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Sopnendu Mohanty
CEO, GFTN
Opening Address at the GFTN Tbilisi Finance Summit
Tbilisi, Georgia
27 October 2026
Prime Minister, Governor, and Distinguished Guests,
Good morning, and Gamarjoba!
Let me begin by thanking the Prime Minister and Vice Prime Minister for visiting my country, Singapore. Your visit has brought our two nations even closer.
Georgia is blessed with one of the world’s hardest-working central bank governors. Every time I meet her, her passion for innovation and for Georgia’s growth is infectious.
We are here because she wants us here. To put Georgia on the global map of finance and technology.
Please join me in giving a warm round of applause for the Governor.
As I prepared these remarks, I came across Georgia’s great poet, Shota Rustaveli. Eight hundred years ago, in The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, he wrote: “What we give away is ours. What we keep is lost.”
Is that not the very principle of open banking? Value grows when it is shared.
And Georgia is living it. Open banking across every regulated institution.
I believe it has scaled, and the central bank is now going to the next phase.
From open caravan routes, to open data, open code, open capital.
These will shape Georgia’s future. These three are driven by three profound technologies of our time, and they are important.
Prime Minister and Governor: Georgia will be judged by how you do in the three areas.
First: artificial intelligence.
We are at the agentic inflection point. AI no longer just answers. It acts.
The world has moved into an AI economy faster than expected. There is no turning back.
Finance must adapt within clear central bank guardrails. And policymakers must keep the transition fair, with minimal job disruption.
The prize is enormous. Fraud caught in milliseconds. Risk priced with precision. Service without limits.
But machines can move at speed. Accountability must move faster, and let me repeat, the success depends on the AI framework central banks set for growth.
Second: tokenization.
Let’s move beyond the labels. Crypto. Digital assets. CBDC. The bigger idea is a tokenized market.
It is time to rethink the whole financial system on tokenized rails. From cash to trade. Money and assets settling in moments, not days. Programmable. Borderless.
And when it meets AI, agentic commerce becomes the next infrastructure. With trust and authorisation programmed into every transaction.
Georgia moved early on digital money. Now I hope Georgia will be bold again, and build a complete tokenized market.
GFTN is here to help. We have built one of the world’s most comprehensive tokenization toolkits, to help countries make that move safely, within central bank guardrails.
Third: quantum.
The most revolutionary technology of our time.
Quantum is a real risk to the security of our financial system. And a real opportunity, at the same time.
At today’s pace, it will be real within a decade. Migration takes years. So we start now.
And here is Georgia’s edge. If you are building new infrastructure today, build it quantum-safe from day one.
At GFTN, our QFINEX programme is accelerating quantum applications in finance. We would be honoured to have Georgia join us.
GFTN is working with partners on exactly this.
To close.
Governor, you have led from the front. Open banking. The sandbox. Digital banks. The digital lari.
You are not just adopting technology. You are designing it.
But technology is not the goal. The goal is a financial system that is productive, resilient and trusted.
Because technology will shape what finance can do. Trust will decide how far it can go.
Let’s make Tbilisi the place where both meet.
Gaumarjos Sakartvelos!
Thank you.
END