One Vision Podcast — Fintech, Banking & AI with Theodora Lau

Briana Marbury grew up in Detroit with one bank in the neighborhood. She opened an account after her first job. Then came the overdraft fees, and the fees on the fees. She had a choice: gas and groceries, or the bank. The bank account closed. So she went to the check-cashing place on the corner, five dollars at a time, for years — while the unpaid fees went to collections and marked a credit file that had barely started. Financial exclusion doesn't always look like someone outside the banking system. Sometimes it looks like a closed account, a check-cashing counter, and a damaged credit file. Briana Marbury, President & CEO of Interledger Foundation, joins Theodora Lau to talk about living it — and about the unglamorous infrastructure work that could stop it happening to someone else.But technology in and of itself was not going to be enough. They close the conversation on what’s next: Mexico, Colombia, and a growing push into US community banks and CDFIs. And on what gives Briana hope: that when she walks into a room with a government, they're not asking whether interoperability matters. They're asking how fast it can happen.Hot take 🔥"I have a choice between either buying gas, buying groceries, or paying a bank fee bill — when I can go access my money right away at this corner store for five dollars."🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: fintech, personal finance, financial inclusion, payments, cross-border payments, remittances, Interledger Protocol, Briana Marbury, Interledger Foundation#FinancialInclusion #CrossBorderPayments #Fintech #PaymentsTimestamp:00:00 Welcome and Introductions01:09 Interledger Foundation Origins02:59 Hidden Financial Exclusion05:54 Personal Stories and Literacy07:55 Interoperability for Inclusion09:16 Fixing Cross Border Payments13:48 Why Fees Persist15:50 Lessons Working with Regulators18:11 Plans for 2027 More about our guest 🌐Briana Marbury on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianamarbury/ 🌐Interledger Foundation: https://interledger.org/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision

Every few years someone tells us banking is about to be disrupted. It never quite happens. So when Dharmesh Mistry and Lou Carlozo came on to talk about their new book, The Intelligent Ledger, I asked: Why is this time different?Dharmesh's take? Banking has adopted plenty of individual technologies, from mainframe to client-server, internet, mobile, cloud. None of them disrupted anything. But the iPhone didn't win by being a better phone. Nokia was building a better phone. Kodak was building a better camera. Garmin was building a better GPS. The iPhone was all of them at once, and the market reorganised around it in under five years.His claim is that banking now has its own version of that convergence — what he and Lou call the Quanvergence: open, accessible data; agentic AI; tokenisation; and quantum, arriving together rather than in sequence. Not the best AI bank. Not the best tokenised rails. All of it, in one place. So platform or pipe? And who will win? 📱 The Intelligent Ledger ships at the end of September from Palgrave Macmillan. Hot take 🔥"Banks have already chosen pipe, but they're not admitting it. Nobody wants to hear it. If you're selling products and that's all that you're doing, you're making your money from margin on a product — that makes you a pipe. So just admit it and get on with it." — Dharmesh MistryHot take 🔥"Change or die by 2032." — Lou Carlozo🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, Agentic AI, AI, Quantum, Digital Transformation, Tokenization Timestamp:00:00 Welcome and Guests00:50 Introducing The Intelligent Ledger03:29 Why Five Years06:58 Convergence and Platform Shift09:31 Skepticism and CEO Courage13:38 Four Forces 17:10 Small Banks Can Compete22:05 Bold Claims and 2032 Deadline34:37 Release Dates and Where to BuyMore about our guests 🌐Dharmesh Mistry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dharmeshmistry2020/ 🌐Lou Carlozo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loucarlozo/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

🎙️Agentic Commerce's Real Bottleneck Isn't the Technology — with Jas ShahA year and a half ago, agentic commerce was going to change everything. Type a prompt, get a package. So what actually happened?In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Theodora Lau sits down with fintech product expert Jas Shah for a clear-eyed look at where agentic commerce really stands. The technology has mobilized, but as Jas puts it, becoming ready is not the same as being ready. Disputes, chargebacks, and fraud liability haven't been solved for a world where transaction volume could rise exponentially. And consumer behavior hasn't moved at all: they will use AI for discovery, then still tap Apple Pay to buy. The conversation turns on a single test: utility. Where an agent removes genuine administrative burden, it wins. Where the person actually wants to choose, it doesn't. Which is why Jas argues the real early adopters are businesses: inventory systems, product codes, predictable repeat purchasing, and a procurement decision that comes down to price and delivery speed. Ready for a bold bet for 2030? It involves a wallet … 💬Hot take: "The tech is becoming ready, but I don't think anyone can say it's ready yet."🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, AI, Agentic Commerce Timestamp:00:00 Welcome and Intro00:57 Agentic Commerce Reality Check04:45 Trust and Value Exchange08:55 Why Businesses Adopt First11:29 Authorization and Fraud Guardrails13:22 PSPs and Wallets Strategy17:27 What People Get Wrong19:23 Agentic Finance for SMEs24:37 Personal Finance Utility27:18 Bold Bet for 2030More about our guest 🌐Jas Shah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jas-shah/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

In this week’s One Vision Podcast, Theodora Lau hosts Kathryn Outlaw, Co-Founder and COO of Spheros, a B2B SaaS platform that aims to unify client data into a single source of truth, enabling accurate, consented data sharing and supporting reliable AI agents. Kathryn talks about her entrepreneurial journey, the inspiration behind the startup, and the goal of making Spheros as essential as DocuSign for onboarding.💬Hot take:  ”Banks don't have a data scarcity problem. They have a data comprehension problem.” 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, Data, Banking Industry Timestamp:00:00 Welcome And Guest Intro01:27 From Banking To Startup04:06 Why Spheros Exists07:58 Agents And Data Consent10:30 Open Banking Pathways15:31 Founder Lessons Learned17:01 Defining Success AheadMore about our guest 🌐Kathryn Outlaw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathrynoutlaw/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

🎙️ "Delight is a deposit strategy."In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Angela Scott, Sales Enablement leader at Zions, joins host Theodora Lau, to discuss her idea that “delight is a deposit strategy,” arguing banks can win deposits by creating intuitive, responsive, and even enjoyable experiences that make money movement easy, especially when digital experiences are constrained by shared core and app vendors. They get into: Why delight isn’t fluffWhy the best deposit strategy makes money easy to move in and outThe chick-and-egg trap of building on the same handful of core and app providersFinancial literacy, and why communities shouldn’t bear the burdenWhy we need to make banking more legibleAngela stresses balancing efficiency and humanity through employee, digital, and brand experience to build trust. 💬 "If you want deposits, you have to bring the right environment to set them free."🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, FinancialServices, Banking Industry, Financial Inclusion, Financial Literacy 00:00 Welcome and Introductions01:05 Delight as Deposit Strategy04:43 Banking UX and Vendor Limits07:16 Neobank Story and Micro Delights11:46 Angela’s Origin Story17:22 Inclusion and Literacy Work25:29 Digital Efficiency vs Human Touch33:02 Brand Experience and Differentiation36:56 Takeaways and GoodbyeMore about our guest 🌐Angela Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-scott-a2348827/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Theo chats with Huyen Tran from US Bank and founder/investor at Elys Ventures. Huyen shares her path from computer engineering and early real-estate investing to two decades in banking product leadership and P&L ownership. She discusses why banks can appear slow due to resilience, regulation, legacy systems, and trust requirements, and how AI will accelerate prototyping, testing, data analysis, and iterative product development while meeting customer expectations for personalization and security amid rising fraud. A must-listen episode on startup, innovation, relationship building, and ecosystem thinking. 🔥"What value are you creating for everyone involved? ...Just don't forget about the people."🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: AI, Fintech, FinancialServices, VC, Startups, Banking Industry Timestamps:00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro00:53 Path to Banking05:17 Are Banks Really Slow?08:09 AI Changing Bank Product10:39 Customer Expectations and Trust13:27 Inside Elys Ventures14:18 Moats in the AI Era18:37 Founder Questions and Cycles20:27 Advice for New Founders23:41 Closing More about our guest 🌐Huyen Tran on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huyen-tran-09a580aa/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision **