Title: Cross-Border Payments: Connecting Merchants to Global Customers

Host: Mark Walker: Editorial Director at The Fintech Times

Guest: Victor Padee: CRO at Aevi. Tom Voaden: VP of Commercial at BR-DGE. David Messenger: Global CEO for Ping Pong Payments

Expanding into new international markets offers immense growth potential, but it comes with a web of complexities—from fragmented local payment schemes to heightened compliance risks. In this episode, Mark Walker sits down with experts from AVE, Bridge, and Ping Pong Payments to deconstruct the current landscape of cross-border payments

The discussion covers the differing needs of B2B versus B2C merchants, highlighting how enterprise merchants use orchestration to optimize conversion rates and how B2B companies prioritize straight-through processing and compliance The panel also debates the impact of fraud on international transactions and offers predictions for the industry in 2026, including the rise of agentic commerce and a return to business fundamentals

Main Topics Discussed:

• Defining Cross-Border Success: How merchants in travel, gaming, and retail aim to make global commerce feel like a local experience for customers
• The B2B vs. B2C Divide: While B2C focuses on conversion and user experience, B2B demands rigorous compliance, liquidity management, and certainty of settlement for high-value transactions
• Navigating Local Fragmentation: The importance of adapting to local schemes (like Gyrocard in Germany or eftpos in Australia) rather than relying solely on international rails
• Payment Orchestration: Utilizing data to route transactions for higher authorization rates and lower costs across different regions
• Risk and Fraud: Strategies for managing higher fraud rates in cross-border trade, including the shift from random attacks to structured exploitation of local rules

Future Trends (2026):

 Predictions on the impact of AI, agentic commerce, stablecoins, and the consolidation of fintechs

Title: AI in Payments, Why Consumer AI Will Rewrite the Rules
Guests: Neira Jones, David Birch

In this episode of the Payments Power 50 podcast, Neira Jones speaks with digital finance expert David Birch about the real shift AI is creating within payments. Rather than incremental improvements in fraud detection or customer service, the major transformation will come when consumers deploy their own AI agents to manage spending, saving and everyday transactions.

• Topics covered include:
  • Why AI adoption by consumers, not institutions, will be the true disruption
  • How AI agents could negotiate payments with retailer bots
  • The impact on loyalty, interchange, card choice and settlement routes
  • Ethical concerns including bias, explainability and autonomy
  • Why bots will need their own digital identities
  • The future role of wallets and digital asset managers
  • How blockchain based market infrastructure fits into the next generation of payments

A forward looking discussion on what happens when AI becomes the primary participant in payments rather than the tool behind the scenes.