As a part of Tech Week NYC and in collaboration with Tech:NYC, J.P. Morgan Payments convened industry leaders and members of the media to discuss the latest trends in fintech and technology in New York and beyond. The event, which played to a standing-room-only crowd, also featured a dynamic panel discussion featuring Julie Samuels, President and CEO of Tech:NYC, Nicole Casperson, founder & CEO of Fintech Is Femme, and Dennis Owusu-Sem, COO of This Week in Fintech. Moderated by CNBC reporter Hugh Son, the conversation explored fintech media trends and the evolving narrative around New York City’s growing technology ecosystem. Looking ahead, Shivananda highlighted four trends that he believes will define the future of payments.
- Planet-scale architectures: These systems are designed to deploy globally, comply locally and serve personally. Shivananda acknowledged that this is not an easy problem to solve, particularly given the regulatory complexities across jurisdictions. But he believes solving for this scale is foundational to delivering personalized, compliant experiences worldwide. Digital ledger transformation: Digital ledgers have “an opportunity to reshape payments completely.” While consumer experiences have become more seamless, often ambient and invisible, the core infrastructure has stayed largely unchanged for decades. “That’s beginning to shift,” he said, as the foundation becomes more “scaled, flexible, agile, nimble [and] innovation-friendly.” With digital payments evolving, cryptographic security has become even more central. Shivananda described this as part of the foundation that enables trust and safety at scale: “Delivering security the way our customers expect it, in fact, probably better than our customers expect it sometimes, is now table stakes.”
- Artificial intelligence: J.P. Morgan Payments is applying AI across both internal systems and emerging client-facing solutions. Shivananda described a two-by-two framework — assist vs. act, internal vs. external — and noted that while much of the current focus is on internal use cases like risk management, “with the right focus on guardrails… you can take it out to the customer.” He emphasized the importance of innovation, trust, ethics, and regulatory alignment as AI capabilities evolve and are introduced to clients as commercialized use cases.