From Prototype to Trust: Danny Friday on Building AI-Powered Benefits Infrastructure

A lot of companies are now connecting AI directly to more systems: CRM, email, meeting recorders, Slack, documents and internal knowledge. On paper, that looks like the obvious next step. Give AI access to everything, and it should be able to help with anything. But access alone does not create understanding. One person who knows all about this is Roope Heinilä, founder and CEO of optivian.ai, and he recently wrote about the hidden cost of connecting AI straight to the sales stack. Every time someone asks a question like “where does this deal stand?”, the AI often has to rebuild the picture from raw material: emails, transcripts, notes and CRM records. It can pull in too much noise, miss important context, and start from scratch again the next time. To find out more I caught up with Roope. Roope talks about his background, what Optivian does, SaaS, and more. More about Roope Heinilä: Before Roope founded Optivan. he founded Smarp, scaled it to a successful exit, and later served as Group CEO of Haiilo, a larger enterprise SaaS business with 700+ enterprise customers.

What do you do when your customers love you for being local and expect you to work like a big global bank? In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Jerry Siegel and Joanna Watts join Theodora Lau to discuss the priorities and challenges that shaped AuburnBank's digital strategy and the decision to select Alkami’s Digital Sales & Service Platform. Nick Weston from Alkami joins the conversation to explain how an integrated platform can help financial institutions connect account opening, digital banking, data, and marketing as they plan for the future.

We've reached a point where a phone call from your child, a video from your boss, or an email from a trusted friend can no longer be accepted at face value. Artificial intelligence isn't just changing how we work. It's changing how we decide who and what to believe. While most AI experts focus on productivity and automation, Aaron Painter, CEO of Nametag argues that the technology's most immediate threat is much more personal: the erosion of trust. Aaron’s book Deepfaked: Restoring Trust in the AI Era was published today and it examines how AI is changing the way we recognise truth and why rebuilding trust may be the defining challenge of this decade. I caught up with Aaron to find out more about his book and deepfakes. Aaron talks about his background, his book, deepfakes, and more. More about Aaron Painter: Aaron Painter is the CEO of Nametag, the identity verification company helping organisations restore trust in an era of AI-generated impersonation. Nametag pioneered a new category of identity verification that protects organisations from impersonators and AI-generated deepfakes, helping leading enterprises prevent fraud, reduce support costs, and securely verify customers during high-risk interactions. Named a Visionary in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Identity Verification, Nametag is helping redefine how trust is established online. Aaron has spent his career helping people earn trust in a world transformed by technology. That journey has taken him across six countries and four continents. Aaron has lived and worked in the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Hong Kong, mainland China, and the United States, and has visited more than 100 countries. Those experiences shaped his belief that while technology continues to change how people live, work, and connect, trust remains the foundation of every successful relationship, organisation, and society — and that it must be earned differently across cultures.

Briana Marbury grew up in Detroit with one bank in the neighborhood. She opened an account after her first job. Then came the overdraft fees, and the fees on the fees. She had a choice: gas and groceries, or the bank. The bank account closed. So she went to the check-cashing place on the corner, five dollars at a time, for years — while the unpaid fees went to collections and marked a credit file that had barely started.   Financial exclusion doesn't always look like someone outside the banking system. Sometimes it looks like a closed account, a check-cashing counter, and a damaged credit file. Briana Marbury, President & CEO of Interledger Foundation, joins Theodora Lau to talk about living it — and about the unglamorous infrastructure work that could stop it happening to someone else. But technology in and of itself was not going to be enough. They close the conversation on what’s next: Mexico, Colombia, and a growing push into US community banks and CDFIs. And on what gives Briana hope: that when she walks into a room with a government, they're not asking whether interoperability matters. They're asking how fast it can happen. Hot take 🔥"I have a choice between either buying gas, buying groceries, or paying a bank fee bill — when I can go access my money right away at this corner store for five dollars." 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: fintech, personal finance, financial inclusion, payments, cross-border payments, remittances, Interledger Protocol, Briana Marbury, Interledger Foundation #FinancialInclusion #CrossBorderPayments #Fintech #Payments Timestamp: 00:00 Welcome and Introductions 01:09 Interledger Foundation Origins 02:59 Hidden Financial Exclusion 05:54 Personal Stories and Literacy 07:55 Interoperability for Inclusion 09:16 Fixing Cross Border Payments 13:48 Why Fees Persist 15:50 Lessons Working with Regulators 18:11 Plans for 2027 More about our guest 🌐Briana Marbury on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianamarbury/ 🌐Interledger Foundation: https://interledger.org/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision **

Cork-based Zyte recently released new research, after analysing 25,000 websites across the globe. The data suggests that the Open Web is Now ‘The Controlled Web’. Tech leaders are facing a strategic decision: allow open access to maximise visibility in search, or erect technical barriers to protect their content. I recently caught up with Shane Evans, the Founder and CEO Zyte to find out more about this. Shane talks about his background, what Zyte does, AI, Zyte’s new research, and more. More about Zyte: Zyte believes that businesses deserve a smooth pathway to data. For more than a decade they have led the way in building powerful, easy-to-use ways to collect, format and deliver web data, quickly, dependably and at scale helping thousands of organisations make smarter business decisions, secure competitive advantage and drive sustainable growth.