Every Rail, Every Millisecond: Rethinking Payments Risk

What we will be discussing

Seven questions the research answers.

Real-time payment rails have collapsed the decision window. Transactions that once allowed seconds or minutes for review now demand a verdict in milliseconds. New research finds 7 in 10 institutions have reduced or disabled real-time checks to stay within processing time constraints. The constraint is no longer the fraud model or the rules engine. It is the decision layer that feeds them.

FinTech Futures, in partnership with Volt Active Data and Persistent Systems, has researched senior decision-makers across North America and the United Kingdom for The State of Real-Time Payments and Risk 2026. Join us for the first in-depth look at the findings: where institutions are compromising, what it is costing them, and how they plan to divide decisions between rules, AI and people.

The Real-Time Evolution

How institutions are adopting real-time rails, and how they rate their own performance across fraud detection, false declines, authorisation and reconciliation.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

What reconciliation breaks, fraud on irrevocable rails and false declines are really costing institutions.

Overcoming the Challenges

The common hurdles in real-time payments decisioning, and how leading organisations are working to address them.

Staying Audit-Ready

How institutions can show their controls are working as intended, and what that means for keeping pace with regulator and audit expectations.

Speed and Architecture

How quickly rules can realistically be updated under live conditions, the build vs platform vs integrator decision, readiness for AI-driven decisioning, and moving from decision to production with a delivery partner.

New Rails, New Risks

What the growth of stablecoins, from Circle’s USDC to PayPal’s PYUSD, means for real-time risk and settlement decisioning as payments span cards, instant rails and digital assets.

The Agentic Frontier

Where the industry is drawing the line between automated rules, AI assistance and human judgment. Volt Field CTO Dheeraj Remella introduces the 90/10 principle, a way of dividing the work rather than a fixed ratio.

Most respondents agree routine decisions belong to deterministic rules, and half want AI to act only within pre-approved guardrails.

Agents recommend

Deterministic systems execute

Humans govern

Who you will hear from

The speakers.

Four perspectives on the findings: the decisioning platform, the delivery partner, a payments leader and the industry editor.

Dheeraj Remella

Field Chief Technology Officer, Volt Active Data

PB

Parminder Bansil

VP, BFSI Consulting & Solutions, Persistent Systems

Christer Holloman

Director at PayPal, Author of How Banks Innovate

Paul Hindle

Managing Editor, FinTech Futures

Disclaimer: Christer Holloman is an employee at PayPal. His views and opinions are his own and do not represent the views and positions of PayPal Inc. or its affiliates.