EBAday 2026: Leveraging today’s foundations for tomorrow’s payments

As one of Europe’s most digitally advanced societies, Denmark was a suitable host for EBAday 2026. In a country where real-time payments, digital identity and online public services have become part of everyday life, discussions naturally focused on what comes next: how to build a payments ecosystem that is faster and more connected while being increasingly multi-rail.

During the conference, discussions centred on how existing payment infrastructures continue to evolve alongside emerging ways of moving value. Instant payments are expanding beyond domestic markets and new forms of digital money – including tokenised deposits and stablecoins – are steadily developing beyond concept towards practical application. Rather than one replacing the other, these capabilities are creating a more diverse payment infrastructure in which different rails will coexist; each serving different customer needs and use cases.

As innovation accelerates, the industry’s shared pan-European infrastructure must stay one step ahead – building bridges to enable new capabilities while continuing to provide the stability, resilience and trust on which every payment depends. One message echoed throughout the conference: the future of payments will not be built by replacing today’s infrastructure systems with tomorrow’s, but by evolving both and connecting them to each other.

Cross-border payments: Laying the foundations of interoperability

One of the strongest themes to emerge at EBAday was that the future of cross-border payments will be inherently multi-rail.

Tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins are increasingly viewed as part of this longer-term evolution. Both have the potential to support always-on, programmable cross-border payments, particularly where transactions involve digital assets or tokenised financial markets. However, speakers were clear that these technologies are unlikely to replace existing payment infrastructure. Instead, they will become additional rails within a broader payments ecosystem that requires interoperability between traditional and emerging forms of money.

Much of the discussion focused on this future state – in which payment service providers (PSPs) intelligently orchestrate payments across multiple networks, selecting the most appropriate rail in real time. But the industry’s immediate priority is more pragmatic: bringing today’s initiatives to scale and establishing the foundations upon which that future can be built.

With this in mind, the EPC’s One Leg-Out Instant Credit Transfer (OCT Inst) Scheme represents one of the most practical next steps towards faster, cheaper, more transparent and more accessible cross-border payments. Unlike other emerging initiatives, it does not require an entirely new network to be built. Instead, it extends the use of Europe’s existing instant payment building blocks beyond SEPA, thereby providing a potential template for one-leg-out (OLO) schemes globally.

In addition, OCT Inst is designed to complement other emerging initiatives, including Swift’s Cross-border Retail Payments Scheme launched in 2025. OCT Inst enables instant settlement for the euro leg of a payment, while Swift’s scheme provides complementary capabilities around messaging, tracking and interoperability across multiple currencies and jurisdictions.

Fraud fighting – at the network level

Audience polling at EBAday revealed that 78% of the delegates believe data sharing is the single most effective way to strengthen fraud prevention. Yet when asked about the biggest barrier to effective cross-border fraud intelligence sharing, 39% cited regulation, ahead of privacy concerns (29%) and collaboration challenges (24%).

Speakers argued, however, that this perception is increasingly outdated. While regulation has historically created uncertainty around what information could be shared and how, the Payment Services Regulation (PSR) is designed to provide a clearer legal framework by requiring PSPs to perform transaction monitoring and participate in information-sharing arrangements.

Even so, regulation alone cannot overcome the practical limitations of traditional information sharing between PSPs. Liability concerns, data protection requirements and the need to avoid disrupting legitimate customer payments mean information is often exchanged only after suspicious activity has been identified and extensive checks have been run, which limits its effectiveness against fast-moving fraud.

This is driving a shift towards real-time, network-level monitoring. Available to RT1 and STEP2 participants since 2024, EBA CLEARING’s Fraud Pattern and Anomaly Detection (FPAD) analyses billions of transactions and delivers risk assessments in under 100 milliseconds. By using pseudonymised risk indicators rather than exchanging customer data, it enables participating PSPs to benefit from collective network intelligence while preserving privacy.

The value of this network-level perspective is already evident, as demonstrated in a presentation at one of our EBA@EBAday sessions. Luxembourg-based Spuerkeess integrated FPAD risk scores into its existing fraud controls, combining institution-specific analytics with pan-European intelligence. Using FPAD’s core scoring capability alone, the bank more than doubled its fraud detection rate.

The bank also uses the EBA Fraud Taxonomy to classify fraud consistently, creating a shared framework across detection, investigation, reporting and customer communication. Thanks to the increased granularity on fraud types facilitated by the taxonomy, for example, Spuerkeess has been able to design better follow-up processes, especially in terms of interacting with affected customers.

Pan-European infrastructure, local innovation

Pan-European progress does not need to be at the expense of local innovation. When solutions are built on common pan-European standards and infrastructure from the outset, they create economies of scale, make it easier for successful models to be adopted elsewhere and reinforce the value of the shared infrastructure that Europe’s payments community has built collectively.

Two exemplary announcements from EBAday 2026 illustrate this principle:

A blueprint for modernising domestic payment systems

For many non-euro countries, modernising domestic payment infrastructure is challenging. Building and maintaining national clearing systems is becoming increasingly expensive as regulatory, resilience and cybersecurity requirements grow heavier, yet few communities have the scale to justify developing entirely new platforms from scratch.

The Danish payments community believes it has found a viable alternative. Rather than replacing its legacy infrastructure with a bespoke domestic solution, members have opted to build its new clearing system for bulk payments in Danish kroner on EBA CLEARING’s established STEP2 infrastructure platform, creating what is effectively a copy of the existing SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) Service adapted only where necessary for the Danish market.[i]

The approach allows Denmark to retain full control over its domestic payment scheme, governance and currency, while taking advantage of proven pan-European infrastructure and operational capabilities. By keeping the platform as close as possible to the existing STEP2 SCT Service, Danish payment service providers can also leverage the investments they have already made in connecting to the European infrastructure, significantly reducing implementation complexity and cost.

Building domestic value-added services on pan-European infrastructure

Following the 2025 launch of a request to pay solution for Italian citizens paying public administration bills, EBAday 2026 saw the announcement of a new offering leveraging EBA CLEARING R2P infrastructure service for the extension of request to pay to businesses. Provided by participating PSPs with the support of CBI and Nexi, the solution enables companies to send structured digital payment requests directly from their enterprise systems to customers across Italy and SEPA. Requests are delivered through internet and mobile banking applications, allowing customers to authorise payment in just a few clicks without manual data entry.[ii]

Built on pan-European standards and real-time message exchange, this solution enables participating PSPs to offer an interoperable solution that supports both domestic and cross-border use cases across SEPA.

Building the foundations for agentic AI

Artificial intelligence (AI), another topic high on the EBAday 2026 agenda, is rapidly evolving from a productivity tool into a strategic priority for financial institutions (FIs).

But while AI – alongside technologies such as quantum computing – continues to attract considerable hype, the mood at EBAday was notably pragmatic. The challenge is no longer deciding whether these technologies matter but identifying lasting innovation from marketing claims and investing today in the capabilities that will underpin tomorrow’s payments ecosystem.

Attention is increasingly turning not only to how AI can automate existing processes, but also to how agentic AI could enable systems to make decisions and execute actions autonomously within defined guardrails. Although widespread adoption is expected to be gradual – progressing from AI-assisted recommendations towards greater autonomy as confidence, governance and regulation mature – the transition is already under way.

During an EBAday 2026 keynote, Nordea’s Head of Transaction Banking, Kirsi Wiitala, revealed that the bank had already executed its first agentic AI payment. The example demonstrated that agentic AI is moving beyond theory, with systems beginning to progress from automating tasks to supporting and, within defined parameters, making decisions.

This direction of travel is reflected in a recent report from the EBA Open Finance Working Group, Supercharging Embedded Finance with Agentic AI, which argues that agentic AI will fundamentally reshape embedded finance by turning AI from a passive assistant into an autonomous participant in financial services. The report concludes that the key question for regulated FIs has evolved from whether to adopt agentic AI, to how to deploy it responsibly. Those that establish robust governance, clear accountability, interoperable application programming interfaces (APIs) and trusted data standards today will be best placed to shape – and benefit from – the next generation of embedded finance.

One destination, many routes

It’s fitting that next year’s EBAday will be in Rome because, as the old saying goes, all roads lead there. In many ways, the same is true in payments. The destination is becoming increasingly clear: customers want payments that are faster, more transparent, more cost-effective and more secure. Everyone knows where the industry is headed, but there are multiple paths to get there.

Which route a PSP takes depends on many factors: its size, its starting point, its customers and its strategic priorities. The means of travel, however, should always be underpinned by collaboration. Before embarking on the journey, it is important the community comes together to discuss its plans and examines the map as a group. If a river needs to be crossed, the community can agree on how to do it collaboratively and safely.

That is what EBAday has always been about: it brings payment practitioners together to openly share experiences, discuss different approaches, debate the best way forward and join forces in the cooperative space where needed. By understanding the different routes that others have taken, FIs become much better equipped to find the right path for their organisation. This willingness to share practical experience and learn from one another remains one of EBAday’s greatest strengths.

[i] https://www.ebaclearing.eu/danish-community-chooses-eba-clearings-step2-for-processing-bulk-payments-in-danish-kroner/?stream=press_releases

[ii] https://www.ebaclearing.eu/payments-cbi-launches-request-to-pay-for-corporates-supported-by-eba-clearing-and-nexi/?stream=press_releases