Hey, fintech fam 💜

FTW: San Francisco starts in less than one week, and this is the last Thursday newsletter before we're all in the room together. I can’t WAIT to see you!

So instead of the usual three stories from the news, I'm doing something different:

The Top 3 From FTW: San Francisco, one highlight from each summit. And I’m genuinely so excited about every single piece of this speaker lineup.

Oh, and we just added something new: We’ll have a special live performance by a musical guest throughout the day during the Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit on September 30.

I've been building this agenda for months, and writing this made me realize just how much is actually happening across three days…

Wealth transfer. Agent infrastructure. Invisible movement. Trust, treated as the actual product. Speed versus stewardship, and who gets to decide which one wins in a given moment.

But underneath it all is a bigger one: What happens to financial services when AI stops being the experiment and starts becoming part of how the industry actually works?

That’s what I want us to figure out together in San Francisco.

If you haven't grabbed your ticket yet… grab it now and let’s get into it. ✨

#TRENDING

Every Thursday, I break down the fintech stories that matter most — grounded in my reporting, interviews with industry leaders, and what I’m seeing unfold across the industry.

I've been building FTW: SF’s agenda for months, and here's how it all culminates: AI isn't something fintech companies are just experimenting with anymore. 

It's quite literally starting to change how financial products get built, who does the work, and how leaders actually make decisions. 

That’s a really, really important conversation to have. I can’t overstate it enough. That’s why this entire agenda is built around that fact.

Fintech touches every industry on earth. AI is touching every industry on earth.

How do fintechs use AI in a way that helps businesses and consumers without abandoning the trust financial services has quite literally spent decades building?

Alexandra Mysoor, Founder & CEO of Alix, is opening the day with the Great Wealth Transfer, but not as your usual story about where trillions of dollars are headed. 

We know that story. The Great Wealth Transfer is happening.

This is a story about who does the actual, unpaid work of moving that money (hint: it’s mostly women), and whether AI can finally make one of the hardest financial transitions in a family's life feel a little less daunting.

It’s also mostly invisible work, and you’ll actually notice that theme of invisible work throughout the event. Whether it’s from people, machines, or infrastructure.

If any part of your customer demographic includes women (aka everyone), you need to make time for this session.

From there, we go straight into the agent era. And we’re bringing people on stage who are actually pioneering the agentic movement in fintech. 

Francine Loza of Gradient Labs and Stas Johnson-Chyzhykov of Rho are getting into what happens when AI moves from surfacing an insight to making decisions and taking actions inside regulated financial workflows. 

What agentic action looks like for customers. What agentic action looks like when you zoom out and consider all angles of the business. 

Jenny Flores, Co-Founder & CEO of AMH Catalyst Center, follows with a different angle: how do we connect capital to women and underestimated founders?

Women-led companies generate 2.5x the revenue per dollar invested, yet receive less than 2% of funding. AMH Catalyst (and Jenny’s session at FTW: SF) are changing that. 

Don’t miss this.

And if you’re not raising anytime soon, invite a friend who is. Imagine your invite secures them $1M+ in fundraising, all because you forwarded this email. 

(BTW… this is a real story that happened at FTW once! Someone left with the tools to go out and secure a $1M raise less than a month later. It was so incredible and one of my favorites to share!)

After a networking break, Laurel Taylor of Candidly and Zeynep Inanoglu Ozdemir of Legora are asking this foundational question that sets everything else we’re talking about in motion: what happens when AI stops being a feature and starts changing how entire industries function? 

Of all the questions we’re raising during FTW: SF, this one is probably the most critical.

We HAVE to get clear on what it means to go from just a feature to changing entire antiquated industries, and how other industries' AI usage will impact fintech.

We touch every industry on the planet, and so does AI. Our moves don’t just impact fintech, but industries in every sector globally.

Then Laurel comes back with Racquel Oden of HSBC and Debbie Hsu of Experian Consumer Services for one of my favorite titles on the agenda: You Can't Move Fast and Break Things With People's Money. 

You already know this, but financial services doesn't get Silicon Valley's move-fast, break-things luxury. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Because the products being tested touch people's money, identities, and financial futures. We don’t always get the privilege of moving fast and breaking things.

What should a company own vs. buy or partner with existing companies? AI changes how fast products and customer experiences can get built.

But moving fast looks different for fintechs who can’t (and shouldn’t) always move fast. In the same vein, who do we trust enough to partner with in the agentic era?

Rodney Robinson of TabaPay, Agustina Sacerdote of Affirm, and Jaspreet Singh of Visa Direct are tackling this.

Then I'm joining Lauren McCollom of Grasshopper, Akankshu Dhawan of Xero, and Nicole Dunn of Baselayer for Who Banks the AI Agent?, on what happens when AI moves from surfacing an insight to actually interacting with banking infrastructure.

Maria Camila Ramirez of Ontop and Maya Mikhailov of Savvi AI close out the founder track with the question hanging over every fundraising conversation in fintech right now: where AI is creating real competitive risk, where the fear is overblown, and what changes when the cost and speed of building a company fundamentally shifts.

We're closing the Leadership Summit with Plaid CMO Hannah Hughes, and it picks up exactly where I left off in Tuesday's newsletter: AI needs trusted financial data, connectivity, and infrastructure before anything on this stage today actually works.

Every session on this stage asks the same question from a myriad of POVs: what does leadership look like when the tools (AI) change faster than the org chart does? 

Leaders: your team is looking to you to lead the AI charge. They have questions about how it will impact their work. Do you have the answers?

Wealth transfer, agent infrastructure, industry transformation, build-versus-buy, founder risk; none of those problems wait for a company to finish its AI strategy before they show up. 

The Leadership Summit teaches you to make decisions at speed without breaking the trust the whole system depends on.

During FTW: NY, Chime’s COO, Janelle Sallenave, told a room that Jade, the company's AI support system, now resolves more than 70% of inbound member interactions end-to-end. And its Net Promoter Score went up.

Heading into FTW:SF’s Security Summit, I’ve been thinking about that number a lot, because most companies treat automation and trust as a trade-off. 

Sallenave has a specific explanation for why Chime avoids that conundrum. 

Fourteen years of transaction data lets Jade make an individualized call on each member's situation instead of applying a one-size-fits-all policy to everyone, so a faster resolution is also a more accurate one. 

That is what actually moved the NPS number, and it’s backed up at the business level too, with its first GAAP-profitable quarter as a public company, 10.2 million active members, and third place in Newsweek's ranking of America's most trusted financial companies. 

Since FTW: NY in April, the questions surrounding this have gotten even harder.

Things are moving faster than ever. More AI announcements have been made. Partnerships have been launched. More money has been poured into AI.

The questions are going from “do I use AI” to “everyone is using AI… how do I use it in a way that actually works for my business?” in a matter of months. Imagine what it will look like this time next year.

As we dive into the "scamdemic" (increasingly sophisticated fraud, fragmented defenses, and scammers exploiting human behavior faster than most institutions can respond), we're asking what it actually means to authenticate and authorize an autonomous agent acting on someone's behalf. 

We're asking what happens to fraud when the cost of impersonating someone approaches zero. And most importantly, we're asking: what is the gap between being compliant and actually being secure? 

Sallenave and I are sitting down for Trust Is the Product, and I want to know what she's learned since April.

Can automation and trust really keep compounding together at this scale? What is at risk of breaking when we go all in? 

The authentication and authorization question for AI agents is coming for every fintech eventually.

Let’s be the fintechs who figure out how to earn trust at the same speed we’re automating. And companies like Chime are leading the charge.

They have the infrastructure and the resources to make mistakes and learn at scale. Smaller fintechs don’t. That’s why they’re stealing Chime’s playbook.

Invisible infrastructure, we meet again. 

The entire Fintech Summit conversation (September 29th, day 1!) is anchored by Green Dot, featuring two panels that build directly on each other.

First, Renata Caine, SVP of Embedded Finance at Green Dot, sits down with Natasha Vernier, COO of Bretton AI, for The Invisible Wallet: Building Financial Infrastructure People Trust. 

It's the same idea as Plaid’s story, but this time from the embedded finance side: the financial products people trust most are increasingly the ones they never notice are there at all.

Then Caine stays onstage, joined by Elizabeth Cox of Fiserv and Brittany Decker of Visa alongside Vernier, for Speed Up vs. Slow Down, touching on a message that will quite literally determine AI’s future in fintech: where can financial services move faster with AI, and where do the fundamentals still require slowing down? 

Just like this idea (what happens when AI stops being a feature and starts changing how entire industries function?), deciding where to move faster vs. speed up quite literally determines how we use AI in fintech long term.

It determines which jobs change, which remain the same, and how to hire in the future. It determines what tools get built and what infrastructure we choose to invest in as a business.

Green Dot's own Chief Risk Officer, Kim Olson, made a related point when I spoke with her at the SOLO Reliance Summit this summer (you can find that conversation on Humans of Fintech): safeguards belong in a product's foundation from the very start. 

That seems obvious, but if you join this session, you’ll soon realize just how many businesses aren’t building with safeguards in place.

You might be surprised to find that you have some work to do in this area; most companies do. Don’t miss this! 

Embedded finance is spreading AI-driven speed across more of the financial stack than ever, but trust, compliance, and reliability don't move at software speed just because everything around them does. 

When everything around you is accelerating, how do you pause and determine what should stay the same?

Every leader is grappling with this right now, and FTW: SF is where leaders like Renata are laying it all on the table.

Where is fintech going next? How do we lead through the next era?

And who controls trust in the financial system we're building?

Next week, we stop talking about FTW: SF and actually get in the room. Industry-defining decisions are made here.

If you've been waiting to decide whether to join us, this is it.

VIP tickets are the only guaranteed ticket type that grants you access to FTW: SF speakers.

Secure your VIP tickets today!

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That wraps up today’s edition—thanks for reading! Until next week, keep innovating and challenging the status quo.

See you Tuesday (and in SF)?

Love,

Nicole 💜