Transcription:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.
Chana Schoenberger (00:01):
Hi, I'm Chana Schoenberger. I'm the Editor-in-Chief of American Banker and I'm here at Digital Banking with Bridgit Chayt from Fifth Third Bank. Thank you for joining me.
Brigit Chayt (00:10):
Thank you for having me.
Chana Schoenberger (00:11):
So now, what is your title these days?
Brigit Chayt (00:13):
My title actually just changed, which is part of what's going on with payments.
Chana Schoenberger (00:17):
Congratulations.
Brigit Chayt (00:18):
At one point I led the Treasury Management Organization, executive vice president of treasury management and commercial payments. But as you know, the payment space is so dynamic that we have now focused on commercial payments solely. So we are now known at Fifth Third as commercial payments.
Chana Schoenberger (00:36):
Wow. Well congrats. That sounds like a big deal. Yes. So what cool things are going on in payments these days?
Brigit Chayt (00:41):
Oh boy. It's easier to probably say what's not. Everything is very cool, very focused these days and on trend, but I think it's primarily what we're doing in the area of embedded payments where we're helping clients actually embed our transaction engines into their own products. And so we're stimulating commerce rather than only moving money. So that's very exciting for us. And then in our managed service offerings, the things that we're doing in managed payables and receivables and liquidity management that are taking care of the things that happen on both sides of acceptance of the payment and initiation that are really helping commercial customers reinvent their resources in a different way to help make their businesses successful.
Chana Schoenberger (01:28):
So when you sort of look down five years, what are the trends now that you think are still going to be playing out then?
Brigit Chayt (01:35):
Well, I think we're just starting to see the AI trend play out, so that will definitely have much more traction. I think the instant payment trends will be more ubiquitous in five years. The use cases will be much more robust and far reaching across a lot of different industries. But I also think the working capital management side of what we do in payments, while not as sexy as what we do with embedded and instant payments, will still have an awful lot of relevance and value.
Chana Schoenberger (02:07):
Where do you see AI happening in payments?
Brigit Chayt (02:10):
I think that AI will be finally the unlock for taking the data that banks have had for years associated with the payments and actually turning them into real insights and very excited about how they will help banks do better in the whole vertical solution space. Where fintechs have really had their head start against banks is in that vertical solution that they're able to build. And if AI agents that to go to work in a particular vertical that sit on top of an offering that a bank already has, I think will be a way for us to really make real headway in that part of the industry.
Chana Schoenberger (02:55):
So that's how banks can finally compete
Brigit Chayt (02:57):
So you're creating a buddy at work for your customer as an AI agent that will help them.
Chana Schoenberger (03:05):
What about instant payments? Fed now started last summer, it's now been a year and the rollout has been a bit slow. Where do you see the whole instant payments thing going?
Brigit Chayt (03:16):
So Fed now, the rollout has been, I think quick in terms of sign-on, slow in terms of the volume that it's created. I think everybody was really happy to receive and not quite as happy to send or ready to send.
Chana Schoenberger (03:33):
That's what the data show. Yeah,
Brigit Chayt (03:34):
Well banks, we love our batches. And so that whole idea of a 24 7 infrastructure to support it has been daunting for some, I think whether it's real-time payments or Fed Now that the use cases are starting to make more sense to businesses and Fed. Now, clearly the Fed is much more open to a variety of business cases, but then knock on the door with stablecoin and crypto, which is probably the ultimate instant payment. Right. I think it will be interesting to see how that all plays out.
Chana Schoenberger (04:05):
So we've been talking about stable coins a lot at this conference so far. We had Anchorage Digital was on stage this morning giving remarks about that. Where do you see stable coins interacting with real banks, traditional regional banks like yours?
Brigit Chayt (04:20):
I do think especially in the regional bank space, a lot of banks did not prioritize and rightly so given their primary client base, the cross border, the global abilities to help their customers in that space and left that really more to the trillionaires. I do think Stablecoin plays another unlock there as well for regional banks to be able to kind of start to jump leapfrog over where they would've normally been in the cross border solution set.
Chana Schoenberger (04:54):
So how would say a medium sized manufacturer in Ohio use a stablecoin through Fifth Third?
Brigit Chayt (05:02):
Well, what we think as we start to go down our own journey on the digital asset space is that it will first start for us more in our embedded area on ramping and off ramping for customers in that space. And then for our own client base as we look at what we could do on cross border and targeting those clients who either have business opportunities or already do business cross border quite a ways and have a lot of pain points around settlement and the valuation at the time of all of that, there's quite a bit of pain that we could release there with Stablecoin where,
Chana Schoenberger (05:40):
Okay. And another thing that we've been sort of talking about regarding stablecoin is what happens to the regulatory environment when fintechs can do all the things that banks do except for have FDIC insurance.
Brigit Chayt (05:55):
I think that will be, it's been interesting for us, especially as we've watched certain fintechs start to go for a single purpose bank charters too. So where is it that the bank provides that value then in the ecosystem? And I think it is no time for a banker to be in denial and you have to go back and look. We've obviously, we've stood up New Line, which is our embedded payments play and have sought to make sure that we are also creating value by being in the tech stack of these companies. And you find your ego in a different place there because it's not about having the fifth third shield all over it to the end customer. And in fact they rarely even know you're involved, but you're able to participate in that part of the commerce. That will definitely be the way more of the country moves and global. Interesting.
Chana Schoenberger (06:48):
What is the coolest thing you've seen recently that's not at Fifth Third.
Brigit Chayt (06:52):
Oh, I'm not supposed to think anything cool if it's not at Fifth Third, but I have seen some opportunities that folks have taken around both the blockchain and the digital asset space that I think is, they're minting their own coin that we're not there yet and haven't made that decision just yet. That I find interesting. It takes me back though, not because I was there, only because I read about it, but to the early days of banking where banks were issuing their own notes, their own physical notes.
Chana Schoenberger (07:27):
Well that's our history. It used to be Thompson's bank note reporter.
Brigit Chayt (07:30):
Oh that's right.
Chana Schoenberger (07:31):
In the 1800 is when American Banker got started.
Brigit Chayt (07:35):
So you kind of wonder how wild the Wild West will be this time around that way.
Chana Schoenberger (07:39):
Well, probably pretty wild.
Brigit Chayt (07:42):
But it's fun to be part of that, to shape it.
Chana Schoenberger (07:44):
Definitely. Well, thank you for coming in and enjoy Florida.
Brigit Chayt (07:47):
Absolutely. You too. You're looking very Floridian today.
