At Sibos Frankfurt, the conversation around blockchain-based payments has crossed a clear line.
The conversation has moved from theoretical relevance to practical reality: how stablecoins and programmable currency are already being used, and what still needs to be addressed to operate them securely at scale.
At the EEA x EY Stablecoins in Business Payments side event, executives from banking, enterprise software, blockchain infrastructure and regulated wholesale settlement compared notes on what’s working today and where the real constraints remain.
From “eventually” to “now”
Opening the session, Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY and chair of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, reflected on how quickly long-held assumptions have collapsed.
He expected institutions to start with tokenized assets and then move cautiously toward digital currency. Instead, the adoption went into reverse. As he put it, institutions are now “plunging headfirst into payments.”
What surprised him just as much was the speed. In his words, the market went from “this is probably happening” to “this is happening immediately” in less than a year.
Payments, he stressed, are not an isolated function. They are the final step in a broader transaction process that includes asset delivery, contract terms and reconciliation. Yet the industry started with the last mile.
Why banks started with cash
This acceleration corresponded to the banking perspective shared during the discussion.
Naveen Mallela, global co-head of Kinexys at JPMorgan Chase, argued that the focus on payments was deliberate. From JP Morgan’s perspective, the real change is introducing shared, programmable ledgers for multiple assets within the bank itself.
As he explained: “Basically, it is about introducing new accounting systems into the bank. »
Once cash and assets reside in the same programmable ledger, new features become possible. Naveen cited examples such as intraday repo and intraday FX swaps, which are changing the way institutions think about short-term liquidity. Interoperability, he stressed, will be decisive during a long transition period where onchain and offchain systems must coexist.
When asked directly about deposit tokens versus stablecoins, his answer remained practical. Differences in how they are guaranteed, how they are treated for accounting and tax purposes, and the importance of deposit-type protections for certain customers all determine the choice.
Payments feel real when usability catches up
If banks focused on balance sheets and interoperability, infrastructure leaders focused on usability.
Guillaume Dechaux, CEO of ConsenSys, highlighted that blockchain payments are finally getting closer to a Web2-level experience. “MetaMask now does a Web2 experience,” he said.
Products like the MetaMask Card illustrate this change. Users can spend assets on-chain while merchants receive local fiat currency, with conversion handled at the time of purchase. As Paul later observed, once users stop noticing whether a service is on-chain or traditional, the adoption conversation fundamentally changes.
Guillaume also explained why payments place such high demands on infrastructure. Predictable finality, throughput, and reliability are not optional when financial institutions are involved.
Where stablecoin use is already real
Adi noted that while early enterprise blockchain work often relied on private networks, real economic activity was systematically drawn to public networks. “The value was going to be in public networks,” he said, largely because that’s where liquidity and interoperability exist.
When discussing cross-border payments, Adi shared an observation from South America that challenges common assumptions. Stablecoin activity there was not dominated by speculation, but by remittance-style flows, largely driven by companies rather than individual users.
He also highlighted stablecoin-based escrow as a simple use case that becomes viable once stablecoin rails are available, with clear implications for supply chain payments.
At the same time, the panel recognized the existence of a structural gap. Small businesses can experiment quickly. Large companies cannot afford regulatory ambiguity.
Wholesale settlement follows different rules
Fnality builds blockchain-based payment systems designed for wholesale markets, settled in central bank grade currency. Ram emphasized that the regulatory bar for systemically important payment infrastructure is exceptionally high. “The standard is very high,” he said.
Demonstrating resilience, governance and compliance is slow and expensive. Even as early pioneers help train regulators, the requirements themselves don’t get simpler.
Scale only happens when processes don’t change
The constraint on business adoption was highlighted by Bernhard Schweizer, head of SAP Digital Currency Hub.
His message was direct. “Companies are not able to change their processes. »
From SAP’s perspective, modern payment rails only evolve when stablecoins, deposit tokens, and bank payments emerge as interchangeable options in existing ERP workflows. Companies cannot run separate processes for each rail.
Paul reinforced this with EY’s own experience. Accepting stablecoins was once possible but operationally painful. Once integrated through SAP’s Digital Currency Hub, it became routine rather than exceptional.
What comes next
If Sibos Frankfurt has made one thing clear, it’s that business payments are no longer a theoretical use case for blockchain. They constitute the main adoption area.
The next phase is not about proving that money can flow on-chain. It’s about proving it can achieve this with enterprise-grade privacy, regulatory trust, predictable execution, and seamless integration into systems already run by businesses.
This is now the work to be done.
