Payments firms are now caught in an accelerating arms race between rapid AI-driven innovation and the ever-growing threat of sophisticated fraud, a dynamic that forces a strategic re-evaluation of how they allocate resources and manage risk.
Rather than viewing AI as solely a product-side tool, companies are increasingly prioritising its defensive capabilities, particularly in the highly-regulated world of cross-border and real-time payments.
Moderator Mark Walker from The Fintech Times is joined by David Messenger, CEO of global businesses for Ping Pong, Thomas B. Normann, lead for digital services products at Paymentology, and Willem Wellinghoff, chief compliance officer and UK chair for Ecommpay.
Together they embark on an insightful discussion on the transformative role of AI in the payments industry.
The conversation focused on where AI sits on the hype cycle, its application in fraud prevention versus product innovation, and the challenges posed by bad actors and the emerging concept of agentic AI.
The panel concluded that while 2024 was a year of discovery and 2025 has been a year of experimentation, 2026 is poised to be the year of productive, large-scale AI deployment.
This progress will be shaped by the industry’s ability to solve the collaboration challenge and create common standards for the governance, auditability, and technical protocols necessary to safely deploy agentic AI in commerce.
