Digital Innovation Summit 2026: from vision to delivery

Delegates included industry leaders and policymakers across HM Government and the regulatory authorities.

The day’s theme was ‘From Vision to Delivery’, as the payments and financial services industry moves beyond strategy, testing and policy ambition to practical execution. See below a summary of key insights from the day’s range of keynote speeches, panel, breakout sessions and announcements.

Digital innovation: AI to digital verification

As AI becomes embedded across financial services, the real value will come from leaders that bridge the gap between technology deployment and business strategy, ‘context engineers’. AI agents will have the ability to reshape commerce, payments, identity, consent and fraud prevention. Agentic commerce is not simply a new channel; it requires a trusted execution layer across the ecosystem.

The delivery of integrated ‘human in the loop’ agentic AI in payments and e-commerce will change the way consumers pay for goods; seamlessly connecting the browsing and check-out journeys to enable consumers to make faster and more personalised purchases.

Announced on the day, the development of a voluntary digital verification service aims to provide a simple and secure way for customers to verify personal details digitally through their banking app. This could be used to make purchases online, verifying age and identity through online platforms, property transactions or opening an account online.

Innovating markets and money: digital money to tokenised assets

From digital money innovations across tokenised commercial bank money and regulated stablecoins, to tokenisation of traditional securities and assets, blockchain finance is already re-shaping markets and money. While tokenisation is often framed as revolutionary, the day’s discussions show that on-chain finance is being built to complement existing institutions, intermediaries and infrastructure to enable faster and more controlled delivery and access to assets and money for businesses and consumers.

On-chain finance will enable users to access smarter, more personalised and transparent financial services. The panel on the Great British Tokenised Deposit (GBTD) launched a new video about the initiative. The GBTD live pilot is demonstrating the opportunities of tokenisation to enhance commercial bank money payments across both wholesale and retail.

The future of payments: GBTD to A2A at PoS

The future of payment systems and infrastructure is seeing unprecedented change. From the world’s first multibank tokenised deposit payment system via the GBTD project, Account-to-Account at Point of Sale (A2A at PoS), to the authorities’ policy and regulatory work to modernise clearing, settlement and messaging infrastructure. Interoperability and modularity will be key to a collaborative and sequenced rollout of these vertical innovations.

Innovation across systems and infrastructure will enable users to access their money in more customisable and faster ways, bespoke to specific online and offline payment journeys. However, as Victoria Cleland from the Bank of England highlighted on the day, delivering this level of transformative change will require coordinated action across the entire ecosystem.

The A2A at PoS Ideathon illustrated how such change can be realised. The winning concept, proposed by Andy Moorley and Amandeep Singh Bedwal, focused on delivering a seamless physical checkout for users, merging payments, proof of age and loyalty into one simple wallet interaction.

What’s next?

Public and private sectors must continue working together to ensure delivery and execution bring tangible benefits to the economy and society, envisioning a new era of intelligent, trusted and resilient digital financial services.

The day also saw the release of other publications: