Banks seek revenue from CBDCs, stablecoins and tokenised deposits

Finextra, in association with CGI, will host a webinar that examines how banks can profit from central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), privately issued stablecoins and bank-issued tokenised deposits. The session will focus on infrastructure, settlement, liquidity and governance while digital money moves toward live systems.

Panelists for the webinar are Sean Devaney, vice-president for market strategy – payments at CGI; Naveen Mallela, global head of payments at Standard Chartered; and Vincent Lau, director and global head of digital money at HSBC. Scott Hamilton, a global payments and liquidity expert, will moderate.

Speakers will compare the infrastructure each digital form requires. CBDCs often need integration with central bank settlement systems and may run on dedicated or permissioned rails, creating demand for direct or indirect access to central bank accounts. Stablecoins are issued by private firms and depend on issuer reserves, custody arrangements and market acceptance, which can place compliance and operational duties on banks that onboard or custody them. Tokenised deposits are bank liabilities recorded on distributed ledgers and raise questions about how token platforms link with core banking, accounting and reserve systems.

The webinar will address settlement and liquidity implications. On-chain settlement can shorten finality times while fragmenting liquidity if banks must hold balances across multiple ledgers or platforms. Panelists will discuss minting and burning processes and the rules needed to convert between digital units and traditional bank money, and how those events affect bank balance sheets. Faster settlement and real-time payments increase intraday liquidity needs and may require real-time monitoring, access to credit lines or automated liquidity pooling.

Speakers will cover ongoing operational costs. Banks may face technology and integration expenses as well as recurring costs for compliance, customer identification checks, custody and safekeeping of digital assets, smart contract maintenance, and legal work to align token structures with deposit insurance and capital rules. The panel will consider how minting and burning generate reconciliation and accounting work and how latency or failures on alternative rails create operational risk.

Control and governance will be discussed. When digital money operates on systems outside a bank’s core platforms, banks retain customer relationships and regulatory obligations. The discussion will consider which functions banks keep – customer onboarding, KYC/AML, credit underwriting, liquidity transformation and regulatory reporting – and which may be delegated to technology providers, custodians or payment networks. Outsourcing arrangements will be compared with existing third-party strategies, with attention to contract terms, audit rights and contingency planning.

The webinar will also examine cross-border and regulatory issues. Banks operating in multiple jurisdictions face different rules for token issuance, custody and settlement. Panelists will outline approaches to set governance guardrails and compliance processes while regulators refine frameworks, and they will discuss using pilot programmes or regulatory sandboxes to test models without full-scale rollouts.

Finally, speakers will identify specific services banks could offer as digital currency adoption grows. Possible services include tokenisation for corporate clients, acting as on- and off-ramps between fiat and digital money, custody or trustee services for stablecoin reserves, and liquidity management and settlement services that connect legacy systems with new rails. The panel will weigh these service opportunities against operational, legal and liquidity constraints banks must manage.