time payment systems, is accelerating settlement speed and improving transparency.

This evolution is transforming how financial institutions deliver foreign exchange, treasury and global liquidity services.

Digital currencies are entering the mainstream, with rapid experimentation

Regulated stablecoins, tokenized deposits and other forms of digital money are introducing programmable, always-on settlement capabilities.

This shifts money from a passive store of value into an executable asset embedded within digital platforms, while creating new requirements for interoperability, governance and regulatory alignment.

AI is moving from decision support toward autonomous execution


In the emerging era of agentic commerce, AI systems are increasingly able to initiate, manage and optimize payment flows on behalf of individuals and organisations. 

Payment foundation models represent the springboard into an agentic future

Proactive fraud prevention in an instant world is non-negotiable

It is imperative to move beyond reactive controls and adopt real-time, behaviour-driven and network-based detection capabilities that are embedded directly within payment flows.

Graph neural networks are enabling new ways of risk scoring through network intelligence.