On the final morning of Sibos Frankfurt 2025, Deutsche Bank’s global head of sales for institutional cash and trade finance, Tsvetanka Nankova, reflected on a hectic but productive week for Deutsche Bank, which, as the host country’s flagship bank, met clients and partners from across the world. She explained how Deutsche Bank is combining policy leadership with technology adoption to achieve the G20’s 2027 targets for cross-border payments. Leading on ISO 20022 and transparency Nankova said Deutsche Bank has been “absolutely at the forefront of driving the G20 agenda to ensure that we are moving more to real-time payments, 24/7, really ensuring that we are providing the transparency that clients expect of us.” She highlighted the bank’s role as a “thought leader” on ISO 20022 migration — the bank went live on time and is “supporting our partners across the globe with sharing best practices and helping them” to adopt the new format. Structured data under ISO 20022 already reduces false positives in sanctions screening and increases straight-through processing (STP), giving staff more time to focus on transactions requiring due diligence. Supporting domestic instant schemes to scale cross-border Deutsche Bank is a “huge supporter” of the Euro Banking Association (EBA)’s “OLO” (one-leg-out) initiative, which allows one side of a cross-border transaction to settle through a domestic instant payment system. Nankova said this is “an excellent opportunity for us to immediately scale and move more to real-time processing” and helps achieve the G20 targets for speed and cost. She added that Deutsche Bank continues to back Swift’s Global Payments Innovation (GPI) for transparency on transaction status and fees, while also developing its own “DBX EverOn” solution to process internal book transfers 24/7 for the US dollar, with the euro to follow. Exploring blockchain and tokenised deposits Nankova noted Deutsche Bank’s investment in a Singapore-based blockchain platform, Partior, and the processing of its first commercial payment on the blockchain in late September. While still at an early stage, this offers an “alternative to Swift” and supports “payment versus payment” or “delivery versus payment” use cases that could improve liquidity management and settlement finality. She distinguished tokenised deposits from stablecoins: tokenised deposits issued by regulated banks can bring “a different safety and security” while still enabling atomic settlement and programmability in securities and private markets. Applying artificial intelligence across the value chain Nankova said, “Artificial intelligence (AI) is going to be one of the most transformational technologies in global transaction banking after the internet and cloud.” Deutsche Bank already uses named-entity recognition to extract applicants, beneficiaries, vessels and ports for sanctions screening in trade finance and is automating document checking for letters of credit and guarantees in partnership with TradeStream; and is piloting smart routing of investigations to the right teams in operations. In corporate cash management, AI powers forecasting of clients’ cash flows and can automate and schedule payments. It can also summarise documentation for know-your-customer (KYC) processes and automate responses to requests for proposals (RFPs). Balancing innovation with operational resilience Nankova stressed that Deutsche Bank’s approach to AI is to move forward with “responsible velocity” by blending artificial and human intelligence — “having the human in the loop is critical and will remain critical for us.” She said, people are still the bank’s greatest asset and key to maintaining client trust while adopting new technologies. Partnering to achieve the G20 vision Nankova’s comments show Deutsche Bank aligning internal innovation with industry collaboration to deliver faster, more transparent and more accessible cross-border payments. By leading on ISO 20022, supporting one-leg-out instant schemes, investing in blockchain alternatives and piloting AI across trade and cash management, the bank is tackling the G20 objectives from multiple angles. She also emphasised that “you can’t do it alone”. Cross-border payments are a network business requiring partnership between banks, infrastructure providers and regulators. Technology, rules and collaboration must converge to make real-time cross-border settlement the norm by 2027. Deutsche Bank’s blend of policy advocacy and operational pilots positions it to shape — and benefit from — that transformation.
