EBAday 2026: Rethinking Correspondent Banking in Real Time

EBAday 2026 brought bankers, regulators and payment-platform providers together this week to examine how correspondent banking must adapt to instant payments and 24/7 settlement, and what that means for liquidity management, cross-border settlement and nostro/vostro accounts.

Panelists described how faster payment rails and expectations for round-the-clock settlement are changing funding practices, intraday credit use and account structures. Banks reported higher prefunding needs, more frequent reconciliation and new operational demands as richer payment data becomes standard.

Representatives from large global banks outlined the challenge of keeping liquidity available at all hours while limiting the cost of holding balances across multiple currencies and jurisdictions. Payment-platform operators and fintech firms presented technical options such as API-based account access, intra-day netting and shared liquidity pools aimed at reducing idle cash in correspondent accounts.

Central bank officials and clearing-house executives discussed adjustments to real-time gross settlement systems and intraday credit arrangements intended to support continuous settlement without raising systemic risk. Regulators said supervisory frameworks should reflect round-the-clock operations and clearer rules on intraday liquidity and real-time reporting.

Delegates highlighted several recurring issues. Prefunding remains costly and inefficient for many corridors, particularly those serving smaller or emerging-market banks. The ISO 20022 standard and richer message formats improve reconciliation and compliance but increase processing complexity and require investment in middleware and straight-through processing.

Technology pilots under way include tokenized deposits and distributed-ledger trials that aim to enable atomic cross-border settlement and cut settlement risk, though legal and regulatory hurdles persist. Some banks are testing on-demand liquidity that uses tokenized central bank money or tokenized bank balances to settle matched cross-border payments without moving pre-funded balances.

Other pilots involve multilateral netting hubs that aggregate flows across corridors and release only netted positions to correspondents, reducing prefunding needs. Several payment providers demonstrated API services that allow respondent banks to access correspondent balances with finer granularity and shorter notice than traditional nostro reporting.

Regulators at the event urged coordination on supervisory rules and recovery tools for liquidity stress outside standard business hours. Central bankers examined whether current intraday credit windows and collateral frameworks suit a world where payments can be initiated and settled in seconds.

Panelists also addressed the continuing decline in correspondent relationships in some corridors, linking it to compliance costs and de-risking. Shrinking networks make real-time cross-border payments harder for small banks and corporates that rely on those rails. Some participants argued that interoperable standards, coordinated regulation and shared liquidity utilities could help restore connectivity where commercial incentives are insufficient.

On a panel, a senior payments executive commented, “Real-time settlement changes both the timetable and the math of liquidity.” Speakers recalled correspondent banking’s long-term role in enabling trade and remittances and cited recent changes — richer data standards, new tracking services and expanded instant-pay schemes — as factors altering the technical landscape.

Speakers presented practical experiments and pilots rather than broad strategy shifts, and they identified remaining obstacles including legal finality, regulatory clarity and the economics of serving low-volume corridors.