The Most Powerful Women in Banking NEXT No. 5, Tessa Naroditsky, Comerica Bank

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Embedded finance and real-time payments are two of the most important trends in banking, creating a need for a vision that connects emerging technology to specific business strategies.

"Embedded finance is the only way to go," Tessa Naroditsky, SVP and director of payments strategy for Comerica Bank , told American Banker. "It's how you create value."

Naroditsky is leading initiatives that combine how faster payment processing improves the bank's delivery of products through partners, the essence of what's referred to as embedded banking.

"That strengthens our position in the market as a payment provider," said Naroditsky, who leads a staff of nine and has been in her role for about two years. "We're going to see more banks working with nonfinancial institutions."

As part of Comerica's payments technology work, Naroditsky's team operates across the bank's departments to deliver an application programming interface, the rail that enables partners to connect to the bank to access financial services. The work included writing detailed requirements and communicating updates on clients that were testing the API.

Naroditsky additionally is Comerica's representative on The Clearing House's real-time payments committee, where she communicates information on industry trends to Comerica's management.

She recently contributed to Comerica's development of "on-behalf-of payments," or using the RTP instant settlement rail to power payments on behalf of a client's customers. Comerica is one of the early adopters of OBO real-time payments, part of the bank's work through the RTP network to expand uses for embedded finance. Comerica has a pipeline of development tied to the RTP rail with several releases scheduled for the rest of 2025.

The bank is betting the expansion of e-commerce and the broader technology industry will create opportunities to support real-time payments for a variety of purposes, including supply chain financing and other third-party vendor transactions. Supporting disbursements for contract workers will also be a big opportunity as payroll firms use OBO through banks and the RTP rail to support their clients payments to freelancers.

Noroditsky's work at Comerca has contributed to the bank's understanding of these opportunities and how to chart a path to take advantage. The experience positions her well for the future, according to the bank's senior management.

"Tessa demonstrates a rare combination of strategic vision, market acuity and executional excellence; qualities that are essential for any future C-suite leader," Allysun Fleming, executive vice president and head of payments for Comerica, said in a statement.

Naroditsky's responsibilities included leading a five-year payments growth strategy at Comerica, using internal and external market research to match Comerica's capabilities with the opportunity in the market.

She then presented the strategy to the bank's senior executives, including an assessment of return on investment over a five-year horizon.

Other work included developing an intellectual property strategy for a 24/7 reciprocal deposit product, resulting in Comerica's first patent filing.

"Her ability to recognize the long-term value of intellectual property protection and execute on it underscores her enterprise mindset, and her ability to [spot] new revenue streams for the bank," Fleming said.