THE PAYMENTS LIBERATION BRIEF:
FIVE THEMES FROM EBA DAY COPENHAGEN
The payments industry is no longer asking whether to modernise , it is asking how to do it faster, safer, and with greater control.
Peter Reynolds
Otoma CEO
Reflecting on a phenomenal few days at EBA Day in Copenhagen, I had the privilege of spending time with the Otoma team, bankers, customers, partners, prospects, consulting firms, advisors, industry friends and fellow vendors from across the global payments ecosystem.
The event was outstanding not just for the conversations on stage, but also for the discussions in the corridors, over dinners, at the stands, and in countless meetings throughout the week.
After days of carefully listening to banks and payment leaders from across Europe and beyond, five major themes emerged repeatedly.
The Massive Need for Faster Time-to-Market
This was by far one of the loudest messages from banks.
Financial institutions are under enormous pressure to build, test, and deploy new payment products, integrations, workflows, rules, and customer experiences in days or weeks - not months or years.
We heard this repeatedly across both retail and corporate banking.
In corporate banking, especially, there is growing demand for the ability to rapidly customise workflows and respond quickly to unique customer requirements. Banks increasingly recognise that speed and agility are becoming competitive differentiators.
The traditional pace of change in payments is simply no longer sustainable.
The Burning Need to Eliminate Vendor Dependency
Another consistent theme was frustration with vendor dependency.
Many banks feel constrained by legacy payment vendors whose innovation cycles no longer keep pace with the market's current demands.
The message was clear: banks want to regain control.
Some institutions are even considering building capabilities in-house to avoid being locked into a traditional vendor roadmap. However, many also recognise the risks, costs, and complexity of fully bespoke development.
What banks increasingly want is a platform they can own, control, configure, and evolve themselves - without waiting for vendors to prioritise their requests.
They want enterprise-grade control combined with the freedom to innovate independently.
The Huge Pressure to Reduce Operational Cost and Complexity
Across the industry, payment stacks have become increasingly overloaded.
Over years of change, layers of middleware, interfaces, testing frameworks, integration projects, and message transformation engines have accumulated. The result is increased operational complexity, slower delivery cycles, and rising costs.
Many banks described environments that are becoming increasingly difficult to navigate.
Every “band-aid” added to the architecture often creates another obstacle to the very purpose the payments infrastructure is meant to enable: innovation, speed, and agility.
The focus is now shifting toward simplification:
That balance remains one of the industry’s biggest challenges.
AI Must Be Native - Not an Add-On
Of course, AI was everywhere at EBA Day, but the conversation has clearly evolved.
Banks are no longer simply looking for AI “features” or standalone AI agents bolted onto legacy platforms.
The real discussion is now about AI-native infrastructure.
How is AI embedded in the platform's DNA? How does it improve operations, change management, exception handling, testing, monitoring, and support, from the ground up?
This shift is important.
The future is not simply AI assisting people at the edges of operations. It is AI becoming deeply embedded in how payment systems are built, operated, governed, and evolved.
That is where the real opportunity for transformation lies.
Modernisation Without Big Bang Replacement
Perhaps one of the most important themes was the growing demand for incremental modernisation.
Yes, some banks are still pursuing large-scale replacement programmes in which a legacy vendor is removed entirely and replaced with a new platform in a single major transformation effort.
But increasingly, banks are asking for another path.
They want the ability to modernise progressively:
This phased approach significantly reduces transformation risk while allowing institutions to modernise at a pace that fits their organisation.
And Underpinning Everything: Stablecoins and the Future of Payments
Overlaid on all of these discussions was the ongoing conversation about stablecoins and digital value transfer.
What was interesting this year was the growing consensus emerging across the market: stablecoins should not sit outside the payments architecture.
Instead, they should be treated like any other payment rail, fully integrated into the same operational governance, controls, orchestration, compliance, and infrastructure as traditional payment systems.
That feels like a major shift in thinking.
Final Thoughts
Those were the five biggest themes I consistently heard throughout the week in Copenhagen. But EBA Day reinforced something very important:
The payments industry is no longer debating whether transformation is needed. That debate is over.
The focus has now shifted to how banks modernise to be:
The event was outstanding not just for the conversations on stage, but also for the discussions in the corridors, over dinners, at the stands, and in countless meetings throughout the week.
After days of carefully listening to banks and payment leaders from across Europe and beyond, five major themes emerged repeatedly.
The Massive Need for Faster Time-to-Market
This was by far one of the loudest messages from banks.
Financial institutions are under enormous pressure to build, test, and deploy new payment products, integrations, workflows, rules, and customer experiences in days or weeks - not months or years.
We heard this repeatedly across both retail and corporate banking.
In corporate banking, especially, there is growing demand for the ability to rapidly customise workflows and respond quickly to unique customer requirements. Banks increasingly recognise that speed and agility are becoming competitive differentiators.
The traditional pace of change in payments is simply no longer sustainable.
The Burning Need to Eliminate Vendor Dependency
Another consistent theme was frustration with vendor dependency.
Many banks feel constrained by legacy payment vendors whose innovation cycles no longer keep pace with the market's current demands.
The message was clear: banks want to regain control.
Some institutions are even considering building capabilities in-house to avoid being locked into a traditional vendor roadmap. However, many also recognise the risks, costs, and complexity of fully bespoke development.
What banks increasingly want is a platform they can own, control, configure, and evolve themselves - without waiting for vendors to prioritise their requests.
They want enterprise-grade control combined with the freedom to innovate independently.
The Huge Pressure to Reduce Operational Cost and Complexity
Across the industry, payment stacks have become increasingly overloaded.
Over years of change, layers of middleware, interfaces, testing frameworks, integration projects, and message transformation engines have accumulated. The result is increased operational complexity, slower delivery cycles, and rising costs.
Many banks described environments that are becoming increasingly difficult to navigate.
Every “band-aid” added to the architecture often creates another obstacle to the very purpose the payments infrastructure is meant to enable: innovation, speed, and agility.
The focus is now shifting toward simplification:
- Reducing testing overhead
- Eliminating unnecessary transformation layers
- Simplifying integrations
- Lowering maintenance and operational costs
- Creating cleaner, more agile technology stacks
That balance remains one of the industry’s biggest challenges.
AI Must Be Native - Not an Add-On
Of course, AI was everywhere at EBA Day, but the conversation has clearly evolved.
Banks are no longer simply looking for AI “features” or standalone AI agents bolted onto legacy platforms.
The real discussion is now about AI-native infrastructure.
How is AI embedded in the platform's DNA? How does it improve operations, change management, exception handling, testing, monitoring, and support, from the ground up?
This shift is important.
The future is not simply AI assisting people at the edges of operations. It is AI becoming deeply embedded in how payment systems are built, operated, governed, and evolved.
That is where the real opportunity for transformation lies.
Modernisation Without Big Bang Replacement
Perhaps one of the most important themes was the growing demand for incremental modernisation.
Yes, some banks are still pursuing large-scale replacement programmes in which a legacy vendor is removed entirely and replaced with a new platform in a single major transformation effort.
But increasingly, banks are asking for another path.
They want the ability to modernise progressively:
- Line of business by line of business
- Payment rail by payment rail
- Capability by capability
This phased approach significantly reduces transformation risk while allowing institutions to modernise at a pace that fits their organisation.
And Underpinning Everything: Stablecoins and the Future of Payments
Overlaid on all of these discussions was the ongoing conversation about stablecoins and digital value transfer.
What was interesting this year was the growing consensus emerging across the market: stablecoins should not sit outside the payments architecture.
Instead, they should be treated like any other payment rail, fully integrated into the same operational governance, controls, orchestration, compliance, and infrastructure as traditional payment systems.
That feels like a major shift in thinking.
Final Thoughts
Those were the five biggest themes I consistently heard throughout the week in Copenhagen. But EBA Day reinforced something very important:
The payments industry is no longer debating whether transformation is needed. That debate is over.
The focus has now shifted to how banks modernise to be:
- Faster
- In more control
- Less dependent on their payment venders
- Less complex
- Embedding AI in everything
- Without excessive transformation risk