Axonect and Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC showcased a global industry-first deployment of TM Forum's Open Digital Architecture (ODA) in Fintech at DTW Ignite, demonstrating how a telco-grade architecture can be applied successfully to modern banking transformation.

Presented at TM Forum's DTW Ignite in Copenhagen, Anthony Rodrigo, chief executive officer of Axonect and Sumudu Gunawardhana, chief information officer of Commercial Bank demonstrated how ODA, originally deployed within the telecom industry, can be applied to financial services as a foundation for modern composable banking. The successful deployment at Commercial Bank facilitated by Axonect, positions ODA as a practical architecture for banks seeking to modernise complex legacy environments while maintaining governance, resilience and regulatory control.

"Already trusted by the telecom industry, ODA is now proving its relevance wherever connectivity is a driver of growth. Axonect and Commercial Bank are demonstrating how a common, open architecture can bridge telecom and financial services, creating new opportunities for innovation and collaboration," said Willie Stegmann, executive vice president, composable IT & ecosystems, TM Forum. "It reinforces the role of open architectures in helping organisations scale AI, simplify integration, and support new business models."

"Axonect's ODA-aligned platforms have enabled Commercial Bank to strengthen and modernise its core technology ecosystem, evolving beyond traditional telco middleware into an enterprise-grade turnkey operating system for financial modernisation. This gives banks the agility, scalability, and innovation speed of a public cloud environment, while maintaining the sovereign data governance, security, and operational control required by a leading financial institution," said Sumudu Gunawardhana, chief information officer of Commercial Bank, speaking at DTW Ignite.

This ODA deployment at Commercial Bank, Sri Lanka's largest private bank, has delivered real, measurable value, including 30–43% core efficiency gains, a reduction in OpEx footprint from 70% to 33%, the fastest Google Pay deployment globally, instant PayPal cross-border remittance clearing, 40+ live microservices across BIAN-compliant domains, 200+ active APIs, 99.99% availability, secure cryptographic boundaries, policy-driven compliance and live operations across three countries.

"ODA was created to help the telco industry bring order, agility, and scale to complex digital ecosystems. What we have proven with Commercial Bank is that the same architectural discipline can now help reimagine how banks modernise," said Anthony Rodrigo, chief executive officer of Axonect. "As agentic AI, APIs, sovereign data, and cloud operating models converge, ODA has the potential to become a common blueprint for secure, intelligent, and future-ready enterprise transformation. This global industry-first is more than a milestone for Commercial Bank and Axonect; it is a signal that enterprises across industries can modernise with precision, confidence, and impact."

For Commercial Bank, the next phase of the journey is about advancing from composable banking to secure agentic banking — with Axonect Fabric enabling a more autonomous, AI-native software delivery lifecycle from business requirement discovery through API development, QA, CI/CD and production. Built with agentic security, sovereign governance and auditable AI at its core, this evolution also opens the path for broader open finance ecosystem expansion, governed AI across banking use cases and scalable adoption across new markets and sectors.

With the ODA Fintech Playbook now live, Axonect is helping define how ODA can move from telecom architecture into fintech execution and industry-wide impact.

Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker