Talking Banking Matters

When Nigel Morris and his cofounder, Frank Rotman, started QED Investors in 2007 to support high-growth financial technology companies, the fintech world was just beginning to blossom. Today, QED is a leading venture capital firm specializing in early-stage and growth fintechs, backing more than 250 portfolio companies. The firm provides hands-on operational support, backing fintech start-ups in lending, payments, insurance, and banking. In this episode, Nigel speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert about how the fintech landscape is shaping up in the face of AI and a younger demographic.
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The blockchain-based fintech Circle is perhaps best known as the issuer of USDC stablecoins, but the company is much broader than that. In the words of its leaders, Circle seeks to build a foundational economic operating system for an AI-driven digital economy running on a blockchain-based payments infrastructure. In this episode Circle CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Matt Higginson about the effect of the passage of 2025’s Genius Act on the future of stablecoin innovation, sources of future value, and how his background in philosophy informs his work and leadership style.
Related insights
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Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters
Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters
Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services
Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com
See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information
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The longtime business payments company seeks to transform B2B money movement and related activities, creating new revenue streams and better cashflow.
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As digital payments make up a growing share of money movement, payments fraud is becoming more frequent and complex, requiring a broader range of ever-more-powerful security tools. SardineAI seeks to meet that need with an AI-powered fraud prevention and compliance platform that uses device intelligence, behavior-based analytics, and machine learning to protect financial services, fintech, and e-commerce businesses.
In this episode, SardineAI cofounder and CEO Soups Ranjan speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Roshan Varadarajan about Ranjan’s experience leading financial crime prevention at Revolut and Coinbase before starting Sardine; the future of payment fraud prevention, given the emergence of agentic commerce; and the growth of the payments security industry.
Related insights
The 2025 McKinsey Global Payments Report: Competing systems, contested outcomes
Guardrails for growth: Building a resilient payments system
The stable door opens: How tokenized cash enables next-gen payments
Global Banking Annual Review 2025: Why precision, not heft, defines the future of banking
After the surge: Tien‑Tsin Huang on the future of payments
The future of the payments industry: How managing risk can drive growth
Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters
Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters
Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services
Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com
See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information
See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

As more retailers and other consumer-facing companies look to offer customer loyalty payment cards with rewards and easier shopping experiences, the co-branded card company Imprint seeks to simplify that process and offer it to a broader range of companies. In this episode Daragh Murphy, cofounder and CEO of Imprint, speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Roshan Varadarajan. Imprint was started with backing by Thrive Capital, whose partner Gaurav Ahuja also is a cofounder and serves as chair of Imprint. In this interview, Murphy discusses how the company got its start, why building their tech stack from scratch was important, and the future of co-branded credit cards.
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Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters
Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters
Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services
Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com
See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information
See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information