Most finance teams have been held back by siloed systems—until now.

Richard Ransom from Bottomline reveals how agentic AI is transforming business payments, turning complex processes into seamless, intelligent workflows.

In this episode, we dive into the innovative concept of the office of the CFO and how it unites accounts payable, receivables, treasury, and fraud management under a single, data-connected vision.

Richard shares how the new CFO Suite of tools is enabling organisations to break down traditional silos and harness the full power of their financial data, driving smarter, faster decision-making.

You’ll discover how agentic AI differs radically from traditional AI by understanding objectives, orchestrating workflows, escalating exceptions, and acting autonomously - all while keeping humans firmly in control.

Richard breaks down practical applications, like automating invoice approval or inventory-based purchasing, with guardrails to minimize risk and optimize cash flow.

Most importantly, you’ll learn why this shift is inevitable.

As boards and CFOs increasingly prioritise automation and strategic insights, agentic AI isn’t just a future trend - it’s a game changer for finance and beyond. If you’re ready to cut costs, reduce errors, and empower your team to focus on growth, this episode is essential listening.

Perfect for finance leaders, CFOs, and tech innovators eager to understand the transformative potential of agentic AI in payments.

Whether you’re just starting or already experimenting with automation, you’ll leave with actionable insights to stay ahead.

And if you want to explore how to implement agentic AI in your own organisation, Richard points to valuable resources on Bottomline’s website. The future of finance is here - don’t get left behind.

Every day, £747 billion moves through the UK’s payment systems—but almost all of it flows through just two invisible pieces of financial infrastructure.

In this episode, Mike Chambers unpacks the surprising reality behind the UK’s payments ecosystem. Discover why CHAPS and CREST account for 98.5% of all value settled, why the payment systems most of us use every day represent just 1.5% of the total, and why the way we visualise payments can completely change our understanding of the industry.

Featuring insights from Bank of England settlement data, this episode reveals the hidden scale of the UK’s financial plumbing—and explains why every payments statistic depends on which chart you’re looking at.

Based on the Payments:Unpacked article: “Where Britain’s Money Actually Moves.”

Chart 1:

Chart 2:

Your summer 2026 payments strategy - all in one place

Everything you need to know about payments, without the usual noise.

Even on holiday, payments don’t slow down.

ISO 20022 deadlines, real‑time expansion, rising fraud, and regulatory pressure are all accelerating into 2026.

Your summer 2026 payments strategy

With cheques now making up just 0.4% of daily UK settlement volume, this episode argues that bolting a dying legacy channel onto tomorrow’s payments rails — “just in case” — doesn’t preserve it, it just drags the whole system down.

A case for letting cheques wind down on their own terms, rather than building the financial equivalent of TGJones.

Join Faith Reynolds from Devon Fields Consulting and Jemma Waters from the Connection Project as they reveal a wealth of digital inclusion insights.

Both Faith and Jemma mention a number of assets in their discussion - here’s the links to the items they mention:

• Hidden Heroes - Understanding the UK’s 11 million financial helpers

• ConsumerDigital Index

• If I Needed Someone - Money and Mental Health Policy Institute

• Project Nemo - Learning Disabilities Report

• The Connection Project - Rethinking digital inclusion

• Misconnected Report

Payments:Unpacked | On A (Slight) Tangent - Unscripted and unedited

Listen

Payments:Unpacked | On A (Slight) Tangent - Unscripted and unedited

Gadgetbahn: Clever or just too clever?

This week’s podcast came from an idea surfaced by Jago Hazard on YouTube

You’ll find the GadgetBahn story here.

And you’ll find all the stories referenced in this podcast at either:

Payments:Unpacked - www.payments-unpacked.com

or

New Retail Payments Infrastructure - www.newrpi.uk

Listen

Payments, Punchlines & Progress

This week’s podcast came from the beach - three stories - having a laugh about payments, hidden heroes bridging the digital divide and learning from Faster Payments.

You’ll find all the stories referenced in this podcast at either:

Payments:Unpacked - www.payments-unpacked.com

or

New Retail Payments Infrastructure - www.newrpi.uk

Payments:Unpacked is now fully open - all content is now available to every reader.

To support our independent perspective on the payments ecosystem we navigate, we invite readers to contribute £4.35 per month — the price of a flat white.

Fuel Payments:Unpacked

This week’s podcast came from deepest Suffolk - three stories - Happy St Lubbock’s Day, the end of the Debit Card and five stunning facts about Faster Payments

You’ll find all the stories referenced in this podcast at either:

Payments:Unpacked - www.payments-unpacked.com

or

New Retail Payments Infrastructure - www.newrpi.uk

Payment Infrastructure (NewRPI) — but will it be the phoenix our industry needs? As the journey to a NewRPI commences we’ll be bringing insights, analysis, and conversations on the future of payments infrastructure in the United Kingdom.

Free from corporate or regulatory agendas, who is better placed to lead the discussion on the NewRPI than Mike Chambers — the driving force behind NewBacs, Faster Payments adoption and part of the original NewCHAPS journey.

Tell Me More!

Dave The Debit Card

A reflective, story-driven podcast told from the perspective of a once-essential debit card navigating a rapidly evolving digital world. Through quiet, emotional storytelling, Dave explores trust, technology, and what it means to be replaced—not out of failure, but progress.

A story about change… and remembering when you mattered.

Location: Suffolk, UK

Topics: Divestments, Direct Debits and the Granddaddy of (Near) Real Time Payments

You’ll find all the stories referenced in this live video at either:

Payments:Unpacked - www.payments-unpacked.com

or

New Retail Payments Infrastructure - www.newrpi.uk

Date: 17 March 2026

Location: Berlin, Germany

Topic: European tokenisation milestone, UK Direct Debit sector stats and the Scottish vicar OG of savings banks.

You’ll find all these stories at www.payments-unpacked.com

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Payments:Unpacked is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Date: 2 February 2026

Location: Isle of Skye

Topic: The Origin of Money, payments regulation and 5 billion and not out!

Links:

• Origins of money:

• 5 billion and not out:

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Payments:Unpacked is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Date: 24 January 2026

Location: Sailors Path, Suffolk

Topic: Big Numbers. Big Weeks. Manual Mayhem - where the data hits hard and the process gets real.

Links

Here’s the links that I referred to:

What do you think?

This is the third edition of the podcast - unscripted and unedited - should we stay with audio or move to video?

New Retail Payments Infrastructure (NewRPI)

Get up to speed on the journey to the UK’s New Payments Architecture new retail payments infrastructure – click here:

NewRPI? Tell Me More!

Subscribe

Payments:Unpacked is now fully open - all content is available to every reader.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Fuel Payments:Unpacked - £4.35 a month

Date: 17 January 2026

Location: Suffolk Coast

Topic: Rails, High Court Decisions and Volume vs Value

What do you think?

This is the second edition of the podcast - unscripted and unedited - how would you rate it?

New Retail Payments Infrastructure (NewRPI)

Get up to speed on the journey to the UK’s New Payments Architecture new retail payments infrastructure – click here:

NewRPI? Tell Me More!

Subscribe

Payments:Unpacked is now fully open - all content is available to every reader.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Fuel Payments:Unpacked - £4.35 a month

Date: 9 January 2026

Location: Thurso, Scotland

Topic: new year new rails

This is the first edition of a possible new podcast - “Payments:Unpacked Off On A (Slight) Tangent” - should I persevere or stop?

Let me know!

Subscribe to my new Retail Payments Infrastructure newsletter at www.newrpi.uk

Subscribe

Payments:Unpacked is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sibos 2025 has been and gone

Just before SIBOS Owen McDonald and Vitus Rotzer from Bottomline broke down the likely hot topics for the event - from the seismic ISO 20022 migration shift and G20 goals cross-border payment goals to real-time payments expectations.

Vitus predicted a focus on upgrading legacy and siloed systems to enhance resilience and compliance, combat fraud, and transform automation in banking.

If you’re into financial messaging, digital banking, or just want to stay ahead in payments, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss including:

• The impending ISO 20022 deadline being the beginning of the beginning

• How the G20’s cross border payment goals are causing a rethink of the traditional model

• The benefits and challenges of pre-verification at scale

• How real time payments are reshaping expectations

• What does resilience really mean for regulators and strategic priorities?

Read more

SaaS represents a shift from business structure to intelligence - by flipping the script this podcast proves that SaaS is not just about upgrading legacy technology.

Hear Owen McDonald from Bottomline speaking with Amrita Ghanekar, Senior Director at BNY Treasury Services, about the forces driving payments modernisation.

From SaaS as a strategic enabler …

Read more

On 9 October 2025, Verification of Payee goes live across the euro area.

No more blind transfers — banks must check if the name matches the IBAN before money moves.

🚀 Big step for fraud prevention.

⏳ Tight deadline for PSPs.

Are you ready?

Fiat: Let it be done

What Fiat Cars Can Teach Us About Fiat Money

Spoiler: They’re not related - but the metaphor works beautifully.

You’ve probably seen a Fiat 500 zipping down the street—small, stylish, undeniably European. But have you ever thought about what “Fiat” really means?

And more importantly…

What does a Fiat car have to do with fiat money?

It’s a fun question because while they come from completely different worlds—one automotive, one economic—they intersect in a surprisingly useful way.

Let’s take a drive through that connection.

We use abbreviations every day - in writing, texting, note-taking, talking and, of course, in payments.

There are a few different categories of abbreviations, and acronyms is one of them.

When you shorten a phrase by using just the first letter of each word and then pronounce it as a new word, you’re using an acronym.

Payments aficionados often dine out on acronyms with the first letters often replacing the full phrase.

It’s been a while since Direct Debits were processed by Bankers Automated Clearing Services or you purchased your house with a payment sent via the Clearing House Automated Payment Service.

It has been many years since both Bacs and CHAPS entered our vocabulary as clear derivations of long established payment scheme names.

Naming the new kid on the block

Back in 2006/7 a name was needed for a new kid on the payments block.

It was time to invent a name for the near real time payment system scheduled for introduction by the UK banks in May 2008.

Today’s global payments naming convention would have led to this new payment type to be christened Instant Payments but 2006/7 was a long time ago and, as a deferred net settlement (DNS) or Near Real Time (NRT) system with a SLA time of 2 hours perhaps an “instant” moniker would not have been appropriate.

For a time it looked like the new payment type might be called Immediate Payments but if “instant” didn’t work then it was unlikely that “immediate” would either. Also, an additional complication that was that Immediate Payments Limited wasn’t a company that the Payment System Operator (at the time CHAPS Clearing Company Limited) owned.

So with a distinct lack of creative innovation we ended up with a Faster Payment and an acronym of FPS - with the “S” being interchangeable between Service, System and Scheme!

Today, we all know Faster Payments (and don’t really care about what the “S” stands for) but did you know that, in 2008, the UK nearly ended up with what was referred to as a Scandinavian model designed to deliver a “same day Bacs¹”?

The Swedish Model

The term “Swedish model” is referred to as the special institutional arrangements of a society that is sometimes described as a middle way between capitalism and socialism.

In the second half of the first decade of the 2000’s a different type of Swedish model was about to take centre stage for the “same day Bacs” payment type slated for launch in May 2008.

In response to the demand for a “same day Bacs” payment by Payment Systems Task Force set up by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) the industry initially offered ELLE(Early for Late and Late for Early) where a payment submitted by midday would be delivered by close of business that day and one submitted after midday would be delivered by midday the next day.

However, in December 2005 the Payment Systems Task Force accepted an APACS²recommendation for a still more ambitious target on payment times to ensure access to funds within a couple of hours of any payment being made, and allowing payments to be sent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to be available by November 2007 (later amended to May 2008).

With the ELLE acronym ceasing to be relevant and naming options including instant and immediate not really working the industry opted for the easy option of a Faster (than Bacs) Payment - along with three variations of “S”.

And the rest, they say, is history

And the rest, they say, is history - interestingly despite the “couple of hours” translating into a two hour SLA the Faster Payment Scheme has actually delivered an instant or immediate transfer of funds between the remitter and the beneficiary (albeit with a deferred net settlement happening in the background) so, perhaps, an instant payments moniker could have been used instead of defaulting to a Faster (than what?) Payment.

Whilst the naming convention may leave a lot to be desired we should be thankful that sense prevailed and the “same day Bacs” design chosen was the Faster Payments Scheme / Service / System that we have enjoyed for the last 15 years - the UK would have been mush poorer with Elle.

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🎧 Payments: Unpacked

Episode:

The Billion-Pound Scam: Fraud in 2024

Host:

Mike Chambers

🔍 Summary:

In 2024, fraudsters stole over £1.17 billion across the UK — and the threat isn’t slowing down. In this episode, we unpack the latest UK Finance fraud report and explore:

• The rise in unauthorised fraud cases

• How banks stopped £1.45 billion in attempted theft

• The evolving danger of APP (Authorised Push Payment) scams

• New reimbursement rules — and what they mean for you

• The link between fraud and organised crime

Whether you’re a consumer, business, or payments professional — this is essential listening.

🔗 Resources:

• UK Finance Fraud Report 2024

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Issue 719: 30 May 2025