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Trust as Infrastructure: Innovation, AI, and the Future of Payments
In this episode of Practical Product Management, hosts Leah Farmer and Marilyn McDonald sit down with Ryan Dew, CPO at Thredd, a global issuing processor based in London, to explore what innovation really means when you're operating at the foundation of the payments ecosystem.
Ryan explains how Thredd approaches innovation as a "slow burn" in a heavily regulated industry — building guardrails first, earning trust before shipping features, and letting their fintech and program manager customers build the flashy user experiences on top. The conversation covers the emergence of trust-as-a-service as a critical pillar for AI and agentic commerce, how the role of the product manager is evolving into a full-stack builder, and why stablecoin may be the most significant disruptor the payments industry has seen in years.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. In regulated industries, trust is the product. Innovation in payments isn't about moving fast — it's about building the guardrails first. Trust-as-a-service has moved from a nice-to-have to a foundational requirement, especially as AI and agentic commerce introduce new layers of complexity and risk.
2. The plumbing has to be right before the experience can be delightful. Platform product management gets underestimated, but no consumer experience works if the underlying infrastructure fails. The most innovative fintech UX in the world is worthless if the payment doesn't go through.
3. AI in payments isn't new — but where it's going is. Machine learning has been powering fraud detection in payments for over a decade. The next wave is agentic commerce, intelligent payment routing, and stronger authentication — and stablecoin rails may change cross-border money movement more fundamentally than anything we've seen.
4. Consumer behavior changes faster than we think — when it has to. The pandemic forced entire markets to shift from cash to digital payments almost overnight. The lesson for product managers: when the benefit is clear and the reason is compelling, people adapt. The job is to make that transition feel safe and obvious.
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By Leah Farmer & Marilyn McDonald
5
33 ratings
In this episode of Practical Product Management, hosts Leah Farmer and Marilyn McDonald sit down with Ryan Dew, CPO at Thredd, a global issuing processor based in London, to explore what innovation really means when you're operating at the foundation of the payments ecosystem.
Ryan explains how Thredd approaches innovation as a "slow burn" in a heavily regulated industry — building guardrails first, earning trust before shipping features, and letting their fintech and program manager customers build the flashy user experiences on top. The conversation covers the emergence of trust-as-a-service as a critical pillar for AI and agentic commerce, how the role of the product manager is evolving into a full-stack builder, and why stablecoin may be the most significant disruptor the payments industry has seen in years.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. In regulated industries, trust is the product. Innovation in payments isn't about moving fast — it's about building the guardrails first. Trust-as-a-service has moved from a nice-to-have to a foundational requirement, especially as AI and agentic commerce introduce new layers of complexity and risk.
2. The plumbing has to be right before the experience can be delightful. Platform product management gets underestimated, but no consumer experience works if the underlying infrastructure fails. The most innovative fintech UX in the world is worthless if the payment doesn't go through.
3. AI in payments isn't new — but where it's going is. Machine learning has been powering fraud detection in payments for over a decade. The next wave is agentic commerce, intelligent payment routing, and stronger authentication — and stablecoin rails may change cross-border money movement more fundamentally than anything we've seen.
4. Consumer behavior changes faster than we think — when it has to. The pandemic forced entire markets to shift from cash to digital payments almost overnight. The lesson for product managers: when the benefit is clear and the reason is compelling, people adapt. The job is to make that transition feel safe and obvious.