Talking with the founder of Featurespace, David Excell

After growing technology businesses at every stage and across different industries, Daniel Marovitz joined Booking.com to introduce payments into its then-basic hotel-booking service. As senior vice president of fintech, Marovitz is enabling the company to achieve its vision to remove financial friction from travel. His cross-functional team focuses on the financial systems, payment solutions, and innovative financial products that strengthen Booking.com’s position as the platform of choice for customers worldwide to arrange lodging, transportation, and more. In this episode, he speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Uzayr Jeenah about what makes transactions especially complex in the travel industry and how streamlining payments eases customers’ pain points. Related insights The 2025 McKinsey Global Payments Report: Competing systems, contested outcomesGuardrails for growth: Building a resilient payments system Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy informationSee www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

When Nigel Morris and his cofounder, Frank Rotman, started QED Investors in 2007 to support high-growth financial technology companies, the fintech world was just beginning to blossom. Today, QED is a leading venture capital firm specializing in early-stage and growth fintechs, backing more than 250 portfolio companies. The firm provides hands-on operational support, backing fintech start-ups in lending, payments, insurance, and banking. In this episode, Nigel speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert about how the fintech landscape is shaping up in the face of AI and a younger demographic. Related insights The next age of fintech: AI, digital assets, and new paths to successMcKinsey Insights on Financial ServicesGlobal Banking Annual ReviewStablecoins in payments: What the raw transaction numbers missFinancial services: M&A bounces back, with scale and capabilities at the center Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy informationSee www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

The blockchain-based fintech Circle is perhaps best known as the issuer of USDC stablecoins, but the company is much broader than that. In the words of its leaders, Circle seeks to build a foundational economic operating system for an AI-driven digital economy running on a blockchain-based payments infrastructure. In this episode Circle CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Matt Higginson about the effect of the passage of 2025’s Genius Act on the future of stablecoin innovation, sources of future value, and how his background in philosophy informs his work and leadership style. Related insights The 2025 McKinsey Global Payments Report: Competing systems, contested outcomesGuardrails for growth: Building a resilient payments systemThe stable door opens: How tokenized cash enables next-gen paymentsGlobal Banking Annual Review 2025: Why precision, not heft, defines the future of bankingAfter the surge: Tien‑Tsin Huang on the future of paymentsThe future of the payments industry: How managing risk can drive growth Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy informationSee www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

The longtime business payments company seeks to transform B2B money movement and related activities, creating new revenue streams and better cashflow.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

As digital payments make up a growing share of money movement, payments fraud is becoming more frequent and complex, requiring a broader range of ever-more-powerful security tools. SardineAI seeks to meet that need with an AI-powered fraud prevention and compliance platform that uses device intelligence, behavior-based analytics, and machine learning to protect financial services, fintech, and e-commerce businesses. In this episode, SardineAI cofounder and CEO Soups Ranjan speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Roshan Varadarajan about Ranjan’s experience leading financial crime prevention at Revolut and Coinbase before starting Sardine; the future of payment fraud prevention, given the emergence of agentic commerce; and the growth of the payments security industry. Related insights The 2025 McKinsey Global Payments Report: Competing systems, contested outcomesGuardrails for growth: Building a resilient payments systemThe stable door opens: How tokenized cash enables next-gen paymentsGlobal Banking Annual Review 2025: Why precision, not heft, defines the future of bankingAfter the surge: Tien‑Tsin Huang on the future of paymentsThe future of the payments industry: How managing risk can drive growth Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy informationSee www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

As more retailers and other consumer-facing companies look to offer customer loyalty payment cards with rewards and easier shopping experiences, the co-branded card company Imprint seeks to simplify that process and offer it to a broader range of companies. In this episode Daragh Murphy, cofounder and CEO of Imprint, speaks with McKinsey partner and payments industry expert Roshan Varadarajan. Imprint was started with backing by Thrive Capital, whose partner Gaurav Ahuja also is a cofounder and serves as chair of Imprint. In this interview, Murphy discusses how the company got its start, why building their tech stack from scratch was important, and the future of co-branded credit cards. Related insights Riding the storm: How consumer finance companies can survive and thriveTravel invented loyalty as we know it. Now it’s time for reinvention.Airline retailing: How payment innovation can improve the bottom lineGlobal payments in 2024: Simpler interfaces, complex realityUnlocking value from technology in banking: An investor lens Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy informationSee www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

The fraud and financial-crime prevention company’s machine-learning approach uses adaptive behavioral analytics to identify and root out improper payments.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

One of the key challenges finance departments face is connecting the various bits of data generated when money moves into or out of the business. This is especially true for small and midsize businesses. Although a profusion of digital payments providers has cropped up to help such companies, many systems generating data from money movement don’t talk to a company’s other systems—at least not well. In this episode of Talking Banking Matters, McKinsey payments sector leader Roshan Varadarajan speaks with Cosmin Pitigoi, CFO of Flywire, which offers a digital payment system has along with software integrations for linking payments to companies’ other systems.   Related insights  Global payments in 2024: Simpler interfaces, complex reality Unlocking value from technology in banking: An investor lens Extracting value from AI in banking: Rewiring the enterprise How to get a core banking transformation right: Eight mistakes to avoid  Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters  Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters   Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services   Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com  See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

In the payments industry, open banking and account-to-account payments have faced slower adoption in certain markets as they compete with card-based and peer-to-peer systems. In this episode McKinsey payments sector leader Roshan Varadarajan speaks with Johan Tjärnberg, the Group CEO of the open banking and account-to-account company, Trustly, about breaking down barriers to commerce and money movement.    Related insights Global payments in 2024: Simpler interfaces, complex realityUnlocking value from technology in banking: An investor lensExtracting value from AI in banking: Rewiring the enterprise  Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy informationSee www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

In this episode of Talking Banking Matters, McKinsey payments sector expert Roshan Varadarajan speaks with one of the entrepreneurial technologists who seek to solve multiple industry challenges including those of legacy payments technology systems, Zeta cofounder and CEO Bhavin Turakhia. Zeta offers a broad array of technology, with a view to offering a unified stack that powers a financial institution’s payments products on a single platform. The following edited transcript shares highlights from the conversation. For more discussion of the banking issues that matter, follow Talking Banking Matters preferred podcast platform. Related insights Global payments in 2024: Simpler interfaces, complex realityUnlocking value from technology in banking: An investor lensExtracting value from AI in banking: Rewiring the enterpriseHow to get a core banking transformation right: Eight mistakes to avoid Follow our banking and payments sector insights: Talking Banking Matters Read our Financial services blog: Banking & Securities Matters Discover our latest insights with our LinkedIn community of 9,000+ financial services professionals: McKinsey Financial Services Find all of our Financial Services insights on McKinsey.com See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy informationSee www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information