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To counter major cyber threats, Danmarks Nationalbank is pioneering an offline emergency payment system.

This article appears in the July/August issue of Global Finance Magazine.

Danmarks Nationalbank, the Danish central bank, has launched a financial systems security project to establish a Dormant Emergency Bank (DEB) to serve as a robust reserve bank in the event of a massive cyberattack against a large banking institution or the wider banking infrastructure in Denmark. 

The DEB proposal forms a central part of Danmarks Nationalbank’s Emergency Preparedness for Critical Financial Sector Activities in Extreme Scenarios (EP-CFSA-ES) strategic plan announced in December 2025. The plan’s bank emergency solution would enable businesses and the public to continue using payment cards, receiving salaries, and transferring money in the event of a significant cyberattack that immobilizes key financial institutions and the national banking infrastructure. 

The DEB would provide the Danish economy with an additional layer of cyber protection, according to Ulrik Nødgaard, governor of Danmarks Nationalbank. In the event of a hyper-scale cyberattack paralyzing a major Danish bank, the proposed backup DEB platform solution would activate to ensure Danish businesses and society “continued to function normally” until the cyberthreat recedes, Nødgaard said.  

Building a Contingency Net

The EP-CFSA-ES plan envisages DEB operating as a decentralized emergency bank prioritized to secure Danish society’s payment systems against a massive and prolonged AI-driven cyberattack.  

The level of threat from cybercriminals in the EP-CFSA-ES plan covers attacks that specifically result in the prolonged immobilization of banks’ IT infrastructure, a scenario that could disrupt the ability of Danish consumers and businesses to conduct normal banking transactions. 

The EP-CFSA-ES plan also includes a Card Payment Contingency (CPC) facility, enabling high street stores to keep trading during cyber-related IT outages. CPC lets consumers pay for goods and services with physical cards and mobile wallets — Vipps, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Dankort, Mastercard, and Visa — for up to seven days. Now being piloted nationwide, the system is expected to be fully operational at grocery chains and pharmacies by year-end 2026.

The CPC system works by letting store payment terminals process and store transactions offline; once reconnected, payments settle automatically with customer banks, Nødgaard said. “The technical solution developed resolves all the key issues around a significant IT outage,” he added.

Gerard O’Dwyer is a contributing writer based in Finland.

The Bermuda bank agrees to buy a 91.7% stake in CIBC Caribbean Bank for $1.8 billion, creating a regional giant.

This article appears in the July/August issue of Global Finance Magazine.

Butterfield Group has agreed to acquire a 91.7% stake in CIBC Caribbean Bank Limited for $1.8 billion — $1.09 billion in cash and the remainder in shares — in a deal that would create one of the region’s largest banking groups.

This is at least the third time in the past seven years that the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) has attempted to sell some of its Caribbean interests.

“This deal combines two storied, complementary banks with significant local scale advantages and time-honored customer relationships in their respective core jurisdictions,” said Michael Collins, Butterfield’s chairman and chief executive, in a statement. 

The new banking group will hold an estimated $29 billion in assets. The Bermuda-based Butterfield Group—formerly The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited—also operates in The Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands, Singapore, Switzerland, and the U.K. CIBC has a presence in 10 countries and is based in Barbados.

CIBC will hold about 22% of the enlarged Butterfield Group and will have the right to appoint two directors to the board. 

The bank’s top brass says the deal underscores a shift in the Caribbean financial sector. 

“This is really a change in Butterfield’s positioning because it now picks up both a retail and a business portfolio that spans the entire gamut of the region, and it probably could make it the biggest bank in the region,” former Butterfield CEO Mariano Browne told the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian.

Butterfield has promised to maintain CIBC’s Barbados office. Customers should expect no immediate changes. Existing branches will remain open, and clients can expect improved cross-border payments and expanded consumer, digital, and merchant banking.

The deal, pending regulatory approval, should close in the first half of 2027.

In 2018, CIBC attempted to list FirstCaribbean on U.S. stock markets to raise up to $240 million but withdrew the application less than a month later after failing to drum up sufficient investor interest. A 2019 deal to sell 66.7% of CIBC to GNB Financial Group for $797 million fell through after the deal failed to secure regulatory approval.

Nic Wirtz is a contributing writer based in Guatemala.