Strategic Co-Pilot for B2B Tech & Fintech Founders | I Help You Scale Without Chaos | AI & Data Delivery at Radsody

I am a fintech founder turned Independent Non-Executive Director, working with boards, founders, and investors navigating growth in regulated and high-velocity environments.

Over 15+ years, I have built and scaled fintech and SaaS businesses across the UK, Europe, and MENA — from early-stage startups to regulated financial institutions. My experience spans digital banking, payments, embedded finance, and financial infrastructure, with a strong focus on translating strategy into durable execution.

I currently serve as an Independent Non-Executive Director and board advisor to fintechs and financial institutions, bringing an operator’s perspective to governance, risk, and growth decisions.

Current and recent roles include:
- IFC-nominated Independent Director, TBC Bank Uzbekistan
- Fintech Advisory Board Member, PayU
- Executive Board Director, Fiat Republic

Earlier in my career, I was a founder and operator:
- Founding team member at HelloFresh (NYSE: HFG)
- Launched and scaled the UK arm of digital bank Fidor, supporting its sale to Groupe BPCE
- Co-founded and scaled a regulated payments platform (Fiat Republic)
- Led revenue growth in multi-million-dollar B2B SaaS businesses

I am also the co-author of Embedded Finance (Wiley, 2022).

In the boardroom, I help teams bring clarity to complexity and turn strategy into scalable outcomes.

Sophie Guibaud 👾

First day at IMD for the Mastering Board Governance programme, and genuinely excited to be here.

Didier Cossin defines Governance as 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬.

In real life, those decisions need to be made with incomplete information, competing priorities, and real consequences.

The best directors I know never stop sharpening that skill. The landscape - AI, ESG, regulation, stakeholder expectations - is shifting faster than ever.

So here I am. Taking notes, in a room full of people who take this responsibility seriously.

That's exactly where I want to be.

Sophie Guibaud

Independent Non-Executive Director & Board Advisor | Financial Services

There’s a moment in board discussions where everything has been analysed.

The numbers work. The deck is coherent. The downside has been modelled.

And still, something either sits right… or it doesn’t.

People call that “gut feeling.”

At board level, it isn’t instinct. It’s compressed experience.

It comes from reading the full pack.
From understanding how the business actually makes money.
From knowing your own biases.
From not needing to win the room.

Ego is expensive in governance.

The intuition that matters is pattern recognition + preparation + integrity, especially when pressure builds, and consensus feels convenient.

That feeling isn’t emotion.

It’s what’s left after you’ve done the work.

I recently joined the 100 Women In Finance's 100WFinTech Directory as part of the #100WFinTech Global Initiative.

As fintech matures, the conversation is shifting from pure innovation to questions of governance, risk, capital discipline and long-term value creation. 

Communities that bring together senior operators, investors and board members across financial services are increasingly important in shaping that evolution.

I was on the Fintech Insider podcast this week to dig into something many of us have noticed but not quite put together the way the team at 11:FS has done: the banking battlefield hasn't just evolved, it's gone vertical.

The original Banking Battlefield they framed back then was genuinely useful when it was created. 

But the battlefield it describes? That's not the one we're fighting on anymore.

So we took the time this week to revisit it.

The challengers who everyone wrote off are now posting billion-pound profits, helping write the rules for the next generation of payments infrastructure, and finally getting their UK banking licence (congrats Revolut!).

The real competitive pressure has shifted underground. It's no longer about who has the best app. It's about who controls the infrastructure underneath.

Primacy gets you the customer. Infrastructure keeps them.

We should also be honest: incumbents got a break. High interest rates bought them time: margins recovered, pressure eased, transformation felt less urgent.

That window is closing.

And most incumbents are finding transformation harder than expected.

Not because the will isn't there, it is.

But because the constraint was never really the technology. It's culture and governance, and that starts at the board.

You cannot navigate this battlefield without commercial and product expertise at the top. Not just risk and compliance - though that matters - but people who genuinely understand what it means to compete in this environment.

Without that, transformation is just expensive theatre.

Have a listen, would love to know what resonates 👇
🎧 https://lnkd.in/gcPZ5nGf

Financial services boards are packed with experience. But is it the right kind?

Having spent much of my career working with fintech operators and now spending more time in financial services governance, the difference in operating perspectives is striking.

Across the industry, many bank and payments boardrooms are rich in decades of risk, regulatory, and traditional banking expertise. That experience is invaluable and necessary.

But when career paths around the table look too similar, it can quietly shape how the future is evaluated.

Meanwhile, the industry itself is being reshaped by digital platforms, fintech operators, and entirely new customer expectations.

This is where board skills mapping matters.

When boards honestly assess the expertise around the table against where the institution needs to go (not just where it has been), the gaps often become clear.

Innovation.
Growth.
Digital transformation.
Customer experience.
Technology-led operating models.

These capabilities are still less common around many financial services board tables.

What someone with a fintech or startup operating background brings to a board isn’t disruption for its own sake. It’s a different lens.

In practice, that perspective often changes the questions that get asked in the boardroom.

• 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞. In high-growth environments, slow decisions don’t just cost time, they cost relevance.
• 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬. Fintech operators are often used to framing decisions through the lens of the end-to-end customer journey.
 • 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. Innovation requires bets that won’t all pay off.

The financial institutions that will lead the next decade are already expanding the range of operating experience around the table.

Because boards don’t just govern the present.

Does the expertise around the table reflect where the institution has been, or where it needs to go?

The Bancolombia outage last week has reopened an important conversation, one that goes well beyond a single institution.

When payments move in real time, interdependence increases, and fragility surfaces faster.

This isn't about blame but about architecture.

A few things stand out from a board governance perspective:

𝐀𝐯𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐟𝐢𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐲. 
Uptime is trust, not only an IT metric. For customers, it's whether salaries arrive. For boards, operational resilience deserves the same seriousness as capital and liquidity.

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐤 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫𝐬. 
Core systems. Cloud providers. Vendors. Instant rails. We tend to assess risk at the institutional level, but increasingly, the real exposure sits in the interconnections.

𝐒𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 
What happens if a major participant in a real-time rail is down for 72 hours? How is liquidity managed? Who coordinates communication? How is contagion contained? Resilience is not a framework. It's a rehearsed capability.

And the stack is expanding.

Stablecoins now operate as parallel settlement layers. They add optionality, particularly cross-border, but introduce new concentration points at issuer and protocol level.

Risk doesn't disappear. It migrates.

The question for boards and regulators is no longer simply: "Is our institution resilient?"

It's: "Is the stack resilient?"
Institution. Rail. Vendor. Issuer. Protocol.

Digital finance will never be risk-free. Resilience must be designed, not assumed. And at the board level, design is governance.

The recent debate in Colombia, highlighted by Marcel van Oost and sparked by comments from Marcela Torres of Nubank Colombia, points to a broader systemic issue.

Open article: Nu Flags Systemic Risk After Bancolombia Hits Bre-B Rails by connectingthedotsinfin.tech

Nu Flags Systemic Risk After Bancolombia Hits Bre-B Rails

Efi Pylarinou

Co-Founder and author

Top Global Fintech & Tech Influencer • Trusted by Finserv & Tech Global • Content & Influencer Services • Advisory for Digital Transformation • Speaking • connect@efipylarinou.com

Seasoned, credible, and independent services for your business.
As a Top Global Fintech & Tech thought leader, continuously recognized in multiple rankings, I offer Content and Influencer services to put your leadership and activities in the spotlight.
I take on advisory roles, helping leadership stay ahead of Fintech trends in combination with their strategic objectives. 
I am also a Speaker and offer Workshops. 

𝐌𝐲 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

My content services enhance your content strategy and include high-quality content - articles, videos, or white papers, shared on all my social networks (close to 250,000 followers). 

My Advisory services help you keep up and stay ahead of Fintech innovations and shape your digital transformation strategy. 
 
1.	Sponsor a series of Articles or Videos.
2.	Hire me as a Speaker. Currently speaking on `Thinking like an AI native Business` or `The Future of Money & Finance`.  
3.	Workshops: On the above topics or the broader topics shaping our future in collaboration with the faculty at the Fast Future Executive program.
4.	Advisory on a retainer basis, plus project-based. 

𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 - DM me. 

𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐈 𝐚𝐦

I am a seasoned Wall Street professional and ex-academic who has become a 𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡 & 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫.

I am a domain expert with a Ph.D. in Finance, a prolific Content creator, and a Faculty at Fast Future Executive. 

I am trusted by global Brands in Tech and Financial services (see brochure). 

I am a Top LinkedIn voice with 200,000+ LinkedIn followers. Also included in:
-	Top 50 Fintech Influencers worldwide - Favikon 
-	Top 50 Global Digital Influencers - IPFC Online
-	Top 100 Tech Influencers - Awards Magazine
-	Top 20 Swiss Linkedin creators - Favikon 
-	Top 50 Digital Futurists, Top Linkedin & Twitter Voice - Engatica 
-	Top 20 Fintech Influencers & Top 20 in ‘ Who`s Who in AI’ influencers Onalytica 

I am a contributing author in these books
o	2025 Marshall Cavendish `Branch Tomorrow`
o	2024 Wiley `Fast Future Blur`
o	2021 Springer ` Theories of Change`
o	2019 `4IR, Reinventing a Nation`
o	2018 `WealthTech` Wiley

Follow me on: 
📌 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/efipylarinou/
📌 YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/EfiPylarinou
📌 Substack https://sifintechpulse.substack.com/
📌 Medium: https://efipm.medium.com/
📌 Twitter: https://twitter.com/efipm
📌 Apple Podcasts - https://buff.ly/3oSZ4CA
📌 Spotify - https://buff.ly/3xPyWaV
📌 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/efipm
📌 TikTok - https://tiktok.com/@efiglobal?lang=en

Founder of Pylarinou Advisory

B2B content campaign services (Blogs and Video). 
My global audience is close to 200,000 followers on Linkedin and an additional 20,000+ across other platforms.  

Speaking engagements & Education - Domain expertise includes Digital Banking, Capital markets, Wealth and Asset Management, Digital Assets, and innovative ways of using advanced technologies.

🔴 The Great AI Consulting Paradox — And What It Means for Banking!

In 2022, the narrative was clear:
"ChatGPT will disrupt professional services forever" and most of us thought consultants would be replaced by AI.

Yesterday, OpenAI announced Frontier Alliances - multi-year partnerships with #BCG, #McKinsey, #Accenture, and #Capgemini to help enterprises deploy AI coworkers at scale.

All four in one deal.

Let that sink in.

🤷‍♀️ The company building the most powerful AI "coworkers" needs the world's biggest consulting firms – the BIG Four - to get those coworkers actually deployed.

And for banking, this is the most telling signal of all.

The bottleneck was never the technology. It was always the same: legacy architecture, siloed data, regulatory complexity, change-resistant cultures, and boards that needed convincing.

That's exactly the gap OpenAI's Frontier Alliance is trying to close - using consultants as the bridge.

So what does this mean for financial services transformation?
➡️ AI agents in banking will scale mostly through consulting-led programs - not organic bottom-up adoption
➡️ Consultants now have to force core banking modernization upon their clients - AI agents can't run on top of a 40-year-old system

The oxymoron of 2026: The firms that were supposed to be replaced are now the chosen deployment partners of the disruptor.

We've seen this before.

"The disruptor going to bed with the establishment is the oldest story in innovation. The only question is — who's using whom?"

News source in comments

#AI #consulting #OpenAI #AndTheIronyIs

Dr. Efi Pylarinou

openAI, consulting, bank modernization, Big 4


🔵 £6.2 Billion signals that the future of Fund Distribution is on-chain.

Deutsche Börse’s acquisition of Allfunds for  £6.2B isn’t just a massive M&A headline; it’s a commitment to owning the end-to-end tokenization of funds.
While many are fixated on the price tag, this is a significant ecosystem play they've been quietly building.

‣ The Trading Engine: Crypto Finance Group  — Providing 24/7 institutional crypto bridges.
‣  The Settlement Rail: Clearstream + AllUnity — Enabling atomic settlement via regulated digital euros (EURAU).
‣ The Distribution Network: Allfunds Blockchain — Connecting 1,400 fund houses to 900 distributors via DLT.

The result? A fund can be natively tokenized, traded, settled in stablecoins, and custodied — all in one place.

This is what "Digital Market Infrastructure" actually looks like. Not a whitepaper. Not a pilot. A commitment to owning end-to-end the tokenization of funds.

And here's the question worth asking: Is a European exchange furthest along in building an ecosystem for our Tokenized future?

The exchange of the future doesn't just list only assets. It owns the rail they travel on.

‣ News: Deutsche Boerse's record deal for Allfunds sends shares higher - link in the comments 
‣ Visual created with Google NotebookLM — C2PA verified

#Tokenization #DigitalAssets #Fintech #AssetManagement

🤖 Governance finally has teeth in financial services AI and the card networks are quietly racing to own the agentic payment layer.
 
Welcome to the 37th edition of the Agentic AI Newsletter for Financial Services — the only dedicated weekly publication curating AI developments in financial services. AI agents work 24/7 to scan global news, enhanced with my human insights.
 
This week's briefing is built around three converging forces that will define how agentic AI gets deployed, governed, and monetized:
 
1️⃣ The FCA's Mills Review puts AI-mediated finance on the 2030 regulatory agenda — Consumer Duty, SM&CR, and Operational Resilience must now be fit for a world where AI sits between consumers and firms.
 
2️⃣ New York's RAISE Act sets a 72-hour incident reporting clock for frontier AI, effective January 2027 — and it covers internal-use models, not just consumer-facing deployments.
 
3️⃣ Policy-as-Code + agentic AI as the next compliance control plane — Kyndryl's "Intelligent Control Fabric" turns regulation from periodic review into a real-time constraint layer.
 
4️⃣ Bank of Ireland reports €9.7M in fraud losses avoided through AI-powered card payment detection — outcomes accountability, not capability claims.
 
5️⃣ Rakuten Card goes live with a production AI agent: named app, two platforms, two languages, public launch date. That's what real deployment looks like.
 
6️⃣ Mastercard and Visa enlist banks for agentic payment pilots — the card networks are positioning themselves as the authorization and liability layer for agent-initiated transactions.
 
7️⃣ Digital identity failures cost $34B annually — the industry is shifting from onboarding checkbox to real-time payment defense.
 
8️⃣ Pagos expands its MCP server — payments analytics becomes conversational, and a new data governance perimeter is born.
 
The message this week is clear: regulators are setting clocks, rails are being built, and production deployments continue. 
 
Which of these developments changes your roadmap? 👇
 
#AgenticAI #Fintech #RegTech #AgenticPayments

Welcome to Agentic Newsletter for Financial Services —the first newsletter dedicated to the transformation in financial services driven by the advance

Open article: Governance Gets Teeth: Regulation Moves to Real-Time as Card Networks Race to Own the Agentic Payment Layer by Dr. Efi Pylarinou • 9 min read

Governance Gets Teeth: Regulation Moves to Real-Time as Card Networks Race to Own the Agentic Payment Layer

🔵 #Block just cut 40% of its workforce. Stock up 24%.

This week's edition of the Agentic AI in Financial Services newsletter is a special thematic edition dedicated entirely to FinServ & Fintech AI Organizational Rewiring.

→ Jack Dorsey says most companies will follow within a year.

→ Dimon says "We have displaced people from AI — and we offer them other jobs."

→ #CBA: $90 million workforce investment & 300 job cuts.
→ #Citi: New AI infrastructure banking unit. $3 trillion thesis. First investment in Japan.
→ #RBC: Dedicated AI Group reporting directly to the CEO. $1B value target by 2027.
 → Morgan Stanley's January forecast — 200,000 banking jobs at risk — is no longer a forecast.
→ Evident AI Index: #PayPal ranks #1 in AI talent. #Stripe is reportedly weighing an acquisition. Whoever buys PayPal doesn't just get Venmo — they get 4,000 AI workers.

Two philosophies are emerging:

Cut fast, cut deep, let AI tools compound. Or invest in people alongside the technology and try to hold the social contract together.

Both are 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬. Neither has proven its thesis.

And perhaps the most uncomfortable data point of all: not a single payments company in the Evident AI Index has published comprehensive ROI on their AI spend. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐮𝐧𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝.

Because the question is no longer whether AI will rewire financial services organizations.

The question is which rewiring philosophy produces the better institution three years from now.

If you haven't subscribed to this weekly newsletter yet, hit the subscribe button. This is the 38th edition. Soon we'll celebrate the 40th — as we approach 40,000 subscribers. Thank you

#fintech #AI #agentic #JPMorgan 
Mary Wisniewski The Fast Future Executive Monica Millares Monica Jasuja Theodora Lau Ronit Ghose Tony Fish Tony Moroney

Open article: Cut, Redeploy, Reorganize? The Rewiring of Financial Services due to AI by Dr. Efi Pylarinou • 14 min read

Cut, Redeploy, Reorganize? The Rewiring of Financial Services due to AI

🔴 AI agents just got wallets. Not metaphorically - Coinbase shipped infrastructure for autonomous AI to hold, spend, and trade crypto with 50M+ transactions already processed through its x402 protocol.

This week marks the shift from agents that advise to infrastructure that acts. And markets are repricing in real time the potential impact of AI on businesses.

Here's what's happening:
1️⃣ #Coinbase launches Agentic Wallets - purpose-built for AI to autonomously hold funds, trade tokens, and earn yield on-chain
2️⃣ #Goldman embeds #Anthropic engineers directly into accounting and compliance—but only 7% of CFOs have actually deployed AI agents
3️⃣ #Lloyds reports £50M value from 50+ live AI use cases—mortgage verification now days→seconds
4️⃣ $2B+ wiped off shadow banking stocks as AI-driven software disruption raises default fears—UBS warns 13% of leveraged loans at risk
5️⃣ UK wealth managers fall 6-11% after #Altruist launches AI tax planning—fee compression fears go live
6️⃣ #KPMG demands AI efficiency discount from its own auditor—setting precedent for fee pressure cascade
7️⃣ UiPath acquires #WorkFusion—AI-powered compliance automation becomes core enterprise automation
8️⃣ #Celent models $177.9M annual savings for Tier 1 banks through AI-driven 80-90% compliance alert reduction

The pattern: agentic AI is moving from demos to production, from advice to execution.

The firms building governance and auditability into deployments now will define the operating reality. The rest will be catching up.

Which development signals the biggest shift for your organization or for the future of financial services? 👇

Read the full analysis in this week's Agentic Newsletter for Financial Services—the only newsletter curating AI in finserv

              𝐀𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐬, 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐍𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐬
 👇
#fintech #wallets #agenticAI

Welcome to Agentic Newsletter for Financial Services—the first newsletter dedicated to the transformation in financial services driven by the advancem

Open article: Agents Get Wallets, Markets Get Nervous: Coinbase Ships Infrastructure as Credit Reprices AI Risk by Dr. Efi Pylarinou • 8 min read

Agents Get Wallets, Markets Get Nervous: Coinbase Ships Infrastructure as Credit Reprices AI Risk

🔴 Crypto still has no real index. The S&P 500 of cryptocurrencies doesn't exist yet.

Also this week, I covered:
Agentic Commerce I: The ACP vs UCP protocol war is quietly deciding who controls the AI shopping interface - and Shopify isn't taking sides in the middle of OpenAI and Google's battle for agentic commerce.

Agentic Commerce II: Shopify and Klarna are taking different positions to protect their payment rails in the age of AI agents. Different strategies, identical stakes.

Agentic Lending: Agentic AI is reshaping lending far beyond underwriting — real-time cashflow models, proactive delinquency management, compressed origination timelines. This is a full credit lifecycle transformation.

And in edition 37 of my Agentic AI Newsletter for Financial Services — governance is no longer a future concern. Regulators are setting reporting clocks. Card networks are racing to own agent-initiated payments. Production AI is moving from pilots to accountability.

You can't afford to miss this week's edition.
#Fintech #AI #AgenticAI #crypto #payments #agenticcommerce

Crypto Indexing Still Hasn’t Arrived With ETF outflows accelerating and most “diversified” products still 70%+ Bitcoin, crypto remains in its stock-pi

Open article: Week in Review: Crypto Indexing Gap, Agentic Commerce Protocol Wars, Agentic Credit, Agentic Payments, and AI Governance with Teeth by Dr. Efi Pylarinou • 2 min read

Week in Review: Crypto Indexing Gap, Agentic Commerce Protocol Wars, Agentic Credit, Agentic Payments, and AI Governance with Teeth

🟣 Agentic Banking is upon us. But where is Banking going?
[Sunday Muses]

As AI agents begin to act autonomously inside financial systems, Dave & Dharm are poking us to Demystify Banking by asking the question: 

                             `What is Banking's true North Star?`

Dave Wallace: As I think about a new "north star" for the Sun, I have to ask myself what is the financial industry`s true north star? Does finance need a big picture beyond making money for shareholders?

Dharmesh Mistry: Without the sun we all die, including earth. It is therefore our core to existence. In banking it is the ledger, a bank cant operate without one hence it called core banking. In both cases most of us take them for granted, but in reality their very existence keeps everything alive.

Dr. Efi Pylarinou: In a way, the ledger is our collective memory field in finance – every action recorded, nothing really forgotten. The risk is that we build an incredible memory without a meaningful reason for remembering.

But here's what is unsettling:
📍 We are now building Intelligence on top of that memory. Agentic Banking will act, decide, and execute autonomously.

📍What happens when you give an organism intelligence... but no purpose?

📍You don't get wisdom. You get an Empty Raincoat that can now walk by itself.

📍The sun doesn't just exist — it orients everything around it. 

📍The ledger keeps everything alive. But alive for what?

That is the North Star question Banking has never properly answered. And with Agentic AI, the cost of not answering it just got much higher.

📖 Read Dave's Linkedin post → [link in comments]
 📖 Read Dharmesh's Banking's Empty Raincoat → [link in comments]

#banking #fintech #agentic

🔵 ACP vs UCP: the battle for AI commerce has begun. Shopify's strategic play.

Starting Jan 26, Shopify merchants selling through ChatGPT pay OpenAI 4%. Combined with Shopify's standard fees? Total take rate hits ~9.2%.

Meanwhile, Google's Gemini/AI Mode and Microsoft's Copilot? Zero fees. For now.

The volume is real: Shopify reports AI-driven traffic up 7x and orders from AI searches up 11x year-over-year.

Why the fee difference? Business model economics.

Google doesn't need transaction revenue.  Their ads and shopping ecosystem already monetize the customer journey. "Free" checkout is a strategic weapon to drive adoption of their Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).

OpenAI? With a $400M/month burn rate, they need this revenue stream now. As one analyst put it: "Google can afford to figure out monetization later. OpenAI needs revenue now."

The protocol war is on:
‣ OpenAI's ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol): Stripe-centric, ChatGPT-native, checkout-focused
‣ Google's UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol): co-developed with Shopify, backed by Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Walmart, Target; covers the full shopping journey

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡: #Shopify is on both sides.
They co-developed UCP with Google AND enabled ACP for ChatGPT checkout.

Here's what that means in practice: Shopify merchants now have "Agentic Storefronts" in their admin dashboard.
From one place, they can toggle ON/OFF which AI platforms to sell through: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode/Gemini, Microsoft Copilot. Products, inventory, and orders all flow through Shopify regardless of which AI surface drives the sale.

The deeper story? This isn't about 4% today. It's about who owns the interface when AI becomes the primary shopping surface. OpenAI isn't just charging for access to customers like Amazon does.  They're positioning as the trusted advisor controlling the purchasing decision itself.

The economics of customer acquisition in retail are being rewritten in real time.

-------------------
Source: PYMNTS (link in comments)
`Shopify merchants to pay 4% fee on sales made through ChatGPT checkout`

#ACP #UCP #AgenticCommerce #stripe #openaI

ACP vs. UCP + Shopify`s Agentic Storefronts

🔵 Bloomberg Resilience: The Agentic Evolution of the Financial OS

VCs will continue to decline in investing in startups that dream of disrupting Bloomberg and Excel. 
#AndTheIronyIs that their resilience is monumental because they don’t just survive disruption—they absorb it.

We are clearly moving beyond the era of Queries for Summarization (2024-2025) into Agentic Financial Research and Modeling. 

#Bloomberg’s launch of 𝐀𝐒𝐊𝐁 (𝐀𝐬𝐤 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐠) turns the Terminal into a proactive partner with agentic capabilities. It’s not just a chatbot; it’s an orchestration engine.

The Power of the ASKB Agentic Shift:

•  1. Multi-Step Task Automation: It doesn't just answer; it orchestrates. Whether it’s "Assembling a Peer-Group Valuation Deck" (e.g., NVIDIA vs. AI-chip peers) or "Forensic Value Discovery" for PayPal - evaluating Enterprise Value (EV) against 24 months of precedent transactions and generating a 20-30% acquisition sensitivity analysis - ASKB coordinates multiple AI agents to synthesize documents, news, and research into one response.

•   2. The Bloomberg + Excel Synergy: Entrenchment deepens when AI insights become "live" models. ASKB generates Bloomberg Query Language (BQL) code that you paste directly into Excel. If PayPal’s stock price or the sector's valuation multiples shift, your natural language insight transforms into a dynamic, linked spreadsheet that updates live 

•   3. Unified Data Synthesis: No more manual crawls. ASKB simultaneously interrogates 200M+ documents and 5,000+ daily news stories to detect subtle "Thematic Drifts". It can instantly flag if Klarna’s management tone on "credit normalization" matches the forensic reality hidden in their peer filings.

•   4. Reusable "ASKB Workflows": You can save high-friction tasks, like Meeting Prep or Post-Earnings Forensics (as used for Klarna), as shareable Workflow Templates. This ensures your entire team follows a consistent, AI-augmented research methodology. 

As my infographics show, Bloomberg’s resilience comes from details like Verified Transparency Links (ensuring accuracy) and agentic workflows that create re-usable templates for entire teams. Bloomberg keeps evolving.

#Fintech #Bloomberg #ASKB #AgenticAI

 - News sources in the comments
- Paypal in the spotlight 😉 as Techcrunch reported that Stripe maybe looking into acquiring parts of the business.

Bloomberg - from AI to Agentic AI 

🔴 When an AI agent from rentahuman.ai could have booked me for FIBE Berlin, I realized: we're preparing for agentic finance sooner rather than later.

This week I explored what we risk losing when we optimize away human friction, why a single AI tax company triggered a market repricing of wealth management, and how Coinbase's agentic wallets shift AI from advisor to executor.

In my latest Week in Review:
→ AI Companions: 93 minutes daily usage - are we optimizing away the friction that builds resilience?
→ TradFi-CeFi-DeFi Convergence: Will 2026 be the breakout year?
→ Reverse Deals: Media acquiring fintechs, Eastern super-apps buying Western regulatory moats
→ Agentic Wallets: The 36th edition of my Agentic AI newsletter—7 developments you can't afford to miss

Plus: Advisory margins under scrutiny as AI tools trigger market repricing.

The gap between capability acceleration and governance readiness is widening. We're building autonomous financial infrastructure while still debating what safeguards should exist.

Join me at FIBE Berlin April 15-16  👉 https://buff.ly/FOFEBdV
#Fintech #AgenticAI #wallets

AI Companions and the Cost of Removing Friction As teens spend 93 minutes a day with AI companions, we confront a deeper question: are we optimizing a

Open article: Fintech Week in Review: AI Companions, Agentic Wallets, TradFi-DeFi Convergence, Advisory Repricing, FIBE Berlin by Dr. Efi Pylarinou • 2 min read

Fintech Week in Review: AI Companions, Agentic Wallets, TradFi-DeFi Convergence, Advisory Repricing, FIBE Berlin

🔵 The two Fintech companies leading the Agentic Commerce transformation.

Shopify and Klarna are leading the race to make products discoverable by AI agents.

They are both unique Fintechs because look both make most of their money from financial services, not selling products.

🔹 Shopify: ~74% of revenue from Merchant Solutions - payments processing at ~3.5% take rate, Shopify Capital loans, FX conversion, and their own BNPL.
🔹 Klarna: ~57% of revenue from merchant fees - BNPL at 3-6% per transaction (nearly double traditional card processing), plus interest income and advertising.

Their agentic commerce plays aren't about commerce. They're about protecting payment rails.

🔹 How Shopify makes it effortless for merchants:
Shopify's "Agentic Storefronts" is a single screen in the merchant admin dashboard. No new integrations. No technical lift.
Merchants simply toggle ON which AI platforms to sell through: 
‣ ChatGPT (ACP protocol, 4% fee) 
‣ Google AI Mode / Gemini (UCP protocol, 0% fee)
‣  Microsoft Copilot (0% fee)
That's it. Products, inventory, pricing, and orders sync automatically. When a customer buys through any AI surface, the order flows into Shopify's existing systems.

Shopify's Catalog uses specialized LLMs to enrich and standardize product data so AI agents can understand it. 

The Shopify play: Every AI sale flows through Shopify Checkout, Shopify Payments, Shop Pay Installments. They capture the payment stack no matter what.

🔹 Klarna's approach is different: horizontal, not vertical.

Klarna`s Agentic Product Protocol (APP) makes 100M+ products and 400M+ prices discoverable by ANY AI agent. Klarna built APP on top of their existing product graph from PriceRunner, which they acquired.

Merchants connect existing feeds — Google Merchant, Shopify, Amazon, Facebook Catalog — and their products become discoverable to AI agents. No fees to list. No reformatting required.

But here's the nuance: APP is a discovery layer, not a payment integration.

Listing products via APP doesn't automatically add "Pay with Klarna" at checkout. The monetization path is indirect. 
Klarna is betting that owning the discovery infrastructure creates merchant relationships and positions them as essential AI commerce infrastructure, even if there's no direct revenue from APP itself.

The competitive twist:
They're also direct BNPL competitors. Shop Pay Installments claims up to 50% AOV lift. Klarna reports 20-30%. But Klarna reaches 850K merchants across platforms; Shop Pay only works on Shopify.

Two different bets:
→ Shopify: Vertical integration. Own the merchant relationship, own the checkout, own the payment. Direct monetization on every AI sale.
→ Klarna: Horizontal infrastructure. Be the discovery layer everywhere, build relationships, and hope that relevance translates to payment volume. Indirect monetization.

Both are Fintech plays disguised as commerce infrastructure. 

#fintech #Agenticcommerce #payments #klarna #shopify

Agentic, Shopify, Klarna, Agentic Commerce, payments, BNPL, fintech

🔵 Agentic AI in credit solutions is real, and it isn’t only about underwriting efficiencies!

Trump's proposed 10% APR cap has forced discussions about underwriting into the open. I sat down with Shuchi Batra, a global Fintech product leader and bestselling author, to explore what's actually changing in consumer lending.

Key insights:
→ Fintechs win with real-time cashflow underwriting; incumbents struggle with legacy debt
→ CBD ONE - the AI-powered gamified card Shuchi launched at Commercial Bank of Dubai - personalized merchant rewards in real-time based on spending behavior (370K customers, $35M revenue, Visa collaboration)
→ Agentic AI is cutting loan origination from 45 days to under 2 weeks with real-time portfolio monitoring
→ Delinquency management is shifting from punitive to proactive and flexible

The shift: 𝐀𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞

Full conversation: 𝐀𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐀𝐈 𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 (closing with what AI tools Shuchi uses) 👉 https://lnkd.in/e65B2_rv

#AI #Fintech #Credit #AgenticAI

🔵 $10B+ in ETF outflows since October. BTC down 50% from peak. Diversification lost in the haystack?

This time last year, US ETF issuers purchased 46,000 bitcoin. This year? Net sellers.

So where are the "diversified" crypto index products?

Multi-asset index products? Just 0.6% of the market.

And the top ones — BITW, GDLC, NCIQ — all look remarkably similar: 70%+ Bitcoin, a slice of Ethereum, and a few altcoins for flavor. That's just Bitcoin in a basket with some decorations.

Crypto hasn't had its indexing revolution. It's still in the stock-picking era.

The question isn't whether indexing comes to crypto. It will. 

The question is: who builds the S&P 500 of crypto?

#cryptocurrencies #indexing #investing #fintech

crypto, indexing, diversification, investing

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