At Money 20/20 Europe, IBM’s Kamini Belday warned that finance leaders chasing AI and embedded finance must first fix the basics. From outdated banking architecture to rising regulatory demands, she explains why payments infrastructure - not innovation - is the real foundation CFOs need to prioritize now.
Payments are having a moment. Or more accurately, a reckoning. The opening day of Money 20/20 Europe 2025 made it clear: finance leaders are standing at a junction between customer demand for real-time experiences and the hard reality of banking infrastructure not built for speed.
On the sidelines of the event, we caught up with Kamini Belday, Head of Global Payments for IBM Cloud, to unpack what’s really holding payments innovation back and what CFOs need to prioritize first.
“Everyone’s talking about AI, embedded finance, stablecoins,” said Belday. “But that’s just the frosting. If your core infrastructure isn’t ready, none of those innovations will scale. You need a properly baked and fully cooled cupcake first for fancy frosting.”
That metaphor – humble, but deadly accurate – summed up a recurring theme across sessions: AI might capture the headlines, but payments modernization begins with plumbing, not polish.
Belday didn’t mince words when laying out the three primary challenges facing finance teams:
For CFOs, these aren’t just IT concerns. They influence how quickly organizations can adapt to market opportunities, launch new products, or comply with shifting policy mandates. And they come with real cost: in vendor complexity, reconciliation delays, and operational risk.
Perhaps the most startling statistic shared during day one: only 15% of payments and core banking workloads currently operate in the cloud.
That low figure was a wake-up call. For all the talk about digital transformation, most institutions still depend on legacy infrastructure. That means new services must work within rigid parameters, slowing down innovation – or inflating its cost.
What should finance leaders be doing? According to Belday, it starts with prioritizing hybrid flexibility – “meeting banks where they are” – instead of expecting a total lift-and-shift approach.
IBM Cloud’s model, purpose-built for highly regulated industries, offers an example of what this could look like: workloads distributed across mainframe, on-prem, and cloud environments, all governed by a compliance-by-design framework that maps against FFIEC, PCI, DORA, and similar standards.
For CFOs, this model reduces risk and improves confidence in cost projections around tech investments. Instead of betting big on unproven platforms, finance leaders can phase modernization gradually – without sacrificing compliance.
It’s tempting to think of payments transformation as a job for IT. But Belday pushed back hard on that narrative.
“Interoperability, regulatory pressure, and customer demand are a perfect storm,” she said. “And it’s not just the CIO’s responsibility. Finance teams are central to steering the investment and making sure the organization can deliver securely and at scale.”
Belday also highlighted how regulations themselves are becoming more proactive and punitive. With initiatives like DORA in Europe and heightened scrutiny in the US, finance leaders must ensure payment operations not only work but are auditable and resilient.
This shift elevates the CFO’s role. It’s not just about controlling cost or calculating ROI – now, it’s about helping architect trust into the core of the business’s financial operations.
Belday repeatedly returned to the idea that financial services must embrace zero trust principles – not just as a cybersecurity feature, but as a structural advantage.
“Everything on IBM Cloud starts from a default deny posture,” she said. “We assume nothing is safe. Every workload must be continuously authenticated and authorized. That’s the world we’re in.”
The implication for CFOs is clear: trust and transparency are no longer just governance checkboxes. They’re competitive advantages. In a world of real-time payments, instant settlements, and cross-border visibility, being able to prove control is as important as exercising it.
Despite the focus on infrastructure, Belday isn’t anti-innovation. In fact, she sees huge potential for embedded finance, generative AI, and stablecoin-driven cross-border payments.
But she warned against the temptation to treat these trends as plug-and-play. Without a modernized core and clear compliance framework, AI models trained on partial or outdated data can create more risk than value. Likewise, adding crypto rails without aligning risk management processes will only raise red flags for regulators.
“Once you’ve modernized the foundation, you can build any ecosystem you like – AI, fintech partnerships, embedded solutions. But the order matters,” she said.
For CFOs eager to drive innovation, this is a vital distinction. Yes, you should explore generative AI to automate reconciliation or improve forecasting. But don’t expect exponential value from AI until you’ve addressed the underlying data integrity and platform consistency issues.
Belday concluded on a less technical but equally important note: leadership.
As part of Money 20/20’s RiseUp and Amplify initiatives, she’s mentoring the next generation of women and minority leaders in fintech. Her message to finance leaders? Challenge assumptions. Open difficult conversations. Influence management in a way that creates shared wins.
“We need more CFOs who ask not just “how much”, but “why now?” – leaders who challenge the order of operations and make sure we’re not building on sand,” she said. That’s a rallying cry for CFOs: not to retreat from innovation, but to anchor it in and ensure it rests on solid ground.