Inside Institutional Payments At Scale with Debo Sen, Head of Payments, Services, Citi | Episode 490

Moving money is easy to describe and brutally hard to do well at global scale. When your network supports thousands of clients across 90+ countries and touches thousands of currency pairs, you start to see a different map of what’s changing in payments and what’s just noise. Greg Myers sits down with Debo Sen, Head of Payments, Services at Citi, to unpack what that vantage point reveals about the future of institutional payments.

We get specific on why payments have become strategic for corporate growth, customer experience, and working capital. Debo explains how “always-on” is more than 24/7/365 uptime, it’s about payments being embedded and invisible inside real business workflows. You’ll also hear a sharp reframing of real-time payments as “just-in-time” optionality for treasury, along with a practical example of how holidays and global supply chains expose the limits of legacy rails.

From there we dig into cross-border payments trends, including faster velocity across the ecosystem and the remaining friction that lives in the last mile. Debo shares how banks and fintech partnerships can expand endpoints like wallets, debit cards, and instant payment schemes while keeping resiliency and safety at the center. We also cover tokenization and blockchain use cases that are already operating at scale, plus what agentic commerce and AI-driven transactions could mean for controls, standards, fraud, and trust.

If you care about real-time treasury, cross-border payments, payments infrastructure, tokenized deposits, and bank-grade security, this episode is for you. 

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast, where we talk to sea level leaders from across the payments landscape. We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments. We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast. I'm your host, Greg Myers. And today's special guest is Debo Sen, Head of Payments for Services at City. So, Debo, thank you. We were talking before we started about the fact that you were on the show in July of last year during Women Leaders in Payments Month. So welcome back to the show and thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Thank you for having me, Greg. It's a pleasure to be back. I can't believe the months in between have gone, but uh there's a lot happening in our space as always. So delighted to be back here with you.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Great. So

Debo Sen’s Global Career Path

SPEAKER_02 0:50

before we dive into the meat of the show, can you give us a quick snapshot of your personal background, maybe where you grew up, where you call home today, a few things like that?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Absolutely. So, Greg, I started in India. I was born in India. I was uh I grew up mostly in multiple cities in India. My parents moved around, they had transferable jobs. And uh I've worked in India, I've worked in Singapore, and I've worked in New York. I'm based here. This is home right now, and uh loving it here.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Okay, well, if you don't mind, can you walk us through your professional journey and how you got to City?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Absolutely. I've actually been at City now for almost 30 years, 30 years this month, actually. I joined as a management trainee right out of business school, but I've worked in many different areas and I've done many different things. So I've worked in trade finance, I've worked in liquidity management, I've worked in payments, and I've worked in security services and issuer services, which are all the five businesses that comprise services today. And I have done multiple roles in operations, in sales, in business management, in product management across a few countries. Many years of that was in India, where we have a very large franchise. Then I ran our treasury and trade solutions business as it was known then, which was across cash liquidity and trade and payments for all our clients based out of Singapore as and all the Southeast Asian markets, what we call the ASEAN subcluster based out of Singapore. And then about four years ago, I moved to New York. I look after the payments business here at City, where we serve our clients all around the world for their payments needs.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Okay. Well, let's dive into the to the meat of the show. So

What Scale Reveals About Payments

SPEAKER_02 2:39

City operates at a scale that very few organizations can match. So how does that vantage point shape the way you see the global payments landscape? And what does it allow you to understand about where the market is headed?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

So we think about this quite a bit, as you can imagine, Craig. We are, as you said, we have scale. We move about $6 trillion a day for our clients, thousands of corporates, public sector clients, FIs, fintechs, and across the spectrum. So from the most digital natives all the way to a wide cross-section of clients who are at various stages of the digital journey in more than 90 countries, many, many, many thousands of currency pairs. But I think where that helps us, it's not so much about the scale and the size, but where that really helps us is across two or three areas, I would say. First, we are able to truly understand what a very wide cross-section of clients across the spectrum of industries, segments, geographical origins, geographical footprints, as well as different sizes and scales are thinking about. So what our public sector clients are thinking about, what problems are they trying to solve? And we are able to see that across the spectrum and not only in certain pockets of geographies or or or businesses or segments. That's one. The second thing is because we are in more than 90 countries and we've been there in many in many cases for over a hundred years, we have a seat at the table as regulations are being drafted, as policies are being framed, as the future of payments infrastructure, or indeed as the future of transactional infrastructure, are being created. Personal anecdote I always look back on is that I was very much part of the journey in India when UPI was set up, the instant payment scheme, which is probably now the biggest in the world. I was at the design table, City was at the design table. Similarly, in Singapore, when the transition to wallets was happening and a lot of work was happening on standardizing QR code, City was at the table having those conversations. So that gives us a wonderful vantage point on where is the world headed, where is infra and policy headed? And putting those two together, then what are the clients globally looking at? Where is the world headed? Helps us to separate the signal from the noise. And you can, and I'm sure you'll agree the payment space is noisy. So it helps us separate the signal from the noise with our data, with our insights, and our on-the-ground presence, which we can then turn into really advising our clients on.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

Okay. So

Payments As A Growth Lever

SPEAKER_02 5:18

for a lot of corporate and institutional clients, payments is no longer just an operational function. How are you seeing payments becoming more strategic related to growth, customer experience, and just overall business performance?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

This is a really important point that you bring up because I would say for the past few decades, payments for many large institutions or even smaller corporates or financial institutions has been a little bit of an operational function historically. But with the shift to digital, with the shift to commerce being much more digital online and always on, and their customer needs driving a very different set of demands, payments is actually becoming front and center for one single reason. And the reason is that very often how you handle payments for your customers or for your suppliers or partners or stakeholders can be either a huge enabler or be a huge impediment to your competitiveness and financial performance if it's not done right. So if you're a consumer-facing company and you know you're not able to offer invisible, integrated, seamless payment experiences, then you will competitively fall behind. Or if you are a large manufacturing company, which traditionally has only dealt with large suppliers and distributors, but today you have to set up a platform. You have to deal with after-sales service, which is online, which is integrated into digital processes and workflows, and your payments capability is not seamless, invisible, always on real-time, on demand, then you will fall behind competitively. So it's really shifted how our clients look at payments now as an enabler. And then the second thing I would say is that if you're a corporate treasurer, then the data related to payments and how payments can help accelerate or extend payment terms in the working capital cycle. So in the procure-to-pay cycle, payment instrument choice and payment method choice and supplier enablement choice for payments can decide whether you can extend your payment terms or not and reduce your weighted average cost to capital. And in the audit or cash cycle, whether you have direct debits, do you have data on payments? Are you enabling instant payments? Pay by bank can accelerate your collections and receipts and change your cost to capital as well. So I think I see that happening more and more, particularly as clients are driving to compete in the world of digital commerce and make things easier for their customers.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Okay.

What Clients Want From Partners

SPEAKER_02 7:53

When large organizations like the ones that you serve on a regular basis, when they are evaluating a payments partner today, what do you think matters most to them beyond the obvious basics of just moving money efficiently?

SPEAKER_00 8:06

I think some things have remained the same universally, and some things have shifted. First of all, whether you're a large organization or you're a smaller one, but on a great growth agenda with customers to satisfy, I think resiliency, safety, and soundness, trust that matters. Scale matters as well, with the ability to handle growth and scale consistently matters. I would say whether you're a growth company or you're a global company operating in multiple countries geographically, that global consistency, the ability to expand, go to market in a consistent manner without adding overheads, and the ability to help them manage global shifts over the last few years. We have seen a lot of global trade shifts. And I think this is an important consideration, certainly, that we hear from our clients. The third thing I will say is interconnectedness, because payments is not payments efficient or effective or a great client enabler in isolation. It comes with seamless integration and interconnectedness with cross with FX, with financing, with liquidity management. And how we are able to really link that, I think is something clients look for. I'll give you an example. It's all very well to say that I will enable you to do instant payments in Australia 24-7 always on, which is it's a wonderful payment scheme. But if I can't enable you to move liquidity seamlessly from your pool in London into Australia and back and forth for investments efficiency, then I haven't really enabled you. So I think that interconnectedness with the rest of the services businesses, I think is something that our clients are looking for. And you know, frictionless payments is a given. I think you started with that, so I won't go there. But our clients are also looking for a partner who can help them build solutions for the future, who can help them see around the corner and say, well, these are the three or four new emerging technologies. Where can you be a fast follower? Where can you let the trend ride a bit before you decide whether you need to adopt it or not? And where do you really have to worry about risk? So I would say it's a whole host of things, but these are the three or four things that certainly I hear a lot from customers as I travel around the world and meet them.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Okay. Well,

Always On And Just In Time

SPEAKER_02 10:26

some of the things that you mentioned, we hear a lot about speed, always on payments, real-time expectations. I mean, I think that's that's a big one that has grown from consumers having those expectations. But how are those shifts changing what institutional clients expect from their banking partner? And what does that mean to the future of payments infrastructure?

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Yeah. I I think you were spot on when you mentioned that consumer expectations is what really started the trend of always on real-time payments in general. And I would add to that, it's not enough to be always on 24-7. It's also important to be fully embedded into the commercial journey. So we always joke amongst payments professionals that we are doing our job when we are invisible, right? If we are visible and someone has to think about us, then we're not really doing our jobs. So I think, but when you see that in the B2B world, I think this is a fundamental shift because it changes how corporates interact with their partners, how they interact with their suppliers, how they interact with their customers, how they also perform the after-sales journey, because there's a payment embedded in almost every leg of that. So I think real-time treasury, the optionality. I always think about instant payments. You know, sometimes clients will tell me, but I don't want to pay faster. And my point is you shouldn't think of instant payments as paying faster. You should think of real-time payments as the ability to pay just in time, right? And I think linked to it is the 24-7,365, which I think sometimes we forget. I think this is this is a phenomenon, this is here to stay. I'll give you another example. If I'm a corporate based in London and I'm paying suppliers in Vietnam, mostly in US dollars, because there's a lot of invoicing that happens in US dollars, as an example. And on a US holiday, I actually today have to pay on Thursday or Friday to make sure that on the Monday, when my Vietnamese supplier is working, they can get payment uninterrupted, even though there's a US holiday or a 4th of July coming up. With the shifts that are now happening, that's not necessarily cost effective or efficient, especially if you scale that up and now you're dealing with shifting supply chains and life is competitive. So some of the solutions that are that our clients are looking for are that Vietnamese supplier can still get paid on Monday, and nobody has to make the payment on a Thursday. They can make that payment even when the US is closed on the Monday itself. And I think those are some of the insights that we have learned from our trends that the always-on 24-7, 365 linked with real-time treasury is inevitable for our B2B clients and our corporate clients. And that's what we've been investing in, and that's really where a lot of our solutions have been focused on.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

Okay. Well,

Cross Border Payments And The Last Mile

SPEAKER_02 13:18

earlier you mentioned cross-border payments, so we'll dive into that for a minute. So, in my opinion, and many people's one of the biggest areas of opportunity, but it's also very complex. So, what are the most important trends you're seeing there right now? And where do you think the industry still has a lot more work to do?

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Yeah, I think the topic of cross-border payments is talked about a lot. And Greg, we obviously have very, very deep experience. This is our sort of at the heart of uh how we bring our network to our clients. If, you know, we offer, we do have the industry-leading cross-border payments network, which facilitates cross-border cross-currency payments with embedded FX, you know, and over 135 currencies to over 180 countries. We've collaborated with FinTechs, we've expanded our capabilities. And I think where there's still a bit of a journey for the world to take, both customers and the industry, is maintaining the optionality of endpoints, but making sure that we can enable the last mile to become more and more efficient. Because I think large institutions can move money reasonably efficiently. And I think some of us have also solved or been solving the problem of always on 24, 7, 365 as well over the last couple of years. But I think where we collectively had work to do is how do we improve the last mile? And I think we have work to do there as well. But this is something we've been very focused on as City. We've been increasing our networks velocity for years. In general, for the industry, when I said we have work to do. Over the last decade, global cross-border payments velocity in general has massively accelerated, right? If you just look at data from Swift GPI, it confirms that nearly 90% of cross-border payments do reach the beneficiary bank within an hour. But that being said, we do know that friction can still exist with the very last mile. And this is where we've been investing. Our cross-border payment solution, for example, we've been aggressively adding near real-time payment endpoints last mile, like wallets, debit cards, instant payments, wherever permitted, very often, working very closely with the regulators in the countries around the world to enable these corridors and channels. And in addition to our own direct clearing connections, which we have a lot because we are present in these markets, we have partnered with our vast domestic network, augmented with partnerships with the likes of MasterCard, Dandelion, to enable us to reach the last mile in a scalable, resilient manner with optionality for clients. The end beneficiary can receive and easily use the funds for day-to-day needs without needing to off-ramp or do anything special to use those funds. If you think about the B2B space, our clearing solutions for FIs, our 24-7 USD solution, which is well publicized, it has not only enabled over 300 banks to exchange last sums of money all the time, but it has also enabled a large proportion of these clients to offer the same to their client base. And we have been seeing that trend, that they are now using that and taking that to their end clients. So I feel that there is a significant shift in the last mile. And I think this journey will continue. We are working with Swift, for example, to launch the Swift Retail Scheme, which has been designed exactly for this purpose, enabling last mile predictability, transparency. And I think it's a little bit of watch the space. I think there's a lot more good things to come.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

Yeah, there's no doubt we could do a whole episode just on cross-border payments and easily fill 30 minutes or more on that. But let's move on. Let's

Fintech Partnerships That Actually Work

SPEAKER_02 16:56

talk about innovation. So innovation and payments today seems to be happening kind of at the intersection of banks, fintechs, networks, and the infrastructure providers. How does City think about partnering with FinTechs and what makes for the right partnership model?

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Yeah. This has very much been at the heart of our strategy for many years. Now we believe in a mix. We believe in and finding that balance between our own investments. Uh, payments in cities sit within the services business. The services in business invests over $2 billion annually in our platform to build the next generation. But we also, A, taking our client inputs and co-creating with clients. We also work with FinTechs, we work with several other players in the market. Some of the partnerships I just mentioned, whether it's with Dandelion, where we recently announced our collaboration to enable near instant full value cross-border payments into digital wallets, starting with a few markets with obviously a ramp. If you think about MasterCard on cross-border payments into debit cards, we talked about a partnership with iPid, which is enhancing our know-your payee capabilities. Greg, I was referring a little bit earlier on how the data on payments is equally important. So delivering consistent, reliable, and secure payments, providing validation services for our global clients, partnership with Coinbase, which we announced recently to focus on fiat pay-ins and payouts to support Coinbase's on-ranth, but also offer alternative on-chain payout methods. So for us, I think the partnership strategy is very fundamental. But the guiding principle for us is making sure it's very well integrated into our tech stack, but at the same time really delivering real use cases, real value use cases for our clients.

Tokenization And Citi Token Services

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Okay. Well, there's been a lot of discussion around, and not on just on my show, but in general, anywhere you read in payments around digital assets, tokenization, and basically the broader monetization of money movement. But from your viewpoint, where are those developments starting to have real practical relevance for your institutional clients?

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, I think for us, we are focused, very focused on building the bank of the future, leveraging digital assets, also leveraging AI and other technologies. If I step back from our clients' point of view, right, I think we are very focused. That's our North Star, Greg. Is there a real client need? What are they solving for? Our clients are solving for and they are looking for interoperable, multi-bank, always-on payment solutions, but which are safe, resilient, and sound, which also are well integrated with how they manage their liquidity and their balance sheet. So then they they do not like fragmentation, they do not like having to integrate into multiple technology solutions. They want us to abstract that complexity away from them, right? And to that end, we had started using and experimenting with blockchain technology, which is at the heart of everything we are speaking about, for several years now. And for the last two years, we've been using it at scale to enable our clients to pay 24-7 within our network through our City Token services. We started with US dollars, it's now available with Euro, you know, and the reaches, the big hubs, which is US, UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, and now Dublin. We also link this with our US dollar 24-7 clearing, where we serve a number of banks, which is what I was just mentioning about. So this is kind of a bridge between our digital assets capabilities, blockchain capabilities with City Token Services into our fiat network, which then expands and creates multi-bank near instant 24-7365 US dollar capability, which is pretty unique actually. And we are also collaborating, as I said, with Coinbase. Now, to go back to your question on where's the real world applicability, I think the use of blockchain to enable 24-7 payments. The industry is working on creating interoperability of tokenized deposits. There are multiple initiatives, as I'm sure everyone our listeners are aware of. I think is a is a great use case. I think there are potentially other developing use cases because I think, you know, a few years out, it will be a multi-asset world. It will be a multi-channel world, and we are getting ready for that multi-channel world through our partnerships, through our experience in stablecoins. I think the use cases are still emerging to go beyond what I described. But I'm sure, you know, if we look back a year or two from now, we would have seen many more use cases develop.

Agentic Commerce And New Trust Models

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Okay, so another hot topic, agentic commerce, one that I really love to talk about. But as these AI agents begin to play a greater role in initiating transactions, managing workflows, and even influencing purchasing decisions, what do you think that could mean for payments, controls, and trust?

SPEAKER_00 21:58

I think this is a very Very interesting space. And I think you are absolutely right to call this out as something to watch. I would say it's while there have been some experiments and some great initiatives, I would say it's still very early days yet, because I think a lot of stars have to align for that in-state where our agents are doing all our shopping for us and also doing the transaction for us and making sure that we are able to complete the payment as well. But there are a few forces at play, you know, AI agents that execute tasks, commerce infrastructure that's designed for machines, you know, embedding APIs, and then payment rails that are designed for that kind of speed of transactions. Sometimes leveraging digital assets, but also leveraging other technologies which are now operating at high speed. I think the possibilities of a shift from consumer initiated to agent initiated, from websites to APIs as point of purchase, expansion from traditional rails to more multi-asset rails. I think these are definitely great possibilities. From our perspective, our strategy is very similar to as it has been for many other new technologies. We are working with AI, we are integrating that into our platforms, and we are looking to be the trusted financial partner and the trusted advisor for our clients as they navigate, as large merchants and large sellers, as they navigate what this might mean for them, right? And I think it's very much a watch the space. There are multiple protocols emerging, as you know. I think there's perhaps at some point the need for an emergence of standards around that so that we are efficient and we are all able to talk to each other, but a very exciting space for sure. And when you multiply that with the power of digital assets, I think it could be very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

Okay,

Fraud, AI, And Bank Grade Controls

SPEAKER_02 23:50

so let's talk about some kind of what I call foundational things that probably don't get enough attention in our industry. So fraud and security and really client confidence. I mean, they've always mattered in any environment, but they seem to be getting more complex. I mean, AI has driven more challenging situations in the fraud space for sure. But how do you think about balancing that innovation and speed with resilience and risk management? And like you mentioned, that being that trusted advisor. So how do you balance those?

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Yeah. So this is at the heart of our strategy and our approach. And as someone who's sort of responsible for making sure along with my team that we hold on to that trust that we are custodians of from our clients, our innovation, experimentation, as well as integration into our payment stack, that has to be done in a very thoughtful and very deliberate manner. Speed is important, but to attain speed, you need the brakes. And I'm a big believer in this philosophy. So we do go through those hoops, we do run our processes and thinking through those hoops and those tests. As we are embedding AI into our processes, uh, it's still a very human-led AI strategy because in payments particularly, you need the deterministic aspect. So that's something we, you know, having those control frameworks for AI solutions or even otherwise, it's something we spend a lot of time thinking. And I think that that enterprise grade or that bank grade, you know, ability or risk framework to look at the risk, to test for the risks, and to create risk management, I think is something that that it's a it's a core competency for us, I would say. I also would say that investing in platforms built on proprietary stacks, like the Citiconnect APIs. So any API that we build, they have to fit into that framework. Even if it takes a little bit longer, and even if it's, you know, it's going to go through a few more hoops of controls and risk management, we will do that because it ensures consistency, it ensures we can protect against vulnerabilities, and it ensures that our clients can then rely on that. Or if you think about City Payments Express, which is our sort of newly reimagined high-speed payment capabilities, which we started work on a couple of years ago, where today now we have 40% of our global payment volumes on it, which is pretty substantial. That is all built through that security in mind and will go through all those hoops to ensure. So it is a it is a fine balance of running fast enough, yet making sure that you're putting everything through the test of the frameworks. But I think that is what our clients are looking for.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Okay. Well,

Who Wins The Next Five Years

SPEAKER_02 26:36

one final question before we wrap up. So looking ahead over the next, say, three to five years, what do you believe will define the winners in institutional payments? And what should clients, fintechs, and basically the broader ecosystem be paying close attention to right now?

SPEAKER_00 26:53

I think some of them we've already spoken about. I think real-time, 24-7, frictionless, that is a given, right? Using the best of technologies. But I think there are a couple of other things. I think interoperability and connectivity is going to be absolutely crucial. I think the winners will be the ones who are able to provide that secure institutional grade, bank rate solutions we spoke about, but those that are multi-asset, multi-bank, and interoperable with each other because our clients at the end of the day are not looking for fragmentation and they are not looking for risks that come from fragmentation. So I think that is one. The second thing is the collaboration between ecosystem players. I think fintechs do certain things extremely well. I think other organizations build bring other strengths. Networks and infrastructure providers create a certain strength as well. I think you'll see a lot more co-creation and a lot more collaboration as they will rely on each other's strengths. What you just mentioned earlier as a question cannot compromise on risk and security. I think the recent conversations in the industry have shown us that we that having AI tools to manage risk from AI tools itself is something that we're going to have to be very thoughtful and very careful about. While we're going to leverage AI for client experience for innovative solutions, we're also going to have to make sure that we're leveraging AI to protect the systems from the risks of emerging risks from AIs and new technology as well. So I would say a few different things, but interoperability, risk management, and strategic partnerships would be how I would sum it up.

unknown 28:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Well,

Final Thanks And How To Follow

SPEAKER_02 28:40

I think that's a great way to wrap up the show. So thank you so much for being on the show today. I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Always a pleasure, Greg. Wonderful to talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

You too. And to all your listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well. And until the next story.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments Podcast. Make sure you visit our website at leadersandpayments.com, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes. If you enjoyed listening, please share on your social channels as well.