At Sibos Frankfurt, the conversation around blockchain-based payments crossed a clear line.
The conversation had shifted from theoretical relevance to practical reality: how stablecoins and programmable money are already in use, and what must still be addressed to operate them safely at scale.
At the EEA x EY side event on Stablecoins in Business Payments, leaders from banking, enterprise software, blockchain infrastructure, and regulated wholesale settlement compared notes on what is working today and where the real constraints remain.
From “eventually” to “right now”
Opening the session, Paul Brody, Global Blockchain Leader at EY and Chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, reflected on how quickly long-held assumptions collapsed.
He had expected institutions to begin with tokenized assets and move cautiously toward digital money later. Instead, adoption inverted. As he put it, institutions are now “jumping headfirst into payments.”
What surprised him just as much was the speed. In his words, the market went from “this is probably happening” to “it is happening right now immediately” in less than a year.
Payments, he noted, are not an isolated function. They are the final step in a broader transaction process that includes asset delivery, contractual terms, and reconciliation. Yet the industry started with the last mile first.
Why banks began with money
That acceleration aligned with the banking perspective shared during the discussion.
Naveen Mallela, Global Co-Head of Kinexys at JPMorgan Chase, argued that the focus on payments was deliberate. From J.P. Morgan’s point of view, the real shift is all about introducing shared, multi-asset programmable ledgers into the bank itself.
As he explained, “Fundamentally, this is about introducing new bookkeeping systems into the bank.”
Once cash and assets live on the same programmable ledger, new capabilities become possible. Naveen pointed to examples such as intraday repo and intraday FX swaps, which change how institutions think about short-term liquidity. Interoperability, he stressed, will be decisive during a long transition period where onchain and offchain systems must coexist.
When asked directly about deposit tokens versus stablecoins, his answer stayed practical. Differences in how they are backed, how they are treated for accounting and tax purposes, and whether deposit-style protections matter for certain clients all shape the choice.
Payments feel real when usability catches up
If banks focused on balance sheets and interoperability, infrastructure leaders focused on usability.
Guillaume Dechaux, Managing Director at ConsenSys, emphasized that blockchain payments are finally approaching a Web2-level experience. “MetaMask now is achieving a Web2 experience,” he said.
Products like the MetaMask Card illustrate that shift. Users can spend onchain assets while merchants receive local fiat, with conversion handled at the moment of purchase. As Paul later observed, once users stop noticing whether a service is onchain or traditional, the adoption conversation fundamentally changes.
Guillaume also highlighted why payments place such high demands on infrastructure. Predictable finality, throughput, and reliability are not optional when financial institutions are involved.
Where stablecoin usage is already real
Adi noted that while early enterprise blockchain work often relied on private networks, real economic activity consistently pulls toward public networks. “The value was going to be in the public networks,” he said, largely because that is where liquidity and interoperability exist.
When discussing cross-border payments, Adi shared an observation from South America that challenged common assumptions. Stablecoin activity there was not dominated by speculation, but by remittance-like flows, much of it driven by businesses rather than retail users.
He also pointed to stablecoin-based escrow as a straightforward use case that becomes viable once stablecoin rails are available, with clear implications for supply chain payments.
At the same time, the panel acknowledged a structural gap. Small businesses can experiment quickly. Large enterprises cannot afford regulatory ambiguity.
Wholesale settlement plays by different rules
Fnality is building blockchain-based payment systems designed for wholesale markets, settling in central-bank-grade money. Ram emphasized that the regulatory bar for systemically important payment infrastructure is exceptionally high. “The standard is a very, very high standard,” he said.
Demonstrating resilience, governance, and compliance is slow and costly. Even if early pioneers help educate regulators, the requirements themselves do not get easier.
Scale only comes when processes do not change
The enterprise adoption constraint came into sharp focus through Bernhard Schweizer, Head of SAP Digital Currency Hub.
His message was blunt. “Corporates are not able to change their processes.”
From SAP’s perspective, modern payment rails only scale when stablecoins, deposit tokens, and bank payments appear as interchangeable options inside existing ERP workflows. Corporates cannot run separate processes for each rail.
Paul reinforced this with EY’s own experience. Accepting stablecoins used to be possible but operationally painful. Once integrated through SAP’s Digital Currency Hub, it became routine rather than exceptional.
What comes next
If Sibos Frankfurt made one thing clear, it is that business payments are no longer a theoretical blockchain use case. They are the primary adoption wedge.
The next phase is not about proving money can move onchain. It is about proving it can do so with enterprise-grade privacy, regulatory confidence, predictable execution, and seamless integration into the systems businesses already run.
That is now the work ahead.
