14 May 2026 Steve Ledford on Pay by Bank, Instant Payments Adoption, AI, Stablecoin

Speaker A: Off the rails from the us faster payments council.

Speaker B: M. I am Reed Lutanen, CEO of the US Faster Payments Council. And. And this is off the Rails from the US Faster Payments Council. Today I'm joined by Steve Ledford, former executive at the Clearinghouse and current advisor to the University of Georgia's Fintech Academy students. But first, the headlines. The call for session proposals for the FPC fall member meeting is open. That event will be in Kansas City this November. And bonus opportunity. We're also accepting session proposals for the spring member meeting, which will be in March in San Antonio, Texas. Find all of that@fasterpaymentscouncil.org of course. And as always, a huge thank you to our fall and spring member meeting sponsors for 2026. First, our platinum sponsors, ACI Worldwide, North American Banking Company and Visa Direct. And our gold sponsors, Aloya, BNY, Brightwell, De Novo, treasury, ePay Resources, Federal Reserve Financial Services, Finsley, Mastercard, Form 3 Plus, Plaid, Shazam, the Clearinghouse, PTAP Advisory, Trustly, Validify, Westpay, and Wyzea. I will have a ton of new resources to share with you next time on the show, so keep an eye out for that on the website, on LinkedIn and here on the podcast. But for now, it is time for my discussion with Steve Ledford. All right, we're joined by Steve Ledford. Steve, thanks for joining us.

Speaker A: Oh, happy to be here.

Speaker B: All. Uh, right. And it's great to have you back on the show.

Speaker A: Our.

Speaker B: Our most loyal listeners will remember that you were the very, very first guest we had on the show way back in February of 2021. At that point, I guess, especially after recording that conversation with you, I wasn't sure that we were gonna. This was gonna work. Um, now, you know, it's been more than five years. Unlike me, you're doing some different things than you were doing then. Um, one thing you're doing is working with students at the University of Georgia, and your students are launching a, uh, payments app. So talk about the program, the students, the project, and how anyone listening might get in touch with you to recruit some of these talented kids.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Um, this is actually a great story, and it's actually a good example of what, what I think we could be doing in school, schools, uh, around the country to really raise that next generation of folks in the payments and fintech world. Uh, uh, the Georgia Fintech Academy is sort of an umbrella organization working with universities across the state. It was actually developed in concert with a lot of the fintech companies that are based In Georgia. And what they do is they come up with ideas, you know, um, uh, actually oversee introducing things like payments into the curriculum of universities. I uh, live in Athens, Georgia. The University of Georgia is nearby. And uh, Professor Bob Trotter actually runs the program, uh, for the University of Georgia, their uh, Terry's College of Business. What they do is it's actually a concentration of uh, it's a certificate program. Um, students can get a certificate in fintech. Uh, they need to go through four courses. And the most important, important thing is not just the courses. It's obviously things like learning how payments and how the fintech, uh, technology works. There's a legal course as well, but it has a whole lot of hands on. Even in the very first course the students do a project. A team of students will really uh, work with a uh, sponsoring fintech company and they come up uh, with a kind of a consulting engagement, something that the company wants to uh, learn more about. And the students actually can do a great job. Uh, they present them at the end of the session, uh, and what's called a shark tank environment. And a lot of the ideas these students are coming up with end up being implemented by the companies also. A lot of the students that are on these get hired by the company so it works out that way as well. And uh, the project that you were talking about was interesting. Uh, there was actually a hackathon about I guess a couple years ago now. And at this hackathon a student team over a weekend came up with this idea for a pay by bank application. And one of the things about pay by bank is you got to give the folks who are uh, going to be using the payment a reason to do so. And they said look, you know there are coupons, there are discounts, things like that, rewards. But what if we actually came up with a way where it contributed to something that the uh, that the customers really value. Um, and not just like rounding up, but we actually introduce uh, a new way of doing payments is appealing to merchants about half of what they would normally pay an interchange and merchant discounts. Um, and it would often then go to uh, a really uh, a purpose that is chosen uh, by the consumers. And so that idea came out of the hackathon. Uh, Professor Trotter actually said I kind of like this idea. And he actually introduced it in his next class as a company. Uh, you know, got an LLC formed, all that. And students have now been working on it for the last three semesters. It's going live in Athens Georgia, uh, going Live in Athens, Georgia in just the coming months. And so real excited. Uh, I've had the opportunity to coach the students. What I do with the university is I'm a, I'm a coach to student teams that are in this program. And I've had a chance to coach the students who have been working on it, many of whom have hung on as interns. And uh, they're the core of the company and they're the ones doing a lot of the work. Uh, and, um, it's really excited, uh, that what they have chosen, by the way, I know that this, uh, will appeal to you in a certain way. They've chosen the money to go towards Georgia athletics to help really, uh, maintain the excellence that University of Georgia.

Speaker B: I was about to use this app and I like. Nope, can't do it. That's pretty cool. Um, so the. They're launching it in a, uh, small area. I, I know you personally have been doing some, some, Some bar hopping to make sure that the local merchants are, are aware that this is available to them. Uh, I guess, you know, what are the, you know, what's, what's that initial, I guess, pilot area look like? And then what are the plans beyond that for this?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It is being launched in Athens, Georgia. And actually the initial merchants are all going to be within very close, uh, proximity to the university. Um, and, uh, if you've ever been to Athens, you know that just right off the university, uh, there's a downtown Athens area chock full of merchants, music venues, uh, as you mentioned, bars and tap rooms, uh, things like that. And, uh, that's going to be the initial market. Uh, and uh, again, one of the things is the merchants are going to be paying about, uh, one and a half percent, uh, merchant discount. One percent of that's going to Georgia athletics. You can probably guess that that's kind of a big deal in Athens. But the model they came up with was designed from the very beginning not to be tied just to what we can do in Athens. Uh, from the very beginning, the very first group of students that worked on it had to came up with an expansion plan first. Um, even though what seemed to be the most valuable purpose, uh, in Athens was, you know, supporting the, uh, Georgia athletic program, um, it would work really with any kind of philanthropic organization. Uh, and so the platform that they developed, and by the way, they actually oversaw the development of a technical platform to deliver this. And so it's, you know, pretty involved. It can be used, uh, for any kind of philanthropic effort. But the other Thing is their initial expansion program is prove this in Athens and then expand through other Division 1 college towns initially across the Southeast, but it could get to probably anywhere. Uh, and so it's a model that is replicable. So I think we could probably see it in Beethovenville if you want.

Speaker B: That's what I was about to say. We're at the other extreme of the sec. We can uh, let's, let's, let's see if we can make that happen. It's super cool. And is there a, is there a way for folks who are not in that area to kind of, is there a website or anything like that that people can sort of see what's going on there and keep tabs a bit?

Speaker A: Uh, yes. Uh, actually there's uh, a Website Ah, on LinkedIn, uh, as well. If you look for purpose payment payments with a purpose, it'll uh, bring you there. Um, and so you can keep up with what's going on. We've been kind of teasing it for a while, uh, that yes, there's something big happening and so I just kind of told you what the big thing happening is and so uh, but no, please purpose payment, you can follow it there. Um, I'll be reposting uh, what's coming up there as well on uh, you know, uh, on my LinkedIn posting. And so you'll, you'll be seeing things there. Uh, I think we also have it on Facebook and a few other places. Instagram.

Speaker B: Um, and if you're in the Atlanta area, which I suspect a decent number of our listeners might be given the, the fintech hub that Atlanta is, it's possible you could even make your way up to Athens and try it out for yourself uh, once it's launched. So keep tabs on that. It's going to be kind of cool. It's fun to see. Kind of like you said that, that, that next generation of people sort of coming into this space and doing cool things.

Speaker A: Oh, I was going to say speaking of the next generation, the students coming out of this fintech program are really good. I mean I think that they're just making students a lot smarter than when uh, you and I were in school. And uh, and if you want any, I would be happy to connect some of you who might be interested in uh, seeing what they have to offer. I'd be happy in making that connection for you. So just put that out there.

Speaker B: There you go. Pipeline for talent. I like how you suggest that you and I were in school at the same time, um, um, switching gears a Bit. Uh, because you also recently had a piece that you co wrote with Lee Kiriakou, also formerly of the clearinghouse. Um, you know, I guess I would call it. And this is a sort of a living autopsy, which, you know, hopefully is not a thing medical doctors are doing, but for instant payments. Um, you know, why don't you take a couple minutes, summarize the piece and the things you hope readers take away from that.

Speaker A: Certainly. Well, I think some of you might know Lee Kiriakou and I have a lot of affection for instant payments, uh, RTP in particular, since we were part of the team that, uh, you know, that launched it with the clearinghouse. And we think there's so much potential for instant payments. And the question we have is, with this much potential, how come the growth has been. I think it's been pretty good, but there's so much more that could have been done. The article is where is that hockey stick of growth? You know, where is that sudden boom that we were expecting to see? So we. We looked at. I. I don't like the term autopsy because that does have sort of a final ring to it. Let's just call it more of a. Of a. Of a checkup, uh, uh, a scan or something like that. Uh, but we looked at it and we realized, look, there's. There's a good bit of acceptance. You can, uh, you can receive, uh, RTP or fed, uh, now payments now in most, uh, accounts in the country. I mean it's really pretty widespread. Um, what we don't have as much is initiation. And the initiation is clustered in a few, uh. In a few, uh, areas, a few use cases and really a. A few banks that are really broadly offering this and really promoting it to their customers. And we're wondering why that is. Um, we went in and took a look at it and there are a few things that we think are environmental factors. There are other ways of moving money quickly. Um, you know, if you talk about things like, uh, Zelle, you know, Venmo cash app, you can move money person to person. And even though it isn't instant behind the scenes, it gets there pretty quickly. Uh, I will note Zelle is now using RTP for a good many other payments. But. But the application was already there. You can move it with push to card. I think there's good arguments that RTP is a superior way of making that money move. Uh, but. But it's. It has. You have to have, uh, other. Other. There has to be something else. The instant settlement, which is actually what makes this uh, so good isn't necessarily what the selling point is to a lot of the end users. What's interesting though, is it is important to those providing the services, whether they're banks, whether they're fintechs, because what it does is allow them to build much more robust services. It allows them to, uh, really do it with less risk than, uh, with payments that have some sort of contingency involved. And so why aren't we seeing more of it? Uh, so we took another look a little bit deeper. One of the things we realized is that we've been treating instant payments like it's some sort of a special, very precious type of product. This should be really focused on a few specific use cases that we as, uh, the mandarins of payments, I guess, have thought. Uh, these are where we should be using it. And I'll be honest with you, that's what I bought into when I first got involved in this. I know, uh, we were both on the Vaster Payments task force and that was kind of like what we're saying. What are the use cases? What are the use cases? If you look at what's actually happening with instant payments now, these are use cases that none of us looking at it strictly from the top down would have ever come up with. Things were happening in the economy and folks said, hey, I can use this thing. And I think that really opens up a lot more opportunity if we would just get out of the way, stop trying to tell people how to use instant payments. The folks who are out there, the small businesses, uh, the fintechs who come up with a great idea for specific applications, they know what use cases are going to make sense at the center. We should just be making that as easy as possible for them to do. But what happened is we thought about it in terms of specific use cases, and we need to treat this as special. This is a premium service. The fact is, it's a really, really, really, really good pipeline. It's a really good rail. And we should start treating it more like the utility that it can be a commonly accessible, widely used way of moving money that you don't have to even think about. In other words, uh, you and I, we wake up in the morning and all we want to do is we want to, you know, get things done. If you're in a business, you just want to, you know, sell the bagels or whatever it is, you don't go wake up in the morning saying, I want to make a payment, do you? I mean, do you? That would be weird. Okay, so I want to make a payment. You're doing it for a reason. How that gets done is really where you know, the financial institutions, the fintechs, a lot of others can get involved. But that's under the covers. It's just like you don't think about where the electricity comes from or how the. Well I have to worry about how

Speaker B: the water, most of us don't.

Speaker A: So anyway, uh, but you don't really have to worry about that. Uh, it just gets done and I think that's how we need to be looking at it and make it more widely available. I think there have been some moves recently that help. Uh, I think we originally tried to control how it was done too much, both from the network as well as the financial institution point of view. You know, we need to make sure it's in these areas. Um, things like raising the limits to 10 million, I think helping a lot on the upper end, uh, in businesses. I think that's something they've been asking for for a while. Um, the on behalf of uh, thing that came out of rtp I think really again opened things up a little bit more by making it where it was easier for those who wouldn't provide those end user services to do so and use some of the mechanisms that are already in place. Uh, seeing inklings now about opening up a little bit more to cross border payments. And I think we're seeing little bits of this happening now. Um, but I think it's going to take us to wholesale rethinking. Like you know what, this is a really good pipeline. It sits there right there with ach, uh wire transfers, all of these types of things and open it up and let the creative forces that are already out there in the, among the end users and uh, providers and such, let those lie. And I think we're going to see it take off like we have seen it in other countries.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think I've been saying for a long time when people ask me, you know, what are the, what are the use cases? And part of this is because I've been paying attention to people like you who've been building this stuff from the beginning. But is the use cases are whatever is legal, whatever legal reason you want to move the money, right? Um, so from your perspective, what's the from, you got operators, you got FIs, you got corporates listening here. What, what should they do differently um, than they have been doing, you know,

Speaker A: stop trying to be prescriptive about it. I mean when it comes right down to. I like the way you put that. What's, what's legally able to do, uh, when you try to over manage it. Um, you know, I think we learn that um, central planning doesn't work as well. I think the folks in the old Soviet Union kind of learned that, you know, um, you know, and so don't have things that are providing unnecessary, uh, restrictions. The fact is there are bad things people can do with payments, but those things are illegal. And we have regulatory mechanisms, the regulators are out there, there are legal mechanisms. Those are the types of things. And so those already exist. Right. E applies. We don't have to double up on that. You know, uh, it's just there are ways this can be done and it doesn't have to be handling through that core, um, payment network and I think also from the providers of the service. If you're a bank, uh, don't try to say, well this is something we're doing for uh, really just treasury management, you know, make it more widely available a little bit. One, one of the other things that I do, uh, in retirement because I get bored I guess is I'm uh, a treasurer of a animal, uh, shelter. Okay. Which isn't quite as exciting as it might sound. I've been wanting to do is I've been wanting to move money around a little bit better. But because we're small, we're on small business platforms and the tools just aren't there. It would be fairly straightforward, I believe, to make them available, but they aren't. And so um, what I'm having to do to uh, just uh, use my money more prudently, efficiently is I'm looking at some fintechs to help me out with that, uh, who are able to latch into the bigger banks. Uh, but I'd like to be able to do those things. Same thing from a consumer point of view. You know, uh, maybe you have money, uh, you have kids in college in a 529 plan. You know, uh, why not be able to just fire that off and pay for the tuition straight out of that. It's just we need to make these tools available.

Speaker B: Have you, have you considered training the dogs to, to move the money like they could?

Speaker A: I mean there, um, didn't mention trying to get the cats to do it because they don't do anything you want. You know, I have to look into that. I'll look into it.

Speaker B: Yeah, dogs are pretty fast. Um, all right, uh, let's, let's move on. Let's play some games. Let's do Odd one out. So I'm going to give you three things, and you're going to tell us which one is the odd one out and your rationale for that. So the first, First Trio Card, ach and instant payments.

Speaker A: Um, the odd one out there, I think, is instant payments because it happens right now and it has so much unfulfilled potential.

Speaker B: All right, see, I thought you were going to say one of the other ones, because instant payments isn't special. Rules, um, regulations or standards?

Speaker A: Rules, Regulations and standards. Um, I would say standards. A lot of rules and regulations are things you have to do. To me, standards are just a tool to get things done.

Speaker B: All right, uh, industry, government or individuals.

Speaker A: I would say, uh, industry and individuals. Uh, even though government can also be a player, but they're the ones who are actually making the decisions on, uh, what happens with money.

Speaker B: All right, uh, how about ipa, Stout?

Speaker A: Logger lagers, the odd one out. And, uh, I mean, we're talking cold fermentation. We're talking bottom fermentation versus top fermentation. Uh, stout and ipa, by the way, are ales for those of you who aren't nerdy, uh, like I am on this.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I assumed you would go there. I was gonna go with stout because it's more of a winter and IPA and lager feel. More like warm weather drinks. But, you know, teach their own regulation. Competition or cooperation.

Speaker A: Um, I would say on that one, regulation is the one that stands out because it's what sets the rules for what's going on. And competition and co collaboration are basically, uh, two strategies for, uh, getting things done.

Speaker B: Okay, how about cats, chickens, goats?

Speaker A: Uh, because I have cats living in my house. Not chickens or goats.

Speaker B: No, no, no chickens in the house. That's a good rule. Good job. You have one. Odd one out. Let's play word association. I'm going to give you a word or phrase. Tell us the first thing that comes to your mind and why. Send.

Speaker A: Do it.

Speaker B: Do it. Yeah, I don't think we needed a Y on that one. Fraud.

Speaker A: Don't do it.

Speaker B: Uh, brewery.

Speaker A: Wonderful place.

Speaker B: Uh, but give us one. Tell us one we should go to.

Speaker A: You know what? Um, Nano Brewery in Athens. If you don't come here, do go to Normal Town Brewing. Uh, it's small, but, uh, and it's hard finding their stuff in. In stores to find it in a few local places. But go there. It's just a cool, small nano brewery, and folks who run it are fantastic. All right, how about beer, by the way?

Speaker B: How about AI AI?

Speaker A: Um, learn to use it well.

Speaker B: Stablecoin,

Speaker A: an interesting competition. Uh, I think there'll be an interesting competition between stablecoins and, uh, tokenized deposits once financial institutions figure out how to really make the tokenized deposits work.

Speaker B: Okay. Gunner Stockton.

Speaker A: Gunner Stockton, the best name ever for an SEC quarterback.

Speaker B: Love it. Yeah, I mean, come on, who doesn't want the Gunner behind there, behind center. Um, innovation.

Speaker A: Innovation. Um, innovation should be part of everyone's job.

Speaker B: All right, good stuff. You have one word association as well. And then our new segment that we've added to the show. Steve, give us one LinkedIn account to follow.

Speaker A: Well, I gave you one earlier purpose payment, but I would also highly recommend that anybody interested in payments, uh, follow the king of beer nerd.

Speaker B: Oh, great account. I follow that one. Uh, podcast to try out.

Speaker A: Podcast to try out. Uh, technically I don't know if you call it a podcast, but lately I've been listening to the, uh, the Economist has something they call, uh, inside the Economist. And it's just a bunch of really cool sounding Brits talking about things in the world.

Speaker B: And they're smart because they have that accent. Um, and one book to read.

Speaker A: Um, last one I finished. Ah, the Demon of Unrest. Uh, by the way, it's the, uh, by Eric Larson. It's taking the time between the election of Abraham Lincoln up until really the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter in the beginning of the Civil War. And it, it's almost a minute by minute account sometimes. And it goes into what everybody was saying and thinking and doing. And the thing about it was, um, on one hand it shows how much of a, uh, difference in a very short amount of time technology made. So much of it happened because of the telegraph and railroad. So I think we could probably make some uh, analysis some of the stuff going on now. But most importantly, it was about how all of these folks involved in what was going to happen made really, really, uh, put it this way, they really underestimated the potential implications of the actions that they were taking and the things that they were doing. Um, I'm not saying the Civil War wouldn't have happened, but it might not have happened then had it not been from just miscalculation, um, of how severe the things that were going on were going to be. I, uh, think we all know the Civil War, um, I don't think either side was expecting it to be the way it was, but you could kind of see it coming in retrospect. And again, when you're talking about a whole lot of big things happening it's important to think beyond just what's immediately going on and try to really, really say, what's the other guy gonna do? And how does that change the way? I think so, um, yeah, it's a good book.

Speaker B: And what information does the other guy have? And yeah, you know, that his information is incomplete in different ways, that my information is incomplete, and that. That can cause all kinds of. Of changing in your thing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Interesting stuff. All right, Steve, thank you so much. This has been awesome.

Speaker A: Thank you. Enjoy it.

Speaker B: And that is it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Steve for joining me. Please take a moment to leave us a five star review. Subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes and share it with your network. Also, if you aren't already following FPC on LinkedIn, get out there and click that follow button. That account shares a ton of valuable information. Have a great day and we will talk to you in a couple weeks.