[00:00:00] Amir Sarhangi: One of the ways that actually banks, especially retail banks can help is bank can essentially tokenize your identity and your purchasing history right through the bank experience as an example. So there is ways to essentially know that this agent really is working on behalf of a human versus a scalper that’s trying to buy a hundred tickets.

[00:00:21] The Digital Banking Podcast is powered by tfo Tyfone is the creator of Infiniti, a ally better digital banking platform for community financial institutions, as well as several platform agnostic revenue generating point solutions. Our highly configurable platform and broad ecosystem of third party partners ensure our entire suite is scalable and extensible to meet the needs of any FI.

[00:00:46] On our podcast, you will hear host Josh DeTar, discuss today’s most pressing financial technology topics with seasoned industry experts from every possible discipline.

[00:01:05] 

[00:02:04] Josh DeTar: Welcome to another episode of the Digital Banking Podcast. My guest today is Amir Sarangi, the CEO and co-founder of Skyfire. Oh goodness. Another episode on AI and payments. Really? Yes. Really. and I’m actually super pumped about it. Why? Because there’s so much to discuss in this space, and frankly, the unique perspective of a guest has a lot to do with what we end up talking about, about AI and payments.

[00:02:35] Josh DeTar: Two minutes into my first conversation with Amir. I knew this was gonna be fascinating, so let’s get a little background on Amir. I always like to ask my guests, you know, what’s the most important thing for people to know about you? And Amir responded Without hesitation and with true conviction. I want people to know about the love I have for my family.

[00:02:55] Josh DeTar: So, a little background here. This background also tells us a lot about the story of Amir being on his fourth startup. By the way, now Amir immigrated to the US when he was 11 years old. He and his dad always had a dream of starting a company together. Fun fact, it wasn’t even in tech, but we’ll get the details on that here in a second.

[00:03:15] Josh DeTar: Now, unfortunately, life had other plans and Amir lost his father tragically before that dream became a reality. Now, rather than halt his passion for starting something, that moment provided fuel for it. Now, unfortunately, yet again, his first startup was way too early for the market and ultimately ended up not being successful.

[00:03:38] Josh DeTar: That, again, only fueled him more. It takes a lot to get up when you fall off the bike, but the more you fall, the easier it gets to get back up. And that’s exactly what Amir has done time and time again. I think he’s really an amazing success story of resiliency. So much of that comes from the family and the upbringing he had and the family he cares so much for today.

[00:04:02] Josh DeTar: Amir later started the company that ultimately became Android messaging that now even Apple uses. So if he’d never gotten back up, well, you might not be able to text your friends like you do. Now, Amir loves the highs of creating and building, but he’s also built a foundation of tools through life and experiences to help him get through the lows of being a founder.

[00:04:26] Josh DeTar: So how did he get into payments and AI and what has this all got to do with AI and payments and all the things we just talked about? Stick around and find out, ’cause we’ve got some really cool ideas and use cases to discuss from this perspective of a company’s founder. And some things that you should be thinking about as you navigate the new landscape of payments and AI and working with companies in that space.

[00:04:55] Josh DeTar: So, Amir, thanks for joining me, sir. Welcome to the show.

[00:04:59] Amir Sarhangi: Thanks, Josh. Great to be here.

[00:05:01] Josh DeTar: all right, so we gotta start out with, I I, I didn’t want 

[00:05:05] Josh DeTar: you to tell me this story earlier because I wanted to hear it like, and get my reaction live, but when you just casually drop, you’re like, yeah, yeah. You know, my whole world has been in the tech space, had, you know, four tech company startups, but the first one was gonna be chocolate.

[00:05:18] Josh DeTar: I was like, hang on, we gotta go back to that. So, I’d love to hear a little bit more about what was this, this chocolate company that, that never got to be.

[00:05:27] Amir Sarhangi: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s been a while since I talked about it. but, so when I was growing up, I grew up in, in Iran. I moved here when I was 11. and before moving here, Iran at that time was, it was during the war. So, you know, there, there wasn’t a lot of luxuries, including things like candy and chocolate.

[00:05:45] Amir Sarhangi: So a lot of times where family would come from. Outside, like from Europe or from US to, to Iran. The only thing as kids we would ask for was candy and chocolate, because the quality of the chocolate in Iran was terrible. So I had this, you know, desire and really this thing that just got, you know, kind of, built into me over those years was that I’m gonna start a really high quality chocolate. There’s no reason why we can’t have Swiss Swiss quality chocolate, in Iran. So, so that was really, you know, we talked about that a lot with my dad as I was going, you know, through high school here and then college. and, you know, that I was planning to move back and, you know, started chocolate company and, and it’s something that, you know, I, to this day, I still have a lot of passion for it ’cause I love chocolate.

[00:06:30] Amir Sarhangi: so that, that part of, part of it hasn’t changed.

[00:06:33] Josh DeTar: well, I’m down to get together with you for some chocolate. Anytime. I like, I’m one of those people, if I don’t have at least a half of a bar of dark chocolate before I go to bed, like the day’s not complete.

[00:06:43] Amir Sarhangi: Exactly. For me, for whatever reason, there’s no dessert that take can take the place of chocolate. That is the ultimate satisfaction for me is a good high quality piece of chocolate. So, yeah, we’d love to do that with you.

[00:06:56] Josh DeTar: Well, yeah. Now maybe by the end of this podcast we’re gonna have a business plan. We’re gonna start a chocolate company in Iran together.

[00:07:02] Amir Sarhangi: There you go. There you go.

[00:07:03] Josh DeTar: I’m into it like bring the world Good chocolate. Sounds pretty awesome. So, okay, so then how do you go from chocolate to tech? Like, walk me through a little bit of that.

[00:07:15] Amir Sarhangi: so yeah, I mean, look, my first, job outta college was, I was working in consulting for Deloitte. Which was great because I got a chance to, you know, see a lot of different, industries, was a lot in the telco space. and it happened to be at the same time as kind of the internet boom. you know, there was all these different companies like Web Van, which no one hears about anymore ’cause they went out of business.

[00:07:37] Amir Sarhangi: But Web Van, Google, a lot of household names that you hear today, were created during the, you know, that boom. So, you know, given that I had this desire to start my own company, I, I was actually talking with a, another colleague at Deloitte and a couple others within the commercial real estate industry.

[00:07:58] Amir Sarhangi: And the idea that came up was like, why can’t we take the commercial real estate transaction, which is a very complicated, complex, transaction and make it more digital at that time. You know, commercial brokers, really did everything very manually, including their kind of Rolodex of contacts and their, listings.

[00:08:19] Amir Sarhangi: Everything was very, you know, very much manual. and so really that first, company, it was called Real Prompt. And, the idea really was to bring the broker, the commercial broker, and the buyer together and make it easier for them to, to do a commercial real estate transaction. And that, that was really the initial idea.

[00:08:39] Josh DeTar: Huh. well, I guess fast forward to today, do you still own the rights to, to real prompt. I bet that’s actually pretty valuable given the whole AI conversation where

[00:08:50] Josh DeTar: It’s so funny you say that. I hadn’t even thought about that. yeah, we may, I mean, I don’t, we never, you know, we continued to hold onto it, so we probably do. That’s a, that’s a really good point. you heard it. Here folks, it’s on record, Amir, if you make out like a bandit with that, I get a percent.

[00:09:06] Amir Sarhangi: Absolutely, absolutely. No, I didn’t even think, honestly, I, I have not even said the word real prompt, in quite a while. So, so yeah, no, I think we, we may still have, the rights to it, so

[00:09:16] Josh DeTar: Yeah, if you, if you still own real prompts.com, go check what GoDaddy thinks that thing’s worth. Now

[00:09:23] Amir Sarhangi: That’s right. That’s right. So, you know, we were way too early to the market. You know, we built a product. we even had, you know, one of our founders was within the, from the industry, someone who was, had a lot of knowledge of buying commercial assets. but you know, as founders, you know, a lot of times even when we really understand the problem, a lot of times we’re way early to, to solving a problem.

[00:09:48] Amir Sarhangi: and you know, that that has repeated itself over and over again in history, where a really good product or idea has come way too early for its time. And then when things have lined up, another company has been able to come in and, do the same thing and be very successful.

[00:10:05] Josh DeTar: You know, that’s interesting. I think we should park that and come back to it because, I’d love to get your perspective on, you know, in today’s day and age where, you know, so many of these companies, are fueled by AI or, or AI native companies. The, I’m too early to market today may be totally different literally tomorrow, like not figuratively, like literally tomorrow.

[00:10:29] Josh DeTar: So I wonder how that changes the game and that kind of stuff. But before we come to that, I, I’d love to, you know, just going back to the, you know, you’ve had four different startups and we were kind of even talking about this. you know, before we started recording that, you know, there’s, there’s this kind of concept that like the hardest thing that you’ve ever done in life is the hardest thing that you’ve ever done.

[00:10:55] Josh DeTar: And so, you know, I was referencing a, a, a speaker that I’d heard a few years ago, and if you haven’t heard him speak, I highly recommend it. The Iron Cowboy who, holds the world record for the most Ironmans and he did 101 in 101 consecutive days, which is just

[00:11:12] Amir Sarhangi: Incredible.

[00:11:13] Josh DeTar: But his whole talk track was around like, the hardest thing you’ve ever done is the hardest thing you’ve ever done.

[00:11:19] Josh DeTar: And so you don’t necessarily get to compare your hardest thing to someone else’s hardest thing. But you know, that person has to compare their hardest thing to their own hardest thing. So his point was, you know, if the hardest thing you’ve ever had to face is somebody said something to mean to you on social media, then that is the hardest thing you’ve had to face.

[00:11:39] Josh DeTar: But if then you have to face something that really and truly is like deeply challenging, are you prepared and equipped with the tools to be able to deal with that? And just as I was hearing your story, Amir, and talking about, you know, some of the challenges that you faced, like you had to face a lot of adversity early on in life and like some big things, not just somebody said something mean to you on Facebook.

[00:12:04] Josh DeTar: Right. Although I’m sure you probably got some of that too, you know, we all got some of that, but it, it kind of set you up for success in some ways, right? Because it, it gave you the ability to kind of bounce back from that first unsuccessful startup and, and say, Hey, that’s okay. I’m still willing to try again and start another thing.

[00:12:23] Josh DeTar: so I’d love to hear just some of your perspective as a founder. Like what has that journey been like for you?

[00:12:29] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: I think, all founders have their own stories and, there’s no lack. Of, you know, hardships that hardship, stories that a lot of ’em have gone through in my case. You know, I think, having lost my dad at a young age, you know, that definitely was not only a wake up call for me in terms of, look, you’re on your own and, you know, you gotta, you gotta push forward.

[00:12:50] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: ’cause I, had my mom, my sister, and, that were also definitely depending on me. so that was like the first big kind of mental, challenge that I had. And, you know, finishing school and, and doing that. And then my first job out of, out of college, you know, with Deloitte, that was great because. It kept you on your toes.

[00:13:11] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: You, you were constantly with new customers and new, new projects that required you to kind of come in with prior knowledge that we didn’t have as, as, you know, entry level consultants. and, you know, those experiences, what drove me to, start the first company, I, you know, I’d say the first company I was definitely deer in the headlights, didn’t really understand, you know, what it takes to build a company.

[00:13:36] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: and also, you know, a, a lot of learnings in terms of like what you really need to know about your customer, who you’re building for, and what it takes to then grow that business. So in a lot of ways, I’m really happy that kind of the internet crash happened. That forced us out of that business real prompt.

[00:13:55] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: and, in, in a lot of ways I’m, I’m grateful for that because otherwise we would’ve probably spent a couple more years doing that, which frankly would’ve been, kind of a waste of, you know, two more years of my life at, at that, at that point, because I still just didn’t understand how to build a business.

[00:14:13] Josh DeTar: Isn’t that

[00:14:13] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: then going,

[00:14:14] Josh DeTar: think like that? Something like that, that probably at the time felt like the worst thing ever, but now you’re looking back on it and you’re like, yeah, that was actually pretty good.

[00:14:25] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: I’m telling you, there’s so many examples of founders. And, and I’ve been, you know, with that first company and, and, and I’ve seen it so many times where you hang on because as a founder you gotta be the believer you have. You’re the one who has conviction and every time you see just a little bit of hope, you continue to hang on and you want to push forward.

[00:14:46] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: I think those who understand that balance of knowing when a idea or something that they really believed in is not at the right time or the right place, or the right funding or the right team. that’s just as much of a winning formula as is knowing when there is, you know, something that’s actually going to work and, and be successful.

[00:15:08] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: because you can really grind it out and put yourself in a really difficult situation. and you know, frankly, my second company, you know, jive Mobile, which, you know, ended up, being acquired by Google. That was a 10 year journey and we probably had at least four or five. Instances where the company should have been done, you know, and, and we, and we pivoted the business, you know, as far as I remember, at least four or five times.

[00:15:35] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And all these weren’t major pivots, but they definitely were change of direction, which every time you do that, that’s like, kind of like heart surgery, because like you’re going in and you’re trying to convince your, your found, your founding team, then the, the extended team and then your investors, that you need to change directions and, and, and you as, as the CEO or you have to take, you know, that that responsibility that this new direction is gonna work.

[00:16:01] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And then when it doesn’t and you gotta change again, it becomes even more challenging, right? So, you know, I think all founders, you know, have gone through that. And there, there is no overnight success story. I think, you know, everybody has had that journey. Even the, even even the Zuckerbergs, you know, have had that, that, that journey to get there.

[00:16:22] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I always think that’s interesting. I can’t remember, what was it? I remember seeing a post on social media at once and it kind of always stuck with me and, It was from some guy who, I can’t remember what his company did or, or what it was, but essentially his post was a picture of his Lamborghini and it said, man, it must be nice to have that. And, and then it was his whole dialogue around, he goes, yeah, a lot of people tell me it must be nice to have a Lamborghini. And he’s like, but what they don’t realize is that I think, you know, he was in his fifties or something like that and he was like, you know, I have 40 years of working seven days a week, 12 hours a day, how many times I’ve had major losses.

[00:17:10] Josh DeTar: I had to reverse mortgage my house, my personal house to keep my business afloat. And he’s like, all of that went into it. So yeah, it must be really nice to have that. And he’s like, it’s also really nice to have all of the heartache that I went through to get to this point. I just, I thought it was really interesting.

[00:17:27] Josh DeTar: Like the way he wrote it was not. Like egotistical, like, oh, I have a Lamborghini. Like, it definitely wasn’t that. It was very much like trying to highlight just how much. A lot of times, you know, founders, you know, it’s the, the duck analogy, like they look calm and successful on the surface or whatever, but underneath you don’t see the legs that are just going crazy to make it all work and, and all the effort that went into it and all the times that you, you didn’t have the overnight success.

[00:17:53] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: A hundred percent, you know, the number of times you, think you’ve landed a customer or you think you’ve landed your next round of funding. and there’s just with every major high, you know, especially you are, if you’re if you’re a veteran and have gone through startups. When you go through a high, you are already preparing for the low because you know there’s going to be, and you know, there’s gonna be a low, and then, you know, you will have the next high.

[00:18:21] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So, you know, that’s the, I think probably one of the tougher things to deal with is the, swing that happens. And that’s part of the addiction too. Like, if, you like doing startups partly it’s because it really does make you feel alive because of these just extremes, that you see. and those highs are really just amazing because, you know, with a small team when you accomplish something big and impactful, it just, there’s just nothing that can compare to it because, you know, all of you were the ones that actually made that happen.

[00:18:56] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: especially when you’re competing with giants or you’re competing with much larger companies with a lot more resources and, you know, you’re out there. You know, working hard to, make it happen. So, yeah, no, I think, that’s, that’s part of the journey a lot of us go through.

[00:19:13] Josh DeTar: I mean, given what little I’ve gotten to know about you, just, you know, over the, the few conversations we’ve even been able to have, I feel like you could probably agree to this statement. You know, I, I used to get asked all the time like why I liked being a part of small companies and startups and, and all of that.

[00:19:31] Josh DeTar: And, you know, Amir, I used to have a terrible answer for it. I was like, I don’t know, like, do you like getting kicked in the shins? Because that’s kind of what it’s like. Like you just wake up and get kicked in the shins day in and day out, and it’s a lot of work. And, you know, and then when I actually developed the, my real answer to why I love doing what I do was when I became a dad.

[00:19:53] Josh DeTar: And what I realized was being a parent was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. And so therefore, it was the most rewarding thing I’d ever done in my life. And it’s like, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, full trips. I mean, I had a rough day the other day with my 4-year-old, and it was like by the time he finally went to bed, my wife and I just sat on the couch and looked at each other and we’re like, woo.

[00:20:16] Josh DeTar: But then you’re like looking at the monitor, looking at the kids asleep, and you’re like, man, that feels really good. You know? And so it’s, I think the greatest rewards you have in life come from the greatest challenges. So if there’s no real challenge, is there really a reward? I don’t know.

[00:20:34] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Hundred percent. And Judge, what’s interesting is like, parenthood, even though it’s so hard and when you sit back and enjoy, you know, that accomplishment and or that day that that great day that you’re able to get through with your kids. As they grow up, you pretty much don’t remember the, the hard parts.

[00:20:53] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And there are some really hard parts, like those nights where you are, you know, you’re awake all night, you know, you know, your, your son or daughter is sick and you’re trying to take care of them. It’s just, it can be really miserable, right? And for whatever reason, the human psyche just cleans all that out.

[00:21:10] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And it’s like, do you wanna have another kid? You know? Yeah, I’ll do another kid. And then you realize, oh my God. Like, you know, there was all this stuff that I forgot and it was just the last year that I went through it. Right? and it’s the same with startups. It’s like, yeah, I wanna do it again. And then you come back into it and you’re like, oh my God, what was I

[00:21:29] Josh DeTar: what was I thinking? That’s funny. That’s actually a great analogy that, you know, it’s, I mean my, my wife and I literally just cleaned out, the last of like the baby stuff, knowing we were done and we looked at each other and I was like, man, I totally get it. I was like, I get why people have like five, six kids.

[00:21:45] Josh DeTar: I’m like, yeah, I forgot about how little sleep we got, you know, over the last couple of years. And all I see is like my youngest running around, running out of, you know, the baby toys and things like that and thinking, oh, but that was so fun. I wanna do that again.

[00:22:00] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: E Exactly, exactly. Or you watch those old kid videos of, of, of them for the first time walking. Oh my god, you know, that was such a great experience. You know, so you’re like, yeah, we can have another kid. And then, you know, you have the next one, you’re like, oh my God, I forgot all the, about all the, all the, all the other stuff that you went through.

[00:22:17] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So, yeah, no, it’s, it’s, it’s like having a baby,

[00:22:20] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: that is a really, yeah, I love that analogy. ’cause I think that is a really interesting, the thought process of just the, the adaptation of the human psyche, right? Like, I mean, if all we remembered was the negative, you know, there’d probably be only one kid and then we’d be done as a species, like, A hundred percent.

[00:22:37] Josh DeTar: you know, you probably would’ve never started again and again and again if all you thought about was all the hard times, but.

[00:22:45] Josh DeTar: You know, you’ve, you’ve kind of built the tools and the foundation to get through the lows, through the highs,

[00:22:53] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah. And I, you know, I think the first time you do it, you just don’t know any better. It’s just like having a kid you don’t know any better. So you, you kind of struggle through it, but at the same time, because you don’t know what to expect, your, your mental state and your body tries to prepare for the worse.

[00:23:09] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So you, you know, you adapt. and then once you do experience it, you know, some of that muscle memory does come back. You can, especially, you know, if, if you have folks on the team that are new, you’re able to kind of, you know, make things a little bit more, calm and, and be able to handle the, you know, the fluctuations.

[00:23:30] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: It’s like, you know, don’t celebrate too early. Just because we had a great meeting doesn’t mean, you know, we’re gonna be able to close that customer as an example of, of things that come. And in the same way when you have a, a, you know, a a, a bad experience or a, a bad day, being able to recover from that quickly and just forget, and having short memory, in this space is like one of the best, you know, one of the best qualities you could possibly have.

[00:23:54] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Right. Like, you want to be able to move forward and quickly, and, and pick up and go

[00:23:59] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I guess, you know, naivety is a, is a pretty powerful tool. ’cause I think if a lot of us knew like what we were gonna go through, you know, but I think that also speaks to why it’s important to have, you know, a lot of diversity in the thought process and the people that you bring into those types of teams, especially early on.

[00:24:18] Josh DeTar: Right? It’s why you have like the dreamers and the Executioners and you know, the different groups of people that are able to kind of see those things through. because

[00:24:28] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So true. So true. And and I, and I think right now more than ever, because I think. Those that are, you know, have been around for a while, they have a certain way of thinking pre ai, you know, kind of days. And then you have kind of the younger talent that’s coming through that, or prompt engineers or vibe coders, folks that are really using tools to the, you know, to the kind of the ultimate they can, you know, whereas, you know, some of, some engineers that have more experience are a little bit more reluctant to use some of the AI coding tools.

[00:25:02] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And, and, and for, for everybody has good reasons, right? And, and it having kind of that balance and being able to bring a good mix of people into the team, really does help because people do learn from each other. And, especially now with how quickly things are moving with ai.

[00:25:21] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Okay. That is a great transition. Back to what we parked of, you know, you were talking about how your first startup was, was too early to market. It all right. The market maybe just wasn’t ready for it. And we were talking about how, you know, before we hit record, the AI space is just like, it’s, it’s a it’ss own mind-boggling new pace, unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

[00:25:48] Josh DeTar: And so where in the, you know, pre AI world, like you were saying, there was almost this concept that it’s like, hey, you could be too early and it could be a couple of years before you know, that that reality was gonna take off and, and your idea was gonna be wide stream, accepted. And in the AI world, I mean, too early to market can quite literally be a day, and then tomorrow you’re not.

[00:26:13] Josh DeTar: And so you’re good. And it’s like you were actually spot on on the timing, because so much can change in a day. And I think it’s funny when, so for those of you listening in, like, when Amir first joined, I was just like, Hey, you know, how are you doing? Like, how’s the week been? He was like, man, it’s been crazy.

[00:26:30] Josh DeTar: And that’s just kinda like the story of my life. Because you were like, man, every day I wake up, I’m like, okay, what changed today?

[00:26:39] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: That’s probably the biggest anxiety most. Kind of AI CEOs have right now. Right. and because there’s just so much happening at such a high pace, a lot of investment happening, obviously with all the different, LLMs, but then you have a lot of vertical companies that have raised a lot of money, and, it’s, it’s extremely fast paced.

[00:27:00] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: and what’s difficult about it is that you have to be able to understand not only what is happening and keep track of, everything that’s going on within the industry, but then try to kind of bring that in and see what impact that has on your business and how that you can use that and leverage that to your advantage.

[00:27:19] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And in which areas do you have to kind of change your strategy, so that you can, you can accommodate and. You know, as we were talking, like sometimes that could happen, like, you know, twice in a week you change a strategy and then you realize, okay, you got, you gotta change it again because something new came out.

[00:27:34] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So, that I, I, you know, I think that’s the biggest, I’d say thing that I’ve had to adapt to, doing a startup in this kind of AI era is just the pace of innovation and ability to be able to really think, you know, six months to a year down the road and build something that you know is gonna be needed very quickly there.

[00:27:54] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And when we started, you know, six months ago, you know, when we would pitch our idea and what we were doing, you know, a lot of people were like, oh yeah, it’s gonna be like three to four years from now. You know, that’s kind of the mentality. A lot of people were putting us in the bucket. They were putting us.

[00:28:09] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: All of a sudden now it’s almost like they’re too late. When we talk to people now, they feel like they’re too late. And, so that, that’s just in six months. That’s literally in six months. And this is like venture capitalists that we’re talking to, not, and we, who are typically folks who are trying to invest earlier.

[00:28:25] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Right. and even they were thinking we were, we were early and that’s, that, that gap has already closed in less than six months.

[00:28:34] Josh DeTar: That’s wild. You know, and I, I’m only gonna say this this way because you said it first, so I feel like I’m safe. But you know, you were saying you’ve also like, started companies in multiple different decades and like you’ve seen a very different, like you’ve had to adapt just not just the type of company that you’re bringing to market, but the way you’re coming to market, the way you’re thinking about, you know, the product that’s actually gonna serve the customer, meet the market, demand, all of that.

[00:29:02] Josh DeTar: And you were saying like, you know, being a little bit more seasoned in your fifties, being like, holy cow. Like I, I’m having to think about this totally different than when we started our first, our second or third company. Just because of how much faster and different, the pace of AI has changed. The, the thought process you need to have in your business model.

[00:29:23] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Oh, a hundred percent. And I think, you know, before you had time to. kind of build your idea up. You didn’t necessarily need to launch right away. whereas now, you know, at least the way we’re approaching it, we’re, we’re pro providing quite a bit of transparency into what we’re doing. You know, we open up our, what we’re doing in terms of our product, we open it up very quickly and really want to collaborate with the ecosystem as quickly as we could because that input helps us move faster.

[00:29:53] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Whereas before, you know, I think, you kind of did thing, at least we did it in a much more of a closed fashion. And then once we were ready, we would bring out, here’s what we have to show. Here’s the shiny object we wanna show the world. and just also the pace at which we were shipping product was very different, right?

[00:30:11] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Like you would have a longer period of time between, you know, you know, new, new releases, and. A lot of times you’d plan your roadmap way ahead of time, whereas now, like our roadmap is literally could change in it every day, where we’re switching features and capabilities that we’re, we’re, you know, reacting based on what we’re seeing in the market.

[00:30:33] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So, definitely the approach has changed. and, and AI tools also help us, move faster. So they’re, we’re leveraging, tools that obviously were never available, in the past. So those things also help.

[00:30:47] Josh DeTar: You know, Amir, I think if, I think you’ll get a kick out of this, we, not too long ago, I’ll spare any names, but we responded to an RFP from a community financial institution and one of the questions in there was they wanted to see our 10 year roadmap. And when I, when I went and asked our CEO and product, like, Hey, how do you guys wanna respond to this?

[00:31:08] Josh DeTar: our, our head of product responded to me and he’s like, dude, I have no clue what I’m gonna do. In 10 years from now. He’s like, at the pace of stuff is changing, like, you’re lucky to get a year. He goes, if I give you a 10 year roadmap, it’s only because I’m gonna tell you it takes me so long to build anything that it’s gonna take me 10 years to build it.

[00:31:27] Josh DeTar: He’s like, that’s, but this, the environment that we’re in is, is so incredibly different. We cannot look at it through a legacy lens. Like, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t apply anymore. And I think especially this is a good segue into like, what does this all mean for a lot of our listeners, right? Like community, financial institutions.

[00:31:45] Josh DeTar: I mean, this is absolutely an exponential curve, right? And I think what happened was AI flew really under the radar for a very, very long time, especially in financial services. And then the second it started to kind of poke its head up, people were like, oh. It’s interesting, what does it mean? And literally just in that time, it grew like a hockey stick so much.

[00:32:11] Josh DeTar: And, and again, I mean we went from even just six months ago having conversations with people and they’re like, yeah, I don’t know if AI has a place to, oh my goodness, we’re so far behind. Like, what are we doing in ai?

[00:32:26] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Very true. it’s very similar conversations that, that we’ve heard and and seen, and I think. It does remind me, you know, I’m old enough to remember when I first used Google for the first time as a search versus Yahoo as an example, and it was kind of like that aha moment where I went and told all my friends like, Hey, you guys should use Google.

[00:32:45] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: You know, we saw the same thing happen with the evolution of, chat GPT and Open ai. Same thing. Like I’m sure the first time you experienced it, you know, you’re like, oh my God, this is amazing. And then you probably went and told a bunch of people. So all of a sudden you saw that hockey stick because not only of the quality of kind of experience you had, but then the constant feature, evolution and capabilities that just keeps coming at you.

[00:33:12] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Just, just when you thought you figured it out and you saw all the cool stuff, a bunch of new cool stuff is coming at you. and I think that is creating kind of the, the excitement and also it’s opening up so many new. Opportunities for people in terms of what these experiences could be and how it could simplify our lives, but at the same time, in some cases, enrich our lives in terms of what it can do.

[00:33:37] Josh DeTar: Yeah. You know, and again, I think that’s a great segue to it’s, along those same lines, I think the use cases being more, I guess, what’s the word I’m looking for? I, I don’t know, like easier for just everyday people who are not technologists, who are not engineers to identify how do I use this to solve a very specific use case.

[00:34:00] Josh DeTar: I think when that became more mainstream, like that’s when you really saw a hockey stick effect. And I love to use my wife as an example because, you know, when we’ve been, I’ve been using AI for a very long time because. I work in tech, right? And our CEO is a big AI guy. So like we’ve been bleeding edge on that kind of stuff.

[00:34:24] Josh DeTar: And I was always, to your exact point, I was always telling my wife like, babe, this is so cool. Like you can use these tools. But it really wasn’t an until chat, GPT kind of hit an inflection point of what it could be able to do. And the first huge light bulb moment for my wife was when she wanted to replant her, garden.

[00:34:44] Josh DeTar: And she literally put in dimensions where we’re located, what types of food we liked, what could she grow, how should she space it out, how could she maximize it? And Chachi PT gave her this beautiful, this is what you should do. You should plant these things and next to these things ’cause these bugs will keep these bugs away from this thing.

[00:35:05] Josh DeTar: And then you can also make sure that you use the same water dripper in this location. And she was just blown away. She was like. Oh my goodness. Like this would’ve taken me forever to have planned out. And she goes with one prompt and a couple of nudges. She’s like, I had my entire garden planned. And I said, great.

[00:35:23] Josh DeTar: Draw me a picture of that. And she had a picture of her garden and she just walked out and planted her garden, right? And then now, I mean, just the other day she texts me and she was, on her way to Costco and she’s like, it hit me. I’m sitting in the driveway with the kids and I knew I was pushing nap time and I knew I was gonna need to get back.

[00:35:44] Josh DeTar: So she’s like, I knew I needed to be efficient. She’s like, and it just hit me. So I literally just took my, Costco list, put it into chat, GPT, and said, give me the path through Costco to shop this the most efficiently. And it literally told her like, start in this section, grab these things, then go here, grab this.

[00:36:01] Josh DeTar: And she was like, it was the fastest in and out Costco trip. And why I say, I think this is kind of also an interesting segue to. again, I wanna park that conversation a little bit because I want you to give a little bit of background on why this is something that’s top of mind for you before we talk about it so our listeners get a little bit of understanding of that.

[00:36:17] Josh DeTar: but you know, the next evolution of that is my wife being able to just say, Hey, here’s the meals that I’d like to plan for the week. Here’s a picture of the pantry and a picture of the fridge. Go shop for the rest of the things that I need. Have the things delivered that could be delivered from further away and I’m willing to go this far to go get these things or whatever.

[00:36:40] Josh DeTar: Right? And then it just processes all of it, even down to making the payments, getting the things coming. And you know, I think for a lot of people that might sound like, you know, Skynet level crazy, but I’d argue it’s pretty darn close. So, and I think that’s a lot of where you know, your mind is going.

[00:37:00] Josh DeTar: So before we talk about that. Gimme a little bit of context into, yeah. Why is, we’ve talked about the AI side of things a little bit, but why is payments something that’s important to you in this realm? And then how are AI and payments kind of becoming interconnected?

[00:37:17] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah, so look, I think the, the key thing we we saw was that, you know, a lot of the things we do as human beings at the end of the day require some sort of a financial transaction. And, a big part of, you know, AI’s value prop is simpl simplifying our lives and being able to, make us more efficient, be able to do some of the mundane tasks like you mentioned.

[00:37:40] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: and I have a few more examples that I love, that I can’t wait to be solved. that at the end of the day always require some sort of a payment transaction in order for those things to be complete. Whereas today, in most cases, AI has to turn to the human being to be able to complete that task because it needs a credit card or a bank account or, some sort of a financial, way of paying for whatever it’s, it’s trying to do.

[00:38:06] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: and some of these things are time sensitive. If you think about something like concert tickets or restaurant reservations or getting the, you know, the cheapest flight, you know, you want it to be able to like do the transaction once it. Is able to find that one concert ticket that is highly, you know, sought after and is able to find it.

[00:38:28] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: You don’t want it to wait for you the next day, and then, you know, it’s already been filled, similarly with, you know, travel and other things. So being able to actually complete a, transaction or a, or a agentic workflow, from beginning to end becomes really important in this scenario versus every time the developer or the human has to get involved in order to be able to complete that and hand in hand with payments comes identity.

[00:38:55] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So it’s not just the payment itself, it’s being able to attach who’s behind that AI transaction and, what’s the identity of, of that, which is, you know, with, for your audience. Of course, your audience really understands KYC and KYB and everything that is related to a transaction.

[00:39:15] Josh DeTar: Yeah. I mean, I love, I, I think I know where you’re headed with one of the examples and ’cause it’s one I really want too, you know, and it’s something like booking my flights and, and hotel for me for travel is such an obnoxious, mundane task. But, to your point, like the ag agentic ability of ai, for me to go in and put my preferences and say, Hey, I’ve gotta go, you know, to Austin next week.

[00:39:41] Josh DeTar: I don’t even have to tell you, you know, that I’m gonna stay at a Hilton, I’m gonna fly Alaska Airlines when all possible, I want to be as close to the meeting location as possible. But I also want to be nearby a gym that’s 24 hour and a, you know, grocery store so I can get, you know, my food you and go book all of those things.

[00:40:00] Josh DeTar: Oh, by the way, like I live, you know, away from the airport and Portland traffic is horrible. So don’t fly me out during traffic hours, all of that. And then I want A ILC. Right? And to your point, like sometimes that’s all very time sensitive, but you know, if you can actually solve that for me, that’s huge.

[00:40:19] Josh DeTar: But a lot of times it just gets to the point where it’s like, hey, now you have to go and fulfill this. And even then I think there’s a big challenge with, you know, I just very recently used a use case where I needed to help somebody get an emergency flight, how to be with a family member. And I literally just went to chat GPT and I was like, Hey, I need the fastest flight from here to here starting now.

[00:40:43] Josh DeTar: And it gave me a flight number, a flight plan, everything. I went to Southwest to book. The flight didn’t exist, went back to chat GPTI was like, Hey, buddy. Like no flight. It was like, oh yeah, my bad. That flight doesn’t exist. I was like, cool. But if it had actually had to go through and book

[00:41:01] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: pay. Yeah.

[00:41:02] Josh DeTar: realized that that wasn’t available.

[00:41:05] Josh DeTar: But you know what I really loved for you to, to talk more about is the the KYC element of that too. Because then if it’s a mirror booking a flight on Josh’s credit card, we got problems.

[00:41:17] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah. So I mean, there’s, there’s a bunch of challenges in getting that done with an agent today. the first challenge is the fact that the agent, first of all, needs to be able to even access the websites. A lot of websites are blocking agents because they’re not human beings, right. and that’s because of traditionally there’s been a lot of fraud using bots.

[00:41:35] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: But in this day and age, now you have good bots and good agents that need to do stuff on your behalf. So in order, in order in the first place for that agent to be able to do that and needs to have access. number two, once it has access, being able to actually complete the transaction means that it, it needs to know, the merchant in that case, the airline or, the hotel, whoever it is, needs to know who’s behind The agent needs to know, and, and needs that to be verified.

[00:42:03] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: which means that in some cases, that could be a KYC or a KYB, depending on the use case. But in the case of travel, it would be, you need to, you need a verified phone number, verified email address. person’s name, birthdate, all those things that you need for travel. and you need to be able to securely obviously,transfer that to that merchant.

[00:42:24] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And then the payment itself, that payment could be using credit card or it could be using, bank, or it could be, you know, any ways that you know is, is available today, can be done. The problem is today, you’d have to, the agent would have to actually go and fill out the form. That exists today for the humans because agents really all they need is an API access.

[00:42:48] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: They don’t actually need a human checkout experience, right? That human checkout experience today has been really, built for human beings and therefore one of the, one of the things that it does well is actually tries to, avoid bots being able to fill these forms out. So a lot of times these things are failures, right?

[00:43:08] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Even if the, agent’s able to get around those,blocking technologies, the next thing is that entering the credit card information in that form is not really PCI compliant. And by not being PCI compliant, a lot of times you have failures. so. In order for that to be, rectified, you need, what’s coming hopefully soon.

[00:43:31] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: We’re working with folks like Visa and MasterCard and others, is essentially, tokenized credit cards. So tokenized credit cards allow you to essentially, do this more through an API model where in the future, pretty much every merchant in the world is going to have APIs that interact with agents versus a human user experience that’s been really tuned for the human consumption.

[00:43:58] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Right now, you will have APIs that are tuned for, for agents, so that those are some of the challenges that exist today, but are, you know, very quickly, a lot of these challenges are being, re, you know, removed or solved so that agents can now completely do a transaction end to end.

[00:44:18] Josh DeTar: So walk me through that a little bit. So that’s, you know, it’s giving the agent essentially your wallet and a digital wallet, which we have, but just in kind of a different digital form factor. Is that accurate?

[00:44:38] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: It’s basically an, you know, it’s essentially an API, right? So there’s a concept today, called MCP, and you know, CPS are basically, think of them, MCP stands for model context, protocol, and, and, philanthropic, came out with MCP and, and CPS are essentially, think of them as a way of standardizing how APIs work for agents.

[00:45:06] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And it’s, it’s essentially, and, Think of it as an API and that API becomes kind of how a company enterprise merchant is able to now tell an agent what’s behind the firewall, what’s the menu of things they can access or, if they had credentials, be able to consume. so that could be data, that could be travel, that could be, content.

[00:45:31] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: It could be, obviously a lot of banks are starting to now look into offering an MCP server to an agent. This could be, a scenario where, your MCP server is able to provide the latest rates or the, you know, or a way for, a lending application to be filled out. so there’s a lot of different things, that you can now provide through these APIs.

[00:45:56] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: and what this, what MCP server does is it really simplifies how agents interact with an enterprise.

[00:46:03] Josh DeTar: Hmm. you know, you have to be, you have to dumb everything down for me, Amir. That’s, that’s why I’m a good host for this. So, you know, I was thinking about a, a kind of recent example and yes, I’m gonna, I’m gonna say this on air and on recording and it’s okay. I recently bought, tickets to go see the Backstreet Boys at the sphere.

[00:46:24] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Oh yeah. That’s great.

[00:46:27] Josh DeTar: It was, the anniversary present for the mrs. She’s a, a big Backstreet fan, but I, the reason I bring it up is I thought it was funny when I went to check out Amir, I even took a screenshot of it ’cause it made me laugh so much. Like being in this industry, dude, there was like 37 different ways to pay.

[00:46:44] Josh DeTar: I mean, it was like this laundry list of little icons of different ways that I could pay. And I was actually shocked that I couldn’t use like a carrier pigeon to deliver gold Boolean. Like I figured we had gotten to that level of an exhaustive list. It was just crazy to me. So how do you feel the, you know, a agentic ability to process actions and transactions on our behalf?

[00:47:07] Josh DeTar: Like, what does that mean in that world where we just have so many different ways to pay and move money, so many different ways to store our cards, our credentials, our payment methods, so many different types of, even ways from. You know, using a credit or debit card to a buy now pay later. Like how does this complex ecosystem all fit into this?

[00:47:29] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah, I think initially it’ll be much simpler because, you know, this is gonna be an evolution where, you know, the agent either has access to a credit card, or may have, or you may have already, you know, funded an account using your bank account. and, and having access, essentially ability for it to kind of top itself up using your bank account.

[00:47:50] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: But over time, what’s, what’s cool here is that, if you’re a point junkie like I am, you know. Your agent will even be able to choose, like what’s the best path for you to earn the most points with your, with your credit cards because you’re buying a, you know, travel and your Amex platinum may be the best thing, or your visa from Chase may be the best thing too.

[00:48:13] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Hey actually, you know, Josh has some stable coins and we’re gonna save him some money, because this particular, merchant is willing to offer you 5% off if you just pay in cash. And, and stable coins would be like cash, right? Or from your bank account. doing debit will save you 10% or 5%, because, you’re not using a credit card.

[00:48:34] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So what’s beautiful is that you can as a ahead of time, basically provide those rules to your, to your assistant to make those choices on your behalf. And today you probably miss out on, on much of those things because as humans we’re not going in there and thinking about like. Is this gonna give me the most points or is that you’re, you’re just kind of taking out whatever you can and it comes to, you know, easiest to you and using that me mechanism.

[00:49:04] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: the other thing is like, also just around budgeting, right? Like if your, if your agent also has a good understanding of your bank account and has a good understanding of your overall budgeting, there’s a lot of interesting things that, you are able to do with your assistant in terms of, at the moment, understanding whether you can afford something or not, or how that fits in with your long-term budget.

[00:49:29] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: If, like, if you’re planning to buy a car and lease a car now and you are gonna have a new $500 payment, like how does that impact your credit? How does that, like, those are things that today are very difficult for us to understand and project and we have to be extremely disciplined to, have the right infrastructure in place to know.

[00:49:50] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: how all those things impact our lives. whereas with, with, with agents in some ways, you know, I think they’ll make us stupider because they’ll do all that work for us and we no longer need to go do a lot of that, for ourselves.

[00:50:03] Josh DeTar: You know, that is a whole nother interesting concept of. I saw, I saw a meme recently, I think is pretty fitting and it was something like, you should probably get your health and your diet in check now because, your doctor is currently passing med school with chat GPT.

[00:50:21] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah. Well, yeah. Or, or, and, and pretty soon we’re all doctors too because, you know, we, we’ll just self-diagnose ourselves, through chatt PT so yeah, no, I, I agree with you. I think the, that’s my biggest fear is that honestly, when I look at AI and what it, how it’s changed my behavior and how it’s changed my daily life, is that.

[00:50:42] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: There are a lot of things that I kind of just now offload into ai, you know, whether it’s Gemini or Chatt BT or whatever. and that is, you know, a lot less times where I have to really struggle over, like crafting an email or, you know, making sure that the positioning is correct. It’s like, boom, oh wow, that looks really good.

[00:51:04] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Well, you know, little change here and there, send, right. So, you know, I, I hope that, you know, that doesn’t have that kind of impact, for, you know, going forward, especially for our kids. But that, that is, that is definitely something that I, that I worry about.

[00:51:20] Josh DeTar: Yeah. I was gonna ask, I mean, what do you think the impact this has for our kids is gonna be? Right? Because I mean, you think about a lot of, you know, our generation grew up with and without the internet and the generation that’s coming up now has grown up. With and without ai and there’s very quickly becoming a new generation that will know nothing but having agentic ai, like, what do you think that’s gonna do for, there’s probably a whole nother can of, you know, like,

[00:51:47] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah.

[00:51:48] Josh DeTar: what is this gonna do to society?

[00:51:49] Josh DeTar: And the implications of that. But

[00:51:52] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: yeah, I, I feel like it, it’s very similar to the early days of iPad and screen time and kind of the challenges, you know, we all had with our own time and how much screen time we do and our kids do. and that did change, I think. So social media definitely changed the fabric. Of the society, you know, and in a lot of ways, not in a good way, necessarily.

[00:52:15] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: In some ways, in a, you know, there were definitely positive impacts, but there’s definitely a lot of negative. I think similarly, I think the doomsday stories are always, you know, the headline grabbing things in reality is we will adjust and we’ll find ways to continue, hopefully to stay smart. you know, AI is not necessarily gonna, the, in my opinion, I, I don’t think, I think humans at the end of the day, still need to be the ones driving innovation.

[00:52:42] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: because AI only knows what it knows from us, at the end of the day. So, I hope that that, you know, continues to be the case and we’ll adapt to some of the negative, you know, impacts of AI and, and hopefully, you know, put more emphasis on the positive stuff. but it, there’s no question is it’s, it’s changing lives.

[00:53:04] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Our lives and, and our, of our, of the next generation extremely at a fast pace. so yeah.

[00:53:11] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I mean that, yeah, we were kind of talking about, I mean, the, the pace is what’s wild. but I wanted to go back to you. so when you were talking about payments and agents being able to make payments, right? You were talking about like what, what if I’m a, a point sorter, which I am, and you know, what about the introduction of things like stable coins and pay by bank?

[00:53:33] Josh DeTar: And, you know, what, if we move to, a model where it’s a, you know, QR code based payment that rides over instant payment rails, right? There are so many things that are happening at once right now that any one of these things could like fundamentally change the fab or fabric, sorry, of community financial services as we know it in the us.

[00:53:58] Josh DeTar: Any one of them individually, but we’ve got like nine of those big things. Don’t fact check me on that, but it’s a lot happening at the same time right now where we could see even multiple of those happening and compounding each other. So, you know, as somebody who’s been focused on kind of the payments landscape and Yeah, like what happens if there’s no longer this, oh, well, you know, chase gives me 3%, American Express gives me 2.5%.

[00:54:27] Josh DeTar: Well, you know what, if I don’t even deal with my financial institution anymore, my agent does, my agent couldn’t care less about anything other than, oh, I can scavenge everything and see that Josh will get a better rate through Chase. So he’s gonna go through Chase whether he even realizes it or not.

[00:54:42] Josh DeTar: Like what, how does that change the landscape?

[00:54:45] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah, I think that is probably the number one thing in, in talking with brands and enterprises in our business. ’cause we’re very much horizontal. we talk to many different verticals. I’d say that’s probably the number one fear that we hear, which is, you know, not owning. They’re concerned about not being able to own, continue to own their customer.

[00:55:07] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And what does that mean? That means like, you know, that checkout experience needs to continue to be owned by the bank or the enterprise or the e-commerce store, the touch point to the customer and where they get their information about the services of that brand. The ability to choose, has to still continue to be with the user.

[00:55:29] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And if, if all that moves much more into the AI land, then obviously like they become more of like a dumb pipe where, you know, that choice really goes away and the ability to be stay unique and deliver that uniqueness that they have goes away. So I think embracing ai, embracing ability to, bring some of these capabilities in early, and it’s not early anymore, but now I think is, is pretty critical, for any enterprise right now.

[00:56:00] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: because owning, continuing to own the customer and that touch point is so, so critical, going forward.

[00:56:09] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I mean, I just thinking about a very simple example that I don’t think is too terribly far off is, you know, how how easily would it be for me to go to cha GPT and say, I wanna buy this car, go. And it knows that I wanna find it, obviously for the, the best price, right? And then it knows how much I can and should, and will put down as a down payment versus finance.

[00:56:36] Josh DeTar: Then it goes and looks at every single financing option on the known universe that I could be, you know, approved for and is going to solely shop based on the price, right? ’cause that’s kind of, its, you know, modus apparatus of what I’ve instructed it to do then yeah. Who, what’s the point of the brand at that point?

[00:57:00] Josh DeTar: Like, what loyalty do I have to whoever is servicing my loan when I never even see it? My agent just says, Hey, got you the car and it’s 20 bucks a month cheaper than you thought it was gonna be. Here’s where you send your payment. Oh, by the way, I’ll take care of that for you too, like.

[00:57:20] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah, and I think, you know, in today’s world, if I have a really good relationship with my banker who’s taking care of everything else for me, even if it is $20 more, I may still choose to go with a more expensive one because of all the reasons that you were saying before, which is like, I have that relationship.

[00:57:39] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Frankly, it’s not worth it for me to like go and choose something different because I know. When I call Bob at the bank, picks up the phone, takes care of my issues for me. Now, in the future, if that becomes the agent taking care of those issues, and all of a sudden, like that uniqueness starts diminishing, yeah, you’re gonna, you know, that choice is almost made for you.

[00:58:02] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: You’re not even gonna be, involved in making the choice because you’ve already told the prompt. You know, your prompt is, find me the best rate with the highest quality service. You know, whatever other criteria you may have. Then the result is gonna be this is your choice. And, and then most likely that’s what you’ll move forward with because over time you’ve also built trust.

[00:58:26] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: You know, AI has built trust with you that, okay, it’s made some good choices for you in the past, even when you’ve done your research, you know, you’ve been able to convince yourselves that it made the right choice for you. At some point, you’ll stop making those research and you know, you won’t, you won’t do research anymore.

[00:58:41] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: You’ll just trust the fact that it’s making the best choice for you. Right. you know, and, and that’s, I think that’s where it lies. I think a lot of challenges for enterprises today is that I think people are not seeing that massive wave that’s coming here because the adoption curve is so high and things are moving so quickly that, it’s gonna ca, you know, catch a lot of people by surprise.

[00:59:08] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I mean, you think about even just how long it took people to adopt having a smartphone, right? And that like the curve to get really saturated adoption took a while, right? I mean, I would argue from the first publicly available chat GPT to today, the ramp of people using it is, blows it outta the water, right?

[00:59:41] Josh DeTar: I mean, the number of people in my life. A mirror that I would, that I would’ve pegged him been like, there’s no way they’re using something like Chachi pt. They’re like, oh yeah, I used it for this. I did this. I’m using it all the time. I’m like, alright. Like.

[00:59:56] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: no, a hundred. I’ll tell you funny story. So the way I explained to my mom about chat, GDPT, is I took a picture of a bunch of watermelon at a store and I said, circle the best watermelon for me to buy. And it was like, I got it. It was like that, that was just amazing to her. Like the fact that, you know, it was able to tell you which watermelon based on the picture is the best one, that’s gonna be the sweetest one to choose.

[01:00:23] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Right? That’s, that’s how I got my mom hooked on. Like, okay, this is one way to use chat TPT. And when you do things like that, that are just so incredible that you’ve never thought, could be so accessible to you, you become a, you become a believer very quickly.

[01:00:41] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Well, you know, I think that that’s actually a good example because it makes me think of, you were kind of talking about this earlier too, and especially as we get further and further into like, okay, so let’s use my, you know, your example of the watermelon. Let’s just say chat. You PT got it wrong.

[01:00:58] Josh DeTar: There was a better watermelon, right? It’s not like catastrophic. Okay? But if, you know, chat, GPT books me my flight and I show up to the airport and there ain’t no flight.

[01:01:13] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah. That’s

[01:01:14] Josh DeTar: we got a problem. Or if it goes to book my flight and instead of paying $500 for the ticket, it adds zero and it pays 5,000.

[01:01:21] Josh DeTar: And now I miss my mortgage payment because I don’t have enough money. Now we got issues, right? So the, the severity level of mistakes goes up pretty significantly, I think, especially when we start talking about, you know, certain use cases. And, you know, a funny one for us recently, my son woke up one morning just covered head to toe in all these crazy looking, like blotches and like raised and gnarly looking and you know, my wife and I are terrified and we’re like, oh my gosh, we’d never seen anything like this on him before.

[01:01:55] Josh DeTar: so I kind of did exactly what you did. I literally took a picture of him without his shirt on, put it into Chachi pt, and I was like, what’s going on with my 4-year-old? Right? And Amir, man, I’m so glad I didn’t show it to my wife because she would’ve been a wreck. Like it went down the, like he’s dying tomorrow route.

[01:02:13] Josh DeTar: And it was terrifying.

[01:02:14] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Wow.

[01:02:15] Josh DeTar: And I was like, so I don’t think that’s really true. I was like, here, lemme give you an extra piece of insight. He had an ear infection. He’s on amoxicillin. Is this hives and potentially just a reaction to amoxicillin? Could he maybe be just allergic to penicillin chat, GPT? Oh yeah, that’s probably definitely it.

[01:02:39] Josh DeTar: It was totally just kissing in my butt and just trying to make me sound like I was smart and new. Turns out that actually was what it was. He was just, he had, you know, this was his second round of, of being on a penicillin. Sometimes the body takes two cycles to develop the allergy to it, and that’s what happened to him, right?

[01:02:56] Josh DeTar: He just got a bad case of hives. Put him on Benadryl for a week. He’s right, his rain. Now we know. Don’t give him penicillin, right? but you know, if we had just gone down the chat GPT route, like that would’ve been a really terrifying experience. Now, are those things getting better? That’s what I would argue what we were talking about earlier.

[01:03:14] Josh DeTar: Like I would actually be, would not be surprised if I ran that exact same experiment today, if it did a better job today than it did last time. Like that’s how fast it’s improving. But I think the argument I’m trying to make is, is that especially when we get into these more life or death, like bigger consequence types of things that we’re allowing agents to do, like there’s gotta be a lot more controls around it.

[01:03:37] Josh DeTar: I, and I would argue that’s probably why financial services has been a little bit more, you know, hesitant to go gung-ho into some of these things, right? Like, I use the example, like it would be really easy for, an AI LLM to look at my financial picture and say, oh, you have a bunch of cash sitting in your checking account.

[01:03:59] Josh DeTar: Your credit union offers a CD that would earn you 5% on that. You’re leaving money on the table, let’s move that money over. And if it’s really confident in it, and like you were saying, like if I’ve just gotten so used to trusting it, I’m like, great, let’s do that. But that cash was sitting there because that was what was gonna make my mortgage payment in a week.

[01:04:18] Josh DeTar: And now I can’t make my mortgage payment and I’ve gotta liquidate the CD and I’ve gotta pay the penalties on it. Then it actually didn’t do me any good. So, I mean, there’s an an interesting, like as the models get better, we’re gonna solve for some of those things. But still, like you were talking about, I mean it’s, it’s really a complex ecosystem of things that we’ve gotta get right.

[01:04:42] Josh DeTar: But because it’s such a complex ecosystem of things, I would also argue it’s a huge opportunity area, right? Like we were just talking about. I mean, both of us travel a bunch for work, right? I mean, it’s a pain in the butt to book all these flights and stuff. I would love it if I could just tell my agent I need to be in Austin.

[01:04:59] Josh DeTar: Go look up my calendar, figure out my meetings, and go book the flights that I need, the hotel that I need. Get me a rental car if I need it. All the things, you know, me go take care of it.

[01:05:09] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: But that’s why I think, yeah, that’s why I think actually there is a lot of opportunity for financial institutions because I’m gonna have a lot more trust. right. Especially today, using an agent, for example, that’s being delivered by my bank to do anything related to finances because. my expectation, because of the trust that I’ve built over time with my bank is that it’s safeguarding my money.

[01:05:34] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So it should also have built and delivered an agent experience that’s gonna safeguard, continue safeguarding my money. And if, and if, if something even happens, my expectation is that they’ll take care of it like that’s on them. whereas I think an external agent doing that, that’s, you know, that’s not his expertise, more of a jack of all trade, I think, there’s much higher chance of, potentially things happening that you didn’t intend to happen.

[01:06:03] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So to me, this is where we have a period of time where I think there is huge opportunity for those who move faster and are able to kind of provide these. You know, kind of aha moment experiences for their users. ’cause all of a sudden something that was very difficult to do before and you had to go through a bunch of steps physically showing up at a branch, or having to pick up the phone and talk to a bunch of different people to get answers around can now very easily be in a more self-serve, self-serve model.

[01:06:39] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: You can provide it, to your customers and, and deliver this kind of like amazing experience that they’ve never seen from, you know, from their financial institution. And to me that’s, you know, that’s a, that’s a really big opportunity to capitalize on, before others do. Because once those users go somewhere else, it’s really hard, hard to pull them back.

[01:07:01] Josh DeTar: Yeah. You know, that’s a great point, Amir. I mean, I would say anytime I talk to, you know, community financial institutions, like what are you trying to solve with technology? You know, usually the two biggest things that come out of it are user experience for their account holders. And operational efficiency for their institution.

[01:07:22] Josh DeTar: Right. And yeah, I would, I would agree with you. I think those are two huge areas that AI can have a really positive impact if used appropriately and with the right use cases. And, you know, when you talk about account holder experiences, it, it really is like, it’s, it’s about convenience. it’s about not having to worry and think, I mean, finance is a stressful thing.

[01:07:49] Josh DeTar: and, and having something that’s kind of always in your corner specializing in you and your finances is a pretty sexy idea if you ask me. so I agree. I mean, I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.

[01:08:04] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah. And also just think, you know, basically planning ahead for you, being able to budget when you didn’t even ask it to do budgeting for you, ability to be able to point out opportunities. Like for example, you know, in my case, you know, I had a little bit of money sitting in a checking account earning zero interest that was just sitting there, right?

[01:08:26] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Like if my financial institution proactively came to me and said, Hey, actually you should be you, you haven’t touched this thing in like six months a year. You should have move. You should move this into a interest bearing account. And you know what? I’ll do it for you. Just let me know if you’re okay with that, without me having to, like, there’s been moments where before, like a banker has called me and left me a message, but even the concept of like. Dialing a number, you know, trying to get through to my banker and to have that conversation takes up like an hour of my time. Right? And that could be done so much faster and easier. And then more importantly, when proactively I’m told, Hey, I can make more money. Wow, that’s a cool experience, right? That’s, that’s kind of where we are.

[01:09:14] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And I think, that kind of capitalize on that and are able to deliver that kinda experience to their, to their customers, I think are gonna win. I mean, there’s no question about that.

[01:09:24] Josh DeTar: You were mentioning earlier you had a couple of like fun use cases or examples. Were there any way that we haven’t touched on yet that you wanted to share?

[01:09:32] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: you know, I think, the one I like is, you know, there’s two that I like. One is, there’s always that restaurant you want to reserve for where. They release the new seats at like 12:01 AM right? And, and they do it like one month before reservations, a new block of reservations open up, right? I mean, who wants to be up at 12:00 AM to to, to, you know, to try to like, reserve a, you know, reserve a table, how nice it would be to just set your agent to do that for you and next morning you wake up.

[01:10:05] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And by the way, as part of that experience, it has to put a credit card down to hold the reservation and all the things that you need to do as a human. so that’s one example. obviously, you know, getting that Taylor Swift ticket for your kids is another example of like, things that we hate to do, which is, you know, trying to be the first one to get a concert ticket or, you know, a football game or whatever that may be.

[01:10:31] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Because even in cases where you are looking at StubHub or looking. You know, alternatives. You spend so much time trying to figure out whether the best seat with the best price, and there’s no one site that does that for you. Right. But an agent can definitely do it very quickly and efficiently and be able to tell you, Hey, wait another six days, because we think there’s a high chance the prices are gonna drop based on the demand we’ve seen.

[01:11:01] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Right. And that that’s true for travel, that’s true for concert tickets. That’s true for a lot of those things that today, like people just, those are not things that are enjoyable to do. But at the end of the day, you do it because, you wanna make sure you’re getting the best deal and the best, best experience.

[01:11:18] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So I think those are things that I think are going to really change our life for the better when it comes to,agents.

[01:11:24] Josh DeTar: So I’m, I’m curious. I have maybe a little bit different thought on that. What happens when we all have agents that are doing that though, right? And the restaurant only has 10 seats and there’s a thousand people that would’ve had to stay up late and it’s the 10 people that stayed up late and hit the button first, versus now we just have a thousand agents battling against each other for the 10 seats.

[01:11:48] Josh DeTar: Like what happens to commerce in that?

[01:11:50] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah, I mean, in, in a lot of ways that’s already happening without even agents. I mean, even before agents were a thing, agents were a thing, meaning, you know, scalpers, that’s what they use. They use agents, right? They, so, so that is already happening. I think what’s unique here and the opportunity is that being able to actually now have verified agents where it’s not spam and it’s not fraud, you’re actually gonna lower the number of people coming in.

[01:12:16] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And more importantly, like very popular concerts are going to be able to differentiate between a scalper and a human human agent. Because now if you have a verified Josh agent. that seller, that merchant knows you are an individual that’s trying to buy. And by the way, it probably also knows your history.

[01:12:37] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And that’s 

[01:12:38] Amir Sarhangi: one of the ways that actually banks, you know, especially retail banks can help is 

[01:12:43] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: retail 

[01:12:43] Amir Sarhangi: bank can essentially tokenize your identity and your purchasing history right through the bank experience as an example. So there is ways to essentially know that this agent really is working on behalf of a human versus a scalper that’s trying to buy a hundred tickets.

[01:12:59] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:13:00] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And I actually think it can improve, a lot of things as it relates to things that have really high demand because now the people who deserve it will be able to access those things much better, and more efficiently.

[01:13:13] Josh DeTar: Yeah, you know, that’s a, so, my wife used to work at Nike and

[01:13:17] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Perfect example.

[01:13:19] Josh DeTar: like people would ask her all the time, like, Hey, can you help me get the latest Jordan’s drop? Right? And the answer was always no. Like, employees have to go through the exact same process. Like, you gotta go to the website.

[01:13:32] Josh DeTar: And people would always tell us, and, and it, I think this is exactly your example. People would always tell us like, man, this sucks because like, there’s so many people that have bots that are just running around and they’re buying ’em all up. And even if I’m sitting there at midnight ready to click the button, I still never get a pair of shoes.

[01:13:49] Josh DeTar: And then that bot buys a hundred pairs and then turns around and puts ’em on eBay for a hundred times the cost. And that’s the only way I can access ’em. I actually want the shoes. Like I don’t wanna resell ’em. I just, I really want that pair of shoes and it sucks for them as a verified buyer who really just wants to own that pair of Jordans and walk around in those pair of Jordans because a bot bought a hundred of ’em to put on eBay to make money for somebody.

[01:14:15] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: In that example, actually, Josh Nike would know that you. You have come and bought the last three drops and you’ve only bought one. Right? So there’s even more information that Nike will have about you in the future that allows it to make a decision on whether not only are you a loyal customer, but also a real customer versus, you know, the bot example you gave.

[01:14:41] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: So, you know that, that the, and of course it’s gonna take a little bit of time and Nike needs to have an agentic, checkout experience to be able to support that model. But we’re not that far, like that’s possible today. And especially with tokenized, credit cards, it’s gonna be even easier. And, that’s where I think things will improve versus not when it comes to, these experiences.

[01:15:04] Josh DeTar: Well, yeah, and I think you’re right. I mean, as we get to a point of you know, being able to have verified digital identity tied to that plus tokenized data in an open banking standardized messaging set format, then all of this stuff’s becomes possible. And in all reality, like you said, that is actually possible today.

[01:15:25] Josh DeTar: but a part of it is almost even just training consumers and consumer behavior about that because I, I would imagine there’s probably a wide range of people on the spectrum of, of accepting of that. And I use the example of the, I won’t say her name ’cause she’ll pipe up in the kitchen, but you know, the, the Amazon helper lady, right?

[01:15:42] Josh DeTar: In the speaker, and I remember when those first came out and, you know, you, you had polarizing camps of. I don’t want that thing snooping in my house to, me. And I was like, wait, it can turn my lights on for me and I don’t have to get up. Yeah, go for it. Bring it in. Like, I got nothing to hide. Amazon’s already got my data.

[01:15:59] Josh DeTar: It’s fine. You know? And so, you know, getting consumers wrapped around this concept of sharing tokenized data is actually safe. It’s actually, yes, you could argue it’s creepy, right? That Nike knows so much about you, but let’s be real. Let’s say you really wanted that pair of Jordans and you could never, ever get ’em, but now you can, would you argue that you’re happy with that?

[01:16:24] Josh DeTar: Like, I would probably say yes. So I, I think there’s an interesting balance in just getting consumer behavior to accept that when they understand, you know, what all this means.

[01:16:35] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah, and also you will be able to control how much your agent provides in terms of information. You know, I think there, there is going to be actually potentially more control over what you want to share and what you don’t want to share, because now your agent is gonna be working on your behalf. Now, as consumers, we have to be smart about who, which agents we use and who we trust.

[01:16:59] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: But I think those brands who bring that transparency to you and provide you that control are going to win, because of exactly that reason. Because you’re gonna wanna work with, you know, brands that are actually gonna be on your side and are gonna make sure that, you know, you’re, you know, you’re not being duped by the information that’s being shared.

[01:17:21] Josh DeTar: Well, and that, okay, so that opens up a whole nother, topic that you had kind of touched on, which is, you know, you wake up as a founder every day and you’re like, okay, what happened while I was asleep for the last four hours? Like, oh, great. The whole world turned upside down again in my space.

[01:17:36] Josh DeTar: Great. What do we gotta pivot on? you know, as, as buyers of technology right now, that’s also a real challenge. I’m probably gonna get the facts wrong, so nobody hold me to it, but there was a recent story that came out that there was a, you know, an AI startup company that was writing code using ai, and, you know, they were, an overnight success grew to a billion dollar valuation, and then it was uncovered.

[01:18:00] Josh DeTar: There was no ai, there was no platform. It was literally a bunch of engineers in an office in India. And when you submitted a prompt to write the code, like literally there was a hundred people there quickly writing code, right? There was no ai. And immediately funding dries up. Obviously, you know, you got the whole shenanigans that fall out from that.

[01:18:20] Josh DeTar: But I mean, can you imagine if you were a buyer of that software and you’re like, crud? Like, so how should you know financial institutions be looking at doing business with companies in kind of this new world of stuff changes so fast.

[01:18:37] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah, well, I think that’s where actually financial institutions have a leg up because I think there’s a lot of rigor in place already to, do a lot of due diligence around, you know, technology that is brought in because of all the security issues and because of the fact that, you know, basically penetration of.

[01:18:57] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Bad actors within a financial institution is, is really dangerous. So I think from some aspects, I think it’s, there’s, there’s some already rigor in place to understand what they’re signing up to. but I think the way, at least I think about it is, you know, first starting out with the stuff that’s not going to be impacting, let’s say, people’s money, right?

[01:19:22] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Like initially it’s simply having an agent that, is able to answer the, let’s say the top 50 questions that typically, you know, someone at the bank is picking up the call for, right? And being able to do that in natural language and simply be, you know, very quickly allowing their customers to be able to not only find that information, but to be able to act on it and do something right.

[01:19:47] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: for me that’s like a simple first step that is not gonna impact, at the end of the day. you know, someone’s, financial, you know, wellbeing, or, or the money that they have in the bank, as an example. And then layering on as the bank has a better understanding of AI technology and the companies that they’re dealing with, starting to layer on other capabilities.

[01:20:11] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Now, having said all that, I think it’s critical to own what impacts, you know, the most critical path for their use. You know, for, for their users, in this case being their money. The bank has to own that. They have to understand that technology and how it’s basically impacting,their systems. And I think, probably that’s the biggest challenge a lot of companies have right now, is that they’re, they’re, they’re having to bring in a lot of consultants and paying, you know, large sums of money.

[01:20:45] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: For transformation projects to, because just ha you know, a lot of times having AI at the edge only solves so much of the problem. You need the rest of your organization to be essentially AI enabled and AI ready. because if, let’s say an AI agent, for example, wants to move money from a checking account to a saving account to gain more interest, I’m just making that up.

[01:21:10] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: today, how does it do that? You know, there, there’s probably five human physical checks that have to happen before that money moves. Right? so how does an AI agent, able to do that? So those are things that basically I think, has to evolve over time and has to be owned by the bank themselves. otherwise I think it’s very difficult, to make good decisions there.

[01:21:35] Josh DeTar: Yeah. No, I think that was great advice. No, I mean, it, it is, it’s it really comes down to due diligence and. What’s the real value it’s gonna add? Because I think there’s a lot of shiny squirrel syndrome right now in ai. And I, your point is well said. Like it may solve for this, but it may open up this or not solve for this.

[01:21:58] Josh DeTar: And so does it really actually add value? Maybe, maybe not. Right? Like those are the things that kind of need to be taken into consideration.

[01:22:06] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Absolutely. Like, you know, the, I think as a bank customer, like filling out a lending application is probably one of the things, le least things I like, you know, about, about dealing with a bank as an example. Like that should be much easier to do. And that doesn’t necessarily, you know, need to impact the, you know, some of the more critical, Capabilities of the bank, right? But it can really simplify how I, I see this bank as a forward thinking, company that is simplifying my life and with a very simple, you know, agent. You know, not only can it fill my lending application out, but my next credit card application and everything else that I need to do with the bank, I shouldn’t have to keep repeating the same information over and over again.

[01:22:58] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: as an example.

[01:22:59] Josh DeTar: Yeah, that’s a good point. And I think too, you know, it’s, it’s probably worth noting, I would argue there’s probably two very distinct buckets that you need to think about in terms of AI utilization. And it’s the stuff that you can do that’s low hanging fruit that doesn’t even require enterprise level stuff,

[01:23:19] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Exactly.

[01:23:19] Josh DeTar: That’s not using proprietary or, personal data or information that it’s okay to live in a public world. That’s okay to put into a public chay pt. But arguably in a, you know, financial services infrastructure, the vast majority of what you’re gonna do, and the vast majority of the value you’re gonna get is actually when you are providing, you know, more sensitive information.

[01:23:45] Josh DeTar: And that has got to be done with lots of safeguards in place. And that’s where a big chunk of the due diligence needs to be done to make sure you understand what data’s being used, how’s that data being used, where’s it going, what’s it feeding back into the model? Right. Is your data

[01:24:03] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Sure. Absolutely agreed.

[01:24:07] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Amir, I feel like we’ve gone through a ton of different, you know, parts of this conversation.

[01:24:12] Josh DeTar: Is there anything that we missed? Anything we’re forgetting? anything you wanted to bring up?

[01:24:18] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Look, I think, you know, I think we’re at an exciting time right now. and there is definitely, you know, I know your audience is a lot of folks in the banking space. I think there’s a lot of opportunity to, embrace a few. Like if, if I was, if, if know not being in a, a banker or, being in your shoes, Josh, who obviously your day to day is dealing with banks, I, the areas that I would definitely pay attention to, one is stable coins, which I think is something that is coming fast and we’re hearing a lot more enterprises being interested in, and, and being able to embrace that because it can bring some really good benefits to.

[01:24:58] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Their customers. I think that’s one category. And the other piece is really around, you know, how do they, how do you get merchants ready for this new agentic world Agent commerce world? And banks definitely have a, you know, a very strong position for that. and then of course the user itself has data and, and an identity that needs to be, tokenized for this AI world.

[01:25:24] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: And that’s another area where there’s a lot of value and data that, that banks have. So that, that would be really where I would spend a lot of time tr you know, really trying to understand, strategy and how banks can position themselves.

[01:25:38] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Great closing thoughts. Honestly, I, I don’t, I don’t have anything to add. Ditto. Amir, seriously, thank you so much for coming and being a guest on the podcast. But before I let you go, I’ve got two final questions for you. So, especially going back to what we were talking about the other day of just how fast the space that you operate in changes.

[01:25:57] Josh DeTar: I gotta know, where do you go to get information? To stay up to date? Like what’s the first thing you check in the morning?

[01:26:02] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: I mean, there’s a bunch of stuff that comes to me on a daily basis, but I’ll tell you, x Twitter basically is something that a lot of good, innovation you see there, first folks are posting there. especially in the AI space. mi MIT tech review is really cool. the, the information a lot of times does really good in depth pieces and they’re really looking for trends.

[01:26:25] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: so I like the information. and then op, the OpenAI blog is a great one. if you don’t follow it, I think is a good one to, to follow.

[01:26:34] Josh DeTar: Awesome. and then if people want to connect with you or if they wanna learn more about skyfire, where and how can they do that?

[01:26:40] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Yeah. I’m just Amir at Skyfire xyz. Or you guys can go to our, to our website, ww dot skyfire.xyz.

[01:26:49] Josh DeTar: Awesome. Thank you again, sir. I, I really appreciate it. Like I said, you know, it’s always funny when, you know, AI and or payments or both come into the conversation. It, it literally is, it’s like, okay, this again. But, it, it is always really interesting to see because there’s so many different facets to this where everybody’s head is at with this, and I think this has been a really unique set of conversation that we really haven’t had thus far about what this intersection of AI payments, commerce and how it impacts like our everyday lives.

[01:27:20] Josh DeTar: It’s really the first time I’ve ever been able to have this conversation with somebody. So it’s been really fascinating.

[01:27:25] riverside_amir_sarhangi_raw-synced-video-cfr_the_digital banking_0006: Thank you for having me, Josh. It was, it was really fun. Really appreciate it.

[01:27:29] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Thanks again for coming and being a guest on the Digital Banking Podcast.

[01:27:32] Thank you for listening to the Digital Banking Podcast, powered by Tyfone. Find more episodes on digital banking podcast.com or subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.