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Insights and Expertise

mentation, highlighting loyalty, upselling and acqui-
sition opportunities.
• VoC Agent listens to publicly available comments
and call-center communications to understand cus-
tomer needs, product usage and competitor behavior.
• Account Take Over (ATO) Agent helps organiza-
tions catch and resolve fraud before it happens.
Is that a product or Despite their uniform design, each agent conforms to its

capability? Part 2 respective environment, making its manufactured pur-
pose seem more a personality trait than a fixed specifica-
tion. A Retain Agent, for example, can also react in real
time and prevent an attack.
By Dale Laszig
"Every hyper-personalized recommendation TAZI creates
his series explores our changing relationship draws on the client's past data, predictions across multi-
with hardware in a software-driven world. Part ple drivers (attrition, loyalty, upsell/cross-sell, sentiment,
1 opens a decade ago, when applications began fraud), explanations and insights behind those predic-
T to gain dominion over machines. Terminals and tions, and the next steps the agents generate," she said.
PIN pads became interchangeable, depending on environ-
ment and use case. Hardware was relegated from a lead- When worlds collide
ing role to supporting infrastructure.
Ammad Sohail, technical project manager at InvoZone,
Part 2 enters the future, fittingly with Deb Reuben, found- summarized the primary differences between hardware
er and CEO of TomorrowZone and author of Enter the To- and software as time and money. "Manufacturers have
morrow Zone: How to Inspire Breakthrough Innovation and hard costs of materials, assembly and shipping, no mat-
Shape Your Future. We met in 2016 at Singularity Universi- ter how many units they sell," he said. "But software, once
ty's Exponential Finance conference in New York City and it's built, is free to duplicate and forgiving of mistakes. A
reminisced about the event on her podcast in June 2026. software bug can be patched and pushed out the same day
it's discovered."
Technology as language
Sohail further noted that hardware teams test products
When Reuben asked if I'd ever rethought any assumptions before release to avoid costly recalls and replacements.
about technology, I recalled my bylined articles in The Software teams, on the other hand, can afford to ship and
Green Sheet and the story they tell. From hardware-centric iterate faster. And finally, it takes time, capital and factory
musings in "Bold new mode in modems," to broader con- relationships to tool and prototype hardware, he stated,
templations in "Editing Paytech DNA," the headlines show noting that a manufacturer can spend a year or more cre-
my concept of technology evolving from tools to integra- ating a single sellable unit while software can go from idea
tions to capabilities, and finally, to seeing technology as a to working version in a week. "Payments is one of those
language. spaces where hardware and software collide," he added.
"A POS terminal is a hardware device but increasingly, the
This intrigued Reuben, who noted that language, particu- real value and margin are the software running on it."
larly machine language, is a primary interface to compu-
tation power and invisible, omnipresent elements of pay- If technology is a language, perhaps its real value lies not
ments. "It's really interesting to think about technology as in products, but in the capabilities they create. Software
a language," she said. "And if we think way back, language powers payments, while hardware keeps them agile, se-
is actually a technology." cure, connected and tokenized. POS devices are the wind

Purpose-built and personalized beneath software's wings. In the middle of the Tomorrow-
Zone Catalyst podcast, I surprised Reuben by unveiling
When technology moves faster than language, we fre- "Postcards from payments 2026," an October 2016 cover
quently assign new meanings to old words. Zehra Catalt- story in The Green Sheet. Inspired by a sci-fi workshop
epe, founder and CEO of TAZI AI, used the machine-age we'd attended a decade ago, the story featured dispatches
term "purpose-built" to describe digital agents that are by Reuben and other industry leaders from an imagined
built to specifications but malleable enough to react and future.
adapt to individual workplace environments.
• Retain Agent helps businesses understand customer Dale S. Laszig, content strategy director at The Green Sheet and founder
behavior, transactions and product usage while im- and CEO at DSL Direct, is a payments industry journalist, creator and
proving data quality and AI readiness. consultant. Connect via email at dale@dsldirectllc.com and LinkedIn at
• Grow and Acquire Agent drives retention and seg- www.linkedin.com/in/dalelaszig.

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