KIAN JACKSON

For the past couple of years, the technology sector has been obsessed with a single question: Which AI agent will win? Founders, enterprise leaders, and venture capitalists have poured billions into reasoning models, multi-agent frameworks, and autonomous workflow orchestrators. Everyone has been competing on intelligence quotients, prompt chaining efficiency, and task completion rates. However, as we move deeper into 2026, a profound realization is dawning on fintech founder

For years, the fintech industry has treated stablecoins as the "awkward middle child" of finance: too fast for traditional banks, yet too pegged to fiat for the crypto-purists. But as of July 2026, that narrative hasn't just shifted; it has been completely rewritten. Yesterday’s announcement that Marqeta: the global modern card issuing giant: has integrated Zero Hash’s stablecoin infrastructure represents a tectonic shift in the payments landscape. We aren’t just talking abou

If you’re still designing your checkout experience for a human thumb, you’re already behind. As we hit the mid-point of 2026, the fintech landscape has shifted. We have moved beyond the "Chatbot Era" and entered the age of Agentic Commerce. This isn’t just another buzzword to throw into a pitch deck; it is a fundamental re-architecting of how money moves across the globe. According to recent data from Juniper Research, the total transaction value mediated by AI agents is expe

If you’re a fintech founder or a CEO in 2026, you’ve likely faced the “Build vs. Buy” dilemma a dozen times. But when it comes to your payment infrastructure, the stakes have never been higher. In the early days of fintech, "building" meant writing some custom code to talk to a gateway. Today, "building" means managing real-time settlement across multiple rails, integrating stablecoin liquidity, and navigating an Australian regulatory landscape that has become significantly m

The era of human-exclusive commerce is effectively over. If you’re a fintech founder or an executive in the payments space, you’ve likely spent the last decade optimising for "one-click" checkouts and reducing friction for human thumbs. But as we move through June 2026, the game has fundamentally shifted. We are no longer just building for humans. We are building for agents. Stripe, the undisputed heavyweight of payment infrastructure, hasn’t just been watching this trend; th

If you still think the primary user of your checkout page is a human being with a thumb and a credit card, you’re already behind the curve. Welcome to the post-human economy. By 2027, "human-initiated" payments will officially become the minority. We aren't just talking about automated direct debits or recurring subscriptions. We’re talking about Agentic Commerce: a world where autonomous AI agents: tasked with everything from optimising cloud compute to restaging your fridge

If you feel like the fintech world is moving at breakneck speed, you’re not alone. Just when we finally got our heads around stablecoin settlement and real-time payment rails, the goalposts have shifted again. This week, Alipay: the giant that essentially invented the modern mobile wallet: dropped a bombshell that is set to redefine how we think about "users" in the payments ecosystem. They’ve launched the world’s first AI Wallet and a developer-facing platform called Token P

If you’ve been following the fintech space for more than five minutes, you’ve probably heard the buzz about "agentic workflows." We’ve spent the last two years talking about AI that can write code, AI that can draft emails, and AI that can hallucinate a legal brief with terrifying confidence. But until recently, there was a glaring, multi-billion-dollar hole in the narrative: AI agents couldn’t actually buy anything. That changed on May 8, 2026. Visa, the titan of global paym

If you’ve been following the fintech space for a while, you’ve probably developed a healthy amount of "crypto fatigue." For years, we were promised a revolution that felt more like a rollercoaster of speculative bubbles and "to the moon" tweets. But while the hype-machine was busy elsewhere, the actual plumbing of global finance was being quietly rebuilt. It’s now May 2026, and the conversation has shifted. We’re no longer talking about whether digital assets have value; we’r

If you’d told a payments executive five years ago that the world’s biggest card networks would be fighting over blockchain infrastructure, they probably would’ve laughed you out of the boardroom. Fast forward to May 2026, and the laughter has stopped. It’s been replaced by the sound of billion-dollar wire transfers. The headline act? Mastercard’s massive $1.8 billion acquisition of BVNK. But this isn't just one company making a speculative play. We are witnessing a fundamenta

It’s April 2026, and the "future of work" in fintech isn’t a future anymore: it’s the current reality. If you’re sitting in a Payment Operations (PayOps) team today, the landscape looks fundamentally different than it did even 18 months ago. We aren’t just talking about better spreadsheets or "smarter" macros. We’re talking about a structural shift where AI is no longer a tool; it’s a team member. The headline might sound like clickbait, but the math is starting to back it up

For the last couple of years, the world has been obsessed with what AI can say . We’ve marvelled at its ability to draft emails, write code, and hallucinate a legal brief or two. But in 2026, the conversation has fundamentally shifted. We’re no longer interested in what AI can say; we’re focused on what AI can do . And "doing" things in a capitalist society requires one specific capability: the ability to pay. The era of the "Agentic Economy" is officially here, and it is eat

Before we dive into the massive legislative shifts coming out of Washington, we need to talk about something happening right in your pocket. Dwayne Gefferie recently dropped some truth bombs on LinkedIn about the slow demise of the traditional co-branded credit card. You know the ones: the airline card that gives you miles you never use, or the department store card that offers 10% off a pair of jeans once a year. The reality? These legacy models are losing their edge, and th

For decades, we’ve thought of Visa as the giant behind the plastic in our wallets. They were the "pipes" of the financial world: the invisible infrastructure that made sure when you tapped your card for a flat white in Sydney or a souvenir in Paris, the money moved from point A to point B. But the world of payments is changing, and the "toll booth" model of taking a tiny slice of every transaction is under threat. Regulation is tightening, competition from real-time payment r

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the global payments landscape lately, you’ll know that the goalposts aren't just moving: they’re being completely redesigned. As we charge through 2026, the strategy shifts we’re seeing from the giants are no longer about incremental gains. They are about fundamental survival in a world that has finally, irreversibly, gone digital-first. Dwayne Gefferie recently dropped a masterclass breakdown of the Mastercard 2026 Strategy, and if you’re a f

If you’ve been paying attention to the global payments landscape lately, you’ll know that the old guard of "dumb pipe" processing is effectively dead. As we navigate the complexities of 2026, the gap between simple transaction handlers and strategic growth partners has become a chasm. In his recent breakdown, "The Payments Strategy 2026," industry veteran Dwayne Gefferie highlighted a shift that every fintech founder and executive needs to bake into their roadmap: the transit

For over a decade, the narrative in fintech was one of consolidation. Stripe, the poster child of the silicon-valley-to-global-dominance pipeline, succeeded by offering the "everything" stack. It was a monolith of convenience: one API for payments, billing, fraud prevention, and reporting. If you were starting a company, you didn't think; you just integrated Stripe. But the winds are shifting. As we navigate the mid-2020s, the "all-in-one" dream is being replaced by a more so

Here's the uncomfortable truth: your Instagram followers aren't paying your bills. Your brand advocates are. You've got 50,000 followers, engagement rates that make the marketing team smile, and a content calendar that'd make a military operation look disorganised. But when you look at your actual sales data, there's a frustrating disconnect. Those likes and shares aren't translating into foot traffic or transactions. Not in any measurable way, anyway. Enter Social Loyalty, t

Here's something wild: a 22-year-old sees a cafe's matcha latte on TikTok at 9am, taps "save," then rocks up at 11am to order it in person: expecting it to be in stock, priced exactly as advertised, and paid for with the same frictionless experience they'd get online. If your POS system can't handle that journey, you're already behind. Welcome to the era of social POS : where the line between discovery, desire, and transaction has blurred so completely that your point-of-sale

Your POS system was supposed to make life easier. Instead, it's a glorified calculator that records what's already happened. You ring up a sale. It logs the transaction. End of story. But what if your POS didn't just record revenue, what if it actively generated it? That's exactly what's happening right now with agentic AI. And if you're running a café, restaurant, bar, or hotel in 2026, this shift isn't just interesting, it's existential. What the Hell Is Agentic AI, Anyw