Agenda

This session will provide an update on recent retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) developments. It will show that large-scale (“Death Star”) projects are fizzling out and discuss potential reasons why. The update will then show that projects that focus on “purpose bound” use cases are on the rise, as are those that combine tokenized deposits with wholesale CBDC.

CBDCs are moving into real-world use. Central banks are advancing CBDCs to modernize payments and improve financial inclusion - but the shift from exploration to production introduces new challenges. Systems must be secure, scalable, and ready for both domestic and cross-border transactions, while navigating confidentiality, governance, and integration with existing financial infrastructure.

Drawing on practical experience from global projects, Oracle brings insights across both retail and wholesale CBDC models. This session shares real architectures, key lessons, and proven approaches to help decision makers and technical leaders build resilient, future-ready CBDC systems.

 

Offline payments are increasingly recognised as a critical requirement for resilient payment systems, but most alternative approaches introduce unacceptable trade-offs, such as unmanaged credit risks, loss of control of digital money, or systemic device risks.

This academy session provides a architectural and institutional analysis of governed offline payments. A model that enables payments independent of system availability while preserving the core principles of regulated financial systems.

The session will explore how a reservation-based, Layer-2 architecture allows funds to remain within the banking system while enabling offline execution through locally authorised transactions and deferred, deterministic settlement.

Participants will gain insight into:

• How to eliminate settlement credit risk in offline payments
• How to maintain central governance while enabling local execution
• The separation of authentication, clearing, and settlement as a foundation for resilience
• The institutional implications for central banks, payment systems, and commercial banks

The session concludes with a discussion on how governed offline payments can be integrated into CBDC, instant payment systems, and tokenized deposit frameworks — positioning offline capability as a core component of future payment infrastructure.

As CBDCs move from concept to implementation, they are reshaping the relationship between money, technology, and state authority. This panel explores how CBDCs can strengthen monetary sovereignty. Experts will discuss the opportunities and challenges of designing digital currencies that balance national interests with the realities of an increasingly interconnected global economy.

This speech provides an update on the progress of the Digital Euro Project, outlining key developments in design, policy, and technical implementation. It explores how a digital euro could complement cash, strengthen Europe's payment ecosystem, and support financial innovation while maintaining privacy, security, and financial stability. The presentation also highlights upcoming milestones and the path toward potential issuance.

Drawing on the Danmark Nationalbank’s research and practical assessments, this speech will share key insights into the role wholesale CBDCs could play in modernising financial market infrastructure. It will highlight the bank’s findings on efficiency, settlement innovation, and cross-border payments, while outlining the considerations that shape Denmark’s approach to the future of central bank money.

In this presentation, we showcase two real-world use cases demonstrating the power of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) combined with Wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). Witness how digital bonds were issued and purchased with instant, real-time settlement powered by CBDC payments. Our insights highlight the practical benefits, challenges, and future potential of integrating DLT and CBDC in bond markets. Join us to explore how these innovations can transform financial infrastructures worldwide.

As digital assets continue to reshape global finance, policymakers face the challenge of fostering innovation while safeguarding economic stability and public confidence. This speech examines the policy considerations surrounding digital currency, tokenization, and decentralized finance, and explores how governments can build balanced frameworks that support innovation, transparency, and responsible market development.

As digital currencies move from concept to reality, wallets are emerging as a critical component of the new financial infrastructure. Far more than simple storage tools, digital wallets serve as the primary interface between users, institutions, and digital currency networks. This presentation explores how wallets enable secure access, identity management, compliance, interoperability, and innovative payment experiences across retail and wholesale digital currency ecosystems. It also examines the opportunities and challenges facing wallet providers as CBDCs, stablecoins, and tokenized assets reshape the future of finance. The session will highlight why wallets are becoming a strategic enabler of trust, adoption, and value creation in the digital economy.

Money is changing, but not all digital instruments deserve to be called money. Over the past two decades, payment innovation has made money faster, more mobile, and increasingly embedded in digital platforms. Yet the classical functions of money—medium of exchange, store of value, unit of account, and standard of deferred payment—remain a demanding benchmark. Many private digital instruments meet only part of this test. Cryptocurrencies offer technological novelty but fail as stable money. Stablecoins improve usability but borrow credibility from sovereign currencies and remain vulnerable to private-issuer risk.

We argue that the central issue is not whether money will become digital; it already has. The real question is whether public money will remain accessible and relevant in a digital economy. Central bank digital currencies, including the digital euro, should be understood as a response to this structural challenge. A well-designed CBDC can preserve the role of central bank money as the monetary anchor, support payment resilience, enhance strategic autonomy, and offer a public alternative in an increasingly private and platform-based payment landscape. The future of money is digital, but its credibility must remain public.

Tokenized deposits promise the benefits of blockchain technology while preserving the role of regulated financial institutions. This session explores how banks are adapting their business models for a tokenized economy.

This panels examines the rapidly evolving landscape of digital payments and financial infrastructure in Europe and beyond. It will explore how CBDCs like the Digital Euro compare with emerging payment solutions such as WERO, as well as traditional banking networks, fintech platforms, and blockchain-based systems. Experts will discuss the implications for consumers, businesses, privacy, security, financial sovereignty, and the future of cross-border transactions in an increasingly digital economy.

Tokenization is moving beyond experimentation and into mainstream financial markets. This panel explores how tokenized assets, securities, and deposits are reshaping liquidity, settlement, and market infrastructure.

50 years ago, the internet solved resilience for communication by decentralizing it. Messages route around failure. Networks degrade gracefully.
Payments never made that leap. Instead, they remain built on centralized, real-time, always-on architectures, dependent on continuous availability of authentication, clearing, and settlement. In that sense, payments today are as fragile as communications were before the internet changed the model.

This session takes a broader perspective, using offline payments as a starting point to explore a more fundamental shift:

How do we design digital systems that remain functional and trustworthy, even when the system itself is unavailable?

By applying the principles that made the internet resilient, a new class of governed architectures is emerging—where execution can happen at the edge, while control, compliance, and trust remain centrally governed.

“The internet delivered survivability in the face of failure for communications. Crunchfish applies the same principles to applications, starting with payments.”

The session will explore how this model extends beyond payments to any digital system requiring trust, security, and continuity, and what this means for the future of:

• Payments and digital money
• CBDCs and payments infrastructure
• Critical digital infrastructure more broadly

 

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With the evolution of digital assets, Certificates of Deposits (CDs) are being reimagined as digital instruments within an increasingly interconnected financial ecosystem. As institutions adopt digital currencies, enabling the end-to-end lifecycle of digital CDs across multiple platforms enables efficiencies and new monetizable offerings enabling secondary trading.

This session explores how issuance, purchase, redemption, and settlement can be executed across heterogeneous ledgers, where value must move seamlessly between systems. It highlights key challenges including interoperability, coordination, governance, and atomic settlement across systems.

Through practical insights and architectural patterns, the session demonstrates how integration layers, workflow orchestration, and policy-driven controls can enable secure, compliant, and synchronized transactions. Attendees will gain a clear understanding of how to design scalable, production-ready solutions for digital CDs in an interoperable, multi-ledger world.

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As payment systems become more digital and interconnected, operational resilience becomes increasingly critical. Industry experts discuss emerging threats, cyber defense strategies, and best practices for safeguarding financial infrastructure.

Digital currencies offer new opportunities for more efficient money transfers. Increased automation and streamlined processes can enable faster transactions at lower cost. However, what are the implications for the security of the payment system? Will digital currencies be more susceptible to fraud? What mechanisms and controls need to be implemented to detect and prevent fraud, and how can fraudulent transactions be reversed when necessary?

Digital currencies and tokenized cash are opening new possibilities for liquidity management, cross-border payments, and working capital optimization. Corporate treasurers share their vision for the next generation of treasury operations.

Consumers and businesses increasingly expect payments to be instant, seamless, and available around the clock. This session reviews the evolution of real-time payment systems and their impact on financial innovation.

AI agents are beginning to initiate, negotiate, and execute transactions on behalf of individuals and businesses. This forward-looking session explores how payment systems must evolve to support machine-driven commerce safely and efficiently.

Trust remains the cornerstone of any monetary system, regardless of technology. This presentation explore how governance, transparency, regulation, and security can strengthen confidence in digital currencies and payment networks.

Secure and trusted digital identity is increasingly recognized as essential for scalable digital payment ecosystems. This presentation examines emerging identity frameworks that balance compliance requirements with user privacy.

As digital payments become faster, more seamless, and increasingly global, fraud tactics are evolving just as rapidly. This panel will explore the latest approaches to detecting, preventing, and responding to payment fraud across digital currencies, real-time payment systems, and emerging financial technologies. Experts from the public and private sectors will discuss the role of data analytics, artificial intelligence, regulatory frameworks, and industry collaboration in strengthening security while maintaining a frictionless user experience.

This panel explores the transformative rise of autonomous AI systems capable of making decisions, taking actions, and collaborating with humans in increasingly complex ways. This panel discussion will examine the opportunities Agentic AI presents for innovation, productivity, and problem-solving, while also addressing the ethical, societal, and security concerns surrounding autonomy, accountability, and control.

Balancing privacy, security, and regulatory oversight remains one of the most contentious issues in digital finance. Experts debate technical and policy approaches that can protect users while maintaining system integrity.

As digital transformation reshapes economies and financial systems, this panel will explore the key trends, opportunities, and challenges defining the road ahead. The panelists will share perspectives on innovation, regulation, and emerging technologies that are shaping the future of digital currency and payments.