AI, Trust, and the Digital Euro: Insights from SIBOS 2025

A Week of Connection and Collaboration

From the buzzing corridors of Messe Frankfurt to thought-provoking panels and fireside chats, Sibos once again proved why it stands at the very core of the global financial community.

At the RiskShield booth, we had the opportunity to have rich conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and potential partners, each one reinforcing what drives us: merging artificial intelligence with domain expertise to spot anomalies and stop financial crime in real time.

Beyond the discussions on the floor, our own session “Rethinking Fraud Prevention in the Age of Instant Payments,” drew a strong crowd and generated a lot of interest. We explored how financial institutions can move from isolated risk signals to holistic, intelligence-driven fraud decisions, combining real-time data, shared network insights, and adaptive AI to stop fraud without slowing payments.

One comment by a booth visitor stuck with me in particular, as it encapsulated the red thread throughout the discussion on stage and the conversations in the hallways: “It’s not just about stopping fraud - it’s about enabling trust in a digital-first world.”

The Digital Euro, Stablecoins, and SWIFT’s Shared Ledger

One of the most talked-about topics at Sibos was the future of money in Europe. Three major trends turned the heads of the industry:

• Perhaps one of the opening statements by Swift, the host of Sibos, was quick to grab attention with its launch of a blockchain-based shared ledger to its core infrastructure.
• In parallel, the European Central Bank’s ECB’s push to bring the digital euro to life has grown from a research initiative into a serious agenda item.
• Last but not least, a group of nine major European banks announced a joint effort to launch a MiCAR-compliant euro stablecoin to enable instant cross-border settlement … an important signal that tokenized value is becoming a real contender in Europe’s payments architecture.

All these initiatives signal more than technological progress, they represent a profound shift in how value and trust will move in the coming decade. With programmable money and instant settlement on the horizon, fraud prevention and compliance will become mission critical.

For RiskShield, this marks the kind of transformation we’re built for: helping institutions detect and prevent financial crime across emerging payment rails with adaptive, explainable AI.

AI and the Rise of Agentic Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (and especially emerging Agentic AI) dominated many of the key conversations. Panels explored how systems that can sense, plan, and act autonomously might soon be part of payments flows, handling liquidity, routing, and anomaly detection with minimal human intervention.

But along with that potential came pressing questions:

• How do we ensure transparency and auditability in these systems?
• Where do we draw the line between empowerment and overreach?
• How do we govern systems that learn and evolve?

At INFORM, we believe the future lies in augmented intelligence, meaning systems that amplify and complement human decision-making. Models must be explainable, accountable, and governed with humans clearly in the loop. 

The Human Side of Innovation

Sibos 2025 was as much about people as platforms. Across booths, corridors, and side events, the same truth resonated: client conversations, honest feedback, and collaboration drive progress.

We saw how banks, regulators, and technology providers are increasingly leaning into co-development, sharing threat intelligence, and aligning roadmaps. That spirit fuels our work at RiskShield, because the best defense against financial crime is built in concert, not isolation.

In Frankfurt, this energy was palpable. A community eager to co-shape what’s next. Every handshake, shared insight, and challenge brought us one step closer to a common mission: protecting institutions in an era of evolving financial risk.

Looking Ahead

As we return from Frankfurt, our firm belief is that the next frontier of finance will be defined by intelligence, transparency, and trust.

Whether it’s the digital euro, tokenized rails, or SWIFT’s shared ledger, the infrastructure is shifting. Real-time payments, interoperable ledgers, and AI-powered compliance are no longer aspirational, they’re now the new industry baseline.

At RiskShield by INFORM, we stand ready … to help financial institutions navigate these changes, to detect anomalies across new rails, to provide explainable AI governance, to connect the dots between legacy systems and tomorrow’s architecture.

If you weren’t able to meet us in Frankfurt, reach out. Let’s continue the conversation, and build this future together.