Episodes

As financial fraud continues to accelerate, its impact on victims goes far beyond monetary loss. The emotional and behavioral effects are long-lasting, shaping future decisions and sometimes undermining trust in their financial institutions. Substantial progress has been made in strengthening fraud detection and prevention, but much work remains—especially in the age of AI. In a PaymentsJournal podcast, Dal Sahota, Global Director of Trusted Payments at LSEG Risk Intelligence, and Suzanne Sando...

Many credit unions are grappling with the differences between cryptocurrency, stablecoins and tokenized deposits—and whether these innovations fit into their business model. It’s important to take a step back and allow strategic evaluation, rather than urgency, to drive decisions around digital assets. Velera and its Digital Asset Lab are helping credit unions overcome the “fear of missing out” that often accompanies emerging technologies like crypto. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Velera’s Vlad...

In the past, banks and businesses could build rapport by delighting customers over several interactions. That window has largely disappeared amid the impersonal nature of today’s digital ecosystem—and the growing sophistication of fraud. The surge in fraud and money laundering has prompted many experts to advocate for a return to a zero-trust framework, where every party must be verified before a transaction proceeds. That mandate will only grow more complex as agentic commerce gains traction a...

High-profile data breaches at major retailers exposed thousands of consumers’ personal account numbers (PANs), spurring the adoption of tokenization—a solution that replaces sensitive account data with surrogate values, protecting both consumers and merchants. As tokenization scaled, its benefits proved to extend well beyond fraud prevention. Merchants often saw meaningful lifts in authorization rates. But the rise of competing token types, the emergence of agentic commerce, and evolving polici...

For many small business owners, the workday doesn’t end when customers leave. It continues late into the evening—logging into multiple dashboards, exporting spreadsheets, reconciling transactions, and trying to make sense of scattered financial data. In the absence of a centralized solution, many have been forced to stitch together a patchwork of banks, fintech apps, payment processors, and accounting tools just to keep their business running. Reconciling these fragmented systems has become a d...

With the advent of faster payments, many financial organizations have prioritized speed over fraud detection. Consumers expect instant transactions, but banks must still protect themselves and their customers from fraud. Running fraud detection in the background—analyzing contextual signals and historical data—helps strike the right balance between speed and security. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Diarmuid Thoma, Head of Fraud & Data Strategy at AtData, and Jennifer Pitt, Senior Analyst of Frau...

ACH is a critical part of the U.S. payment infrastructure, driving a significant portion of transaction volumes and supporting important use cases such as supplier payments, payroll, and many others. Despite competition from newer rails that serve similar purposes, ACH continues to grow at a remarkable pace. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Radha Suvarna, Chief Product Officer of Payments at Finastra, and James Wester, Co-Head of Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, examined why ACH payments h...

Credit unions have distinct hallmarks: they are not-for-profit and member-owned. Yet amid the flood of financial services companies in today’s digital landscape, these differentiators can be difficult to convey. While many younger consumers are actively seeking the kind of guidance credit unions excel at providing, they often perceive credit unions as just another bank. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Velera’s Tom Pierce, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, and Carrie Stapp, Vice P...

Scams have become universal, affecting all types of consumers and every kind of organization. This has placed tremendous pressure on financial services firms, which often bear the brunt of the financial losses, to develop strong fraud prevention strategies to protect their customers. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Raj Dasgupta, Vice President of Product Marketing at BioCatch, and Suzanne Sando, Lead Fraud Analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the evolving forms of scams, the v...

Every year, billions of dollars vanish at the final step of online shopping, not because consumers change their minds, but because of hurdles within the checkout experience. Despite decades of innovation in payments technology, many shoppers still walk away when checkout feels slow or overly complex, costing businesses an estimated $260 billion annually. The answer may lie in the growing influence of developers as companies build embedded payment platforms. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Bryan L...

The past holiday season didn’t just test consumer wallets—it revealed how dramatically shopping behavior is evolving. As inflation-weary shoppers searched for flexibility, value, and convenience, gift cards emerged as a central tool in how consumers planned, budgeted, and ultimately gifted. From promotion hunting to increased reliance on AI, the behaviors that defined the season are poised to shape retail for years to come. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Sarah Kositzke, Director of Resear...

In just eight years, Zelle has revolutionized the way people send money. And the best is yet to come—peer-to-peer payments are expanding to small businesses and cross-border transactions, opening up a world of new possibilities. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Tina Shirley, Senior Director of Product for Fiserv, and Brian Riley, Co-Head of Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how Zelle has become a prominent part of the U.S. financial landscape and how it’s positioned for even great...

Paying a supplier is a fundamental function for businesses, yet it’s often encumbered by a complex billing cycle. When the supplier is in a different jurisdiction, this complexity skyrockets, forcing organizations to navigate foreign exchange rates, bank intermediaries, local regulations, and opaque fees—all with limited visibility into where a payment is and when it will settle. By contrast, stablecoin payments are immediate, transparent, and less expensive. Designed to maintain a consistent v...

Amid the rapid transformation of the payments industry, merchants have leveraged multiple acquirers to navigate new payment types, regulations, and consumer expectations. For example, operating across regions like the European Union often requires merchants to work with multiple acquirers to navigate the unique regulatory, payment, and consumer nuances of all 27 countries. Increasingly, however, multi-acquiring is no longer just a European necessity. Many U.S.-based companies have embraced this...

The ACH Network is reliable and ubiquitous. And over the past year, it continued to realize strong growth, both in the volume of payments and overall dollar amount. In 2025, ACH Network payment volume increased by roughly 1.6 billion, reaching a total of 35.2 billion, or an average of 141 million payments per day. In the same period, $93 trillion moved across ACH rails, up nearly $7 trillion from the prior year. While transaction volume grew by 4.9%, the total value of those payments increased b...

Fraud is evolving faster than ever, with AI-powered scams, deepfake-enabled identity theft, and a surge in account takeovers putting financial institutions on high alert and accountholders at risk. As the most visible safeguard of the past few decades, the humble password is coming under increasing scrutiny. In a PaymentsJournal podcast, Dr. Adam Lowe, Chief Product and Innovation Officer at CompoSecure and Arculus, and Suzanne Sando, Lead Analyst of Fraud Management at Javelin Strategy & Resea...

Banks are no strangers to artificial intelligence. For years, machine learning and deep learning models have quietly powered fraud detection, transaction monitoring, and risk analysis. But the industry is now approaching a more consequential shift: agentic AI—systems that don’t just analyze data, but can act on it. With that shift comes a fundamental question about how much authority banks are prepared to give to machines. Trust sits at the center of the debate. Is AI ready to be trusted with d...

In today’s world, nearly anything a business or individual desires is available instantly. Yet, for most, receiving a payment still takes two to three days to clear, despite the availability of instant payments networks such as FedNow. What will it take for instant payments to reach a tipping point and become a standard expectation? In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Justin Jackson, Head of Enterprise Payment Solutions, Digital Payments at Fiserv, and Jordan Hirschfield, Director of Prepaid at Javel...

The rise of artificial intelligence is coinciding with a shift toward instant payments that are increasingly difficult to stop once fraud occurs. Real-time payments put a stopwatch on fraud prevention, leaving businesses with only moments to detect and respond to suspicious activity. Striking the right balance between frictionless customer experiences and strong controls is becoming a critical challenge for businesses. In a recent PaymentsJournal Podcast, Dal Sahota, Global Director of Trusted ...

Digital banking has trained consumers to expect speed, simplicity, and instant results. Yet, when those same expectations reach the commercial side of the house, many financial institutions fall short—leaving business clients stuck in slow, manual onboarding journeys that drive up costs and frustration. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Penny Townsend, Co-Founder and Chief Payments Officer at Qualpay, and Hugh Thomas, Lead Commercial and Enterprise Payments Analyst at Javelin Strategy & Rese...

As payments have evolved from cash and checks to cards and digital payments, something essential has been lost: the human touch. Yet consumers are not data points—they crave a payments experience that is fast, secure, and effortless, and when they do need support, they want it to shift seamlessly into something personalized and attentive to their needs. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Robyn Burkinshaw, CEO and Founder at BlytzPay, and Christopher Miller, Lead Emerging Payments Analyst at J...

Running a small business is hard enough—juggling operations, customers, and cash flow. Now imagine software that not only streamlines day-to-day work but also provides the financial tools needed to grow. That’s the promise of embedded finance. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Ian Hillis, SVP of Growth at Worldpay, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, examined the emerging embedded finance landscape, the value it offers merchants and software providers...

Creating a synthetic identity used to be the realm of seasoned hackers, but now it can be done with a few simple prompts. Just as artificial intelligence has fueled countless business innovations, it has also been a boon for bad actors—allowing cybercriminals to commit fraud at a fraction of the cost and with greater sophistication. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Danica Kleint, Product Marketing Manager for Fraud Solutions at Plaid, and Jennifer Pitt, Senior Fraud Management Analyst at Ja...

From transforming member experiences to building a culture of information literacy, data has become a catalyst for innovation at credit unions. New use cases are constantly emerging for organizations willing to explore them, and artificial intelligence will only increase their value. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Jeremiah Lotz, Senior Vice President of Experience Design and Enterprise Data at Velera, and Christopher Miller, Lead Analyst of Emerging Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, explo...