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Pam Habner has been keeping her fingers on the pulse of digital advancements in the credit card industry for almost 25 years. She did so at JPMorgan Chase and American Express for a combined 17 years before being hired in 2020 as Citi's head of U.S. consumer cards.
Reporting to Citi CEO Jane Fraser and serving on the executive management team, Habner focuses on operating and growing the company's branded and co-branded credit card portfolio, which generated over $18 billion in revenue in 2025 and serves more than 70 million customers.
These days, much of Habner's work relates to incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into Citi's credit card business.
Two prime examples are the recent rollouts of Mastercard Agent Pay and Citi Flex Pay/Apply Pay capabilities.
Habner said Citi was one of the first credit card issuers in the U.S. to pilot agentic AI payment technology via Mastercard Agent Pay. This technology, which ensures transactions handled by AI agents are processed correctly and securely, builds on Mastercard's AI-enabled infrastructure and standards, and it helps deliver "early insights into how AI-driven commerce will evolve," Habner said.
In the first quarter of 2025, Citi launched Citi Flex Pay on Apple Pay, making Citi one of the first big banks in the U.S. to pair installment lending with Apple's widely used digital wallet. After its launch, Citi Flex Pay on Apple Pay represented nearly 17% of the installment lending platform's point-of-sale transactions in 2025.
"Overall, this partnership further illustrates how we are layering flexibility and convenience into everyday purchase flows, giving cardmembers more choice in how they pay," Habner said.
Elsewhere in the AI universe, the company in 2024 introduced the CitiService Agent Assist, its first customer service tool powered by generative AI. Now, more than 5,000 customer service representatives use Agent Assist across more than 11 million customer calls related to branded and co-branded cards. Habner said the tool, built in-house, guides Citi's customer service "advocates" through customer calls by supplying pertinent data, real-time transcripts, automated post-call summaries and more.
Habner said that last year alone, Citi's digital initiatives resulted in $15 million in additional revenue and $11 million in cost savings for the bank. "It's a win for our customers and advocates alike — advocates can spend less time on manual tasks and more time directly helping clients to resolve their inquiries faster," Habner said.
What's on the horizon for AI within Citi's credit card business and the financial services industry as a whole?
"I believe one of the timeliest innovations on the horizon is agentic AI in financial services," Habner said. "We are moving from systems that respond to prompts to systems that can reason, plan and execute tasks securely on behalf of customers. In payments, that means AI that can discover and search for options, compare value, initiate transactions, manage subscriptions or optimize rewards, all within guardrails that protect customer consent and security."
