Talking Banking Matters

After growing technology businesses at every stage and across different industries, Daniel Marovitz joined Booking.com to introduce payments into its then-basic hotel-booking service. As senior vice president of fintech, Marovitz is enabling the company to achieve its vision to remove financial friction from travel. His cross-functional team focuses on the financial systems, payment solutions, and innovative financial products that strengthen Booking.com’s position as the platform of choice for customers worldwide to arrange lodging, transportation, and more. In this episode, he speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Uzayr Jeenah about what makes transactions especially complex in the travel industry and how streamlining payments eases customers’ pain points.

Related insights

The 2025 McKinsey Global Payments Report: Competing systems, contested outcomes
Guardrails for growth: Building a resilient payments system

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In this preview of our 2026 Global Banking Annual Review, we provide a glimpse of banks’ continued strong results in 2025; the emergence of a new world map; the tipping point for customer ownership; and the unprecedented pace at which AI is remaking the industry, prompting banks to accelerate their precision strategies and evolve into multispeed organizations.

Read the full Chapter now: Global Banking Annual Review 2026: Precision with speed

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When Nigel Morris and his cofounder, Frank Rotman, started QED Investors in 2007 to support high-growth financial technology companies, the fintech world was just beginning to blossom. Today, QED is a leading venture capital firm specializing in early-stage and growth fintechs, backing more than 250 portfolio companies. The firm provides hands-on operational support, backing fintech start-ups in lending, payments, insurance, and banking. In this episode, Nigel speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert about how the fintech landscape is shaping up in the face of AI and a younger demographic.

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The blockchain-based fintech Circle is perhaps best known as the issuer of USDC stablecoins, but the company is much broader than that. In the words of its leaders, Circle seeks to build a foundational economic operating system for an AI-driven digital economy running on a blockchain-based payments infrastructure. In this episode Circle CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Matt Higginson about the effect of the passage of 2025’s Genius Act on the future of stablecoin innovation, sources of future value, and how his background in philosophy informs his work and leadership style.

Related insights

The 2025 McKinsey Global Payments Report: Competing systems, contested outcomes
Guardrails for growth: Building a resilient payments system
The stable door opens: How tokenized cash enables next-gen payments
Global Banking Annual Review 2025: Why precision, not heft, defines the future of banking
After the surge: Tien‑Tsin Huang on the future of payments
The future of the payments industry: How managing risk can drive growth

Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters

Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters

Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services

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The longtime business payments company seeks to transform B2B money movement and related activities, creating new revenue streams and better cashflow.

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As digital payments make up a growing share of money movement, payments fraud is becoming more frequent and complex, requiring a broader range of ever-more-powerful security tools. SardineAI seeks to meet that need with an AI-powered fraud prevention and compliance platform that uses device intelligence, behavior-based analytics, and machine learning to protect financial services, fintech, and e-commerce businesses.

In this episode, SardineAI cofounder and CEO Soups Ranjan speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Roshan Varadarajan about Ranjan’s experience leading financial crime prevention at Revolut and Coinbase before starting Sardine; the future of payment fraud prevention, given the emergence of agentic commerce; and the growth of the payments security industry.

Related insights

The 2025 McKinsey Global Payments Report: Competing systems, contested outcomes
Guardrails for growth: Building a resilient payments system
The stable door opens: How tokenized cash enables next-gen payments
Global Banking Annual Review 2025: Why precision, not heft, defines the future of banking
After the surge: Tien‑Tsin Huang on the future of payments
The future of the payments industry: How managing risk can drive growth

Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters

Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters

Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services

Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com

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As more retailers and other consumer-facing companies look to offer customer loyalty payment cards with rewards and easier shopping experiences, the co-branded card company Imprint seeks to simplify that process and offer it to a broader range of companies. In this episode Daragh Murphy, cofounder and CEO of Imprint, speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Roshan Varadarajan. Imprint was started with backing by Thrive Capital, whose partner Gaurav Ahuja also is a cofounder and serves as chair of Imprint. In this interview, Murphy discusses how the company got its start, why building their tech stack from scratch was important, and the future of co-branded credit cards.

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Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters

Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters

Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services

Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com

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The fraud and financial-crime prevention company’s machine-learning approach uses adaptive behavioral analytics to identify and root out improper payments.

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One of the key challenges finance departments face is connecting the various bits of data generated when money moves into or out of the business. This is especially true for small and midsize businesses. Although a profusion of digital payments providers has cropped up to help such companies, many systems generating data from money movement don’t talk to a company’s other systems—at least not well. In this episode of Talking Banking Matters, McKinsey payments sector leader Roshan Varadarajan speaks with Cosmin Pitigoi, CFO of Flywire, which offers a digital payment system has along with software integrations for linking payments to companies’ other systems.  

Related insights 

Global payments in 2024: Simpler interfaces, complex reality
Unlocking value from technology in banking: An investor lens
Extracting value from AI in banking: Rewiring the enterprise
How to get a core banking transformation right: Eight mistakes to avoid 

Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters 

Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters  

Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services  

Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com 

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In the payments industry, open banking and account-to-account payments have faced slower adoption in certain markets as they compete with card-based and peer-to-peer systems. In this episode McKinsey payments sector leader Roshan Varadarajan speaks with Johan Tjärnberg, the Group CEO of the open banking and account-to-account company, Trustly, about breaking down barriers to commerce and money movement.   

Related insights

Global payments in 2024: Simpler interfaces, complex reality
Unlocking value from technology in banking: An investor lens
Extracting value from AI in banking: Rewiring the enterprise 

Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters

Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters

Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services

Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com

See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

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