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Adrian Talapan, CEO and co-founder at Fee Navigator, Marco Margiotta, CEO and co-founder at Payfare,
agreed agility is essential to every aspect of commerce, foresees real-time payments playing a larger role in the
from individual transactions to service delivery to new gig economy. "Real-time payments tools help to ensure
product launches. "When your competitors can move that every worker in the gig economy can become an
faster than you, you lose," he said. "Today's technology and empowered entrepreneur with dignity and financial
I-want-it-now demand impatience continue to accelerate security," he said. "Bank accounts can also be costly for
all supply chains, sales and feedback loops." low-balance clients, leading them to turn to predatory
check cashers and payday lenders to fill the gaps."
Talapan added that native digital commerce places stress
on an organization's ability to adapt and compete, and Gig workers face inconsistent demand for their services
without the aid of real-time or near real-time insights, and shoulder high costs for vehicle fuel, maintenance and
organizations will have difficulty competing with tech- insurance, Margiotta stated, noting that they pay fees to
enabled companies that continually align operational get their earnings from third-party payment processors
strategies and resources with their well-informed demand or use traditional bank accounts that have slow transfers.
curves. Having flexibility and control of their earnings would
help their businesses grow, he added.
Agile machines
Transparent use of data
Achieving agility begins by trusting machines, Talapan
noted. "While one would expect that technology is the rate- Ng envisions embedded finance proliferating this year
limiting step in delivering real-time analytics, we believe beyond the boundaries of banks and big tech. "2022 is
that humans are the real bottlenecks," he said. "Change is the year brands wake up to the power of their customers'
hard, and it's difficult for most people and organizations to financial data and start to introduce their first embedded
operate at breakneck speed, especially when overwhelmed financial products," he said. "Traditionally, banks and
by the amount of information available." credit card companies have had unbridled access to
their customers' spending habits and patterns, while a
The data gold rush has left humans awash in extraneous store manager may only know what their customers are
data, and instead of getting mired in minute data points, purchasing at their own company."
humans could delegate sorting and decisioning to AIs,
Talapan stated, adding, Why not allow smart digital Ng further noted that Apple Card provides rich insights
assistants to perform A/B testing, using automated, real- into customer purchases, even non-Apple products and
time analytics? These always-on AIs can continuously services, and this is why embedded finance may reach
adjust product inventories in real time to meet projected $7 trillion by 2030, as more companies embed financial
demands while their human partners keep their fingers services within core offerings.
on the pulse, he added.
Mark Gazit, CEO at ThetaRay, warned of escalating
"Do you fully trust the machine to make the right financial crimes in 2022, including money laundering
decisions, especially if it's an AI neural net whose model, and terrorist organization funding. "The ability to move
while performant, cannot be explained or modeled using money between countries is very important for terrorist
traditional mathematics?" Talapan asked. "We believe funding and other criminal activities, but by shutting
organizations that strike the right balance between down cross-border transactions entirely, banks are also
human control and AI-powered computer automation will hurting innocent people in these regions," he said. "We
ultimately win." need to find a middle ground."

Agile financial Inclusion AI-powered fraud prevention, detection and monitoring
Roy Ng, CEO at Bond, predicted agile service providers can improve transparency, Gazit stated. "Perpetrators use
will continue to take market share from traditional AI for wide-scale, automated attacks," he said. "We have
financial institutions in 2022. "Neobanks and modern an obligation to create even stronger AI-based systems to
fintech solutions have radically disrupted old models and protect ourselves."
paradigms and are providing long-overdue access to core Transparent B2B, B2C commerce
banking services to underserved communities such as
creators, LGBT, Black and Hispanic communities," he said. Brandon Spear, CEO at TreviPay, proposed that data
personalization and omnichannel access will be key to B2B
Citing data from Morning Consult and Fair Isaac Corp., commerce in 2022. "Business buyers who require a variety
Ng noted that nearly 25 percent of the U.S. population is of payment options, including net terms, are beginning to
underbanked, 10 percent are unbanked, and 53 million expect that their purchases be transacted and trackable
do not qualify for affordable terms on auto or home with the ease and convenience of an Uber transaction," he
loans. These citizens, he said, need fast, affordable said.
access to financial services, especially now, following the
pandemic's acceleration of income inequality.

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