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Christian Exshaw, Senior Executive Vice-President and Group Head, CIBC Capital Markets: Hi everyone, I&#8217;m Christian Exshaw, Group Head of Capital Markets at CIBC, and I&#8217;m joined today by Giorgia Anton, Head of Payments here at CIBC Capital Markets, and John Lee, Head of Digital Asset Platforms, to discuss an area that&#8217;s evolving quickly and becoming increasingly important to our clients: payments and digital assets.
Payments are now a strategic part of how clients run their businesses, connecting treasury, liquidity, reconciliation data, risk management, and client experience. The opportunity goes beyond speed to better information, stronger controls, greater interoperability, and smarter workflows.
At CIBC Capital Markets, we are investing in next-generation payments capabilities, data and AI, and the foundations for digital assets and tokenization, with a clear focus on practical client outcomes. Today, we&#8217;ll discuss what is changing, what matters most for clients, and where the future of payments is heading.
And with that, let&#8217;s get into the conversation.
So Giorgia, welcome. And let’s start with you. When we talk about the current payments landscape, what is changing most materially for Capital Markets clients beyond simply moving money faster?
Giorgia Anton, Managing Director and Head, Payments, CIBC Capital Markets: Thanks, Christian.
When we think of our clients, they&#8217;re becoming more global. Their needs are becoming more complex. So when we think about payments, it&#8217;s becoming more and more tied to what their actual operating model and business needs are. And so at the forefront of that are really their treasury needs, data, risk, and overall cross-border money movements.
Historically, the conversation often started around cost and speed, but it&#8217;s changed over the last few years. They still matter, but clients are increasingly asking broader questions: How can the payments modernization journey help their own operating model?
A second major shift is in data. If we think about data, richer, more structured payment data will really help them move money more effectively, more efficiently, and help empower them into insights into their own money movements. So the value isn&#8217;t just how you move the money; it&#8217;s also in the quality of the data that you have, how it empowers you, and what insights you can gain and what improvements you can make in terms of your own liquidity management capabilities.
And as I mentioned earlier, clients are increasingly becoming more global, so they need to move money more and more across borders. With that, they&#8217;re navigating different jurisdictions and different payment rails, so it is increasingly becoming more complex. And this modernization journey will help along that journey.
And finally, risk remains central. In the world today, payments are increasingly pushing to move 24/7. If we get to a world in which we&#8217;re seeing instant settlement, risk is going to become more and more important. Clients are increasingly thinking about fraud, money laundering, cyber resilience, and making sure that at the end of the day, the model is robust, resilient, and can meet their needs.
So overall, if you think about the big picture, payments is really becoming a strategic part of our clients&#8217; business. And so when we think about the modernization journey, it&#8217;s not just modernizing the infrastructure; it&#8217;s modernizing the entire operating model.
Christian Exshaw: Well thanks, Giorgia. Let&#8217;s turn this to you now, John. Digital assets and tokenization continue to evolve. What role do you see them playing in the future of payments, and where are our clients most focused today in terms of practical, near-term applications
John Lee, Managing Director and Head, Digital Asset Platforms: Well, I think the first thing that I&#8217;ll say is maturity in the space has just hit an all-time high. I think we&#8217;ve come to a point where payments is now really key to unlocking the scale that tokenization and digital assets can bring.
And when we think about the idea of how you can actually move money both domestically and internationally, one of the key things is very, very clear: the complexities of how these corporates are actually managing their flows. They want more tools. They want to be able to look at how to move money seamlessly. And at the end of the day, tokenization is a mechanism by which you can actually do that.
I think one of the other things that&#8217;s becoming very, very clear is that when you look at all of these payment-versus-payment flows, delivery versus payment is also becoming increasingly important as you start to see that bridge of conventional regulated instruments going on-chain, online, 24/7. There has to be a settlement rail to actually deal with the delivery aspects of some of these securities.
And when we look at some of the international programs like Project Agora, it&#8217;s very clear that the world is moving forward.
Christian Exshaw: So, Giorgia, let&#8217;s go over to you and speak about AI. AI is another area where the conversation is quickly moving from potential to measurable impact. Where are we seeing the most tangible benefits for clients in the payments space today?
Giorgia Anton: So it&#8217;s an interesting question, Christian. When I think about AI, you know, it is table stakes nowadays. We hear a lot about it. And there are some clear, tangible areas where you can see immediate impact and think about automating basic operations, getting better insights. It can help in exception reporting, help in payments processing overall.
And really, when you think about where you can take it to the next level, there&#8217;s no doubt that you can use it to help manage exception reporting, and that will help make payments more efficient, reduce errors, and reduce issues in the system.
But when you take it to the next level and when you think about where AI can take you, you can think about how do you use AI to manage liquidity needs, how can a client use it to flag where there&#8217;s latency in a balance sheet, and how can we use it to flag that and make overall a better client experience?
AI can also be an extremely valuable tool in managing risk. And as John mentioned earlier, in terms of tokenization and 24/7 settlement, AI can be used as a very valuable tool to monitor fraud, money laundering, and help empower our clients to make sure they have better visibility across their platform.
One thing to consider: discipline matters. Trust in the payment system is critical to ensuring that it is successful. So clients want to make sure that AI is embedded in the right way, with the proper controls and governance in place.
So when you think about AI, the strongest use cases to embed AI is not to replace judgment, but to enhance it. We want AI to be functioning properly, not just embedding it for the sake of embedding it, but I think it&#8217;s going to be a very powerful tool in the future for us.
Christian Exshaw: Look, I think I agree with you. I think there are some limitations. We looked recently at what happened with Muse, what it means in terms of privacy. You&#8217;re right. It is about trust. And our clients need to understand some of the limitations, to be honest, of AI.
John, you and I had spoken about tokenization many, many times over the last few months. How is your team approaching that opportunity and what capabilities could it unlock for CIBC and for our clients?
John Lee: So one of the things that I would say, and I completely agree with Giorgia’s comments, when you think about the power of what AI can bring, it&#8217;s really about augmenting, decisioning, and giving more insights before you actually trigger a solution.
One of the interesting things that I always hear about in my travels is people will always seem to segregate tokenization, digital assets, and AI as completely mutually exclusive. One of the things that&#8217;s very, very clear now is that it couldn&#8217;t be further from the truth.
At the end of the day, tokenization creates the next-generation real-time settlement rail, and how you actually decision that is where AI comes in, and it&#8217;s all about how you process that data.
On the digital asset front, on the tokenization front, when you think about a blockchain or a layer one, it&#8217;s all about the data. It&#8217;s all about it being immutable. AI can extract that information and then be able to use it to determine how you deal with things like fraud, risk management, compliance, all of your trade supervision, and sanctions.
This actually will enhance transparency so that you can ultimately bring straight-through processing and business process optimization to our clients.
Christian Exshaw: Well, John, thanks very much. I could not agree more with you. I think next time we&#8217;ll have to speak also about privacy. That&#8217;s also very important for our clients. And they need to understand the limitations of AI.
John Lee: So Christian, I wanted to ask you a question. From your perspective, what will it take to scale tokenization across the bank and make it part of a broader modernization journey versus just something on the side of desk?
Christian Exshaw: That&#8217;s a great question, John. Tokenization has real potential, and you and I have just discussed this at length, but it also should be seen as part of a broader modernization journey, as you noted, rather than as a separate track.
The opportunity is not simply to create a new technology layer. It is to improve how the bank operates, how clients interact with us, and how value moves across a broader ecosystem.
First, it has to be client relevant and solve a real problem around settlement efficiency, programmability, or transparency.
Second, it has to sit with a strong framework for risk, governance, compliance, and privacy. And in banking, innovation only scales if it is trusted, as Giorgia said.
We need to think about interoperability. The future is more likely a connected environment where traditional and digital infrastructure work together. Strategic advantage will come from orchestration and integration, not just one-off capabilities.
More broadly, tokenization can push us to modernize core processes and rethink operating models with greater flexibility from the start. So I hope that answers your question.
John Lee: Oh, it sure does.
Christian Exshaw: We&#8217;ve covered a lot of ground today. On a final note, what&#8217;s the one thought each of you would want people to take away from this conversation?
Giorgia Anton: Sure. When I think about the payments modernization journey, there is no doubt that that is speeding up in the world, and our clients are on that journey. We&#8217;re there with them. But at the end of the day, that modernization journey needs to be not just about upgrading infrastructure. It&#8217;s about creating better outcomes, modernizing the operating system, and giving our clients more flexibility to innovate and grow for the future. And we&#8217;re on that journey with our clients, to deliver better results.
Christian Exshaw: Thanks, Giorgia. What about you, John?
John Lee: The one thing that I would say about tokenization is the era of prototypes and POCs is over. Things are going online. Things are becoming very real, very fast. If I look at some of the industry movements that are taking place, both in capital markets, especially around the 24/7 of our incumbent infrastructures, as well as DTCC moving forward to tokenized securities, it&#8217;s very, very clear that industry is coming online and mainstream.
And I do think that there needs to be a renewed focus, especially as you start to look at the international lens of where capital flows and how we can attract capital to Canada. CIBC is going to be at the forefront of that, and we want to make sure that we make Canada as attractive as possible from a capital liquidity perspective.
Christian Exshaw: The payments landscape is evolving across infrastructure, data, intelligence, and new digital forms of value. The opportunity is significant, but modernization is most powerful when it delivers clear outcomes: a better client experience, more efficient operations, stronger controls, and new avenues for growth.
Our team is helping clients navigate that journey with the right capabilities, advice, and execution so they can move forward with confidence. The institutions that stand out will pair innovation with judgment and ambition with strong execution.
Thank you for joining us today. And thank you, Giorgia and John, for sharing your insights.
Disclaimer: All opinions and estimates expressed in this video are as of the date of publication unless otherwise indicated, and are subject to change.
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Payments, AI & tokenization: From potential to impact

Payments, AI & tokenization: From potential to impact

Payments, AI & tokenization: From potential to impact

Christian Exshaw

Senior Executive Vice-President and Group Head

CIBC Capital Markets