Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
00:20:34 · Wincie Wong, Kate Moody
This is a controversial thing I know to say on this on this kind of a show, but people just aren't that excited about their banking. They want it to work and they are very much pissed off when it does not work. And that is when they come calling and crying and things. So that's why I think the bank's job is always just to keep things running and make it easy for the customer. And Mastercard has not necessarily been the front user interface for people in a very long time, but they managed to make plenty of money. So I think there is definitely something in. So so this is very natural, I think, for Mastercard and their competitor Visa, who's also invested in this, to go into this in this way. [00:21:22] S0: Yeah. Absolutely. James, what was your take on the story?
00:21:26 · James A. Brown
[00:21:26] S5: Yeah. No. I suppose I was just gonna add actually that I agree we wouldn't say to some extent, but I think there are organisations now in the marketplace that have actually, and I'm not a big fan of the word gamified financial services. And I use my wife as the example here in that she hated everything financial services. You know, have I been paid? Can I go out and spend my money? That was the extent of it. When we moved back from overseas, she asked me the question, like who should I bank with? And I said, Just bank with Monzo. It's really nice. It's really easy. It's good user experience. Now it's, have you seen what they're doing? Oh my goodness, this is absolutely amazing. So it's quite a big transformation. But I think back to the story, I do agree with Wincie. It's a sort of next evolution, isn't it, really? Things have to progress. You know, when I set up Fintech back in sort of the early 2000s, it was the new thing. It was the new sort of like the new poster child. AI has obviously now sort of superseded that. So it's to be expected that big organisations will try and sort of like have that sort of first mover ability. When we're actually thinking about where do we generally spend a lot of our time, we'd spend a lot of our time transacting. It's just that they've taken it into the payment sphere to actually make it much easier. We're all very busy regardless of who you are, the job that you do. We're generally all we're all and I know you're going to talk about it later we're all hustling actually to sort of like get out of life what we want. The adoption of sort of agentic payment or agentic agents doing things for you, I think it's just another way to free up some of that stuff that was very precious, which is time, that we actually then can allow ourselves to then make the choice about how we want to use that time. Because, you know, I love Wincie's point, like, you know, we don't like doing the weekly shop. I mean, if people do, then that's a bit strange. But, you know, so there's a lot of functionality to things that we do when it comes to payment technology that this will remove and actually just give us or allow us actually to make different decisions about how we want to spend that time, either for ourselves or with our family or with maybe different hobbies.
00:23:43 · Kate Moody, James A. Brown
[00:23:43] S0: I really like to do the weekly shop if it gives me an excuse to leave my children at home and have some time alone in the supermarket, but that's not really about doing the weekly shop. [00:23:51] S5: Yeah, you do realise this is being recorded and it is going out so they might hear it. [00:23:55] S0: They're too young, it's okay. Clive, I thought it was interesting in this announcement as well that, you know, the the Mastercard CEO was quite open about the fact that, you know, actually current levels of usage of agents are really, really small. It's it's quite refreshing, right, to see there's so much hype around AI. Is it kind of refreshing to see someone being a bit more honest about how early stage this is?
00:23:55 · Kate Moody, Clive Summerfield
[00:23:55] S0: They're too young, it's okay. Clive, I thought it was interesting in this announcement as well that, you know, the the Mastercard CEO was quite open about the fact that, you know, actually current levels of usage of agents are really, really small. It's it's quite refreshing, right, to see there's so much hype around AI. Is it kind of refreshing to see someone being a bit more honest about how early stage this is? [00:24:17] S3: Well, yeah, it is. And unless they, unless they fix the interoperability of these AI agents, then its growth will always be stifled somewhat. Know, credit cards won because it was standardized, you know, merchants in Auckland take cards that were issued in Atlanta, for instance. So, if every AI platform has its own way of, paying merchants, it it just doesn't scale. And so that's really going to be the challenge, I think. So it's encouraging to see that Mastercard, has made its, its verifiable, intent open and aligned with Google's protocols. And so I think, we'll start to see standardization of these, agentic AI processes, which I think will then, drive the growth in this sector. But, yeah, it's nice to see someone that's a bit realistic about this stuff. But think in ten years time, think Agent Pay AI will be much like credit cards are today.
00:24:17 · Clive Summerfield, Kate Moody
[00:24:17] S3: Well, yeah, it is. And unless they, unless they fix the interoperability of these AI agents, then its growth will always be stifled somewhat. Know, credit cards won because it was standardized, you know, merchants in Auckland take cards that were issued in Atlanta, for instance. So, if every AI platform has its own way of, paying merchants, it it just doesn't scale. And so that's really going to be the challenge, I think. So it's encouraging to see that Mastercard, has made its, its verifiable, intent open and aligned with Google's protocols. And so I think, we'll start to see standardization of these, agentic AI processes, which I think will then, drive the growth in this sector. But, yeah, it's nice to see someone that's a bit realistic about this stuff. But think in ten years time, think Agent Pay AI will be much like credit cards are today. [00:25:30] S0: Yeah, absolutely. And obviously, you know, some of the examples we've talked about, understanding about, you know, doing the personal shop and freeing up individual time make a ton of sense. But Wincie, Mastercard also stated in this release, you know, the opportunity for agentic within B2B payments as well, you know, micro transactions. Where do you think the most meaningful value will land first?
00:25:30 · Kate Moody, Wincie Wong
[00:25:30] S0: Yeah, absolutely. And obviously, you know, some of the examples we've talked about, understanding about, you know, doing the personal shop and freeing up individual time make a ton of sense. But Wincie, Mastercard also stated in this release, you know, the opportunity for agentic within B2B payments as well, you know, micro transactions. Where do you think the most meaningful value will land first? [00:25:49] S4: I think actually the value will be in B2B to be, quite honest. There is a lot of, I think in buying in personal consumer spending where you're making big purchases and maybe you want a bit more review. But if you're a company trying to place an order for 500 widgets every single month, you have to fill out a 100 forms in order to do it and to go back and forth with the supplier, ensuring also that you find the best price for something. I think AI will be an absolute game changer for b to b. We'll talk about it a little bit later. I'm doing a bit of a side hustle at the moment where I'm helping my friend run her restaurant, and we're sourcing a lot of things from China at the moment. And it is, the amount of messages I get inundated with with China, with the time differences and all of that in order to source the supplies, Putting the AI layer in front of it, which actually has started to happen, will be an absolute game changer. And I think once it becomes better known, it has become probably proven to be safe and proven to be able to make the right choices, for example, then I think it will definitely take off.