With spring in full swing, we’ve got another doubleheader in our Streamly Snapshot series in store for you this week.

To start, we talked with Philip Froom, Founder and CEO at PayIP, about navigating the complexity of payment networks. Froom discussed how PayIP leverages advanced technologies such as AI and machine learning to uncover hidden value for banks and fintechs around the world.

“Banks and fintechs around the world pay a lot of money, billions of dollars to the payment networks—the payment networks being Visa, Mastercard, American Express, UnionPay. Our clients pay fortunes and the money and the billing from the payment networks back to the banks is extremely complicated. There’s thousands of different billing line items from fixed fees to variable fees, tiered fees, daily, weekly, annual fees.”

Headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, PayIP specializes in payment network (Visa and Mastercard) billing recovery and optimization. The company leverages decades of card and data expertise to simplify complex card network invoices and reporting, and identifies recoveries for bank finance and card payment teams.

Next, we talked with Jurgen Vandenbroucke, Managing Director at everyoneINVESTED, KBC, about the value of decision science and how it can be effectively applied to financial services. We also discussed the Great Wealth transfer, and the challenges faced by financial services companies when it comes to serving a new generation of investors.

“Decision science is a broad field. I think a more popular term is perhaps choice architecture in the sense of putting into models (people’s) decision-making process as much as possible in order to anticipate their behavior … For example, trying to optimize the small screen of a smartphone in order to present data in such a way that it triggers desired behavior or discourages undesired behavior.”

Brussels-based everyoneINVESTED helps financial institutions increase their investor conversions, fortify their customer base, and put behavioral finance to work to help them have more of their clients invest in their solutions. A wealthtech spin-off of KBC, everyoneINVESTED was named to FinTech Global’s WealthTech100 for the fifth consecutive year.

Photo by Steshka Willems

In today’s data-saturated world, the ability to visualize information in a meaningful way is no longer just a nice-to-have—it’s a competitive advantage. Financial institutions, fintechs, and large enterprises are increasingly turning to AI-driven data visualization tools to unlock insights, improve decision-making, and streamline operations.

In a recent conversation on Streamly, Plotly European Sales Director Andy Wisbey shared how organizations can harness the full power of their data using advanced visualization tools. The discussion touched on common pain points financial institutions face when scaling AI, as well as the benefits of enabling cross-functional teams to explore and communicate data insights more effectively.

“What we’ve seen over the last few years is really a move towards more things like GenAI, where perhaps with large language models we’re doing more analysis around predictive analytics. So, we’re trying to predict where the market might go if certain conditions are met. And that really is going to encompass both structured and unstructured data.”

Plotly, best known for its open-source graphing libraries and enterprise-grade data visualization platform Dash, helps organizations turn complex datasets into accessible visual insights. With its low-code capabilities, Dash enables data scientists and business analysts to build powerful, interactive dashboards using Python without needing to rely on front-end developers. Dash Enterprise supports secure, scalable deployments across large teams, making it a popular choice for banks, insurance firms, and governments.

Andy Wisbey brings nearly two decades of experience in enterprise software sales and has a deep understanding of the challenges financial institutions face when trying to operationalize AI. At Plotly, Wisbey focuses on helping clients across Europe use Dash Enterprise to enhance their data storytelling, improve regulatory compliance, and drive innovation. His passion lies in helping organizations bridge the gap between technical teams and business stakeholders through effective data visualization.

Photo courtesy Cottonbro via Pexels

This week’s edition of Streamly Snapshot features a pair of conversations from FinovateEurope discussing two of the hottest topics in fintech in 2025: AI and compliance.

First up, my interview with Christian Blaser (LinkedIn), Chief Technology Officer with b-next. Blaser discusses compliance for financial institutions, including specific issues in trade surveillance, insider compliance, personal account dealings, and market abuse. Blaser also provides his perspective on the role of AI and machine learning in enhancing compliance for financial institutions.

“What we initially did when we built our platform and our solutions was focus on modularity. We can easily come up with new solutions and our customers can always pick and choose from whatever offerings we provide to them. It definitely helps the client’s ability to react to any regulatory changes very, very fast.”

Founded in 1989, b-next is a compliance solutions provider and specialist in capital markets trading surveillance. With offices in Germany, the UK, and the US, b-next serves banks, brokers, supervisory entities, and energy suppliers with the solutions they need in order to meet regulatory requirements and manage operational risks.

Second, Ben Goldin (LinkedIn), Founder and CEO of Plumery talks about the rise and evolution of lifestyle banking, as well as other key trends in digital banking such as the role of AI and the demand for hyper-personalization. Goldin also discusses the impact of generative AI on all aspects of banking and what he believes is the “secret” to successful modernization in financial services.

“Plumery is a digital banking company. We’ve built a technology that we call Digital Success Fabric. The mission of Digital Success Fabric is to modernize the banking experience and essentially democratize access to delightful experiences for financial institutions globally.”

Headquartered in Amsterdam and founded in 2016, Plumery offers a digital banking experience platform that empowers financial institutions to launch their own mobile and online applications. The company’s developer-friendly platform supports constant enhancement of the customer experience, helping financial institutions meet the demands of an increasingly digital-first, tech-savvy customer base.

Photo by Pixabay

From the continued relevance of paper checks to the rapid growth of digital technology, payments continues to be one of the most fascinating — and important — areas in fintech.

In this week’s Streamly interview, William Mills, CEO of the William Mills Agency, talks with Kevin Brown, CMO and Head of Corporate Development for Onbe. The two men discuss a variety of key issues in the payments world, including the potential for AI to revolutionize payment systems and the future of cross-border payments.

“One of the very prevalent modalities, or payment instruments, that still exist are paper-based checks. We did research with the team at Oliver Wyman and, in 2023, there were still 1.7 trillion dollars of paper check or cash-based B2C payments. A huge amount of paper that’s out there. Checks are dated, not a great customer experience, require action on behalf of the consumer and they’re really expensive to corporate clients … As an industry, we have a huge opportunity to still alleviate a significant amount of pain, both for the ultimate enterprises and then their consumers and recipients, just by the doing away of paper checks.”

Onbe manages and modernizes consumer and workforce disbursements for corporate customers. The company’s technology platform powers a suite of turnkey managed disbursement solutions that enable its customers to outsource their entire B2C disbursement operations. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Onbe was founded in 1996. Bala Janakiraman Iyer is CEO.

In his role at Onbe, Kevin Brown leads marketing, corporate development, business development, and communications. A fintech and payments operator with experience at both public and private equity-backed businesses, Brown is a graduate of Marist College (BA) and Pace University (MBA).

Photo by Nubia Navarro (nubikini)

How is digital transformation impacting community banking? What can community banks do to maximize the opportunities that digitalization can provide? And what role should enabling technologies like AI play in helping community banks develop new products, new services, and new sources of revenue?

These are some of the questions posed to our fintech experts in our latest Streamly Subject Snapshot video on the digital transformation of community banking. Today’s conversation features insights and observations from:

Barb Maclean, SVP, Head of Technology Operations and Implementation at Coastal Community Bank (Linkedin)

“Your customers today are expecting to interact with their money at the time and place and mechanism of their choosing and they’re going to drive it off their phone, for the most part. So if you haven’t yet put in the kind of technology that enables them to do that in the way that they choose to do it, when they choose to do it, you’re definitely already behind the eight ball.”

John Waupsh, Chief Revenue Officer at Manifest Financial (LinkedIn)

“Certainly a lot of time the core is the scapegoat, whether it’s a real issue or not. ‘We as a bank have a challenge with X or building Y or doing some tactical thing because our data is being held by the core’ … The end of the story here is while it’s very challenging to switch core providers, every core, just like every vendor, wants to keep their customers around, wants to keep their clients around. So having progressive discussions with these providers, at an executive level, sharing strategy and moving forward together can usually be very productive.”

Brian Solis, Author of Mindshift: Ignite Change, Inspire Action, and Innovate for a Better Tomorrow (LinkedIn)

“Right now we have an ability to run our company as an intelligent company, an AI-first company, one that’s more intelligent, more integrated, and one that’s more focused on not just using AI to automate what we do, but looking to unlock the future. It’s prioritizing the use of AI in shaping new business models and operational models, products, services, with AI influencing every decision, from the problems the company chooses to solve, to explore new horizons, to the way it interacts with customers and employees.”

Jason Henrichs, CEO at Alloy Labs (LinkedIn)

“Building the relationship is not about being personable, about saying, ‘Oh, we’ve got dog treats in our branch.’ That’s not going to grow your deposits. You need to bundle in additional services that grow your deposits without growing the cost of those. These include things like, say, account protection against scams and frauds. Things like an AI assistant that helps you answer tough questions about retirement and health care choices attached to it.”

Greg Palmer, Vice President at Finovate (LinkedIn)

“Community banks are in desperate need of new technologies, but they lack the resources that some of their larger competitors have, which means there’s a real opportunity for fintechs to come in and help them, give them new access to technologies that they need to stay competitive with their larger counterparts.”

Digital Transformation of Community Banks

Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash