The Irish Tech News Podcast

What do you do when your customers love you for being local and expect you to work like a big global bank? 
In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Jerry Siegel and Joanna Watts join Theodora Lau to discuss the priorities and challenges that shaped AuburnBank's digital strategy and the decision to select Alkami’s Digital Sales & Service Platform. Nick Weston from Alkami joins the conversation to explain how an integrated platform can help financial institutions connect account opening, digital banking, data, and marketing as they plan for the future.

🔥Hot take: “There is a risk to staying where you are.” – Jerry Siegel, Sr. Vice President / CTO, AuburnBank

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Keywords: Digital Transformation, Banking Industry, Financial Services

Timestamp:
00:00 Welcome and meet the guests
02:20 Jerry and Joanna backstory
04:01 Balancing legacy and tech
07:38 Why AuburnBank needed change
13:26 Implementation game plan
17:17 Training and change management
22:54 What success looks like
26:23 Wrap up and thanks

More about our guests 
🌐Jerry Siegel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerry-siegel-2b6409/ 
🌐Joanna Watts on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joanna-watts-8726aa3a7/ 
🌐Nick Weston on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick--weston/ 
🌐AuburnBank: https://www.auburnbank.com/
🌐Alkami Technology: https://www.alkami.com/ 

More about our host and One Vision Podcast 
🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 
🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 
🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 
🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision

We've reached a point where a phone call from your child, a video from your boss, or an email from a trusted friend can no longer be accepted at face value. Artificial intelligence isn't just changing how we work. It's changing how we decide who and what to believe. While most AI experts focus on productivity and automation, Aaron Painter, CEO of Nametag argues that the technology's most immediate threat is much more personal: the erosion of trust. 
Aaron’s book Deepfaked: Restoring Trust in the AI Era was published today and it examines how AI is changing the way we recognise truth and why rebuilding trust may be the defining challenge of this decade.  I caught up with Aaron to find out more about his book and deepfakes. Aaron talks about his background, his book, deepfakes, and more.
More about Aaron Painter:
Aaron Painter is the CEO of Nametag, the identity verification company helping organisations restore trust in an era of AI-generated impersonation. Nametag pioneered a new category of identity verification that protects organisations from impersonators and AI-generated deepfakes, helping leading enterprises prevent fraud, reduce support costs, and securely verify customers during high-risk interactions. Named a Visionary in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Identity Verification, Nametag is helping redefine how trust is established online.
Aaron has spent his career helping people earn trust in a world transformed by technology. That journey has taken him across six countries and four continents. Aaron has lived and worked in the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Hong Kong, mainland China, and the United States, and has visited more than 100 countries.
Those experiences shaped his belief that while technology continues to change how people live, work, and connect, trust remains the foundation of every successful relationship, organisation, and society — and that it must be earned differently across cultures.

Briana Marbury grew up in Detroit with one bank in the neighborhood. She opened an account after her first job. Then came the overdraft fees, and the fees on the fees. She had a choice: gas and groceries, or the bank. The bank account closed. So she went to the check-cashing place on the corner, five dollars at a time, for years — while the unpaid fees went to collections and marked a credit file that had barely started.  
Financial exclusion doesn't always look like someone outside the banking system. Sometimes it looks like a closed account, a check-cashing counter, and a damaged credit file. Briana Marbury, President & CEO of Interledger Foundation, joins Theodora Lau to talk about living it — and about the unglamorous infrastructure work that could stop it happening to someone else.
But technology in and of itself was not going to be enough. They close the conversation on what’s next: Mexico, Colombia, and a growing push into US community banks and CDFIs. And on what gives Briana hope: that when she walks into a room with a government, they're not asking whether interoperability matters. They're asking how fast it can happen.
Hot take 🔥"I have a choice between either buying gas, buying groceries, or paying a bank fee bill — when I can go access my money right away at this corner store for five dollars."
🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
Keywords: fintech, personal finance, financial inclusion, payments, cross-border payments, remittances, Interledger Protocol, Briana Marbury, Interledger Foundation
#FinancialInclusion #CrossBorderPayments #Fintech #Payments
Timestamp:
00:00 Welcome and Introductions
01:09 Interledger Foundation Origins
02:59 Hidden Financial Exclusion
05:54 Personal Stories and Literacy
07:55 Interoperability for Inclusion
09:16 Fixing Cross Border Payments
13:48 Why Fees Persist
15:50 Lessons Working with Regulators
18:11 Plans for 2027 
More about our guest 
🌐Briana Marbury on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianamarbury/ 
🌐Interledger Foundation: https://interledger.org/  
More about our host and One Vision Podcast 
🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 
🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 
🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 
🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 
**

Cork-based Zyte  recently released new research, after analysing 25,000 websites across the globe. The data suggests that the Open Web is Now ‘The Controlled Web’. Tech leaders are facing a strategic decision: allow open access to maximise visibility in search, or erect technical barriers to protect their content. I recently caught up with Shane Evans, the Founder and CEO Zyte to find out more about this.
Shane talks about his background, what Zyte does, AI, Zyte’s new research, and more.
More about Zyte:
Zyte believes that businesses deserve a smooth pathway to data. For more than a decade they have led the way in building powerful, easy-to-use ways to collect, format and deliver web data, quickly, dependably and at scale helping thousands of organisations make smarter business decisions, secure competitive advantage and drive sustainable growth.

Cork has become a cybersecurity success story, and the city's talent, universities and quality of life have helped attract and retain global technology companies for more than two decades. To find out more about this I caught up with Marianne Lee, Vice President, HR Europe for TrendAI, a business unit of global cybersecurity leader Trend Micro.
Maruanne talks about her background, why Cork has become a cybersecurity success story, Ireland's growing influence in global cybersecurity, how AI is hanging cybersecurity careers and more.
More about Marianne Lee:
Based in Cork, Marianne has been with the company since it established its European HQ in the city in 2003 and has had a front-row seat to both the evolution of the cybersecurity industry and Cork's growth into a major technology hub.
Today, Trend AI employs almost 300 people at its Model Farm Road campus and continues to invest in talent development, university partnerships and emerging technologies, particularly in AI and cybersecurity.