Settling Up with GoCardless

AI isn't just helping your customers decide what to buy, it's starting to buy things for them. In this episode of Settling Up, we explore agentic commerce: what happens when software acts on your behalf, makes purchases within rules you've set, and does it without you lifting a finger.We're joined by two leading voices in fintech. Chris Skinner, author of Digital Bank and the voice behind TheFinanser.com, and David Birch, advisor, Forbes contributor, and the man who literally wrote the paper on "robots paying robots."Together, we get into the size of the opportunity, the battle between payment rails, what consumers actually think (spoiler: they're more ready than you'd expect), the unsolved identity problem, and what all of this means for fraud, regulation, and the future of commerce.The bots are going shopping. The question is, are we ready for it?

The commercial rollout of Variable Recurring Payments represents the single biggest upgrade to the UK payments infrastructure in a generation.

At such a crucial inflection point, we brought together voices from across the industry including UK Payments Initiative MD, Richard Koch, Oli Shaw-Latimer, Head of Fintech and Innovation, JustGiving and Shaun Puckrin CPO, GoCardless to discuss this landmark development.

Hannah Matson is Chief Operating Officer for Creditspring. They’re on a mission to bridge the credit divide by offering practical, short-term liquidity with transparent, no-interest loans for a fixed fee. 

Hannah and Ellie discuss the opaque world of interest rates and APRs, the importance of financial education and the power of open banking for better affordability checks and responsive repayment plans. 

Neira Jones is a self-proclaimed payments nerd with over 25 years of experience as an author, educator and consultant in financial services & technology. In a world full of jargon and complex ecosystems, her goal is to demystify the world of payments and help anyone who’s interested navigate the payments landscape.

In this episode, she discusses with Ellie Duncan:

• The one thing more payment leaders should prioritise
• Why trust, or a lack of it, might be the biggest threat to the payments space 
• Why we may no longer pay for anything ourselves in the future
  

Gordon Stuart has over 14 years’ experience, specialising in portfolio strategy, operations, FinTech and embedded services.

Today he serves as Global Senior Vice President of FinTech & Embedded Services at Sage overseeing their partner ecosystem and strategy for FinTech, payments and data portfolio.

We get his thoughts on why buying your way to success isn’t always the answer to building a powerful 3rd party ecosystem and product portfolio, and his approach to finding the right partners for the 2 million businesses Sage works with.

Host: Ellie Duncan, Freelance writer and speaker

Speaker: Gordon Stuart, Global Senior Vice President of FinTech & Embedded Services

In October 2024, 11:FS and GoCardless released research looking at ‘How to take open banking payments mainstream’. The research identified key steps to encourage mass consumer and merchant adoption.
12 months on, we catch up with report author Benjamin Ensor, Director of Research & Strategy for 11:FS to discuss how far we have come on the road to adoption, where consumer appetite is today and the hotly anticipated rollout of cVRPs.

Host: Ellie Duncan, Freelance writer and speaker

Speaker: Benjamin Ensor, Director of Research & Strategy, 11:FS

Clare Bennett has over 10 years experience in FinTech, building and scaling financial products that empower small businesses at Capital on Tap. She's passionate about embedded finance, open banking and all things payments innovation.
She sits down with Ellie Duncan to discuss the next big thing in payments innovation - Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs). Clare shares her experiences from the frontline of implementing VRPs at Capital on Tap and why you shouldn't really notice payments at all if they're working properly.

Host: Ellie Duncan, Freelance writer and speaker

Speaker: Clare Bennett, Senior Product Manager, Capital on Tap

Oli Shaw-Latimer, Head of FinTech and Innovation from JustGiving, has over 15 years experience managing teams, product and strategy and firmly believes in the power of payments tech to transform businesses.
He sits down with Ellie Duncan to take a pulse check on the journey of open banking so far and why the open banking dream is certainly not dead. He shares some surprising donor payment behaviours, why he believes in the fundamentals of open banking and how it's much more than just another logo at checkout.

Host: Ellie Duncan, Freelance writer and speaker

Speaker: Oli Shaw-Latimer, Head of FinTech and Innovation, JustGiving

Shaun Puckrin joins GoCardless as Chief Product Officer and brings with him over 20 years in product and payments. 

He sits down with Hamish Wood to discuss the payment trends he’s seen come and go in that time and what truly makes a payment method stick. 

We hear about a particular product decision he’d rather forget, where AI will fit into payments in the future and the meta trend of services being bundled or non-bundled.

Host: Hamish Wood, Senior Manager Customer Experience, GoCardless

Speaker: Shaun Puckrin, Chief Product Officer, GoCardless

For our first episode, we put our very own Pat Phelan, Chief Commercial Officer, in the hot seat. 

He tells us what he really feels about card fees, the card network monopoly and why he sees open banking as an opportunity for category-creation. 

We also get his hot takes on the banks charging PSPs for open banking access and whether the term open banking is fit for purpose.

Host: Borja Valiente, VP of Sales, EMEA, GoCardless

Speaker: Pat Phelan, Chief Commercial Officer, GoCardless