The Payment Expert Podcast is joined by BNY’s Bana Akkad Azhari to discuss new payment rails, liquidity in always-on payments, tokenisation and autonomous payment decisions
In the latest episode of the Payment Expert Podcast, Bana Akkad Azhari, Head of EMEA Global Payments & Trade at BNY, says new payment rails are a positive development but create complexity where systems do not connect well.
“The question is not just about adding new rails,” she says. “It is about how do we make the overall ecosystem work more seamlessly for clients.”
Clients operate across markets, currencies and payment types, Akkad Azhari says, and need greater standardisation, better data and stronger coordination across infrastructure and participants.
New rails can make cross-border payments faster, more transparent and give clients more choice, she says, but rails introduced without enough interoperability add a layer of complexity rather than reduce it.
BNY: 24/7 payments and liquidity
24/7 payments require more than open infrastructure, Akkad Azhari says. Firms need liquidity models that support activity outside traditional business hours rather than legacy funding cycles, and payments, clearing and treasury need to become more closely connected.
“To make 24/7 payments feel truly 24/7, operational availability has to be matched by financial readiness, resilience, as well as strong coordination behind the scenes,” she says.
Clients are already managing liquidity, funding and cash positions throughout the day, she says, and treasury is becoming linked to payment strategy rather than sitting separate from it.
Tokenisation
Tokenisation can connect the movement of value, data and ownership within the same workflow, Akkad Azhari says, rather than creating a digital version of what already exists.
She names collateral mobility, liquidity management and cross-border activity as the areas where it matters most, along with programmable transactions executed under defined conditions.
“The real value of tokenisation will come from solving real operational challenges and working alongside existing financial infrastructure in a more practical but trusted and secure manner,” she says.
Agentic payments
On autonomous payment decisions, “trust and control always have to come first,” Akkad Azhari says.
Firms need confidence around governance, clear decision boundaries and the ability to monitor and intervene, she adds, and explainability is critical because institutions must understand how decisions are made where compliance, fraud prevention and client outcomes are affected.
Adoption should start with a narrowly scoped, supervised subset of use cases where AI supports decisions and strengthens controls before anything more autonomous at scale, she says.
Standardisation of agent models will aid interoperability and set the governance and controls needed for trust across the industry, she concludes.
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