Leaders In Payments and FinTech - The EDC Podcast

In this episode of the Leaders in Payments and Fintech podcast, host Beatrice Sava sits down with Sam Boboev, founder of Fintech Wrap Up, to cut through the hype around agentic commerce and get honest about where the technology actually stands. Sam draws on his background in product management and his ongoing work covering fintech and payments to separate what’s genuinely working from what’s still a demo.

 

Sam argues that the real bottleneck isn’t agent capability — it’s everything around it. Inconsistent data, unclear liability, and infrastructure built for humans rather than machines are the core friction points. The verticals best positioned to move first are those where decisions are already structured — particularly B2B payments, where policy constraints actually make it easier for agents to act reliably.

In this episode: 

 

What’s actually working in agentic commerce today — and what’s still a demo

Why B2B payments are best positioned for agent-led transactions first

The infrastructure and fraud systems that need to adapt for delegated payments

Why liability for agent errors remains the biggest unsolved question

Why translating human intent into agent instructions is the core unsolved challenge

Which verticals — travel, e-commerce, digital goods — are most primed for early adoption

Resources:

 

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/sirojboboev  

Website: https://www.fintechwrapup.com 

Podcast: https://www.fintechwrapup.com/podcast

In this episode of the Leaders in Payments and Fintech podcast, host Greg Toussaint sits down with Antonio “Toni” Rami, co-founder of Kantox, to unpack why FX remains one of the most overlooked financial risks in global business — and what companies can do about it. Toni shares how Kantox grew from a two-person startup to nearly 300 people by helping corporates automate their FX processes, and why the travel industry, with its inherently cross-border nature, is both especially exposed and especially well-positioned to benefit.

 

With awareness still the biggest barrier, Toni argues that the cost of inaction is far higher than most CFOs realize. He walks through how a coordinated, cross-functional approach to FX can drive direct bookings, reduce acquiring costs, improve cash flow, and even protect company valuation in an M&A process. The companies that treat FX as a strategic lever, not a back-office nuisance, are the ones pulling ahead.

In this episode: 

 

Why FX consistently ranks as a top-three financial risk — yet still gets managed in Excel

How multi-currency pricing helped Iberostar shift bookings from indirect to direct channels

Why solving FX in one silo creates downstream problems for commercial and accounting teams

How to use the pricing rate vs. conversion rate gap to uncover hidden FX leakage

Where travel distribution and IATA settlement create unexpected margin risk

How neobanks and VCC issuers are embedding FX as a differentiated service

Why poor FX management can directly reduce your company’s valuation at exit​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Resources:

 

LinkedIn: https://sg.linkedin.com/in/antoniorami  

Website: https://www.kantox.com/

Davide Villa, Manager at EDC, sits down with Daniel Kalish, CEO and Co-Founder at Nilus, to discuss the evolution of treasury management, and the role that AI can play in innovating in the space.

In this episode of the Leaders in Payments and Fintech podcast, host Davide sits down with Daniel Kalish, co-founder and CEO of Nilus and former PayPal veteran, to explore how AI is reshaping corporate treasury management. Daniel shares why he founded Nilus after seeing firsthand how finance teams were struggling to manage cash across complex, global operations — and how agentic AI is finally replacing the side Excel files that have long driven treasury decisions.

 

With CFO expectations shifting fast and stablecoins beginning to enter the corporate treasury conversation, Daniel makes the case that the window to modernise is now — and that the companies who move early will have a significant edge. He also offers candid advice for fintech founders on what it truly means to build AI-native, both in product and in culture.

In this episode: 

How Nilus goes beyond data visibility to enable real treasury decision-making

Why legacy TMS systems fall short and Excel still dominates forecasting

Where AI agents are creating value: cash positioning, FX hedging, forecasting, and payments

Why real-time bank data matters less to treasury than you might think

How stablecoins are starting to change internal money movement between entities

Why CFOs now expect AI-native platforms — and how quickly that shift happened

What it takes to build successfully in an AI-native environment

 

Resources:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-kalish-74194768 

Website: https://www.nilus.com

The payments industry is on the cusp of a major transformation as stablecoins emerge as alternatives to traditional payment rails. Stablecoins promise to revolutionize cross-border payments and micropayments through blockchain's native interoperability, but they face challenges around demonstrating clear advantages over existing instant payment networks and avoiding market fragmentation. This episode explores how stablecoins differ from volatile cryptocurrencies and CBDCs, examines real-world use cases from remittances to tokenized assets, and discusses where they're most likely to gain traction in a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape shaped by frameworks like Europe's MiCA.

 

In this episode of the Leaders in Payments and Fintech podcast, host Mark Beresford sits down with Diederick Langstraat and Thibault Pelé from Worldline, alongside Samee Zafar, CEO of Edgar, Dunn & Company, to explore the emerging world of stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). They discuss how stablecoins differ from volatile cryptocurrencies and traditional payment rails, and examine real-world use cases from cross-border payments to tokenized assets. 

 

The conversation covers blockchain's role in enabling native interoperability between payment systems, the regulatory frameworks shaping adoption like Europe's MiCA, and whether stablecoins offer genuine advantages over existing instant payment networks. They also explore emerging applications in gaming micropayments, social commerce, and agentic commerce.

 

In this episode: 

What stablecoins are and how they solve crypto's volatility problem by pegging to fiat currencies 

Why blockchain enables cheaper, near-instant transactions by reducing intermediaries 

Real-world use cases: cross-border payments, remittances, B2B trade, and tokenized assets 

The challenge stablecoins face competing with existing 5-minute remittance services 

How Europe's MiCA regulation is creating a framework for stablecoin adoption 

Potential applications in gaming micropayments, social commerce, and agent-to-agent payments 

Why industry consolidation and transparency are essential to avoid market fragmentation

Resources:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diederick-langstraat-212861/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thibaultpele/ 

Website: https://worldline.com/

The payments industry is on the cusp of a major transformation as AI agents evolve from helpful assistants to autonomous shoppers. Agentic commerce—where AI independently finds, compares, negotiates, and purchases products on behalf of consumers—promises to revolutionize e-commerce, but it also introduces complex challenges around fraud, authentication, and customer identity in a highly regulated industry. This episode explores how the industry is racing to establish standards and protocols to make agentic commerce both secure and seamless.

 

In this episode of the Leaders in Payments and Fintech podcast, host Mark Beresford sits down with Adam Davies, Payment Partnerships Lead at Forter, to explore how agentic commerce is coming to market and what it means for merchants, payment providers, and consumers. They discuss the shift from AI as a supportive tool to AI as an autonomous actor capable of completing entire shopping journeys without human intervention. Adam breaks down the three types of AI shopping flows—referral, hybrid, and fully autonomous—and explains why the past six months have seen a flurry of protocol announcements from major players like Google, OpenAI, Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard.

 

The conversation covers both sides of the agentic commerce coin: the risks fraudsters can exploit with scalable, untraceable AI-powered attacks, and the opportunities for merchants to serve customers in entirely new ways. They also tackle the shift from traditional SEO to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and share practical advice for merchants preparing for this new reality.

In this episode: 

How agentic commerce differs from traditional AI assistance and why it’s happening now

The three categories of AI shopping flows: referral, hybrid, and fully autonomous

Why fraudsters see AI as “fraud university” and how they’re exploiting scalable, untraceable attacks

What protocols like MCP, AP2, ACP, and TAP are designed to solve for secure agent payments

How passkeys and network tokens enable authentication without breaking the user experience

The shift from SEO to GEO as agents replace traditional search for product discovery

Three steps merchants should take today: audit bot traffic, consult risk vendors, and engage with PSPs​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

 

Resources:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamrdavies  

Website: https://www.forter.com/