• 03 Jun, 2025 02:00 am

The Invisible Revolution in Finance

Dear Readers,

It’s a pleasure, and a bit surreal, to welcome you to the Summer 2025 issue of Financial IT as your new Editor. My journey here has been far from linear. In my previous role as Editor of Daryo, I had the opportunity to explore the intersection of geopolitics, regulation, and emerging technologies. One highlight was a compelling conversation with Huawei’s Aloysius Cheang on cybersecurity and digital sovereignty. These are issues that increasingly intersect with fintech. That conversation sharpened my sense that we are not just watching finance evolve; we are watching it reinvent itself.

Nowhere is that reinvention more visible than in our cover story, where John Trapani of Appian delivers a powerful, practical, and future-forward vision of AI in payment processing. Titled “Efficient Investigations, Happier Customers,” the article demonstrates how artificial intelligence is no longer an optional upgrade. It is a strategic imperative for any institution aiming to compete in a real-time, cross-border, customer-driven marketplace.

Trapani begins with a jarring statistic: 99.6% of sanctions screening alerts in some financial institutions are false positives. That is not just inefficiency; it creates friction, fatigue, and a real risk to customer satisfaction. With AI-powered automation built into alert investigation platforms, banks and regulators can now streamline case management, shorten resolution times, and reduce the need for rework. At the same time, they maintain audit-readiness and compliance integrity.

But this is not just about speeding up back-end processes. It’s about transforming the customer experience. Through natural language processing (NLP), AI-enabled chatbots and digital assistants are now fielding queries around the clock. Predictive models are helping detect fraud in real time. Agentic AI is supporting customer service reps with instant, data-driven suggestions. And for the first time, financial institutions can automate failed payment investigations. The goal is not just to resolve errors faster, but to prevent them from happening again.

As Trapani notes, this shift from reactive to predictive is where the real magic lies. What was once the exclusive domain of manual investigation is now supported by intelligent automation, freeing up human capital to focus on high-value decision-making. The result? Fewer delays, better audit trails, and happier customers.

This issue is filled with stories that echo and expand that theme of invisible intelligence.

In The Intelligent Bank, Jason Cao, CEO of Huawei’s Digital Finance BU, shares a bold vision for banking transformation. He outlines the “Four Zeros” strategy: Zero Downtime, Zero Touch, Zero Trust, and Zero Wait and he also introduces Huawei’s RAAS framework to support a new generation of resilient financial institutions. It’s a roadmap for the software-defined bank of the future, where uptime is constant, interactions are autonomous, and trust is embedded, not assumed.

Savas Manyasli, CTO at Finance Incorporated Limited, follows with a deeply thoughtful essay titled “Invisible by Design.” His premise is elegant: the best payment experiences are the ones we never notice. In an age of instant transactions across jurisdictions, currencies, and compliance frameworks, the challenge isn’t adding more features - it’s managing complexity behind the scenes. His vision of adaptive payment ecosystems is both philosophical and technical, with design simplicity as the highest goal.

Another urgent theme in this issue is identity and trust. Pedro Torres and Daniel Flowe sound the alarm on synthetic identity fraud, deepfakes, and the vulnerabilities of outdated KYC frameworks. Their recommendations include embracing decentralized identity (DID), integrating biometric authentication, and transitioning from static to dynamic identity validation. These reflect a growing consensus: our digital infrastructures must be as agile and intelligent as the threats they face.
 

Brady Harris, CEO of IXOPAY, shifts our attention from security to scalability in his sharp piece on payment orchestration. He makes a compelling case that for high-growth businesses, sticking to one PSP (payment service provider) is no longer a viable strategy. Orchestration platforms not only optimize routing, reduce costs, and recover false declines - they future-proof your payment stack. In a landscape where decline rates exceed the cost of fraud, agility isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a survival mechanism.

In the B2B sphere, Sarah-Jayne Martin of Quadient explores how AI and automation are finally bridging the gap between corporate and consumer payment experiences. Her article highlights the importance of predictive analytics, intelligent reminders, and seamless approval flows in speeding up payment cycles and strengthening supplier relationships. With the rise of younger, tech-savvy financial decision-makers, this transformation is not just overdue - it’s expected.

Also featured: insights from Finastra’s Radha Suvarna on cloud and API-led modernization; a tour through embedded finance’s impact on credit unions by Union Credit’s Barry Kirby; and a spotlight on Huawei’s Dr. Peter Zhou, who discusses AI-ready storage as the foundation of financial data innovation.

All these voices reflect a common reality: financial technology is becoming less visible but more essential. It’s disappearing into the background, into APIs and automated flows, into decision engines and invisible fraud defenses. And in that invisibility lies power, not just technical but human. Power to deliver faster, fairer, and more intuitive experiences. Power to make finance work for people, not the other way around.

As I begin this chapter with Financial IT, I do so with gratitude, curiosity, and a commitment to clarity. I’m here to connect the dots between cutting-edge innovation and real-world value and to highlight the voices moving us toward a more intelligent, equitable financial future.

Let’s build it, one invisible transaction at a time.

Stay Curious,

Tawney Kruger

Editor, Financial IT