Customers rarely think about payment rails. Whether transferring money to a family member overseas, paying an international supplier or settling a trade transaction, they do not stop to consider whether the payment travels through correspondent banking, an instant payment system, a digital wallet, a fintech network or an emerging settlement platform. They have already made their only meaningful decision: where they want the money to go. Everything else should simply happen.

Banks, however, face a very different reality. The infrastructure supporting cross-border payments has become more diverse than at any point in its history. Correspondent banking now sits alongside domestic instant payment systems, fintech networks, digital wallets and new forms of digital money.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to influence how payments are validated, routed and processed, while distributed ledger technology promises new approaches to settlement and liquidity. It also expands the number of decisions that need to be made before a payment reaches its destination. For many institutions, that growing complexity has become the challenge.

For Sriram Muthukrishnan, Managing Director, Group Head of Transaction Banking Product Management and Head of Enterprise Payments at DBS Bank, the response begins with customer intent. DBS first seeks to understand what the customer is trying to achieve, then determines the service and route best suited to that outcome.

The expansion of payment infrastructure raises a broader competitive question for banks. Advantage may increasingly depend on how effectively they coordinate multiple payment rails and partners while shielding customers from unnecessary complexity.

This thinking is evident across DBS’s work in payments, including GlobeSend, fintech and wallet connectivity, participation in emerging payment infrastructure and the use of AI. These initiatives serve different purposes, but together they expand the services, routes and partners available to meet different customer needs.

Muthukrishnan sees these initiatives as components of a single operating model organised around a central objective: understanding what the customer is trying to achieve, then determining the best way to achieve it. As he put it, "we enable choice" rather than expecting customers to navigate an increasingly fragmented payments landscape themselves.

Begin with the destination, not the journey

Ask Muthukrishnan where payment innovation should begin and his answer is unexpectedly simple. Not with blockchain. Not with artificial intelligence. Not even with payments themselves. It begins with understanding the customer's destination. Someone travelling from Singapore to London begins by deciding where they want to go. They may reach the airport by car, bus or rail, then choose a service suited to the journey. Each decision helps them reach their destination in the most effective way.

The traveller does not need to know how those connections are coordinated. Cross-border payments, Muthukrishnan argued, should work much the same way. Customers care about reaching the destination safely, reliably, on time and within budget. Muthukrishnan described “service, safety and certainty” as DBS’s credo, supported by visibility across the payment journey.

Customers should not have to understand the technical complexities of correspondent banking, instant payment systems, digital wallets or whatever settlement infrastructure eventually emerges. They should simply express their intent.

The bank's responsibility, Muthukrishnan argued, is to determine the best route without asking customers to understand the alternatives. Historically, banks built products around payment rails. As new infrastructure emerged, more products followed. The operating model Muthukrishnan described reverses that logic.

As payment options increase, customers who do not want to navigate the additional complexity should see fewer choices rather than more. Muthukrishnan said DBS has built the infrastructure to select the best route when customers do not want to make the choice themselves. The growing number of payment rails does not necessarily mean customers require more payment products. It means banks require greater flexibility in delivering a single outcome.

Competitive advantage therefore shifts from owning infrastructure to orchestrating increasingly diverse infrastructure.

Why GlobeSend is becoming an orchestration layer

This philosophy explains what might otherwise appear to be a series of unrelated initiatives at DBS.

GlobeSend is the bank’s cross-border payments platform, but its role extends beyond DBS’s own customers. By making its network available to smaller banks and payment providers that lack comparable infrastructure, DBS absorbs part of the complexity they would otherwise have to build and manage themselves. Its reach is supported by DBS’s connections with banks, fintechs, wallets and other last-mile partners across different corridors.

GlobeSend addresses one part of the wider model. Every payment begins with the same question, what outcome is the customer trying to achieve?  A customer sending funds overseas may simply want the recipient paid quickly. Whether the payment ultimately reaches a bank account, an instant payment system or a digital wallet can be determined by the bank when the customer does not want to navigate those choices.

The answer determines every decision that follows. Should funds be credited to a bank account or a digital wallet? Should the payment travel through correspondent banking, a domestic instant payment scheme or a specialist partner? Which route provides the best balance between speed, certainty, cost and availability? Which network offers the most reliable last-mile delivery?

DBS’s wider payments business has also achieved measurable commercial scale. Muthukrishnan said the bank’s domestic real-time payment volumes grew fourfold between 2021 and 2025, while its cross-border payment volumes generally grew at about twice the rate of GDP in the markets where DBS operates. These figures cover multiple payment services rather than GlobeSend alone, but indicate the rising volumes moving through the bank’s domestic and cross-border infrastructure.

Across its different payment services, DBS supports more than 100 payment corridors, with about 30 offering real-time or same-day capabilities. The breadth of this network gives the bank greater flexibility to determine the most appropriate route for each transaction, whether through correspondent banking, domestic payment systems, digital wallets or specialist partners, while presenting customers with a consistent payment experience.

More infrastructure does not necessarily create more complexity for customers. Properly orchestrated, it creates more flexibility for the bank. GlobeSend therefore becomes less a standalone payment platform than an orchestration layer within DBS's wider payments model.

Building a network of supportive partners

The same thinking shapes how DBS approaches partnerships. Cross-border payments have traditionally depended on correspondent banking relationships linking institutions across different markets. Those relationships remain fundamental. Increasingly, however, they are complemented by fintechs, wallet providers, domestic payment systems and specialist payout networks.

What many describe as fragmentation, Muthukrishnan described as optionality. He believes in building a “network of networks” as no single organisation or network can operate a global full-suite service on their own. That philosophy explains partnerships with organisations such as Nium and Banking Circle.

Rather than replacing correspondent banking, Muthukrishnan described such partnerships as extending DBS' reach into additional payment corridors and payout methods without requiring the bank to build every connection itself.  The objective is not to replace one network with another, but to combine established banking relationships with fintechs, wallets and specialist partners according to the needs of each corridor.

This is where the industry's competitive landscape is changing. Muthukrishnan sees this wider range of options and greater reach, supported by DBS’s standing and trust, as a source of competitive advantage.

Network density matters more than technology

If orchestrating payment channels explains how DBS approaches the front end of cross-border payments, Muthukrishnan believes another principle is becoming equally important beneath the surface. "Network density matters," Muthukrishnan said, noting that past innovations had failed because they lacked sufficient participation and remained “pockets of excellence”. Technology alone does not create value unless enough participants adopt it.

The payments industry has introduced no shortage of innovation. Domestic instant payment systems continue to expand. Digital wallets have become mainstream across many markets. Stablecoins, tokenised deposits and distributed ledger-based settlement are beginning to move into regulated financial services. Yet many technically sophisticated initiatives struggle to achieve commercial relevance.

The obstacle is often commercial as well as technological. A payment network becomes valuable only when enough participants choose to use it. Technology creates possibilities. Participation creates utility. A technically elegant payment network with only a handful of participants creates less value than a simpler network capable of reaching almost every counterparty.

DBS is participating in several payment and settlement initiatives instead of relying on a single emerging infrastructure. “We are not putting all our eggs in one basket,” Muthukrishnan said. Different networks can address different customer needs, giving DBS more options when selecting the route or partner suited to a particular transaction. The bank does not need to predict which network will ultimately prevail if it can connect customers to the one that delivers the best outcome.

That philosophy also changes how interoperability should be understood. The industry often treats interoperability as a technical exercise in connecting different networks. Its commercial value lies in allowing customers and institutions to move across multiple payment infrastructures without encountering unnecessary complexity and friction.

Muthukrishnan described it as an important problem to solve and linked it directly to network density. He expects an intermediate stage in which leading banks host nodes and provide nostro-like services, allowing smaller institutions to access shared-ledger infrastructure without having to build it themselves.

Payments are becoming a platform

That shift has implications beyond customer payments. As GlobeSend's ecosystem expands, DBS is increasingly providing payment capabilities that other financial institutions can consume rather than build independently. This reflects a broader evolution taking place across transaction banking. This also changes DBS' role within the payments ecosystem.

Historically, banks competed by owning proprietary infrastructure. Increasingly, they compete by making that infrastructure available to a wider ecosystem. Payment capabilities, account infrastructure and settlement services become shared building blocks rather than standalone banking products.

As more institutions participate, network density increases, creating greater value for every participant connected to the ecosystem. For Muthukrishnan, the commercial opportunity lies less in building another proprietary network than in participating across complementary networks to offer customers broader optionality. Success therefore depends less on ownership than on orchestration.

Liquidity becomes the next competitive frontier

For much of the past decade, improving cross-border payments meant making them faster. As payment systems increasingly operate around the clock, speed is becoming less of a constraint than liquidity.

Payments can only settle continuously if liquidity is continuously available. Traditional banking has relied on correspondent balances, incoming payment flows and intraday credit to maintain liquidity across multiple currencies and markets. Those mechanisms remain effective, but they become increasingly stretched as payment activity extends beyond conventional banking hours.

This is where tokenisation could have its greatest practical impact. DBS’s tokenised-deposit pilots allowed corporate customers to move funds across jurisdictions outside banking hours. However, these initiatives largely remain within individual bank networks, making interoperability a barrier to wider use.

Muthukrishnan pointed to the Swift Digital Ledger as an effort to address interoperability across these networks. He said shared-ledger infrastructure must support the movement of liquidity alongside messaging to enable true blockchain-based instant atomic settlement.

The next competitive advantage may therefore lie less in accelerating payment messages than in mobilising liquidity more intelligently. That distinction also explains DBS' interest in emerging settlement initiatives. The objective is not simply to modernise payment infrastructure. It is to modernise the movement of liquidity that supports it.

Making complexity invisible

Artificial intelligence enables this operating model to scale. As payment ecosystems become increasingly diverse, banks increasingly require intelligent systems capable of understanding customer intent, identifying the most appropriate routing decision, completing missing payment information and reducing processing and compliance exceptions before payments enter settlement. AI forms one part of that wider infrastructure.

Muthukrishnan said AI can complete missing payment information, lower unit costs, reduce repetitive errors and improve the identification of genuine sanctions and anti-money laundering risks. More accurate screening can reduce false positives and unnecessary queries to customers. None of those capabilities is particularly visible to customers. Nor should they be.

Customers experience only the outcome rather than the technology. More complete payment information and more accurate screening can reduce operational exceptions and avoidable interruptions. Greater sophistication beneath the surface produces greater simplicity above it. AI can contribute by quietly removing complexity from the customer’s experience.

Banks are becoming orchestrators of customer intent

Taken together, Muthukrishnan's observations suggest that transaction banking is entering a fundamentally different phase of development. For decades, banks primarily processed payment instructions. Increasingly, he argued, they are interpreting customer intent rather than merely processing payment instructions. That distinction changes the role of the bank.

Rather than asking customers to choose between different payment products, banks increasingly assume responsibility for selecting the most appropriate payment rail, partner, liquidity source and settlement mechanism for every transaction. As payment infrastructure continues to diversify, that operating model becomes increasingly important.

Customers should not need to deeply understand correspondent banking, digital wallets, fintech partnerships, tokenised deposits, distributed ledgers or whatever settlement technologies emerge over the coming decade, any more than travellers need to understand every transport network involved in an international journey. They simply expect to reach their destination.

The same expectation increasingly applies to payments. Cross-border payments will become more complex because the financial system itself is becoming more complex. More payment rails, more forms of money and more settlement infrastructure will continue to emerge. Banks cannot reverse that trend. They can, however, prevent customers from experiencing it.

For Muthukrishnan, that is ultimately how banks simplify cross-border payments as they become more complex. For him, the institutions that succeed will not necessarily be those that build the largest payment networks or introduce the newest technologies. They will be those that orchestrate an increasingly diverse payments ecosystem so effectively that customers no longer need to think about the infrastructure beneath it.