Financial Services Trends 2026: Payments Trends: Digital Money & AI
Financial Services Trends 2026: Digital Sovereignty and Resilience
The rapid growth of digital currencies—including CBDCs, tokenized assets, and stablecoins—is reshaping the global financial system and introducing new demands for scalability, security, and operational resilience. As financial institutions and regulators navigate this evolving landscape, open source platforms are emerging as a critical foundation for avoiding vendor lock-in, improving transparency, and strengthening system resilience. Join us to examine how open source technologies support secure, interoperable digital currency ecosystems while enabling innovation at speed. Viewers will gain insight into architectural considerations, regulatory implications, and real-world approaches to building resilient digital currency platforms. Key topics covered: - The evolving digital currency landscape: CBDCs, stablecoins, and tokenized assets - Why resilience, interoperability, and transparency are critical at scale - The role of open source platforms in reducing concentration and vendor risk - Security, governance, and regulatory considerations for digital currencies - Practical architecture patterns for building resilient digital currency systems
Armin Warda is a Global FSI Architect and EMEA FSI Technology Lead at Red Hat, bringing more than 25 years of experience in IT for the financial services industry (FSI). He specializes in FSI tech trend scouting: trustworthy AI, cybersecurity in AI, digital operational resilience and sovereignty, AI regulations, DLTs and new forms of digital money (such as stablecoins, CBMT, and CBDC) are among his favorite emerging focus topics. Noteworthy accomplishments in previous roles include contributions to core banking and payment system modernization projects as well as legacy systems modernization and migration projects in banks. Before joining Red Hat, Armin also helped a German retail bank adopt a new container platform for microservices architectures (Red Hat OpenShift 3), and he contributed to the development of the public cloud strategy of a global universal bank. A Linux user and open source enthusiast since 1994, Armin is also the co-author of an IBM Redbook about POWER Virtualization.