Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
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.
00:27:06 · Kate Moody
[00:27:06] S0: Yeah. I mean, we had a a story on the news show last week about, you know, indemnification of agentic payments. Obviously, we're kind of touching on a similar space here. It kind of feels like the recurring big problem, well, maybe it's not a problem there but it certainly sounds like Mastercard are making a first effort here at trying to solve that with their sort of verifiable intent technology trying to really record, you know, what has actually been authorised. And Clive, from where you're sitting, did you agree that this is like the key problem to be solved?
00:27:36 · Clive Summerfield
[00:27:36] S3: It comes back to exactly that's the same problem as before. How do you bind the, the real life person, this biological entity to a, what is essentially a digital entity that you've authorized to go off and perform these transactions? How do you bind those two together? And, you know, I have a line here that, you know, there's only really one one technology that binds biological and digital identities, and that is biometrics. And there really is only two biometrics that make any sense in a, online world, and that is voice and face. And, you know, we're we're, you know, talking to each other here on the online and verifying identities to each other using voice and face. So that is really the challenge here is how do you do you strengthen that layer, that authentication and identity verification layer, confirming... It's back to the same line as before. How do you confirm that this is a real authorized person to actually authorize this agent to go off and do whatever they're going to do? And is this person real, and not a synthetic or an injected, individual into the, into the process? And that's where it goes to.
00:28:56 · James A. Brown
[00:28:56] S5: Yeah, I mean, I suppose all I would add, I mean, I remember doing a TV interview actually in New Zealand, and it was all about digital identity. It was at the time when sort of COVID was hitting and how are we gonna allow people to sort of move around and should there be a sort of a digital identity, sort of like product platform device, etcetera. But when I was actually given the interview, I turned down to the presenter and I said, How do you know I'm actually real? And he nearly fell off his chair in the studio. And he's like, Oh, I hadn't, oh, actually, I hadn't, know, I actually quite frightened him, if I'm honest. But I think back to Clive's point, I mean, it's like as the technology becomes more sophisticated, we've, you know, my friends are doing it at the moment where they're sending pictures of each other but they all of a sudden have put on six kilos of muscle And it's like, woah, clearly someone's been to the gym. So we have to sort of balance out that as the good actors obviously adopt this technology, by that, going back to the sort of the bad actors are also trying to accelerate how they break things. And I've worked with digital identity providers, I'm sure we all have, and the challenge is that, you know, when we started wearing masks, you know, it became a bit of an issue for some providers. So it's nice to see and I think your point is very valid about how open as like Mastercard are actually being about where they are at the moment but what their aspirations are for the future.