Day two of Sibos Frankfurt 2025 continued to centre on speed, security and collaboration in payments. Speaking at BNY’s booth, Isabel Schmidt explained her role as Executive Platform Owner for Enterprise Payments Enablement — a function created under BNY’s new platform operating model to align engineering, operations and business teams. She discussed how BNY is scaling instant payments globally, investing in a single payments hub, tackling regulatory and currency restrictions and building inclusivity into the evolving payment ecosystem. Aligning engineering, operations and business in a platform model Schmidt said that over the past 18 months BNY has transitioned to a “platform operating model,” which “allows us to actually bring together into singular places same types of activity.” As a platform owner she “aligns our engineering teams, operational teams and business teams to drive the right outcomes for our clients for payments.” She emphasised that Sibos is “always exciting because this industry is all about collaboration” — a chance to hear directly from clients “what’s on their minds” and to craft solutions together in a “network industry.” Scaling instant and FX payments globally Schmidt highlighted BNY’s long experience with instant payments in the United States and said the bank is “now building out 24 by 7 foreign exchange (FX) payment capabilities” globally. This enables BNY to “be the machine, so to speak, inside that powers our clients to deliver these solutions for their customers.” The single global payment hub under construction by her engineering and operations teams “allows us to connect into multiple places” either through BNY’s own connectivity or via partner networks. Cross-border payments remain fragmented, especially for the growing number of consumers and small and medium-sized companies sending funds internationally. Schmidt said the bank continues to work “very strongly with a number of banks around the globe to actually be the last mile into the market infrastructures,” while industry initiatives such as ISO 20022 help drive standardisation, interoperability and richer remittance data. Tackling Asia Pacific challenges and regulatory pain points Asia Pacific has been a leader in real-time and instant payment systems and “the art of the possible,” Schmidt said, but local market requirements, regulatory reporting and currency restrictions still present “evolving pain points.” BNY addresses these through partnerships “in the country” and by contributing to multilateral initiatives. Schmidt noted she is part of the CPMI (Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures) payments interlinking working group, which tackles such challenges. She cited the coexistence phase of ISO 20022 ending in November, adoption above 60% and ongoing reliance on translation mechanisms from MT to MX messages as limiting the ability to pick up structured data and automate reconciliation. She argued that “we haven’t scratched the surface yet” of ISO’s potential to increase straight-through processing and liquidity optimisation. Embedding AI, digital assets and safety Schmidt also described how BNY’s internal AI adoption — with more than 98% of employees trained on its AI platform — is moving from “individual digital agents to agentic models.” AI is valuable “not so much about the efficiency that creates, but about the service improvements,” making automated processes “faster” for clients. She is “very excited” about Swift’s work on a shared ledger, which she believes could help “avoid fragmentation” and segregated liquidity pools by connecting networks operationally and from a liquidity perspective. Safety and security are “really important for us,” Schmidt said, including cyber security, fraud protection and data protection. She called for consistency in applying regulations globally so that public and private sectors can deliver “safe payments for our clients” while remaining inclusive. “We need to make sure we’re all on this journey, right? And nobody gets left behind,” she concluded. Building an inclusive payments ecosystem Schmidt’s remarks show how BNY is using its platform operating model, single global payment hub, partnerships and AI to make cross-border payments faster, safer and more predictable. By combining instant and FX capabilities with ISO 20022 data standards and emerging shared ledger technology, BNY aims to create an inclusive payments ecosystem that brings along consumers, small medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and financial institutions alike.
