25 June 2026 Keith Briscoe of Merchant Risk Council

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

Speaker B: This is off the Rails from the

Speaker C: US Faster Payments Council. And as always, I'm your host, the Reed Lutanen, CEO of the fpc. Today I'm joined by Keith Briscoe, VP of Member Advocacy at the Merchant Risk Council MRC. Keith and I talk about MRC's recent payments and fraud trends, report AI, faster payments for retail, and orchids. But first, the headlines. The call for session proposals for the FPC Fall Member Meeting is open. That event will be in Kansas City November 4th through the 6th 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 that@fasterpaymentscouncil.org of course. And as always, a huge thank you to our Fall Member meeting sponsors. 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 three, Plaid, Shazam, the Clearinghouse, PTAP Advisory, Trustly, Validify, westpay, and Wise uh, fpc's Board of Directors elections are wrapping up and we will soon be seeking nominations for our Board Advisory Group. We encourage all FPC members who are interested in helping to shape the future of the FPC and the work we'll be doing to submit your nominations. The Board Advisory Group will be meeting with the Board of Directors in person at the FPC Fall Member Meeting in Kansas City and at the 2027 spring member meeting San Antonio. And it is already time to be looking ahead to Fall Conference season. And of particular interest to this week's listeners, in September, I'll be attending the Merchant Risk Council's MRC San Diego event as well as the Merchant Advisory Group's Payments Conference. I recently wrote an article from Ag Insights about how the FPC is positioned to take the lead when it comes to building out the standards and frameworks that will define the next generation of payments. And merchants and other business end users have an opportunity right now to claim their seat at the table. So if you're a merchant and you're listening to this episode, please reach out to us. We'd love to find a way to get you engaged and that will do it for the headlines. Let's get to the discussion with Keith Briscoe of mrc, the Merchant Risk Council.

Speaker B: All right, we're joined by Keith Briscoe from the MRC Merchant Risk Council. Keith, thanks for joining.

Speaker A: Reed, thank you so much for the Opportunity. Definitely looking forward to it.

Speaker B: All right, I'm glad to have you on and you know, given I think that this is not, I think, I know this is the first time we've had somebody from MRC on the podcast. I think we should start with just a bit about mrc, who, you know, who participates there, uh, what do your members work on together, what do the MRC team members do for your members and the payments community more broadly? Just kind of, you know, what are you guys up to and you know,

Speaker C: how can people engage potentially?

Speaker A: Yeah, the MRC is the Merchant Risk Council. So we consider ourselves to be the go to place for fraud and E commerce payments professionals. Um, so we have a number of core pillars, uh, I would call those networking, education, advocacy and collaboration. So we host a number of flagship and regional events every year. That's one of the key pillars and one of the primary ways members engage. But we're a year round engagement organization so we take our mandate, um, of educating and training and sharing knowledge amongst payments and fraud prevention professionals super seriously. So we have things like online summits that we host four or five times a year. Like I said, we have regional events, both flagship events being Vegas, the largest one in America, and then we have European flagships events as well, um, that was held earlier this spring in London. And then we have regional member only events that offer an opportunity for members to really deep dive in less of a commercial setting and really focused on content and value exchange in a way that's uh, a little bit more intimate than some of our larger conferences that can be anywhere from 800 to 2000 people. So the MRC is about 800ish members, largely comprised of some of the globe's largest E commerce merchants. But as well as that, like our inclusive approach to the ecosystem is definitely making sure we've got card networks, solution providers, acquirers, all of the payments innovators you would expect to be part of that kind of culture and that community. And it really is that a global community. We have presence in the Americas, uh, Latin America as well as the us, Europe and Asia Pacific as well. So we really do encourage that kind of global engagement and members work on dedicated projects together. For example, we launched what was our first official working group, which was our dispute resolution working group to come up with. And as you probably know, there's a big challenge in the industry today around consistent ways to respond to chargebacks in the compelling evidence process. And so for the first time we're working toward a common template that essentially says if a Merchant responds with these correct fields to respond to a chargeback, an issuer will behave in predictable ways toward an outcome that makes sense for the entire industry. And uh, I'm sure, as you realize today, it's very fragmented process merchants all have, whether they use a service provider for that or do it themselves, it's a very fragmented space. So we're excited about some of the dedicated kind of collaboration around these industry problems that's occurring as well. Um, in addition to that, we have communities globally as well. So our members have different clustered communities based on topic area. So that could be fraud prevention, that could be payments optimization, that could be regionally focused. So Latin America specific community group, for example. So we do offer these platforms for our members to both communicate and interact face to face as well as through things like online communities. So that's kind of, you know, it in a nutshell. What's really key though is I think the education offerings that we've launched in recent years, uh, we have close to 30 or over 30 education courses as well as the official certification. We've launched the Certified Payments and Fraud Prevention Professional, which is a bit of a mouthful, but we have about 200 certificates now who have gone through that program and that's been a big value add to our overall base of offerings.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Yeah, those, those professional certifications or accreditations are, are powerful tools. We as, as our listeners know and maybe you do too. Well, the FPC also of course has one that we've partnered with nacho and they credited Faster Payments Professional. Um, and it's been really good, uh, experience for our members and for the eco, you know, the community more broadly. Um, another thing, I'm, I'm totally sold on the, the dispute resolution, the exception resolution process for payments is, it's kind of in my mind the flip side of the coin on fraud prevention. Right. It's like you're going to obviously do what you can to prevent as much fraud as you possibly can, but you also need to have an understanding of how are you going to handle those times where fraud does occur or whether something went wrong with the payment and how are you going to resolve that? Um, so I'm glad to hear you guys are working on that. We actually, I've been talking about that on the podcast, but we actually recently launched an exception resolution workgroup ourselves, um, focused on instant payment flows. Right. So thinking about, the potential for, um, resolving exceptions, um, when it comes to fednown RTP transactions, um, you know, again, like to the side of the card Networks. Um, cool. Uh, I did want to get into one big project. You do that. I don't think if you mentioned it, I didn't hear it. But uh, you guys have your, your global.

Speaker A: Yeah, I did not mention it.

Speaker B: Yeah, you're holding it back. You're going to. Let me ask. Um, that your global e commerce payments and fraud report, uh, it came out recently. I shared it on LinkedIn. It's a, it's a great report. There's so much in there. I had a really good time as a payment nerd, just going through it

Speaker A: and thinking about, yeah, there's a lot

Speaker B: of data stuff in there and the different ways you guys can slice it because there's a really good, healthy number of responses um, to it. So I would first of all just recommend anybody listening check it out because it is really like a lot of information there and you get a global lens, um, to it. Um, but I'd say to start off telling folks, you know, what is in there. I just said it's great but I didn't say what it covers. So what can people expect to find? And then maybe two to three of the top headlines that people will find in there.

Speaker A: Yeah, so it covers a range of fraud and payments related topics and really it's about the struggles as well as some of the challenges and opportunities that I think today's fraud and payments professionals are encountering. So you know, I think in this age, I'll cite kind of one example of an area that's kind of a thorny, really meaty area that our report, uh, tried to uncover some insights around. And that was the idea of orchestration both on the fraud side but also the payment side. I think we all understand today that kind of orchestration technologies to ensure that a payment will succeed all the way through. Obviously having ah, reach, smart retry strategy, utilizing AI and machine learning for that capability, both on the fraud side and the payment side presents a ton of new opportunities for merchants to get more effective at ensuring a successful payment outcome. But some of the challenge in that is the vendors in this space and whether you decide to do it yourself or use a vendor, it does place more of a responsibility on the merchant to have their technology stack in place, better access to consolidated data, uh, all of the reporting that actually makes those tools effective. So I think the upside is we're seeing a lot of these new capabilities in the industry, but kind of behind the scenes and payment operations professionals still do struggle with ensuring organizational readiness to be able to take advantage of some of those tools. So these are some of the, you know, the kind of double edged dual edge that we sort of explore, um, in some of the kinds of questions that, that we do ask. Another key area we've been tracking over the last several years is first party misuse or friendly fraud. The MRC played a pretty critical role with the card networks to kind of better define the definition for friendly fraud and those data elements that could be used to determine in fact was a legitimate consumer transaction. So we continue to kind of monitor the progress of that because there are broad network level tools available for that now. Compelling evidence 3.0 from Visa and MasterCard has its own variant called First Party Trust. And it is taking some time for those to gain some traction. So we're trying to get a read of whether this problem is continuing to increase. Right. Because I think as we all realize, consumer abuse is a huge industry challenge right now. And the report kind of reveals some interesting insights around that too, which is in certain markets like the US it appears to be plateauing. Uh, and in other markets and other categories it appears to be still rising dramatically. And I think part of the reason for that is the fact that it takes time for these tools to gain kind of an overall network effect and begin to be actually successful and effective at a mass adoption scale. So I think it's taking some time, but I think consumers, because they're not for one thing, if liability is the thing that shifts through models like something like CE3O, unless you hold the consumer accountable right for that transaction, that's not necessarily going to stop the behavior. So we really need to have all the industry parties, merchants, the networks, acquirers and issuers all really embracing and adopting these tools for them to really have the effect we're after. So those are some other key insights we're track as well as I'm sure lead into some of the questions you might have about rtp.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. That was definitely where I was going to go because I obviously wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't pull up because there are quite a bit of different nuggets in there that were related to instant payments or you guys are in the report calling them real time payments. I think that is a more, more of a global name. We, we in the US kind of have adopted instant just to avoid confusion with the RTP network. The RTP network, um, anyway, same, same thing, different name. Uh, but I wanted to pull on

Speaker A: that and it really is in the report, I think a cash offer more than just RT or instant payments. But also account to account.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: Uh, payments. Right. So it's that whole sphere I think of, of solutions.

Speaker B: Yeah, just real fast. Account to account. Um, for the first time you guys have done this report, MRC has, uh, numerous times, I believe you um, can correct the record there on how many times.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's correct.

Speaker B: Um, uh, but for the first time Real Time Payments was among the top five payment methods accepted by respondents. I'd say. I'd like to just talk about that a bit and then maybe double click on that data, um, if you can. Because I think for our primarily US based audience, they're maybe thinking that their experience is different than that.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And I think it all comes down and people don't often like to get into the weeds of survey methodology because it's not the most exciting jump off the page topic. But I think it all comes down to the nature of the categories of the segments that get surveyed. So I think part of the reason why it did jump into the top five this year is because there was a fairly significant number of respondents from business to business and professional services categories which have use cases that are more in line and aligned to the value that account, ah, to account payments can bring. Um, I think certainly if you look at other markets like for example Pix in Brazil and um, you know, even in India as well with, with their real time payment system, you know, some of these capabilities in emerging markets have already captured a significant amount of actual transaction volume in E commerce. But I think in the US obviously that's still much more burgeoning early stage kind of growth. And so it is somewhat surprising I think to see it leap into the top five. But I think the big reason for it is probably the fact, as I said, that those segments were pretty heavy responders in the survey. So it's definitely, and this is something the MRC would love to see more of from a competition perspective. Right. Um, obviously there can be frustration about some of the network mandates and, and bulletins that merchants have to comply with and implement toward. Right. From a compliance perspective and real time payments do offer cost advantages as well as some of the real time settlement opportunities that exist as well. So I think that's probably the reason. But suffice to say, and I'm sure you can see these trends as well, obviously given you're from the Faster Payments Council, there's a lot of experimentation going on in this space and you know, obviously there are a few nuts we're still trying to crack. Like the whole incentive part of the Equation, um, what happens from an overall reward standpoint in the US Market. Obviously consumers are very addicted to their car, uh, reward programs. And so there are some of these dimensions that obviously we're still working through. But I think it's an indication of both the segment part of it, but also the fact that there is a lot more experimentation going on within mainstream merges to prove out some of the value of RTP and account to account.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think one thing, you mentioned this in your response to my first question about how you guys are so focused and FPC is as well so focused on collaboration with the different segments we call them of the payments ecosystem. Right. So having these conversations not in isolation but with the networks, with the banks, with other providers in the space. Um, and I'm excited I didn't mention this before, um, this is a good time to mention it as any, um, that I'll be doing a session at your event in San Diego and in September along with, with Matt Friend from Chase and with Sarah Arnio from Walmart and with Dennis, uh, from ACI Worldwide, kind of talking about pay by bank and the promise there. And I think having those conversations across those different segments is super important. So I'm looking forward to that.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And it's in fact, you know, as a jumping off point, I'll just mention quickly too that that's exactly the kind of cross industry approach that we take to our advocacy efforts at the MRC as well. So as opposed to some might be more direct lobbying organizations, sometimes that approach we, you know, we call it sometimes a little scorched earth because if you're not bringing along all the members of the payments value chain. Right. That can often be a little bit one sided. And our belief is that we really have to have a balanced view to any change we're trying to drive. Right. That all participants should share equally in the risks and the rewards of the payment system. And so that's kind of the approach we take to advocacy as well. Obviously it tends to be merchant led and merchant forward given the type of organization we are. But it is really important to have that kind of balance and contribution from the other players.

Speaker B: Cool. And one, one other thing I wanted to talk about in the report before we get into some games that we're going to play. Um, not surprisingly agentic AI seemed to be that kind of the meta topic that was, I was going to say on the horizon, but honestly that feels too distant. So maybe it's around the corner. Um, what insights would readers who are thinking about that. I know it's a hot topic across the board, but for sure, with the merchant community, um, you know, what, what are some insights that, you know, expectations, concerns, hopes when uh, it comes to agentic, uh, from the report.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I, I think as you would expect, I mean we definitely saw more of a, a state of readiness with larger enterprises who, you know, many of whom are well down the track, uh, preparing for Agentic. When you get into the mid tier and the, the smaller SMB type businesses, obviously they're not so far along the preparation path for that. I think a lot of the sessions that we had have, have had around the report in both London and in Vegas also did demonstrate that, you know, the report often will reveal a kind of one size fits all approach by broad industry categories and segments. But then when you start to drill down into what the use case might be for agentic within gaming and gambling versus luxury goods, there's a lot of nuance in there across different, different merchant segments. So for example, taking luxury goods, we had a great dialogue um, in London about this. You know, when a consumer has such a strong affinity for a particular luxury brand, let's say it's probably unlikely they're going to let their agent make a, um, you know, a kind of standard decision on what product satisfies a core set of criteria. If they want, you know, a Louis Vuitton handbag, right. They're probably going to be very engaged and interested in buying that product. So relinquishing control to an agent becomes I think a more challenging, um, kind of leap of faith for them. Right. And you know, similarly in a gaming and gambling sector where you've got the number of betting products that exist within those sectors, I think, as you probably realize is, is just insane. Right? Like there can be hundreds and hundreds of variants of products within that space that a, that a gambling company might offer or facilitate. So the ability to kind of make a catalog available is not something that kind of fits in the same way that it does in a retail environment or a retail model. Right. So there's, there's a ton of variety and nuance that informs how merchants are going to decide to prepare for agentic above and beyond the fact that obviously enterprise organizations have more resources and they're kind of strongly considering that as how that could be a differentiator for them. Right. And I think similarly, it's not surprising that in regions like the US there's a much stronger level of preparedness. Other markets like Europe tend to be a lot more, let's pause and wait and see how the market evolves before we kind of go headlong down the investment path. And that's exactly what we also saw when we looked at the agency results for Europe versus the US So lots of different nuances in that conversation.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's sort of, it's sort of self evident when you're, when you think about this stuff, not as a payments person but just as a human being who like lives in this world. Like there are certain things like light bulbs, like I don't necessarily care that much about the light bulbs and if there's some, if there's a bot that can notice when my light is out or just, or decide, you know, buy the light bulbs, it's great. But yeah, I think most people, if they're buying a high end, like you said, handbag, the experience of buying it is part of the experience right along with having it.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And the affinity with that uh, brand is such a key part of the experience. I don't think those segments are going to get commoditized by that anytime soon.

Speaker B: So yeah, for sure. That's, it's interesting stuff. I, I, I, I think it's, it's, it's for sure going to change a lot of how we live and how we shop. Um, and I think uh, you know, we, we as payments professionals are kind of on the inside track here to see, to sort of see some of these things in preview because the payment aspect of it is so important. Um, and back to the dispute resolution piece of it. There's a lot of dispute resolution stuff that needs to get thought through.

Speaker A: Um, when it comes to talk about opening up a new vector entirely for first party misuse. Right. Agentic is, is definitely going to do that. So we've been having a lot of conversations with our members about that. Huh?

Speaker B: Yep. I'm sure, I'm sure. Hey, good stuff. Let's, let's move on. Let's play a game. Let's play odd one out. I'll list three things for you. You tell us which one in your mind is the odd one out and you're your rationale for that. You can use whatever criteria you like. Um, uh, so let's start with these three. Payment success rate, cost of payments and checkout abandonment rate.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm going to go with a tried and true one here which is checkout abandoned rate. Just because I think it's one that we need to continue to put pressure on because there have been a lot of mandates and a lot of what we do from a regulatory monitoring perspective or advocacy work does revolve around some of the sea mandates that have emerged in various regions. And there has been that uh, as you know, that constant friction and tension between stopping uh, fraud and what it actually means from uh, a shopping cart abandonment perspective. Right. And we continue to see a lot of this happening across global regions. And I was reading an article about the mandates coming out of Japan from many in the JCA and it certainly does look like because and depending on how SCA gets adopted and how 3Ds is used, those can be interpreted as riskier transactions. And I think post the implementation of that mandate in Japan, um, not leveraging 3Ds would yield an approval rate or a success rate of about 95% and now post mandate it's about 75%. So again we're seeing that kind of age old impact to conversion rate drop off which suggests that 3DS as a technology is not really fully mature in terms of how it's being implemented. Right. Both from a frictional perspective and how issuers might be interpreting the presence of that indicator if it's a 3Ds transaction. Right. So again merchants are continuing to see, we've seen this many times historically. Right. That uh, the conversion rate problem has not been solved yet. And there does need to be I think quite a bit more nuance in how things like SCA mandates are handed down and implemented.

Speaker B: So that's the one I, there's definitely, definitely a lot of progress still can be made there. Um, I was actually surprised it was a little lower on the. Yeah. In the report there's this chart that kind of gives it all these different aspects of the payment and that, that one was a little lower down the list than I was expecting. And that's kind of, that's actually why I put it on here because I was. Um. Anyway, um, how about these three? Moth, Catalaya and Dancing Lady. I don't even know if I said that second one correctly.

Speaker A: Catalia. Yeah, yeah. Uh, so for those who might not know those are orchid varieties. Uh, and I think I would in this case just because I like to. And I'm a bit of an orchid. Nutrita and I were talking about that um, I would choose the moth orchid or what's called Phalaenopsis. These would be kind of the typical grocery store orchids you might see, although grocery stores are carrying a much broader range. But these types of orchids are probably the best suited to what's called windowsill culture, which means Anybody with a window can probably grow this orchid. And it's well suited to kind of the interior conditions we have in, in our houses. So for that reason, just because I like to kind of spread the joy and let everybody benefit from having an orchid they can enjoy for years and getting it to rebloom, I would choose the moth orchid.

Speaker B: All right, how about these three? And I actually, I, I didn't know anything about orchids until we talked and then I did some. Did, um, some looking up and that's how I came up with those three. Although I don't know that I would. Even with a windowsill type approach, I probably would still kill it.

Speaker A: Um, well, it is interesting when it comes to these plants, for whatever reason, people think they're super difficult to grow and they're actually. And it's kind of like the next thing that I'm sort of interested in, that we talked about, which is Sourdough, is once you understand how something behaves and what it needs to thrive, it becomes very easy to care for it. And I would say the same is true of both orchids and sourdough.

Speaker B: How about these three real time payments? Buy now, pay later, or crypto?

Speaker A: Well, I would definitely pick real time payments. I think when it comes to the level like we were talking about earlier, the level of experimentation that's going on with it, the potential promise that it does hold, um, from multiple perspectives. When you think about things like bnpl, you know, I think we all know some of the challenges associated with, with that. It does have, I think, this, this consumer dimension that is potentially problematic. Right. When it comes to financing, obviously. Right. And then potentially some of the issues that come from that. So for that reason, and again, I'm not denigrating any BNPL provider out there, but it feels like, you know, the, the common currency of today's conversation. Um, I hear RTP and Account to Account discussed a lot amongst our membership. Bnpl, not quite as much. Uh, and sorry, what was the third one again?

Speaker B: Crypto.

Speaker A: Oh, crypto. Yeah. And again, crypto. I would say it's interesting when we do survey our membership and get a general sense of both the speaking topic submissions and what the appetite is from our audiences. There's not a ton of demand for crypto. Right. So I think crypto, much like Bitcoin, you know, very much in the conversation five years ago, but I wouldn't say it's at, uh, the top of the stack for, you know, topics which within our community currently. All right, so I'd go with rtp for sure. Very much. Still on top of the conversation.

Speaker B: I like to hear it. Um, how about the last. Last I went out. San Diego, Las Vegas, London.

Speaker A: I'm assuming you selected those cities because they're the locations of some key MRC events. Um, but I could be wrong. Uh, I, I guess even though I'm not necessarily a fan of the place, I'm going to have to pick Vegas because it does have that association with our largest annual flagship conference. We had about 2,000 people there earlier this spring in March. Great conference. And it is considered kind of the super bowl of where the MRC kind of shines within our niche. Right. So the magic that happens in Vegas around the MRC conference at that time is always a great experience. It was a great experience when I was on the vendor side of the equation. Now that I work for the mrc, I get to see that from a totally different lens. And it's a lot of fun to execute that obviously completely exhausting conference. But the, the interaction and just the level of communication and dialogue and collaboration that happens there is, is really the highlight of our year. So yeah, I really, I would pick Vegas.

Speaker B: Really wanted to go to, to the event. I might you guys. It was during my spring breaks I was. Family conflict superseded that. But I will, I'm excited to be there in San Diego. Um, love San Diego as a place.

Speaker A: Yeah, that'll be. I love San Diego. Yeah, absolutely. Great location. Good.

Speaker B: Um, job. You have one odd one out. Congratulations. Uh, let's move on and play word association. I'm going to throw something out, some different words and phrases. Just tell us first thing comes to your mind and why first one refunds.

Speaker A: I'm going to pick abuse, um, just because I think, you know, with some of the work being done on first party misuse, which you know, obviously itself, there's a element of abuse within that. Um, it comes from many different perspectives obviously and many different, um, many different issues fuel that kind of level of first party misuse. But uh, what we're seeing on the refund abuse side is that it is increasing significantly. You're probably referring to some of the report findings on that front obviously. Right. Um, it is as we see first party misuse sort of start to plateau in some regions like the US Refund abuse is something when, and often fraud in the E Commerce space is called a balloon. You squeeze it in one place and it bulges out at another. Right. So I, I think we're beginning to see consumers learn how to game the system when it comes to Refund, abuse. I think we've all heard the stories of, you know, the crazy stuff that happens with, with refunds and, and why that's such an issue. But I think that is increasing significantly.

Speaker B: All right, how about fraud?

Speaker A: Fraud? I'm gonna say I think AI on this one just because I think everybody is terrified at the, the acceleration of broad vectors that is being facilitated by AI. When you look at the quality of things like website impersonations compared to what it was five years ago and the ability to dupe consumers through those, those phony websites, it's, it's just night and day. Right. So the fraudsters are definitely learning how to take advantage of the tools at a, I would say a slightly faster rate than the good guys, which has kind of always been the case. Right. And so it's is fairly shocking how that's beginning to increase and amplify. And so for that reason I would say that.

Speaker B: Yeah, um, how about AI?

Speaker A: AI? What should we say about AI? Uh, yeah, what comes to mind?

Speaker B: What can you not say about AI really?

Speaker A: What can you. Yeah, what can you not say about it? I mean, I think the thing I, I'd highlight here, just because I don't hear a lot of people talking about this is the word that I would associate is slop. Because uh, unfortunately I think a lot of the focus in the industry and a lot of the public consciousness around AI is around a lot of these useless sort of tools and enhancement of images and kind of the face of AI sometimes is the use of uh, all of that resource to create completely kind of entertainment driven slop, if you will. Right. So I think we've all been inundated by that. I think the impact that's happening on certain creative enterprises and creatives in general, whether it's, it's writers or graphic designers, that, that's something that doesn't get discussed enough. I think it's certainly mentioned, but I think the disappearance of some of those creative skill sets in the industry is going to be eventually a problem and I think it's going to be a challenge for marketers who are trying to differentiate as well. And of, um, course many marketers are using these tools as well and they like anything they could be harnessed for good and in productive ways. But I think we need to kind of find a way to shift the conversation of AI toward all of the amazing things that can be done from a uh, medical and scientific standpoint as well as true automation capabilities that can add so much operational value to organizations. I think, unfortunately I Think we tend to gravitate toward the stuff that's sort of shiny and sexy as opposed to the stuff that's really meaningful. Right. So I'd like to see a lot of that side of the AI uh universe kind of recede into the distance and really focus on the meaty stuff that matters. Right.

Speaker C: I hear you.

Speaker B: I'm, I'm pretty old fashioned in that. Like I still, you know, I do LinkedIn articles, I do LinkedIn posts, I write and I, I cannot bring myself to have Claude write those for me. I like it, just it. Yeah, Uh, I think, I think it'll be obvious to the reader. I think it is obvious to most of us after.

Speaker A: I think it is too, a little

Speaker B: while that that's, it's inauthentic and I think, I do think that kind of like a lot of other things that were, I think initially like highly commoditized and automated, we've kind of drifted back to expecting or desiring handmade things. And I think, ah, I think the same is going to happen with content. I think people will demand human made content. I guess, you know, some of the, maybe marketing, advertising stuff that might be something that people don't feel the same affinity towards as like a movie or a television show or a book or something like nobody's. Most people are not going to be interested in reading a book that was written by Claude. I don't think. Um, at least I hope not.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: At least not if it's.

Speaker A: And then there's the kind of prevalence of, you know, you, uh, talked about LinkedIn and the number of AI enhanced headshots and things that I'm seeing as well, like that doesn't even resemble the person that I know. You know, if you see somebody pop up and all of a sudden they've got an AI enhanced photo, like the Uncanny Valley dimension of that and like you said, the disappearance of authenticity, you know, that's. I don't think we fully appreciated the consequences of some of that yet.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, come on guys. If anybody could use an enhanced headshot, it's me, and I don't use them. So you either. Um, how about, uh, you mentioned this before, but we'll go back to it. First party fraud,

Speaker A: uh, first party fraud. Still a significant issue. And I just, I do want to harp on this just for a minute because I think the tools and the definitions and the resources are there and I think it's really important and we are beginning to make sure that there are ways that more of the industry's Transaction volume can be included, um, in uh, frameworks like CE3 auto from Visa and the MasterCard tools. It's really important to be able to drive adoption there just because we do have a solution that can be quite effective. And it's, you know, it's been three or four years since the introduction of CE3O. I know visa is making a ton of changes to ensure that, for example, the subscription universe can participate more effectively given the length of that window between payments and so forth. Right. Um, and also looking at, I think cross merchant applications of that. Right. So a consumer who abuses merchant A is very likely to abuse merchant B. And triangulating that behavior across merchants to qualify Those transactions for C 3.0 is also really important. So, uh, I guess that's kind of my call to arms to the industry that, you know, we've made a lot of progress in this area, but we need to continue to drive adoption to truly make that problem go away or at least reduce it. And yes, there is probably going to be a way that bulges into another area in the industry. But uh, it's one of those opportunities that's kind of here before us now. So I encourage all merchants to explore the value of that as well as issuers to continue to, within the regulatory constraints they have as much as possible have those difficult, somewhat tricky conversations with consumers to hold them accountable for that purchase. Right. Because when the liability only shifts, it just shifts the financial obligation from one party to another where in the first party fraud universe it needs to rest with the consumer. So there's still so much to be done in that area. So I would say, yeah, ah, let's, let's double down on solving this problem because we've invested a lot in trying to. And it definitely has the opportunity to get there.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. Um, good job. You have one word association. Let's uh, Before I let you go though, I like, I like to ask my guests to give us one of each of the following. So first give us a LinkedIn account that we should be following or take a look at.

Speaker A: Um, I think it's probably, I always try to have a look at some of these, you know, payments gurus that are out there to get a sense of what some of the insights and the content is that they're promoting. You know, we had a fellow named Arthur Bedell who was assisting us with our London conference. So I've been checking out, he's got this new 90 minute or sorry, 90 second kind of insight session and some of his other insights And I think following some of those folks is useful just because it's a gathering point for a lot of different data points and insights. So it's not necessarily about the original perspective in all cases, but if I don't have a lot of time, I find that following some of those influencers gives me a bit of a crash course and kind of high ROI for the time I might be devoting to searching and. Or trying to gain those insights from multiple other folks. Right. So it's kind of a concentration point, if you will.

Speaker B: Cool. I love it. How about a podcast? We should try out.

Speaker A: I have to admit, I don't know if I've listened to that many podcasts.

Speaker B: That's okay. Uh, this is the best one.

Speaker A: So you should definitely check out off the Rails for sure, because I think it's going to be, uh, you know, especially after this episode, it's going to go through the roof. But, uh, yeah, I don't. I have to admit, I don't listen to podcasts for pleasure in my personal life either, so.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: I need to get with the times, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna throw it a through line from the New York Times. Super interesting. They kind of take a historical thread and they, they carry it from, you know, typically U.S. history or U.S. politics, and they kind of say, okay, we're to follow this thread all the way through from the beginning of the, you know, Constitution all the way to today. It's kind of an interesting look at different. Different things that are, you know, have. That we think of as being unique to our current moment, but really, um, that goes through, you know, in our case, a couple centuries worth of history. Um, how about a book?

Speaker A: A book, um. This might be kind of an oddball choice, but one book I was gifted, uh, a while ago was Bono's kind of autobiography. I think it's called Moments of Surrender, I believe. And as you know, I've been a lifelong YouTube fan, so totally unapologetic on that front. But, um, as people may or may not know from YouTube's popular music, Bono is a bit of a poet. He's a great writer. And I think the way that he's kind of viewed their history and, and his history through his very kind of unique take on language, is something that people should read. I think it's. It's probably a bit of surprise for people might be expecting the typical rock star autobiography. But, uh, as somebody who's appreciated the, the language and poetic aspects of YouTube's lyrics, how that kind of comes together in Bono's autobiography, I think is really an interesting read. So you don't necessarily have to be a YouTube fan to enjoy it, but it was everything I kind of hoped it would be because it's just really, it's a great read and it does have a lot of those, those qualities that I was hoping it would.

Speaker B: Love it. I'm gonna, I last, last time out I recommended a, a Hunger, uh, Games book that I was in the middle of reading because my son put it in my hands. The, the Sunrise and the Reaping. But I'll go back, uh, over my last summer, uh, over last vacation we took, not over the summer, but earlier this year, um, in the heart of the Sea. Uh, uh, it's about the tragedy of the Essex, a whaling ship that was downed by a whale. It was actually the, the real life story that gave Herman Melville, um, the idea. He's from Nantucket where this boat was based, where he, that was the idea for Behind Moby Dick. So it was pretty interesting reading. These guys shipwrecked and cast adrift when they're little, tiny little whale boats that open, uh, you know, to the elements and how they survived. Many of them survived. Not all of them sadly. But anyway, very interesting story if you guys are into, into historical, uh, true stories. So, uh, anyway, good stuff. Hey Keith, this has been fun, man.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was fun. Thanks, appreciate it.

Speaker B: Thanks for being on and that is

Speaker C: it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Keith for joining me and please take a moment to give us a five star review. Subscribe to the podcast so you uh, don't miss future episodes. Share it with your network. Also, if you aren't already following FPC on LinkedIn, get out there.

Speaker B: Click that follow button.

Speaker C: That account shares a ton of valuable information. Have a great day and we will talk to you in a couple weeks.