A CTO's Technology Outlook for 2025

The Payments Podcast by Bottomline

Episode Transcript

Owen McDonald (host): Welcome to The Payments Podcast. I'm your host, Bottomline Managing Editor, Owen McDonald. 

We've all heard the expression; may you live in interesting times. It often pairs with another saying, be careful what you wish for. Rapid technological change, including Generative AI, many forms of financial automation, instant payments, and more are making 2025 a very interesting time. 

For an expert outlook on some of the major tech developments impacting B2B payments in 2025, we're delighted to welcome Bottomline Chief Technology Officer, Eve Aretakis. Eve is a highly respected industry voice on all aspects of payments technology, and we're very glad she could join us today. Eve Aretakis, Bottomline CTO, welcome to The Payments Podcast.

Eve Aretakis: Thank you.

Owen McDonald: To kick it off, Eve, what is your outlook on top technical priorities for B2B payments in 2025? Where are you and the CTOs you speak with in payment services focusing most this year and why? Looking for the high-level view.

Eve Aretakis: Sure, Owen. So, I think, obviously, you have to think from the end customer, the target customer. So, if I think about the end customer, what they're looking for are secure payments, that their payment methodology is intuitive, and that, obviously, they can create a seamless experience for themselves. So, you look at what technology areas are driving those three requirements, obviously, security, data analytics, really understanding customer utilization and needs, and then, of course, integration of any third party so that security, cost optimization, can all generate, whether it's with your own products or third party, a seamless experience.

Owen McDonald: Understood. Generative AI is significantly changing payments, cybersecurity, and pretty much everything in between. Eve, what are some of the advantages of using Gen AI to accelerate digital transformation in B2B payments? Along with that, are there any disadvantages to Gen AI that you would point out?

Eve Aretakis: Sure. So, obviously, you can't pick up any kind of news media and not have, somebody talking about the power of AI. So, there's no doubt the power of AI is undeniable. It's incredible in terms of generating new ideas in the ability to produce and help deliver product features.

We're also seeing it obviously can spark innovation around digital transformation, especially with machine learning and data modeling. And these are really important as you try to look at how to create benefits for your customer. Of course, for me, running a big development organization, you can't underestimate the excitement around AI and how it's energizing the workforce. And we find that particularly exciting as you bring it into the development community. We're seeing time efficiency, cost effectiveness, and other gains as you facilitate automation from traditional manual coding practices.

And for us, it's creating a pivotal standardization around our global distributed developer community. So, we can really push things into standardization regardless of where our development community sits. So, some of the complexity or disadvantages, obviously, you have to be careful navigating the evolving landscape of compliance and regulations, and you can't underestimate those areas. The organization has to build a robust framework to ensure Gen AI applications not only drive innovation but also adhere to evolving legal and ethical standards and maintaining trust and integrity in the software development processes.

Owen McDonald: We chatted recently, and you mentioned a fear factor, quote, unquote, among banks and corporates associated with the use of Gen AI. Please explain that and expand on it.

Eve Aretakis: So traditional users, obviously, because of some of the security and compliance concerns, it's really a top priority to look at those security and compliance areas in terms of Gen AI, especially when you talk B2B payments. So, they're probably not going to be the fastest afoot to adopt some of the new technology areas already, so Gen AI is not going to be any different. So, it's really important that they're secure.

Also, when you think about it, and some of the market leaders I mean, I know I just recently read a quote of Bill Gates where he said Gen AI has the potential to change the world in ways that we can't even imagine. So that's really, really exciting. But don't forget that might come with some negative consequences, and some of the use in not the most positive ways to facilitate our business. So, partnering with banks, it's critical to overcome some of these fear factors and some of the conservative areas where it's just absolutely essential. Together, we work to ensure the technology and the business are driving not only incremental value, but also in a very secure deployment mechanism.

Owen McDonald: Eve, you've also spoken about the importance of integrating business payment networks with digital banking as a way to add value and utility. In what ways does that kind of configuration improve processes from cash management to security?

Eve Aretakis: So, I think anything we can do to simplify the complexity of workflows around cash management and business payments will really help the end customer. So doing that and integrating the application area, gives us a lot of benefit. And also, the use of application programming interfaces or APIs, improves communication flow between systems and platforms, even when they're not provided by the same vendor.

Owen McDonald: Last question, Eve. What fraud threats are you most concerned about this year? How can banks and corporates make business payments more secure in 2025 than they were last year?

Eve Aretakis: So, obviously one of the things we see as a big threat is availability of services, which don't just include automated and continuous threat monitoring, but also business continuity, which is very, very key. It's hard not to think about B2B and not include always on. That means not only having plans for business continuity written down, but well tested and rehearsed, so, in case of a disaster or in case of an interruption of service. The ability to recover quickly is so critical to the availability of the service and the availability to our customers. So really important those are vetted.

Obviously, the same excitement we have about the innovation that can be driven with Gen AI, you can't ignore that it creates a number of opportunities for fraudsters as well. Hopefully, we're faster and we can keep the fraudsters at bay, but that at the same time, we have to understand that direction and protect the service from potential fraud. Our security protocols have to evolve and continue to evolve, and the world moves closer to instant payments in all aspects of business and personal lives. And it's really key that identity management is another fraud threat that we have to stay on top of. We need to be two steps ahead of the fraudsters to maintain the value propositions.

Owen McDonald: From faster payments to deep fake fraud, we are witnessing the technological makeover of payments worldwide. We call that living in interesting times. Our thanks to Bottomline Chief Technology Officer, Eve Aretakis, for giving us an expert overview of the terrain. To our wonderful audience, thanks for listening. 

Hit subscribe. Catch us again on your favorite podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify. Bye for now. 

Owen McDonald: The Payments Podcast from Bottomline.