Sibos 25: less theory, more application

The shift of real-time payments from idea to practice has been a key theme at the 2025 Sibos financial services conference, according to ANZ Managing Director, Transaction Banking, Lisa Vasic.

Speaking to ANZ’s Head of Banks, FIG, Australia, Sean Rowe in Frankfurt, Vasic said how the real-time economy is working in action was top of mind for conference attendees.

“Real-time payments has been a conversation for a number of years now,” she said. “It's actually now less about the theory, and more about the application. And we're seeing that from cross border into real-time payments.”

Both Vasic and Rowe are at Sibos as part of an ANZ delegation engaging with, and learning from, the bank’s customers, global peers and others among the event’s 10,000 attendees.

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Vasic said the development of ISO 20022, “one of the biggest transformations from an industry perspective”, was also a key topic of conversation at Sibos.

ISO 20022 is the modern system for data associated with digital payments, including messaging, which SWIFT took up in 2022. Currently in a ‘co-existence period’ for cross-border payments, it will become the only supported format by November.

ISO is “going to give us richer data, and particularly help on the financial crime side, as well as actually help around the digitisation of payments,” Vasic said.

Vasic said it had been “fantastic” to spend time in person with the bank’s key stakeholders, including customers, at the event.

She said the conference provided an opportunity to get an insight into the state of the payments space across key global markets — “whether it's an American view, a European view, and particularly from our customers across the Asia-Pacific region”.

“We're talking about what we have delivered for our customers,” she said. “About being able to really support our customers' customers in terms of tapping into the real-time payments network here in Australia.”