via FINTECH GLOBAL
AI is no longer a pilot project in financial services. That was the clear message from the 2026 BAFT International Trade & Payment Conference, where a panel on AI in compliance and fraud detection focused less on experimentation and more on execution.
According to Quantifind, moderated by BNY senior vice president of global payments and trade Ryan Lastra, the discussion brought together Quantifind vice president of strategic client partnerships Teresa Buechner and BNY senior vice president of domestic payments Sumner Francisco to explore how institutions must now govern, explain and collaborate around AI in an increasingly networked risk environment.
The debate has moved on from whether AI belongs in payments and compliance. It is already embedded across transaction monitoring, fraud detection and case management workflows. Instead, the panel centred on what comes next: how firms govern their models, how they ensure explainability, and how they work across institutional boundaries as financial crime becomes more interconnected. The era of speculative AI use cases has ended. The operational phase has begun.