The idea of a personal “digital defender” in the form of an AI agent is not very widely talked about on the web. Alex “Sandy” Pentland describes that your AI agent addresses all of that other agent activity that’s aimed at you, and intervenes on your behalf. In a way, it’s like having a public defender in court. There’s a legal effort against you, so you need your own advocacy to represent you on your side. It’s also sort of like consumer reporting – Pentland mentioned how Consumer Reports has been doing this kind of work for 80 years with polls and other tools. Another sort of similar idea is cybersecurity agents who are created by a company called Twine that are intended to protect people from cyberattacks. Essentially, Pentland argued, a bad actor can easily throw a system out of balance by being “just a little edgy,” by making small changes that lead to a domino effect that can be detrimental. He used the example of a traffic jam, which starts off as just one car in dense traffic changing its behavior. This type of game theory, he asserted, has to be factored into how we create our digital defense agent networks. With all of this in mind, it’s probably a good idea to think about building those digital defense agents. They might not be perfect right away, but they might be the defense that we need against an emerging army of hackers utilizing some of the most potent technologies we’ve ever seen. The idea also feeds back into the whole debate about open source and closed source models, and when tools should be published for all the world to use. It’s imperative to keep a lid on the types of bad actors that could otherwise jeopardize systems. In the cryptocurrency days, we had the notion of a 51% attack, where as soon as somebody held more than half of a given blockchain item, they had full control, with no exceptions.
Merger will combine Global Payments’ strength in SME segment and vertical-specific solutions with Worldpay’s enterprise and eCommerce capabilities, creating a comprehensive commerce solutions platform
TSYS-parent Global Payments is betting big on its $600 million synergy target as it pushes forward with the $22.7 billion acquisition of Worldpay, a move that is expected to shake up the competitive dynamics in merchant services and payments technology. The acquisition will see Global Payments divest its Issuer Solutions business to FIS for $13.5 billion, sharpening its focus as a pure-play merchant solutions provider. The combined entity will serve more than 6 million customers in 175 countries, processing $3.7 trillion in annual payment volume and 94 billion transactions — a scale that positions the company among the world’s largest payment processors. Central to the strategic rationale is an ambitious plan to realize $600 million in annual run-rate cost synergies within three years of closing. According to Global Payments, roughly a third of these savings will come from consolidating technology infrastructure and eliminating duplicative vendor and software spend. Additional synergies are expected from streamlining operations, integrating product offerings, and leveraging the expanded global footprint. The company also projects at least $200 million in annual revenue synergies from cross-selling opportunities enabled by the complementary merchant, enterprise and eCommerce capabilities of the two firms. On the company’s Q1 earnings call, CEO Cameron Bready emphasized the transformative nature of the deal: “We have a tremendous opportunity to drive substantial revenue and cost synergies from the transaction as we amplify our collective go-to-market strengths and simplify our business to become a pure-play merchant solutions provider with significantly expanded capabilities, extensive scale and greater market access. The transaction will drive an enhanced financial profile for the combined enterprise and unlock long-term value for our shareholders.” The merger will combine Global Payments’ strength in small and mid-sized businesses and vertical-specific solutions with Worldpay’s enterprise and eCommerce capabilities, creating a comprehensive commerce solutions platform that spans the full merchant spectrum.
Fifth Third’s Currency Processing Solutions (CPS) is a holistic approach to improving cash management processes for grocers, from point of sale to account reconciliation and reporting
The Federal Reserve Cash Office survey shows that 16% of U.S. payments are made with cash, the third most-used form after credit and debit cards. Cash continues to be a reliable payment method—especially among older generations. Still, a recent USA Today article said nearly 70% of Gen Zers use cash more than they did 12 months ago. In 2023, 18.4% of U.S. households—representing nearly 49 million people—were either unbanked or underbanked.3 There’s a growing push toward cashless payment systems, but this approach encountered backlash. For many of these households, eliminating cash as a payment option could mean losing a crucial means of feeding their families. Fifth Third is part of a group of industry leaders and experts called the Cash Payment Choice Coalition, focused on raising awareness of the importance of cash as a means of transacting business and informing and activating influencers to ensure the legal and regulatory environment remains “Cash” favorable. About 28% of consumers in the U.S. feel “safer” with cash as an option,4 and Fifth Third wants to be part of the solution in retaining this option for consumers. Robert Norman, SVP of Cash Logistics Strategy at Fifth Third Bank offers insight into why cash continues to play a crucial role at the supermarket checkout and describes how automation can improve the cash management process for grocers. “More than 90% of consumers intend to use cash either as a means of payment or store of value in the future. Cash transactions eliminate the risk of incurring fees associated with credit card usage, such as interest charges and late payment fees. Additionally, financial uncertainty, such as geopolitical instability and changes in trade policies, can lead consumers to prefer cash as a more secure and immediate form of payment. Fifth Third’s Currency Processing Solutions® (CPS) is a holistic approach to improving cash management processes for grocers, from point of sale to account reconciliation and reporting. CPS automates the cash-handling process from the time you take a cash payment through the time the money is deposited and credited into your account. Our expert cash-handling team partners with grocers to tailor solutions that streamline store processes, reduce costs, and enhance safety. We help optimize labor, minimize shrinkage and improve working capital management. We deployed our solution at a top 10 U.S. retailer that offers groceries and general merchandise. Store managers were spending 6-8 hours daily on cash handling. Fifth Third’s solution eliminated that burden, allowing managers to focus on operations. With our cash experts, the client optimized their cash process and achieved real ROI. Key benefits include:
- Save Managers’ Time: Automate cash counting and reconciliation.
- Enhance Safety: Secure funds and reduce shrinkage.
- Minimize Errors: Eliminate manual cash errors requiring recounts.
- Eliminate Bank Trips: Get cash credited directly to your account.
- Reduce Dependency on Armored Events: Manage courier relationships and reduce reliance on armored services.
- Consolidate Banking: Fewer financial institution relationships are needed across store locations.
Keys to creating an agentic AI business- Vertical specialization, chasing the labor spend as against enterprise IT budgets, focusing on cognitive reasoning and human judgement and designing end-to-end workflows
Startups that succeed in the agentic AI space are betting on vertical specialization, digital labor and new kinds of software primitives. Rather than broad platforms, these companies are zeroing in on deep domain challenges and embedding AI agents where judgment, context and autonomy matter most. Instead of retrofitting yesterday’s SaaS models, HOAi focuses on a labor-intensive, highly contextual domain: Homeowner association management. That clarity of focus enables the company to design agentic systems with three core components: cognitive reasoning engines, seamless integration with existing workflows and a flexible orchestration layer for agents. By targeting labor spend rather than IT budgets, startups such as HOAi create new categories of digital workers that operate alongside humans. This shift enables access to budgets that are 10–20 times larger than traditional enterprise IT, according to Haoyu Zha, founder and chief executive officer of HOAi. To distill the lessons from HOAi and similar innovators, here are five keys to building a successful agentic AI startup, according to Zha: Go vertical in nuanced markets: Specialized agents can capture untapped value in industries with unique operational needs. Follow the labor spend, not the IT: Labor budgets are significantly larger than IT budgets and far less saturated. Empower decisions over tasks: Build agents that enhance human judgment, not just automation. Decision intelligence is the new strategic edge. Rethink software: Go agentic: Don’t retrofit software-as-a-service blueprints. Design end-to-end workflows with autonomous, context-aware agents from the ground up. Visibility fuels viability: In a crowded market, discovery matters. Build brand awareness early or risk being invisible, regardless of how advanced your tech is.
Databricks acquisition of Neon to offer enterprises ability to deploy AI agents at scale by rapidly spinning up databases programmatically without coupling storage and compute needs, through a serverless autoscaling approach to PostgreSQL
Databricks announced its intent to acquire Neon, a leading serverless Postgres company. Neon’s serverless PostgreSQL approach separates storage and compute, making it developer-friendly and AI-native. It also enables automated scaling as well as branching in an approach that is similar to how the Git version control system works for code. Amalgam Insights CEO and Chief Analyst Hyoun Park noted that Databricks has been a pioneer in deploying and scaling AI projects. Park explained that Neon’s serverless autoscaling approach to PostgreSQL is important for AI because it allows agents and AI projects to grow as needed without artificially coupling storage and compute needs together. He added that for Databricks, this is useful both for agentic use cases and for supporting the custom models they have built over the last couple of years after its Mosaic AI acquisition. For enterprises looking to lead the way in AI, this acquisition signals a shift in infrastructure requirements for successful AI implementation. What is particularly insightful, though, is that the ability to rapidly spin up databases is essential for agentic AI success. The deal validates that even advanced data companies need specialized serverless database capabilities to support AI agents that create and manage databases programmatically. Organizations should recognize that traditional database approaches may limit their AI initiatives, while flexible, instantly scalable serverless solutions enable the dynamic resource allocation that modern AI applications demand. For companies still planning their AI roadmap, this acquisition signals that database infrastructure decisions should prioritize serverless capabilities that can adapt quickly to unpredictable AI workloads. This would transform database strategy from a technical consideration to a competitive advantage in delivering responsive, efficient AI solutions.
FS-ISAC report asks financial firms to begin migrating most vulnerable assets to crypto agile encryption algorithms to be able to adapt quickly to the quantum age
The annual threat report from the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or FS-ISAC, identifies key risks driven by geopolitical shifts, emerging technologies and changing criminal tactics. “The report’s findings underscore the complexity and unpredictability of today’s threat landscape,” said Steve Silberstein, CEO of the FS-ISAC said. The report found that stability and continuity of the global financial system remain under constant threat from lone hackers, organized criminal gangs and nation-state actors. However, the overall threat level globally, including for the Americas specifically, is at the lowest of the four levels FS-ISAC has in its Cyber Threat Level, or CTL. The CTL for each region is an industry barometer of cyber risk set by regional Threat Intelligence Committees, or TICs, made up of experts from FS-ISAC member firms. “The relative stability of the CTLs reflects the sector’s ability to manage the changing threat landscape,” the FS-ISAC report reads. “The overall ratings in each region were more stable than they have been in years past,” the report notes. Regardless, TICs have raised concerns about specific elements of the threat environment, which the consortium highlighted in the annual report.For a period of roughly two weeks in May 2024, the cyber threat level in the Americas region increased one level due to ongoing activity by Scattered Spider, the threat actor that compromised MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment in 2023. The report called the threat actor “credible” and “sophisticated,” adding it is believed to be based in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. FS-ISAC members voted to return the threat level from “elevated” back to “guarded” later in the month. Supply chain risk continues to be a primary worry for the financial sector worldwide, according to FS-ISAC. The industry’s significant reliance on third-party vendors increases exposure to disruptions that can have widespread impact. Recent incidents involving software vulnerabilities in common tools like XZ Utils — an open-source data compression software package widely used in almost all Linux distributions — and Managed File Transfer, or MFT, products such as Cleo and MoveIt highlight this risk. Fraud is surging across multiple sectors, targeting firms, customers and employees, according to the FS-ISAC report. “Real-time payments infrastructure, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized finance mechanisms make it virtually impossible to retrieve stolen funds,”
BOK Financial creates a content site offering timely articles and videos on economic and personal finance contributing to higher levels of “earned media” — exposure gained through social media sharing and other channels
Bankers are often reporters’ go-to sources for economic and personal finance coverage. BOK Financial’s CMO Sue Hermann thought the bank could get some direct benefit from that. The possibilities that can be realized when a bank decides to deploy its experts to produce “brand journalism” excited Sue Hermann, CMO at BOK Financial, parent of Bank of Oklahoma. Not only can brand journalism deliver meaningful content to customers and potential customers, rather than the usual pabulum, she says, but it can begin to improve the flagging degree of trust that studies still show the industry suffers from. Today, BOK Financial produces “The Statement,” a content site offering timely articles and videos. The site features four sub-channels — “Your Money,” “Your Business,” “Perspectives” and “Community.” Since 2019 the bank’s team of internal experts and writers, as well as freelance writers, produce approximately 150 articles or videos annually. Hermann says the critical difference is “creating a need, rather than selling a thing. Not talking about checking accounts, but helping people understand the importance of long-term planning for their financial needs.” Brand journalism “is a long-term play and it takes a long time for some people to get on board,” says Megan Ryan, the bank’s director of content strategy. This not only includes superiors who want proof that the technique produces results, but even experts within the bank. She and Hermann say that often the best people on a given subject area start out feeling that they’re just bankers, and not media material. But the bank has tracked reader and viewer behavior in multiple ways and Hermann says the content team is garnering results. The bank tracks return users and Hermann says people come back for more articles and videos. (The bank filters bots and employees out of its figures.) In addition, The Statement contributes to higher levels of “earned media” — exposure gained through social media sharing and other channels. Building exposure for the bank in this way, rather than pouring on email after email and then sending those who click through to a page about checking (yes, this is a bugaboo for Hermann), she says. “There is huge value in delivering information in a way that isn’t salesy, because that aligns with our brand and developing long-term relationships — doing what’s best for the client,” says Hermann. Hermann says the bank learned early on that making a success out of this technique takes dedication and regularity. Another helpful element is cross-pollination. Something setting BOK Financial apart from some other large banks is that both marketing and corporate communications report to Hermann as CMO. In the early days, the two functions tended not to leave their swim lanes, as Hermann calls the divide, but now more sharing of ideas and information regarding The Statement occurs. Meetings with line-of-business staff sometimes prompt marketing staff to ask what questions the bankers are hearing from their customers. This may pinpoint an issue and then the right approach to address it has to be settled. The idea is not just to chime along with other media, but to add a viewpoint of bank experts or a round-up informed by that expertise. Hermann and Ryan says its helpful to have professional journalists on the staff or as regular freelancers, because they are not only comfortable with the need to crank out articles on a timely basis, but also the ability to drop.
Nonbanks are increasingly applying for bank charters to gain inroads into processing transactions and connecting directly to payment infrastructure
Nonbanks, including FinTechs like Fiserv and Stripe, are increasingly applying for bank charters to gain inroads into processing transactions and connecting directly to payment infrastructure. This trend comes against a backdrop of previously muted de novo activity, with regulators potentially easing the application process. Specific limited purpose charters, such as Merchant Acquirer Limited Purpose Banks in Georgia and proposed “payments banks” in Nevada, are emerging that allow connection to rails like FedNow and merchant acquiring activities but prohibit lending. The “Nevada Payments Bank Act” would create new banks that exist for the purpose of money movement. The bill would let new banks connect, directly, to payments infrastructure including FedNow. The door would be open, then, for FinTechs to connect directly to real-time rails. Beyond the scope of those firms, other nonbanks, including retailers, would be able to gain direct access to money movement, which, according to the bill’s sponsors, would lower transaction costs. Those lower costs would come through skirting interchange fees. Securing direct access through these limited charters allows nonbanks and potentially retailers to connect directly to real-time rails, building new revenue streams and foster stronger relationships with merchants. The direct connection to the payment rails and the card rails, as these charters are pursued and granted, would allow these (limited in scope) banks to serve merchants in new ways and in turn, forge stickier relationships with those merchants.
Meta’s study shows shorter reasoning processes in AI systems lead to results that are 34.5% more accurate while reducing computational costs by up to 40%
Researchers from Meta’s FAIR team and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered that forcing large language models to “think” less actually improves their performance on complex reasoning tasks. The study found that shorter reasoning processes in AI systems lead to more accurate results while significantly reducing computational costs. The researchers discovered that within the same reasoning task, “shorter reasoning chains are significantly more likely to yield correct answers — up to 34.5% more accurate than the longest chain sampled for the same question.” This finding held true across multiple leading AI models and benchmarks. Based on these findings, the team developed a novel approach called “short-m@k,” which executes multiple reasoning attempts in parallel but halts computation once the first few processes complete. The final answer is then selected through majority voting among these shorter chains. The researchers found their method could reduce computational resources by up to 40% while maintaining the same level of performance as standard approaches. “Our findings suggest rethinking current methods of test-time compute in reasoning LLMs, emphasizing that longer ‘thinking’ does not necessarily translate to improved performance and can, counter-intuitively, lead to degraded results,” the researchers conclude. The study points toward potential cost savings and performance improvements by optimizing for efficiency rather than raw computing power.
Bank of America seeks to “bring the bank” to merchant services customers, integrating lending services and payments tied to back-office functions and virtual cards
The lines between software vendors, payment processors and merchant services are blurring, leading to changing buying decisions for merchants who are asking for more from their payment providers. Merchants, particularly small and mid-sized enterprises, are looking for service providers to help them run every aspect of their business, including automated employee time tracking, data management, streamlined B2B payments and marketing tools, going beyond transaction services. The merchants themselves are expanding their own business models, which typically involve selling direct to consumers. In doing so, they are leveraging the power of their brand for digital direct-to-consumer experiences, which require the use of payment facilitation or marketplace models. While these models reduce storefront overhead, they drive a new need in helping contend regulatory changes, security concerns and meeting the demands of burgeoning populations of end customers. Value-added services enable those merchants to garner repeat business, to collect data as consumers buy goods and services online — and merchants can offer loyalty and rewards as well as individualized engagement with consumers. Bank of America, for its own part, has conducted its own surveys of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), to ask what merchant services meant to those clients. The customers said they wanted offerings from service providers that help them run every aspect of their business. “They’re looking to these merchant processors and acquirers to provide more than just a transaction service,” Bank of America Merchant Solutions Head Wally Mlynarski said. These growing companies want automated employee time tracking, data management to optimize inventory and streamlined B2B payments — along with marketing tools to enhance their presence across digital and mobile channels. For Bank of America, Mlynarski said, “We don’t stop at integrating into the merchant’s business — we want to integrate into the financial lives of the merchants well. We try to bring the bank to our customers and operate in their territory,” integrating, for example, lending services so that capital is available as needed, with payments tied to back-office functions so that merchants can pay their suppliers efficiently with virtual cards. Bank of America, Mlynarski said, has used a partnership approach to deliver those value-added service to merchant clients in the retail, restaurant and healthcare verticals, among others. “Building those partnerships fill any gaps we might have,” he said, and underpin long-term sustainable growth. In some cases, he said, client firms are seeking data and analytics functions from those clients, with integrations into enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Healthcare is a key example here, where back-office money movement needs to break free from paper-based communications and paper checks. Bank of America, he said, has been working to digitize those operations. Looking ahead, no matter whether they are consumer-facing or emanating from the back office, payments themselves should be intuitive and experiential, said Mlynarski, adding that transactions “should be in the background and automatic,” and they soon will be with artificial intelligence (AI) and biometrics.