Project overview
Paylume was pleased to provide advisory services to a Benelux financial institution, supporting their exploration of digital assets, including stablecoins, tokenised instruments, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) such as the digital euro.
Although a domestic leader, the bank was watching international peers loudly publicise their stablecoin initiatives. They needed to move forward with confidence, without wasting resources on initiatives that lacked clear commercial merit.
One of the reasons they chose us was because we came from a place of neutrality and didn’t have a specific agenda to promote becoming part of the initiatives at hand.
The payments landscape in Europe and around the world is evolving rapidly, and Paylume’s advisory services helped this institution as they sought to understand how emerging digital asset rails could impact their existing payment models, particularly in international payments.
The programme focused on building internal capability, assessing strategic opportunities, and defining the next steps for participation in this evolving ecosystem.
The Paylume team approached the engagement not only as an educational exercise, but as a strategic transformation initiative. We are passionate about helping banks position themselves for future revenue streams while at the same time, being conscious of the risk, cost, and regulatory exposure.
The challenge
Digital assets offer faster settlement, lower costs, and new business models, but also significant complexity. Despite the opportunity, the institution lacked a structured understanding of how stablecoins and tokenised payments work and how to integrate them into existing operations.
Internal knowledge gaps, on matters such as stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and CBDCs was making it difficult to form a clear strategic view, while uncertainty around the bank’s role in the ecosystem further limited decision-making.
At the same time, the institution faced difficulty identifying commercially viable use cases, particularly in cross-border payments, where return on investment remained unclear. Concerns around duplicative infrastructure, requiring parallel digital and traditional rails without guaranteed volumes, triggered more complexity, alongside evolving regulatory requirements in Europe, custody considerations, and compliance risks.
Senior leadership needed clear, structured insights to assess opportunities, understand risks, and determine how to engage with industry initiatives such as the BIS Agora programme and other digital asset pilots.
Why Paylume was chosen?
Paylume was selected for this project due to our ability to combine deep payments expertise, thanks to an experienced team, with a forward-looking understanding of digital asset ecosystems.
The team brought a strong foundation in international payments and market infrastructures, practical knowledge of how emerging digital asset rails intersect with existing systems, experience analysing initiatives such as central bank programmes and digital euro developments, and the ability to translate complex technological concepts into understandable business and strategic implications.
Paylume bridged the gap between innovation and practicality, enabling the institution to assess not just what is possible, but what is commercially and operationally viable.
Who was involved?
Paylume worked closely with payments and banking professionals across the institution, guaranteeing that it they had high quality collateral and expert research to provide to their senior management colleagues.
The impact that Paylume delivered
Paylume enabled the institution to build a clear, actionable understanding of digital assets through targeted workshops, market analysis, and strategic advisory. This included insight into instruments such as stablecoins and CBDCs, assessment of key initiatives like BIS Agora, and practical recommendations on use cases, risks, and participation. Paylume delivered executive-ready outputs that could support decision-making while also highlighting possibility for costs and infrastructure.
