Leaders In Payments

Final settlement sounds great until you’re the one holding the fraud and compliance risk. That tension sits at the heart of my conversation with Pete Glyman, Founder and CEO of Coinbax, where we explore what it will actually take for stablecoin payments to work for banks, credit unions, and serious fintech programs.

Pete shares his path from building and selling a fintech platform to leading digital asset strategy work, and why the regulatory climate and the rise of blockchain, tokenization, and stablecoins pushed him back into founder mode. We get concrete about the real blockers to adoption: not speed, but controls. We unpack how smart contracts can support payment workflows people already trust, including escrow, lockup periods, delays, and even reversibility, while layering in fraud mitigation, OFAC screening, and multi-party account verification. The goal is simple: make on-chain payments feel safe, compliant, and operationally usable inside existing bank compliance systems.

We also look forward. Pete explains why cross-border payments are an obvious early win, why domestic “wire-like” payments could be rebuilt with programmability, and why agentic payments could create an entirely new machine-to-machine economy. We close with a direct challenge to payments leaders: stop waiting, start tinkering, and learn the rails firsthand.

Gift cards have a branding problem and it’s costing the payments world a big idea. Alex Preece, CEO and Co-Founder of Tillo, joins us to make the case that gift cards aren’t really “gifts” at all. They’re programmable stored value, a modern redemption rail that can sit inside bank apps, fintech wallets, cashback programs, employee rewards, refunds, and payouts. Once you see them as a payment instrument, the market looks a lot less like novelty and a lot more like infrastructure.

We dig into how Tillo built a two-sided marketplace that connects thousands of retail brands with the businesses that want to reward customers and employees. Alex explains why a single API matters in a fragmented global ecosystem, what it takes to support multi-country catalogs, and how better tooling and transparency can make brands more confident partners. We also talk about a surprising insight: most volume is self-use, not gifting, because people are optimizing everyday spending by converting earned value into higher-impact rewards.

We zoom out to the bigger payments trends reshaping rewards and loyalty: the demand for real-time gratification, the opportunity created by open banking and faster payments like RTP and FedNow, and the emerging push toward “global but local” benefits that actually work when customers travel or live abroad. If you’re building in payments, loyalty, or fintech growth, this is a practical look at where rewards infrastructure is heading and why it can change behavior at the moment of decision.

“Instant” payments are usually a well-designed illusion. The customer experience feels real-time, but behind the scenes money still crawls through delayed settlement, fragmented rails, and market-by-market workarounds. That gap is exactly where stablecoins start to look less like hype and more like infrastructure.

We sit down with Tony Tom, CRO and Co-Founder of Stable Sea, to unpack how enterprise stablecoin payments can improve cross-border payments, shorten settlement times, and reduce the operational drag that finance teams accept as normal. Tony shares how his journey through payments led him to Block and then to building Stable Sea, plus what he learned by watching stablecoin adoption accelerate outside the US. We talk liquidity, on-ramp and off-ramp realities, and why “bank-grade” processes matter when you’re moving serious volume.

A big part of the conversation centers on trapped cash: revenue stuck in markets with capital controls or limited FX access, from Argentina to Nigeria and beyond. We also explore stablecoin treasury management, the need for a single view across wallets and bank accounts, and how automation and rules-based movement can turn visibility into action. Finally, Tony lays out why regulated, Wall Street-aligned tokenized real world assets may be the bridge that pulls stablecoin settlement deeper into mainstream enterprise payments.

Vertical SaaS wins when it feels like it was built by someone who has actually done the job, and that same principle is reshaping payments and fintech. We sit down with Brad Pinneke, Head of Enterprise Business Development at Worldpay (is now Global Payments), to unpack why vertical SaaS platforms have become the day-to-day operating system for small businesses and why “embedded payments” is no longer a nice add-on. When the workflow lives inside the software, money flow becomes unavoidable, and the platform that handles both can deliver a cleaner experience and a stronger business model.

We dig into what customers now expect from modern payment processing inside software: one login, one system of record, one support layer, and a single source of truth that connects checkout, settlement, reporting, and reconciliation. Brad explains how natively integrated payments can reduce back-office headaches, improve trust, and increase retention, plus what separates platforms that weave payments into the fabric of the product from those that simply tack it on.

Then we get practical about the hard parts. Selling money is not the same as selling software, and the margin for error is smaller when uptime, compliance, PCI, funding, and fraud risk are on the line. 
We close with the next wave: AI in fintech and how AI plus payments data can turn a system of record into a system of action through predictive cash flow, risk modeling, automated pricing, and standout fraud detection.

The payments world is full of shiny objects. The hard part is deciding what actually matters to clients and then delivering it safely at global scale. I’m joined by Rich Clow, Head of Innovation and Strategies for Global Payments Solutions at Bank of America, for a grounded look at how a large financial institution evaluates emerging payments technology, turns strategy into products, and keeps the focus on real outcomes like faster settlement, better data, and lower fraud.

We unpack what payment volumes and behavior patterns reveal right now: why most transactions are still domestic, why ACH remains a workhorse, and why cross-border payments are still largely wires running through SWIFT. Rich explains where real-time payments (RTP) are gaining traction, how data requirements can slow adoption, and why improving ERP integration is a turning point for reconciliation, payouts, and just-in-time corporate payments that support smarter liquidity management.

From the treasury perspective, the conversation gets practical: streamlining accounts payable and accounts receivable across checks, ACH, wires, cards, lockbox, and virtual cards, while upgrading security and fraud prevention with layered controls. We also go deep on digital treasury and AI, including CashPro Forecasting, CashPro Chat, and mobile approvals, plus how “always-on” 24/7 banking changes operations, investigations, and even how upgrades are handled. 

If you care about payments innovation, real-time payments, treasury management, AI in banking, fraud prevention, and digital payment strategy, you’ll get plenty to take away.