Lolke Bijlsma

Banks already have solid cores.
They’ve got APIs, compliance, and decades of reliability. What’s missing isn’t another system — it’s the intelligence layer that sits between intent and execution. When a customer says, “make sure I don’t overdraft this month,” the bank already knows: - Balances across accounts - Upcoming bills - Spending history - Available credit But nothing connects that knowledge to action.
Everything still waits for a human click. The intelligence layer would: - Monitor balances in real time - Predict cash flow gaps - Move money automatically within limits - Explain every action it takes It’s not about replacing bankers.
It’s about letting the infrastructure be as smart as the people who run it. The data’s there. The rails are there. The policies are there. What’s missing is orchestration. Where else in banking does knowledge exist but action doesn’t?

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Reporting should be the fastest part of treasury. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘴𝘵. → But teams are still pulling from disconnected systems → Still reconciling manually → Still rebuilding logic every month just to get a baseline report out This isn’t a tooling problem. It’s an infrastructure problem. If you don’t have a consistent source of truth—and a way to explore it live—you’ll always be chasing numbers instead of using them. What’s still slowing down your reporting today? #Treasury #CorporateTreasury #Treasury4 #FinanceTransformation #DataInfrastructure #FinancialReporting #CFO #FinTech #TreasuryTech

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No step in your #lending process should be by chance, it needs to be intentionally designed to optimize borrower experience, efficiency, and risk mitigation. #Fintech is about #orchestrating processes and subprocess that are intentionally designed without any extraneous friction points. Vergent LMS and OmniaCnct are designed intentionally to provide lenders EVERYTHING they need to build scalable processes. #lendingtechnology

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The Figma IPO reignited a familiar debate: is the IPO process broken? The truth is more nuanced. IPOs aren’t “broken” - they’ve simply shifted from their original role. In today’s market: • Underwriters still leave money on the table (often deliberately). • Secondary liquidity now competes with lockups. • The IPO has become less about capital raising, more about liquidity + branding. Outdated SPACs, direct listings, and plethoras of secondaries didn’t replace the IPO. They’re all just part of the same evolution. At RoundRaise, we see this transition up close. The “new IPO” blends public and private markets — and startups need to understand both sides of that equation. 👉 Swipe for our breakdown. Curious — do you think IPOs have outlived their purpose, or are they just evolving with the times?

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If you're wondering what's driving Visa's latest initiatives, its the CNP performance gap. Today: 💳 Card-not-present (CNP) has 6x higher fraud than card-present 📉 CNP has ~650 bps lower approval rates 📈 CNP is growing 3x faster and is already 60%+ of US transactions 🎯 Target end-state: Auth rates: 92% → 98% Fraud: sub-5 bps How they expect to get there: 📲 Tap to Add Card → ~90% fraud reduction vs manual PAN entry 🛡️ Tap to Confirm → EMV cryptogram-based step-up authentication 🔐 Passkeys → biometric auth 🧩 DCAP (Digital Commerce Authentication Program) → incentives for sending richer auth data over 3DS rails to drive higher approvals + lower fraud 🧮 VAMP (Visa Acquiring Monitoring Program) → consolidated monitoring + fraud thresholds that push acquirers/merchants to stay within tighter bps bands, with relief for Compelling Evidence 3.0-qualified transactions Expect focus from the other Networks on these areas as well if Visa sees the improvements they expect.

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Reality check: Most FIs aren't going to make the changes they need to in order to survive the disruption from fintech. The changes required are too painful: close all your branches, and fire most of your people and replace them with tech people. Here’s a better idea: Build something new. 🚀 This is what Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen proposed in his bestselling business book "The Innovator's Dilemma". He found that big transformations are too painful for any type of company. This isn't just a banking problem. So, here's what you FIs need to do: Launch a differentiated, digital-first brand. Not another me-too offer that competes on rates, but something meaningful. Initially, it will be a small spin-off. But if it works, it will grow. Over time, that spin-off can become your main business. Yes, it might even cannibalize the old brand. But that’s how disruption works. The economist Joseph Schumpeter called it "creative destruction". The only way to survive it is to recreate yourself. At 📈 MetriFi (www.metrifi.com), we’re building for the future: ✅ Digital-first means your website is your most important marketing asset.  ✅ Conversions have to be measured constantly.  ✅ Ongoing A/B testing to increase conversions is fundamental.  ✅ AI needs to be at the core of how you operate—to work better and faster. 📲 DM me if you're ready to take control and innovate.

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Lending is getting smarter with real-time cash flow data, network-powered insights, and frictionless onboarding. In this session with Plaid Product Lead for Credit, Michelle (Boros) Young, see how lenders can use cash flow data alongside traditional credit data to make faster decisions, approve more borrowers, and manage risk. Plus, new partner integrations with Experian, FICO and more that make it easier than ever to get started ⬇️

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The hypocrisy I'm seeing from big fintechs lately is astounding. Ironically, these bigger players are furious about the proposed open banking scraps, yet they're the ones who have been holding community banks to ransom over their data for years. For community banks, data autonomy is imperative for digitalization. Without it, the tech gap will only grow bigger and bigger. ➡️ Fintechs and community banks can, and should, be working hand-in-hand. As I said in the Payment Expert piece below: 🗣️ "Empowering small banks to embrace technology on their own terms is the only way we can close the sector's tech gap." Many thanks to Kieran O'Connor and the team at Payment Expert for featuring my thoughts. You can read more here. ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/e6QJcr4h

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Despite the rise of seamless bank integrations (like Plaid), a significant demographic is still "super uncomfortable" sharing bank login credentials. To them, the "old school" method of typing a debit card number converts better because it feels safer to the user. Here, I'm referring to "disburse the debit card," which allows the user to type in their debit card number instead of their bank and account routing number when choosing how to receive a payment. Regardless of which information they provide (bank account or debit card), the payment is still real-time, but we are finding that adding the options really enhances user adoption.

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Agentic Payments: The Stack Is Emerging (And It’s Not One Protocol) I've been reading into how AI agents will actually pay for things—and the landscape looked like complete chaos. ACP, UCP, AP2, AXTP, x402, VIC, MAP, ERC-8004, Visa TAP... If your eyes just glazed over, you're not alone. Eight different protocols, each claiming to solve "how agents make purchases." Then I came across a brilliant breakdown that mapped the entire ecosystem. Turns out, they're not all solving the same problem. Here's what clicked: Think of it like traditional banking infrastructure: SWIFT for cross-border. ACH for domestic. Card networks for consumers. Each optimized for different needs, different speeds, different guarantees. Agentic payments work the same way—but the stack is more visible because we're watching it get built in real-time. Here's how the layers actually break down: Communication → MCP, A2A How do agents even talk to each other? These are messaging protocols—like email for AI agents. Trust → ERC-8004, Visa TAP Should I believe this agent? Identity verification before any transaction happens. (Merchants spent years blocking bots—now they need to let the right ones through.) Mandates → AP2 What's this agent authorized to buy? Payment delegation with actual guardrails—think of it like giving your assistant a company card with spending limits. Transaction → UCP, ACP Discovery, negotiation, checkout. The actual "how we buy" layer. UCP (Google/Shopify) is flexible—an orchestration framework where merchants publish what they offer. ACP (OpenAI/Stripe) is prescriptive—defines exactly how checkout works. Merchants wanting to reach both Gemini and ChatGPT users? You'll likely need to support both. Authentication → VIC, MAP Network-level security from Visa and Mastercard. These create "card-like" tokens for agents, ensuring fraud prevention and consumer protections work like they do today. Rails → Cards, ACH, Wire, Stablecoins Where the money actually moves. Traditional payment networks plus blockchain-based alternatives. The part that clicked for me: These aren't competing. They're composing. Google's stack shows how: A2A (agent communication) → AP2 (spending authorization) → UCP (checkout orchestration). One coherent flow from "can agents talk?" to "purchase complete." And here's what makes this moment different: Traditional payment rails took decades to standardize. SWIFT launched in 1973—it's still the backbone of cross-border payments 50+ years later. Agentic payments? We're watching the standards emerge in real-time. It's messy, yes. But someone's going to crack the right stack composition—and that becomes the new rails. For those building in this space: Don't try to pick winners yet. Understand what problem each layer solves. Watch for protocols that work well together. Autonomous software making payments? That's happening whether we have clean standards or not. #AgenticPayments #AIFirstBanking #AgenticCommerce

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In today’s technological world, design teams are a critical part of product development. Design teams should play an important role throughout the product journey, often helping shape the problem and overall strategy—not be an afterthought. I recently spoke with Corwin Stone, who leads some of our product design teams at Capital One Auto, about the definition of design and how it’s evolved over time. Capital One

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Consumers want instant everything. Nine in ten say they’d choose instant payouts over delayed ones — and banks are responding by doubling down on real-time rails like RTP and FedNow. But speed without trust is just faster risk. Multi-rail strategies only work if identity verification can keep pace: ⚡️ Can you know the business instantly? ⚡️ Can you trust the data beneath the transaction? ⚡️ Can you grow without adding friction for good customers? As payments get faster, the margin for error gets thinner. The institutions that win will be the ones that can verify trust at the same speed the rails now run. https://lnkd.in/ew-6EGsh

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