2026 RECAP

Andrew is a product manager at OpenAI leading payments and working across both ChatGPT subscriptions and agentic commerce initiatives. Prior to this, Andrew spent six years at Brex, where he built the Brex Banking product and managed payment rails for the company. He also worked on the FinTech investment team at Andreessen Horowitz and started his career as a management consultant at BCG.

Kausik Rajgopal leads PayPal's Strategy, Corporate Development & Partnerships. He is responsible for the teams driving strategic planning, market research, M&A, Ventures and minority investments, payments markets and partnerships, and the Office of the CEO. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience, Kausik brings extensive global experience in payments, technology, and banking to his role on PayPal's Senior Leadership Team.

Jalpesh Chitalia leads Agentic Commerce at Visa, where he is shaping the next era of AI-driven, autonomous commerce experiences. He drives global initiatives that fuse innovation, scalability, and user-first design to power Visa's vision for intelligent, agent-enabled payments. At Visa, Jalpesh oversees the end-to-end Agentic Commerce strategy, bringing together cross-functional teams across regions to deliver seamless, AI-enhanced payment capabilities. His leadership has played a pivotal role in advancing tokenization frameworks, building dispute-resolution models for autonomous agents, and developing scalable platform integrations that support Visa's global ecosystem.

Gautam Poornachandra is an industry thought leader in Payments. He brings expertise with specialized focus on Financial Technologies and Digital Payment innovations. In his current role as a Senior Product Manager at Amazon, he is at the forefront of shaping Agentic Commerce and leads Agentic AI Payments, and Tokenization.

Calvin leads the core product team at Ramp, where he's driving the company's efforts to build autonomous finance powered by AI agents. Before Ramp, he was a founding member of the Uber Eats team and led consumer product, helping to build it to a $50B GMV global business. Calvin started his career as an APM at Google and studied computer science at Princeton.

Will Allen is a VP of Product at Cloudflare, where he focuses on the emerging business models for content creators, agentic commerce, and the web in the age of AI. He previously was a Vice President at Adobe, overseeing Behance, Adobe Portfolio, 99U, Adobe Live and the Content Authenticity Initiative. He was Behance's COO prior to its acquisition by Adobe in 2012. He graduated with distinction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a double major in political science and philosophy.

Ryan Wiggins is VP of Product at Mercury, where he leads the Growth, Analytics, and Core Products teams. He is responsible for building the journey for ambitious companies / people discovering Mercury into using it to scale every day. His work has been central to Mercury’s growth and to developing products and features that customers love. Before joining Mercury, Ryan held product leadership roles at WhatsApp and Facebook, where he built and scaled high-performance teams. He is also an active angel investor, providing financial backing and strategic guidance to early-stage startups.

Alex Rampell is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm's $1 billion Apps practice. A serial entrepreneur who started writing software at age 10, Alex now invests across a wide range of B2B and B2C startup sectors and stages. He currently serves on the boards of Branch, Brightside, Capitolis, Descript, Divvy Homes, Earnin, Flock Homes, FlyHomes, Loft, Point, Propel, Rocket Companies (NYSE:RKT), Sentilink, Super Evil Megacorp, VGS, and Wise (WISE:LSE). Alex additionally led the firm's investments in Mercury, OpenDoor (NASDAQ:OPEN), OpenInvest (acquired by JP Morgan Chase), Plaid, Quantopian (acquired by Robinhood), and Rival (acquired by LiveNation).

Simon is one of fintech's most respected voices, providing unparalleled insights from over 20 years of driving innovation. His popular Fintech Brainfood blog boasts 45k+ subscribers, including top CEOs and VCs. As a sought-after keynote speaker and advisor, Simon leverages his experience pioneering mobile banking apps and leading digital transformation for global banks. Simon is a regular industry commentator for media, including the BBC, CNBC, and The Financial Times. Trusted by the industry's biggest names, he provides guidance to regulators, financial institutions, and tech companies on strategically capitalizing on emerging trends in fintech, open finance, and AI.

Mark Walick has over 30 years of experience building and scaling payment, risk, and transaction optimization products across digital and physical commerce. He has held senior product leadership roles at Google and Apple, where he led initiatives focused on authorization performance, transaction optimization, and large-scale payment systems. He has worked across startups and Fortune 10 companies and previously served as Chair of the Merchant Issuer Committee at the Merchant Risk Council, helping strengthen collaboration between merchants, issuers, and the broader payments ecosystem.

Debbie Guerra is a leading executive in the global payments industry. As General Manager of Payments at Arrive, she spearheads the integration of seamless payment experiences across the company's 23 brands and 90+ countries of operation. With a distinguished career that includes leadership roles as Chief Product Officer at ACI Worldwide and nearly a decade at First Data, Debbie has a proven track record of driving product evolution and market growth. Her expertise spans global merchant services, merchant acquiring and embedded payments. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Debbie served as an intelligence officer in the Army, attaining the rank of Captain.

Alfonso is the cofounder of Crossmint, a programmatic finance infrastructure company. Prior to founding Crossmint, he worked as a Product Manager at Google and Meta, where he founded products such as “I am not a robot” reCAPTCHA, and the Google Assistant API in 2017, as well as foundational work for end-to-end encryption and automated anti-fraud at WhatsApp.

Don is at the forefront of AI agent commerce, building the infrastructure that enables AI agents to transact, pay, and get paid autonomously. His work spans nearly a decade at the intersection of AI, data, and programmable payments, founding both Ocean Protocol and now Nevermined, where he's focused on solving the payments and access layer for the emerging AI agent economy. Before leading Nevermined, Don co-founded Keyko and Ocean Protocol. Prior to that, he built deep expertise in Big Data and Machine Learning at HSBC, AXA, and L'Oréal, among others. After studying Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta, he's worked across LA, Tokyo, London, and Berlin.

Jon Sheinfeld is a Senior Product Manager at Adyen, a global financial technology platform helping businesses accept payments, protect revenue, and control finances. He focuses on building products that streamline the shopper journey while reducing fraud for global merchants. Prior to Adyen, Jon held product management roles at AppNexus and Paxos.

Timothy Chiodo is a Managing Director covering the Payments, Processors, & FinTech Sector. Tim has over eighteen years of Wall Street experience, including time on both the buy side and sell side. Prior to joining UBS, Tim spent ~4.5 years at Credit Suisse covering Payments, Processors, & FinTech. Before joining Credit Suisse, he spent ~3 years covering the Payments/FinTech and Internet sectors at Graticule Asset Management Asia (GAMA). Prior to GAMA, he spent ~8 years at UBS - both within Equity Research (Internet sector) and Institutional Equity Sales. Additionally, he worked as a consultant at Accenture. Tim holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Penn State (Schreyer Honors College), an MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and is a CFA charterholder.

Federico Cohen Freue is executive vice president, AI & Data Operations at Mastercard. He leads the company's AI & Data strategy, prioritization and development of new AI capabilities, scaling Mastercard's new Data Platform, and adoption & enablement of AI and data advancements for all employees. Prior to this role, Fed was senior vice president, Integration Executive with accountability over acquisitions for Mastercard's Data & Services business. He led end-to-end integration for several companies, including Dynamic Yield and SessionM. He is a seasoned AI and operations leader, having held senior leadership roles in pricing, investment management, and product management throughout his tenure at Mastercard.

Veronica is a strategic fintech and payments executive with more than two decades of experience driving growth, innovation, and ecosystem partnerships across the payments landscape. Most recently, she served as Senior Vice President for North America, Visa Commercial Solutions. During her 19-year tenure at Visa, she built and scaled high-performing teams, forged new commercial partnerships, and consistently delivered double-digit revenue growth. She led multiple organizations across Visa Commercial Solutions, North America Merchant, and Prepaid, developing deep expertise in issuing and merchant acquiring across enterprise, mid-market, and SMB segments.

Sam Ragsdale is CEO & Co-Founder of Merit Systems, where they're building the foundation for open agentic commerce. They recently launched x402scan, the primary discovery layer for the x402 ecosystem. Previously he worked as an investor and open source builder at a16z where he built Jolt, the worlds fastest zkVM.

Oded is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mesh Payments, the AI-driven T&E management platform for the modern global enterprise. Before Mesh, Oded served as Chief Revenue Officer at Payoneer and launched PayPal's Middle East and Africa business, building a career across fintech, banking, and enterprise software.

Adi Thacker is SVP of Product at Poshmark, where he leads core product experiences, monetization, and partnerships. A senior product and GM executive with deep marketplace and platform experience, he focuses on turning emerging technologies into scalable customer value and durable business outcomes. He brings a pragmatic executive lens to agentic AI, especially in commerce and platform ecosystems.