Green Sheet interviews LatentView Analytics CBO Parijat Banerjee

Stripe's expansion beyond payment processing into AI and other technologies reflects a broader shift in payments, as competition increasingly extends to the data, intelligence and orchestration surrounding each transaction. But building those capabilities on top of decades-old infrastructure presents challenges of its own.

Parijat Banerjee, chief business officer at LatentView Analytics, has spent more than 15 years leading digital and risk transformations for Fortune 500 banks. He shared his views with The Green Sheet on Stripe's evolving strategy, the advantages established payments providers still hold, the modernization needed to put their data to work and the role traditional payments companies could play as AI agents begin making purchasing and payment decisions.

Green Sheet: 1. Payment processing has been commoditized for years, prompting ISOs, processors and other merchant services businesses to become more consultative and expand well beyond basic payment acceptance. What does Stripe's current strategy change about that competitive landscape?

Parijat Banerjee: Stripe has been focused on areas like cross-border payments for a long period of time, and that is still a major opportunity. Today, if I have to make a payment for a supply-chain container sitting in Hong Kong, it can still take anywhere between 24 to 72 hours. The expectation now is that it should be instantaneous. If I push the payment, it should go through right now.

That puts pressure on traditional providers because the value is increasingly moving toward the intelligence and orchestration surrounding the transaction. The processor may still move the money, but if somebody else determines how it is routed, identifies the customer, assesses the risk and owns the data informing the decision, that provider has surrendered a significant portion of the value chain.

The next competitive battleground is not simply who can process the payment. It is who can own more of the ecosystem surrounding it.

GS: 2. Does Stripe's expansion threaten to displace traditional payments providers, or could newer platforms and the evolving legacy ecosystem ultimately coexist and serve different needs?

PB: There is too much scale, complexity and infrastructure already in place for that to happen overnight. The more likely outcome is coexistence, but the roles may change significantly.

Newer platforms are very good at simplifying complexity for the merchant and building modern experiences on top of payments. Traditional providers have the scale and the infrastructure, but the danger is becoming the invisible infrastructure underneath somebody else's customer experience.

You also have to look at the social demographics. Today's workforce is comprised of Gen Zers in entry-to-mid-level roles, and the way they use payment structures is constantly changing. If you go back 15 years, a single household may have had four top-of-wallet cards. That is slowly becoming one or two, and consumers are becoming much more comfortable using the payment ecosystem directly for transfers.

So I do not think it is simply a question of one side replacing the other. It is a question of which part of the ecosystem ultimately becomes dominant.

GS: 3. Established players, including Visa and Mastercard, continue to invest heavily in new payment technologies and infrastructure. Where do traditional networks and processors retain advantages that newer platforms may find difficult to replicate?

PB: Scale, trust and resiliency are enormous advantages, and they should not be underestimated.

Payments infrastructure has to work essentially all of the time, across markets, regulatory environments, financial institutions and enormous transaction volumes. Visa, Mastercard, large processors and major banks have spent decades building those relationships, controls and risk systems.

They also possess an enormous amount of transaction history. If used correctly, that data can become a major competitive advantage as fraud detection, authorization, routing and personalization become more intelligent. The issue is that some of the deeper layers are still caught in a time warp.

GS: 4. If intelligence, data and orchestration increasingly become the competitive layer in payments, what should ISOs, processors and others on the acquiring side of payments be doing now to ensure they participate in that layer rather than surrender it to technology platforms?

PB: They have to get the data streams talking to each other.

That sounds simple, but it is one of the biggest problems in financial services. You can have tremendous amounts of data across different systems, but if those systems do not communicate, you cannot create intelligence around the transaction in real time.

Capital One is an IT-first company, and even they have been working through the challenge of getting the data streams to talk to each other. If an IT-first organization faces that problem, imagine how difficult it can be for a legacy institution.

That is where ISOs, acquirers and processors need to focus. Before you start talking about AI or intelligent orchestration, you need the underlying data infrastructure aligned. Otherwise, you are putting a modern layer on top of fragmented systems.

GS: 5. You've described legacy back-end infrastructure as being caught in a "time warp." Where are the most consequential weaknesses, and what modernization is realistically achievable without abandoning infrastructure that still processes enormous volumes reliably?

PB: The problem is that they were built for a different era of payments. Cross-border is a good example that I cited earlier, where payments take 24 to 72 hours when the consumer expects it to be instantaneous. That is the time warp. You have a very modern experience at the surface, but underneath it the technology and the data may still be moving through systems designed years or decades ago.

I do not think the answer is to abandon all of that infrastructure. You cannot simply rip out systems that are processing enormous volumes reliably. The realistic modernization is to make those systems communicate better, improve the connective tissue and modernize the pieces that create the biggest bottlenecks.

GS: 6. As AI agents begin initiating transactions, who is best positioned to own the routing, risk and intelligence surrounding those payments—and where could traditional payments companies establish a meaningful role?

PB: This may become one of the most important competitive questions in payments because an AI agent changes where the payment decision happens. Traditionally, a consumer or business makes a choice, and the payment infrastructure executes it. With agents, software may increasingly decide what to buy, when to buy it, which payment method to use and potentially which route provides the best economics.

That means routing, identity, permissions and risk become incredibly valuable. The company that understands the transaction context and has permission to act on it will occupy a powerful position.

Technology platforms have an advantage because they are building the agent experience, but traditional payments companies already understand how to move money safely at scale. Their opportunity is to become the trusted intelligence and control layer for agentic transactions. That means providing real-time risk decisions, authentication, spending controls, routing intelligence and clear auditability.

In an agentic world, trust may become just as valuable as convenience.

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