I sat down with Myles Stephenson, CEO of Modulr, to talk through how the company evolved from powering early Revolut t to building a full-stack payments automation platform serving lenders, payroll providers, and travel companies.

Modulr made a deliberate call two years ago to stop being a horizontal BaaS provider and go deep on specific verticals. They hold an EMI licence, settle at the Bank of England, and have direct scheme access and Myles argues that gives them everything they need without the overhead of a banking licence. The business model is flow, not storage, which means transaction revenue drives profitability, not interest margin.

We get into:

• Why Modulr walked away from the embedded finance land grab to double down on payments automation
• How their EMI licence gives them everything they need (and why they don’t want a banking licence)
• The US expansion with FIS and what real-time payment adoption actually looks like across markets
• Why the US is behind on real-time payments and what it will actually take to change behaviour
• Commercial VRP and whether open banking can ever dent direct debit
• Stablecoins vs. tokenized deposits — and how a non-bank positions for both
• How Modulr built a compliance hub with Sardine and where AI fits into fraud and operations
• How Modulr reached profitability, and why the answer is flow, not interest margin
• What’s on the roadmap: ACH in the US, foreign currency, and commercial VRP as a collections layer

Modulr’s bet is simple: own the infrastructure, stay focused on payments, and let the applications follow. Whether that thesis holds in the US is the real test.

This is my first-ever in-person episode, recorded live at Stripe Tour London. I sat down with Neetika Bansal, Business Lead for Connect, Money Management, and Crypto at Stripe.

We covered a lot of ground: why Stripe doesn’t have its own stablecoin, what Stripe Treasury actually means for global startups, how AI agents are starting to transact at scale, and where the real stablecoin volume is coming from.

Here’s what we got into:

Why Stripe built an open stablecoin issuance platform instead of launching its own coin

Stripe Treasury: multi-currency accounts, stablecoin balances, and paying contractors worldwide

The machine payments protocol and Link AI wallet

x402 protocol hitting 100M cumulative transactions and what that signals

How companies like Meta, Felix, and Deel are using stablecoins for real economic activity

Fraud, disputes, and trust in a world where AI agents transact faster than humans

How Stripe is managing 300+ product launches across Bridge, Privy, and its core platform

Advice for founders building global-from-day-one companies on how to think about money movement

Neetika’s take on where agentic commerce goes in five years is worth listening to closely.

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Banks are not being replaced by AI. They are being rebuilt around it. Tim Rutten, Chief Marketing Officer at Backbase, joins me to break down what that actually means for your career and for the industry.

Jamie Dimon wants fewer bankers and more AI builders. But what does that really mean for the thousands of finance professionals already in the workforce? Tim gives a more nuanced read, and it is not the doomsday story the headlines are selling.

We also get into the difference between machine learning, generative AI, and agentic AI in a banking context, how Backbase’s AI-native banking OS handles governance and auditability in a regulated environment, who is liable when an AI agent makes a mistake, and why token cost management is one of the most underrated problems in agentic banking.

If you work in banking or are thinking about entering the industry, this one is worth your time.

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In this episode, I sit down with Davi Strazza, Chief Business Officer at Lightspark and former President of North America at Adyen, to discuss why traditional payment infrastructure remains broken despite decades of innovation—and how Lightspark is using Bitcoin, Lightning, stablecoins, and AI to build a new financial network.

We cover:

Why 15% of online transactions still fail

The limitations of SWIFT and traditional payment rails

How Lightspark connects RTP, FedNow, PIX, UPI, and SEPA Instant

Why Bitcoin is becoming a transport layer for money movement

The role of stablecoins in global finance

Lightspark's new Grid Global Accounts product

How AI agents will make payments and manage money autonomously

The future of machine-to-machine commerce

If you're interested in payments, fintech, stablecoins, digital banking, or agentic commerce, this conversation is packed with insights.

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In this episode of the WRAP UP Podcast, I sit down with Coinbase UK CEO Keith Grose to discuss why stablecoins, tokenized assets, and blockchain infrastructure are starting to move from the edge of finance into the core of the global financial system.

We discuss why the UK is becoming one of Coinbase’s most important markets, how stablecoins could reshape cross-border payments and treasury operations, and why banks, PSPs, and fintechs are suddenly taking on-chain finance seriously.

Keith also breaks down:

• Why the US is currently ahead in stablecoins

• Why the UK may have a regulatory advantage over Europe

• How Coinbase Borrow works

• Why tokenized stocks and bonds are coming faster than people expect

• Why AI agents could eventually manage portfolios and move money autonomously

• How Coinbase plans to expand beyond crypto trading into a much broader financial platform

One of the most interesting parts of the conversation was Keith explaining that the future customer experience may look exactly the same on the surface, while the entire backend of finance quietly moves on-chain.

If stablecoins, tokenization, AI finance, and the future of banking interest you, this episode is packed with insights.

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In this episode of the WRAP UP Podcast, I speak with Tyler Allen, CEO of Unit21, about why AI agents may become one of the most important tools in the fight against financial crime.

Tyler explains why traditional rules-based systems and machine learning models are no longer enough as fraud becomes faster, more automated, and more sophisticated. He also breaks down how AI agents can help compliance and fraud teams review alerts, investigate suspicious activity, reduce false positives, and respond to financial crime in real time.

The conversation also explores the future of “Know Your Agent,” AI-powered fraud decisioning, agent registries, regulatory readiness, and whether financial institutions are ready to trust AI with high-stakes compliance work.

In this episode, we discuss:

- Why financial crime is becoming harder to fight

- How AI is changing fraud and AML operations

- Why traditional machine learning is not enough

- The role of human-in-the-loop reviews

- How AI agents can reduce investigation time

- The future of Know Your Agent

- Whether regulators are ready for AI decision-making

- Why compliance teams may become AI-native faster than expected

Watch the full episode to understand how AI agents could reshape fraud prevention, AML, and financial crime compliance.

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What happens when every bank, fintech, and enterprise launches its own stablecoin?

In this episode of the WRAP UP Podcast, I sit down with Sam Broner, the CEO of The Better Money Company, a former investor at Andreessen Horowitz, and a former engineer at Microsoft, to discuss why he left venture capital to build a stablecoin company.

Sam is building what he calls a stablecoin clearinghouse infrastructure that allows banks, fintechs, and payment companies to swap between stablecoins at guaranteed 1:1 pricing, without relying on thin market liquidity or costly trading venues.

We discuss:

- Why stablecoin infrastructure has been built primarily for trading, not payments

- How a stablecoin clearinghouse works

- Why large companies are launching custom branded stablecoins

- The economics behind stablecoin issuance

- Stablecoins vs CBDCs

- Why stablecoins may become the default payment rail for AI agents

- What Sam learned moving from investor to founder

One of the most important takeaways from this conversation is that the future of money may look less like a handful of dominant stablecoins and more like thousands of interoperable digital dollars issued by banks, fintechs, and enterprises. Better Money Company is building the infrastructure to make that possible.

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In this episode of the WRAP UP Podcast, I sit down with David Messenger, CEO of Global Businesses at Pingpong Payments, to unpack what really happens behind cross-border payments and why moving money globally is still far more complex than most businesses realize.

We explore how global payments infrastructure is evolving beyond simple money movement into a full-stack ecosystem of compliance, FX, treasury, local rails, and embedded financial workflows. David shares how PingPong Payments quietly built one of the world’s largest cross-border payment networks with 70+ licenses, 200+ banking partnerships, and operations across more than 40 offices globally.

We also discuss:

• Why compliance and risk are the real foundation of cross-border payments • How AI is reshaping onboarding, transaction monitoring, routing, and product development • Why fintechs and banks are moving toward collaboration instead of competition • The hidden complexity behind FX, treasury, and multi-currency collections • Where stablecoins actually fit into enterprise payments today • Why geographic coverage and banking relationships are harder to replicate than product features • How embedded finance is evolving from “invisible payments” into industry-specific infrastructure

One of the most interesting parts of the conversation was David’s perspective on how enterprise customers increasingly want hybrid solutions that combine the balance sheet strength of banks with the agility and customization of fintech infrastructure.

If you work in payments, fintech, marketplaces, global commerce, or treasury, this episode offers a practical look into how cross-border financial infrastructure is actually being built behind the scenes.