Episode 28 - Payments Podcast Robot

Welcome to episode #28 of Agents of AI, Capto’s podcast for leaders who want to understand how humans + AI agents are reshaping the future.The "Payments Podcast Robot" joins us to share:• The guest is based in London and has a career that has spanned the payment space, having worked at large acquirers, payment gateways, and open banking providers. They currently work for an embedded finance payments company. The guest also has a very well-known podcast in the payments space, which is called The Payments Shed.• What keeps the guest motivated is that innovation never stops in the payments world. The industry has changed more in the last 10 or even five years than it did in the previous 25 years. The guest also finds it exciting that everyday life impacts the work they do.• They suggest that the difficulty of selling in the payments industry is underappreciated. Selling is more challenging than ever because there are more salespeople and buyers are doing more research, but expectations for delivering results have not changed. The job of salespeople is now more than just selling; it's about being at the forefront of the ideal customer profile's mind when they move into buying mode.• The guest noted that for a long time, AI was a buzzword, and people claimed to be experts when they were not. The guest sees a huge impact from AI in reporting and reconciliation for businesses. Work that used to take finance teams months or years can now be done in minutes. In the business the guest works for, AI is used in payments for transactions to decide if a decline reason means a transaction should be written down to a certain provider, moving from manual or API-driven decisions to decisions not even made by a human. • The guest believes the biggest change coming in the near future (months, not years) is businesses trusting AI to have access to more data. Businesses that succeed the most are trusting AI more and giving it access to more of their inbound processes to make their life easier. The guest advises that if you are working with AI, you need to give it access to do more, and it will "happily do it for you" (or "do it with you"). The guest also addressed agentic commerce, noting that while consumers are more aware of it now and it's a "buzzword" due to increased news coverage, it is not fully realized yet to the point where a consumer would trust it completely for complex tasks like booking flights and ensuring they get their preferences and best offers.• Advice shared for peers is to; network and speak to people you find interesting on LinkedIn, at work, or outside of work, speaking to people who do not make you feel comfortable and putting yourself out of your comfort zone, ask your peers what they think with 360 feedback, and help people!

...and finally their identity is revealed as Justin Hanna, Director at Storfund and host of "The Payments Shed" podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-hanna-storfund/Agents of AI features CFOs, other practitioners, technology leaders, and AI visionaries to share real wins, failures, and strategies, so teams everywhere can learn, adapt, and lead. You can also learn any time from the entire knowledge base of our guests via our "AI Twin". https://hey.speak-to.ai/agents-of-ai 👉 If you know a superhero and "Agent of AI" that should join our program, or you are one yourself! Comment, tag them, or reach out to Alexis Chevallot or Peter Steube on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearecapto/