October 09, 2025
By Anjali Kochhar
At Sibos 2025 in Frankfurt, Deutsche Bank took centre stage in pushing the G20’s ambitious agenda to modernize cross-border payments, combining policy leadership with cutting-edge technology. On the closing day, Tsvetanka Nankova, the bank’s global head of sales for institutional cash and trade finance, shared how Deutsche Bank is executing real-time payments, blockchain pilots, and AI tools to meet the G20’s goals for faster, cheaper, and more transparent international transfers.
Nankova emphasised that Deutsche Bank has been at the forefront of championing the migration to ISO 20022, the messaging standard designed to embed richer, structured data into payments. The bank went live on schedule and now supports its global partners by sharing best practices in adoption. The structured data helps reduce false positives in sanctions screening, increases straight-through processing, and allows staff to focus on tasks requiring human judgment.
To bridge domestic real-time systems with cross-border flows, Deutsche Bank backs the Euro Banking Association’s “one-leg-out” initiative, which enables one side of a transaction to settle through a domestic instant payments scheme. This approach, according to Nankova, can accelerate the adoption of real-time cross-border settlement and contribute to the G20’s benchmarks on speed and cost.
Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank continues to support SWIFT’s Global Payments Innovation for enhanced transparency on fees and transaction status. In parallel, the bank is developing its own DBX EverOn solution to enable 24/7 internal book transfers in US dollars, with plans to extend this to euros.
Venturing beyond traditional payment rails, Deutsche Bank has joined the Singapore-based blockchain platform Partior. It processed its first commercial blockchain payment in late September, signaling an experimental move toward alternatives to SWIFT. The goal is to enable atomic “payment versus payment” or “delivery versus payment” mechanisms that improve settlement finality and liquidity management.
Nankova also highlighted that tokenised deposits, issued by regulated banks, can offer greater security and regulatory assurance while preserving programmability in securities and private markets.
Deutsche Bank is leveraging AI in multiple areas. Named-entity recognition helps extract data for trade finance and sanctions screening. In trade documentation, the bank is automating checks of letters of credit and guarantees. Smart routing of investigation cases to operations teams is being tested. In corporate cash management, AI models forecast client cash flows, automate payments scheduling, and assist with documentation and responses to client proposals.
Nankova emphasised that Deutsche Bank adopts a “responsible velocity” approach to AI, ensuring that human oversight remains central to maintaining client trust and operational soundness.
Deutsche Bank’s strategy illustrates how a global financial institution is aligning internal innovation with industry-wide transformation. Nankova concluded that cross-border payments cannot be improved in isolation, as the challenge requires collaboration among banks, fintechs, regulators, and market infrastructures. By championing ISO 20022, supporting instant payments, experimenting with blockchain, and integrating AI, Deutsche Bank aims to shape the future architecture of global payments by 2027.
About the author
Anjali Kochhar covers cryptocurrency and blockchain stories in India as well as globally. Having been in the field of media and journalism for over four years now, she has developed a sharp news sense and works hard to present information that goes beyond the obvious. She is an avid reader and loves writing on a wide range of subjects.
