- Key insights: Top execs from the payments industry shared their views at American Banker's Payments Forum this week in San Francisco.
- What's at stake: Trends such as AI and blockchain are changing opportunities and threats for banks.
- Forward look: Bankers also stressed the importance of building interoperability to boost growth for real-time payments and digital assets.
The payments industry is always awash in new innovation, competition and risk, making it vital for professionals to share their ideas, insights and observations.
Many of the market's top executives assembled this week at American Banker's Payments Forum, telling their stories about how blockchain, AI, real-time processing and other innovations are opening new markets, advancing ways to engage with merchants and consumers, but also posing new threats to security and competition.
Here's a sample of what some of the industry's highest-profile leaders had to say:
Ather Williams III, Wells Fargo
The bank's head of global payments and liquidity for wholesale digital
"The stakes are real, and we can't delay our choices," Williams said. "Payments are no longer just about moving money."
Jodie Kelley, Electronic Transactions Association
The CEO of the trade group stressed the need to develop multiple ways for consumers to shop, order and make payments, covering all available channels as payments become more commoditized.
"Consumers demand and expect [easy and efficient] ways to pay. Younger consumers in particular want tons of options," Kelley said.
Amit Dhingra, Huntington National Bank
Huntington's chief enterprise payments officer noted the long-standing trend of small-business owners using, or at least starting their relationship, with consumer financial services.
"Small businesses expect the same payment experience as consumers," he said. "This creates an opportunity for banks, but also pressure to get it right."
Kim Fitzsimmons, Talus
Fitzsimmons, CEO of the payment processor, says the migration of checkout to smartphones is reimagining the point of sale, as payments moves away from countertops and move about with clerks inside of stores.
"Consumers want you to meet them where they are. They're saying 'we want it now and we want it seamless,'" she said, adding smartphones are actually safer than other options. "The smartphone has protections that you can't get on a laptop."
Eynat Guez, Papaya Global
The CEO of the global payments company said it's vital that payments can be executed and available globally and at all times as real-time rails and agentic commerce take hold. Given the rapid digitization, banks will be threatened if they can't support payments at nearly all times.
"A payment needs to be immediate all over the world, if payments take longer than a flight, there is a problem. This is the way we need to look at payments today," Guez said.
Driss Temsamani, Citi
The bank's managing director of the Americas and head of digital likened the growth of digital assets and AI to the advent of the internet, predicting it will revolutionize banking and payments. But there's one catch. "The internet wasn't built to handle mass movements of money," he said, noting it's difficult for different modes of AI and its supporting data to work together.
Matthew Friend, JPMorganChase
Friend, the manager and head of new payment rails at the banking giant, said the instant payment rails are seeking consumer acceptance.
"The rails are there," he said. "What's missing is the value added service and the top level is the user experience."
Umar Farooq, JP MorganChase
The bank's global head of payments said transaction methods are changing all over the world maybe even more globally than in the U.S.
"Payments have changed as expectations change," he said. "It is becoming part of the value proposition."
Farooq addressed the tendency of banks to work with fintechs that are also rivals.
"There probably isn't a fintech that we don't work with, but there also isn't a fintech that we don't compete with," he said.
