01Why now: three forces are moving intelligent money from pilots to deployment
are already scaling at least one instrument: the report's “leaders”.
willing to source stablecoin services from non-banks if their bank fails to keep pace.
of liquidity trapped by cross-border settlement.
of payments revenue at risk (around 10% of the total): FX, correspondent banking, float, fees.
- Regulation builds legitimacy: four major frameworks in three years (MiCA, MAS Singapore, the US GENIUS Act, Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance), with the UK FCA/BoE regime in progress. The flip side: without global harmonisation, a single multi-jurisdiction operating model remains hard to build.
- Fragmentation penalises corporates: the actual cross-border payment journey takes 3.5 days (2.2 days plus 1.3 days of reconciliation). 74% find cross-border slow, costly and unpredictable; 57% lack live payment status or cash positions.
- Non-banks are already in production: Circle-USDC, Mastercard × BVNK, Kinexys (around $5bn a day), Swift's shared ledger (17 banks piloting). 36% of B2B volume already flows through non-banks, and every flow captured is hard to win back.
On the bank side, adoption priorities differ by instrument: tokenised deposits first, as they stay on balance sheet and within existing rules; stablecoins for revenue upside and cross-border efficiency; wholesale CBDC for risk control and interbank settlement.
02Where the value is: from transactions to settlement certainty
The report identifies three priority use cases where friction is high and willingness to pay is real: 24/7 cross-border B2B payments with atomic settlement (46% of corporates already use non-banks for these flows), real-time cash visibility (42%) and multi-party reinsurance settlement (60% of insurers are moving to non-bank providers).
| Monetisation model | Leaders | Mainstream |
|---|---|---|
| Bundled value-added services | 66% | 25% |
| Subscription / platform access | 54% | 46% |
| Outcome-based pricing | 41% | 30% |
| Volume-tiered pricing | 59% | 12% |
| Flat per-transaction fees | 51% | 67% |
Leaders expect to offset declining revenues within 15 months, against 25 for the mainstream. And 71% of corporates still prefer a bank over a fintech at equivalent cost and quality: the door is not closed.
03A new role for banks: gateway, orchestrator or owner
| Posture | What it means | Example cited |
|---|---|---|
| Gateway (reactive) | Distribute third-party capabilities with minimal own investment | Partnerships with Circle |
| Orchestrator (offensive) | Invest selectively in priority corridors, segments or use cases | Standard Chartered tokenised deposits between Hong Kong and Singapore |
| Owner (transformative) | Shape the ecosystem: shared infrastructure, standards, governance | JPM / Citi / Wells Fargo / BofA network, CBMT sandbox |
No leading bank intends to stay reactive: 40% aim to orchestrate and 33% to own. Whatever the posture, some foundations are no-regret: a 24/7 operating model, digital-asset talent, smart-contract governance, real-time financial crime compliance, wallets and custody, ISO 20022, and a composable, ledger-agnostic architecture.
04The OpenbanQ view: what to keep in mind, and what the report does not say
- The disruption is in the instrument, not the railMoney becomes a carrier of rules: payment, settlement and business logic in a single layer.
- Corporate demand is ahead of bank supplyOnly 32% are satisfied with their bank; around 60% are ready to turn to a non-bank.
- Compliance moves upstreamIrrevocable settlement removes the post-transaction window: embedded AML/KYC, on-chain monitoring and AI.
- Monetise outcomes, not volumeBundles, subscriptions, outcome-based pricing: leaders are around three times more likely to have identified new revenue streams.
- Orchestrate best executionThe market will stay hybrid: value sits in the multi-instrument orchestration layer, without making clients pick the rail.
Watch-outs
- Sense of scale: around 4% of global volume by 2030. A disruption of value and business models, not (yet) of volume.
- The “leaders” sample: 21% of 300 banks, i.e. around sixty institutions. Percentages rest on a small base, and some quoted ratios vary (2.7× vs 3.1×).
- The European angle is under-played: euro stablecoins (Qivalis), Pontes and Appia, CBMT and the digital euro will shape the game for euro-area banks.
- Who controls orchestration? Banks, TMS (Kyriba…), ERPs and PSPs are all targeting the same layer: this is the number-one strategic battle.
Which posture do we own — gateway, orchestrator or owner —, on which corridors and use cases, and which no-regret foundations do we launch in 2027?The board-level question — OpenbanQ
Sources : Capgemini Research Institute, World Payments Report 2027, September 2026 (banking executive survey n=300; global corporate survey n=1,110); OpenbanQ analysis.