AI is Real, but it’s Not Coming for Your Job

[Buzzer] I'm not sure. AI is rapidly moving from buzzword to being a part of business processes across the payments industry. But what does that actually look like in day-to-day operations? And how can organizations who have yet to adopt AI begin using it today? Welcome to Payment Smartcast, not just podcast channel. I'm your host, Dan Roth, Senior Director of Communications at NACHA. This episode is part of our 365 podcast series, sponsored by B&Y. Stay tuned for a message from them following this episode. Thousands of payments professionals will gather in San Diego later this month from April 26th through April 29th for smarter, faster payments 2026. One of the most talked about topics at this year's conference will be how AI is impacting payments, especially payments operations, and what are the opportunities and challenges for AI and payments operations specifically. Today we're highlighting the AI and Action Track, sponsored by Kendral, with the preview of the session, AI and Action, unlocking the future of payments operations. Joining me are Kevin Miyamoto, co-founder and COO of Identity, and Mark Dixon, a senior consultant with NACHA through NACHA consulting. Kevin will share how companies are applying AI within payments today and what it means for operational teams. Mark will discuss how organizations across the payments ecosystem, from financial institutions to third parties and corporate originators, are thinking strategically about how AI is a part of their operations. There is a lot to process, so let's jump in. So first of all, Kevin, thank you so much for carving out time and making your debut on payments, Mark has today. I know I'm excited to have you on. I know our listeners will be excited to hear what you have to say. But before we jump into the topic, I'm hoping you can just tell us a little bit about identity and your relationship with NACHA. Thanks for having me. We are in AI platform that helps banks and credit unions acquire, services and grow. Think about us as a unified tool that's part CRM, workflows, agents, and digital banking integrations, but it's one super easy to use platform. We have a great relationship with NACHA, we're a preferred partner. Within one of our tools, we have the ability for users to query the latest NACHA rules and get answers back in seconds. So it's a great sidekick or companion piece to the rulebook, whereas you know, a lot of folks will look at the rules. The rulebook to look up information, again, you can go ahead and just type in a query and get answers back within a few seconds. So it's been very well received in market and again, we're thrilled to be partnering with NACHA on that. Well, I know that we're thrilled to have you on, especially as we delve into the discussion of AI. But before we do that, Mark, welcome back to payments, Marcast. You are a veteran of the podcast. And so before we dive more into AI, I'm hoping you can talk about your role at NACHA specifically on the intersection of NACHA consulting and AI right now. Yeah, thanks, Dan. So I work as a senior consultant in NACHA consulting. And we work with a variety of institutions. We work with a lot of financial institutions. We work with businesses, corporates and also technology companies that are all doing different things with payments. We obviously do a lot of work on the the ACH front, but we also touch on other payment rails as well. And what we're starting to see on the AI front is really this kind of intellectual curiosity that our clients are thinking about. How do I actually implement this into my environment? So Kevin gives great examples of the query aspect of it. How do I make it kind of like an assistant to me to make me much more efficient at what I'm doing. And we're also seeing clients that are frustrated with legacy platforms and technology that just isn't keeping up with the times. They're still working operationally like they did many years ago. And I think we're starting to see the industry get frustrated with that aspect of it and figuring out, well, what can I do as far as technology goes or AI tools to modernize that experience to make it so that it's smart decision making and that I'm not actually decisioning all these items. I'm actually just decisioning the ones that need know that expertise. And so I think it's kind of a little bit of the Wild West as far as an evolution. But I think we're starting to get a lot more people thinking about how can I use AI tangibly in modernizing my operational environment. So Mark, I'm glad you brought up using AI tangibly because that is a perfect segue to talk about the panel that you and Kevin are going to be on at smarter faster payments 2026, which is AI in action and unlocking the future of payments operations. Kevin, I'm hoping you can kick us off. So when people hear AI and payments operations, they often think it's futuristic or theoretical. But from your perspective, how real is AI and payments operations today? Yeah, it's it's very real and it's going going to get much much better for most banks and credit unions out there today. They're using a co pilot or maybe another kind of horizontal AI tool that is not FI specific, which is fine. And so for a lot of folks, it's uploading documents and asking questions on it or creating funny cat memes to send to co workers, right? That's kind of what they're using AI for. But to Mark's point, like the next thing is what are the tangible benefits that I can get out of using AI and for payments that could be monitoring. It could be alerts when we think about agentech workflows. And so when I think of AI, I think of kind of you know, gen AI, which is prompt base, you ask a question, you get response back. That's kind of phase one phase two was work close to being able to connect different systems together through a Zapier or N8N, which a lot of the vast majority of financial institutions are not doing that today either. It's mostly just chap B's, but the next frontier of AI for banks and credit unions really is focused on agentech workflows. So being able to perform agents to complete tasks from start to finish. And when we think about payments and fraud, specifically, you think about how it is today versus what it will look like in the future. Today, you might have someone manually pulling reports, putting it in power BI or Tableau or another tool, having to know what to query, sharing those reports over email and then figuring out, hey, what do I actually do with this? And it's not just for fraud, it could be for sales, account management, onboarding it. There's just a lot of manual things that go into it. And what's really great about AI is that again, with a simple prompt that you can program to run at whatever frequency you could say, hey, I want you to look at this data set or this database and find anomalies or when this happens then alert this user and then perform this action. And you can do that across multiple tools. And so a good example I always say is, you know, imagine that you are an account manager and you want an agent to say, like step one, look at my calendar every Monday at 4 a.m. and figure out which customers I'm talking to. And then to go into my core and figure out what types of transactions they're sending and then three based on my own products and services, figure out what you would recommend and why and then four create a customer facing report for those customers and then five email me or email mark or whoever with the output. And in the very near future, some technology already exists today, but this will be table stakes for all FIs in the next two to three years. That'll just happen automatically for the user. So instead of having to do all those different things and spending hours and hours each week, it'll just happen every Monday morning at 4 a.m. or whatever time you designate for it. And so you take that simple example, you apply it to fraud monitoring or payment operations or compliance. The types of things that you're able to do with it are almost endless. And Mark, Kevin has provided several examples of how people could be using AI today. Obviously with not just consulting, you work with a wide range of clients when it comes to multiple areas. So I'm curious from your perspective, how real is AI and payments operations today from what you're seeing. To Kevin's point, you know, things like co-pilot, you know, ones that are more organizationally trusted are definitely getting deployed. And we are seeing them being used for different, you know, analytical purposes, people using it in order to draft emails or communications, depending on how sophisticated their environment is, they could be generating polished images and creating presentations off of it. That stuff is very much a reality. And then you have organizations that are delving into looking at their processes and saying, what are the gaps, where, where are my processes bogging my staff down and my operational processes down. And how could I potentially leverage this technology to maximize that. to streamline whatever that process is because then I can free up resources to use them in different areas. Those are the things, the types of conversations that I'm hearing. Those are the types of conversations we're having with our clients. We've actually started to do a lot of technology assessments as part of our overall offerings along with like if we're doing a compliance and risk review, we go through that process and say, you know, how could you optimize your technology or what are your gaps in those areas. So I think a lot of organizations, especially in the financial services space, are in this analytical stage when it comes to AI. They're starting to use the tools as they they can in a more controlled environment and figuring out how can we actually expand that and use them more as we move into the future. Yeah. And Mark, just to piggyback off of that, a couple things that immediately come to mind for me. I have a couple of friends who work at some of the big tech firms in Palo Alto and Silicon Valley. One of them works at a very, we all know this one. He's a senior engineer. He actually does not even code anymore. He uses the company's coding assistant to generate all of his code and then he reviews the code and kind of sitches it together with their existing tech stack. I say that because that is very normal for coders today. Lots of engineering jobs are being replaced by AI and I'm not saying that's going to happen in payments, but if it can code huge platforms in the matter of hours that would normally take months for coders or senior engineers, it's only a matter of time before that technology is fine tuned for financial institutions and specifically payment operations. So it can already do a ton of things and I have no doubt that we will get there sooner than later. The other thing I would say too at a different large tech firm, I have another friend and she was telling me that they actually get tracked and how often they use AI every day and they're supposed to be using it at least half of their day. So four hours a day, they're literally tracking the amount of time in the tool, how many queries they're getting, etc. Because they want to determine they're trying to force employees to leverage AI because they already are seeing benefits so widespread. And so again, with financial services, we tend to be in the industry a little bit slower to adopt for good reasons because we're working with a lot of very sensitive information. But if you take a look at what a lot of the large leading edge companies out there are already doing, they're mandating that people use AI and they're already using it for absolutely game changing outcomes. And so I think it's only a matter of time before we see all of that. Not just again, not just for payment ops but across every function within a bank. And I think the other point that you raised there that was really good though is the people piece of it because everybody always gets scared when we talk about AI and how it automates and the functions it takes over. But in your examples, you still had a subject matter expert that was required to look at pieces of it or get involved depending on if it was an escalation point to them. And I think that's still a very much a reality is that even the more we mature this, even when we look at it from like a payment operational perspective, you're freeing up resources to have them work on more complex aspects and you're leveraging their knowledge in a much more effective way. That's kind of the role of the technology and where it's kind of filling in. Yeah, 100% and you know this too, there's so many variables where even if you have someone using AI all the time and let's say they reference the wrong content folder or they ask the wrong question, they could get it wrong. And so there's a lot of things, but to your point, we're going to see a shift where instead of people doing a lot of tasks, they're going to be the new kind of future role I think is going to be people who work side by side with agents and become almost like a task master if you will and are working with agents to perform those tasks and then those folks are way more productive and are just monitoring all those agents. Well, and I think that this has been a great discussion about how AI is shaping payments now and looking forward. So Kevin, from your perspective, what should leaders and payments be doing now to prepare for to stay ahead of that shift? I mean, there's there's a million things that they should be doing. One, they should be using AI all the time. This isn't some hype technology that we're going to forget about. If anything in two or three years, we're not going to even talk about AI because AI will literally just be every piece of software. AI is already embedded in every software, even if I'm on Google or canva, which is a design tool. It's all like very heavy AI. And so within the next two, it's already here now, but certainly within the next two to five years, literally everything will be AI. So when I think about payments, specifically, of course, from the fraud piece, we talked about that a little bit from the account management, treasury management component, helping my team get ready to have particular conversations with my customers as big. My perspective is actually, AI is a great equalizer for community and regional financial institutions because you don't have to spend a bajillion dollars like some of the big banks to have, you know, illegally as you provide it, it just cost it more, right? With AI, it's cheaper, it's easy to deploy. And so I see it as a great equalizer between the big banks and the smaller community banks because the technology is so widely accessible. The other thing that I believe is that within the next couple of years, AI will be deployed everywhere. And so if every bank and credit union had the ability to automate a lot of their manual tasks and streamline processes, then what actually separates each Fi then? And the only thing that does that is the engagement with your customer. And so I think you're going to see an even greater importance placed on marketing and customer engagement folks and account management and sales because those will be the only big differentiators between Fi's, if everything else is the same. And again, AI is making it so that a lot of the same technical advantages that the big guys have, these community financial institutions will also have. And I just want to add to that too because I think you made an interesting point. So I think the people even in back office or traditional back office type of functions will start to support what you're describing Kevin because that's where if I'm starting to tap into the data and I can see you know, the trends around what's happening from a payment operations perspective or I can see, I can predict where things are likely going based on what we're seeing with xyz factors. AI helps me be able to make those connections much easier. That information becomes really valuable than when you are talking about the sales and marketing people because now we're connecting the entire organization and we're using this our information, our business intelligence to make really data rich decisions and drive our business forward. So I think it connects everybody to that same problem or that same opportunity really that we're all trying to capitalize on. Yeah 100% yeah your spot on spot on. And the last thing I just like to add Dan, too, is from like a an fi or from anybody in the payments industry perspective when they're looking at preparing. I think one of the really good things to be doing right now is what some of our clients are already doing. Look at your technology and look for the gaps and then where your manual processes are, where your pain points are because those are great opportunities to say, you know, to work with your technology providers and say, what are you doing with AI? Are you doing something that's going to help us on this front? Or maybe I need to look at other solutions I can embed in that. Or maybe I need to build my own if I'm that type of organization. I think we all need to be having those conversations right now and not just kind of going with the status quo of saying, well, ACH operations has been working and we're not going to worry about it right now. We need to really focus in on what are the problems with it right now so that we can use the technology to capitalize on it. Well, this has been an excellent discussion as I know it would be at the top having both of you here who have such knowledge and expertise and breadth of experience when it comes to payments in AI. And I know that for our listeners, they want to make sure to add this session on April 28th at smarter, faster payments. So taking from the conversation, looking forward just a little bit, not two or three years when it comes to AI, but to April when it comes to the session that you'll be on, just one final question. And that was what is one takeaway that you want attendees to lead with knowing after attending your session live. And I'll start with you, Mark. Really, it's the goal of our panel discussion is to be very conversational just like what Kevin and I did today. But we're bringing other folks into it, people that work on the corporate credit union space and are actually practitioners in the treasury side. So you're going to get a really well rounded conversation on lots of different perspectives and angles as to what people are thinking about on the AI front. But really, my goal for this session is, is I want it to be thought provoking. I want people to walk away going, how could I apply this in my role or my organization or who should I be talking to in the organization to figure out how we can strategize on this front? I want people to not ignore the fact that AI is transformational and that it is changing the nature of everything like Kevin said. And that is also going to impact financial institutions and in particular payment operations and payment departments. So we all need to be talking about this and thinking about it. And given from your point of view, Dr. and I will mark said, what is a takeaway that you want attendees to lead with knowing after your session? Yeah, the big takeaway for me is AI is here. It's not coming in a couple of years. Everyone really should be using it day in and day out. I mean, we're to a point now where last year you would say, hey, you want to use AI so you're not late. If you're not using AI a lot, you're already late. So really, what's great about AI is as opposed to legacy technology providers where you have a lengthy configuration and onboarding process, everyone right now, although you don't upload anything sensitive or asking any sensitive information, anyone could go to Gemini or Chatchee BT or in Tropical or whatever and start leveraging AI to just ask questions and get a feel for it. You could do that now, it's free. There's nothing stopping anyone. And a lot of that technology then is, will be available through enterprise products, like Identify, to financial institutions in a more enterprise way that's safe and secure and all that. So I say that because if you're not using it right now, it's already, you're already late to the game, but it's okay, get in there, dive in, start playing with it because it's not, it's not maybe it'll be the future. It will definitely happen. And in two or three years, this will be completely normal for every financial institution. So thank you again to Kevin and Mark for sharing your perspectives on the possibilities and the issues around AI in payments operations. Sessions like AI in action, unlocking the future of payments operations, will give smarter, faster payments attendees practical insights into how these technologies are being implemented and what leaders should be preparing for next. If you wanna be a part of the conversation, be sure to attend this session on April 28th at SmarterFasterPayments2026 in San Diego. To learn more on register, visit payments.natcha.org. And thank you for listening to Payments Smartcast and thank you to BNY for sponsoring the 365 podcast series. Keep listening for a message from them immediately following this podcast. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode featuring the voices shaping the future of payments. And we'll see you in San Diego later this month at SmarterFasterPayments2026. - Unlock the future of payments with BNY Global Payments and Trade, proud sponsor of not just 365 podcast series. Together we're driving innovation in digital payments, enhancing security and simplifying global trade. Stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape with insights from industry leaders and cutting edge solutions designed to accelerate your business. Discover how BNY's expertise empowers smarter, faster, and safer payments worldwide. Visit bny.com/natcha to learn more.