Steve co-founded a successful Fintech company, IPP, which enabled financially inclusive walk-in bill payment plus prepaid & debit card solutions. A series of acquisitions and name changes ended with a PayPal acquisition for over $300m. Steve then founded Vments, commercializing a Enterprise Digital Banking (EDB) Platform.

Now at Photon Commerce, Steve helps clients and partners leverage AI software to automate financial documents, and delivering instant payment user experiences.

Steve provides leadership in committees at the US Faster Payments Council (FPC), the Fed Improvements facilitated Business Payments Coalition, X9 ISO 20022 Market Practices Forum, the FedNow Community, and the FPC Board Advisory Group.

Elspeth is a senior product manager for Jack Henry’s JHA PayCenter and a subject matter expert in the Zelle, FedNow, and RTP networks. She has been in the payment industry for the better part of 20 years, starting with a stint on the x9B committee that created the IRD standard for Check 21.

She has been a frequent work group member for NACHA, the Faster Payments Council and its predecessors, and other cross industry groups. She has experience in online BillPay for the iPay Division of Jack Henry. Prior to that, she was in product management for biller direct and ACH products at multiple companies.

Attila Csutak’s career spans 24 years in Treasury Management practice with Large Financial Institutions (top 5 domestic and international) and a large Fintech company. Attila held product development, product management and product strategy roles. His knowledge of all payment types and systems provided the background required for kick starting the RTP efforts at a Fintech company and was deeply involved in two major acquisitions the Fintech company executed to address the growing needs of Faster Payments needs of Financial Institutions in the U.S.A.

Attila is currently Payables Team Lead (Legacy and Faster Payments) with City National Bank, serving as evangelist for Emerging Payments.

Peter is an accomplished executive, industry thought leader, influencer and strategist across the disciplines of payments, banking and financial services. He is currently a Venture Partner at Alloy Labs focused on building out platforms that help community banks and credit unions succeed in payments and banking. Previous to Alloy, Peter was Head of Product Innovation and Labs at The Clearing House. He is credited as one of the original architects involved in designing and launching RTP® from The Clearing House, the first real-time payment system in the US. Prior to that, he spent ten years as Head of Payment Strategy, Innovation & Industry at Capital One, where he developed and implemented a federated payments governance model for the company, and established the Enterprise Payments Advisory Council, a senior executive council to facilitate cross-functional governance across business lines.

He has a proven track record of building teams & organizations, establishing payments governance, building consensus around payment strategies and providing subject matter expertise and thought leadership in many industry forums.

Travis is a dynamic leader known for guiding banks and fintechs through complex challenges in payments, banking, risk management, and compliance. His impressive journey includes founding BalancedTrust, a Third & Fourth Party Risk Management venture for banks, and co-founding The Ethica Group, a Venture Builder supporting entrepreneurs in realizing their visions.

As the visionary Founder & CEO of PayFi, Travis pioneered a groundbreaking payment processing venture that connected Community Banks to real-time payment schemes, culminating in a successful exit in September 2020. Travis’s career boasts pivotal roles at FIS, including overseeing the FDIC contract during the 2008-2012 economic crisis, liquidating over 2500 insolvent banks. His expertise spans software development, Six Sigma process engineering, and a deep understanding of the payment ecosystem, including Identity Management, Acquiring, Merchant Processing, and Card Networks.

Reed is Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC). The FPC is an industry-led membership organization whose mission is to facilitate a world-class payment system where Americans can safely and securely pay anyone, anywhere, at any time and with near-immediate funds availability. Reed is responsible for managing the daily operations of the organization and working with the FPC board and membership to execute on the FPC’s strategic plan while ensuring inclusive and transparent dialogue with all FPC stakeholders.

Reed has extensive experience in the payments industry and has served on myriad industry bodies, most recently an officer on the FPC Board of Directors; the Federal Reserve-sponsored Governance Framework Formation Team; and the Corporate Advisory Group for The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments System. Prior to the FPC, he spent 15 years at Walmart as senior director of global treasury.

Kevin is a renowned expert and educator in the field of payments. With over two decades of experience, he is known as the “Payments Professor” for his ability to simplify complex concepts and make them accessible to anyone. As a speaker, Kevin has a unique talent for engaging his audience with his passion for the subject matter. Kevin is highly respected in the payments industry for his insights on emerging technologies, regulatory issues, and consumer behavior.

He is the SVP, of Innovation and Strategy for Pidgin, a product leading the way for instant payments in the U.S.

He has an NCP Certification and is an NCP Certified Trainer as well as Accredited Payments Risk Professional (APRP), Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE), Microsoft Certified System Administrator (MCSA), and Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) certifications.

Sean Rodriguez retired from the Federal Reserve System in January 2019. Sean left the Federal Reserve as Executive Vice President and Faster Payments Strategy Leader. As Faster Payments Strategy Leader, Rodriguez led activities to identify effective approaches for implementing a safe, ubiquitous, faster payments capabilities in the United States. Rodriguez chaired the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force, comprised of more than 300 payment system stakeholders interested in improving the speed of authorization, clearing, settlement and notification of various types of personal and business payments.

Rodriguez retired after more than 35 years with the Federal Reserve in operations, product development, sales, marketing and bank administration at the Denver, Los Angeles and Chicago locations. He helped establish the Federal Reserve’s Customer Relations and Support Office in 2001 including its national account program and served on the Federal Reserve’s leadership team for implementing the Check 21 initiative. More recently, Rodriguez was instrumental in the design and launch of the Federal Reserve’s Payments Industry Relations Program.

Rodriguez holds a B.A. from the University of Colorado, a Graduate School of Banking Certificate from the University of Wisconsin and is an Association for Financial Professionals - Certified Cash Manager.

Connie Theien is a payments expert with more than 20 years experience leading payment system improvement programs as a Federal Reserve executive. She retired in December 2023 as senior vice president and head of industry relations, a function she worked to establish in 2013 with an aim to engage a broad swath of industry stakeholders in advancing U.S. payment system improvements.

Theien’s career spanned payments industry transformation programs encompassing ACH adoption, Check 21 implementation, the introduction of cross- border and same-day ACH payments, and instant payments catalyzation and implementation.

Theien led collaboration and education programs focused on faster payments, fraud prevention, and efficiency improvements for B2B and cross-border payments. She designed and facilitated the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force and follow-on efforts to drive adoption of faster payments in the United States, in addition to playing a central role in implementation of the FedNow instant payments service. Prior to her tenure at the Fed, Theien led marketing and public relations efforts for nonprofit, retail and academic organizations. Theien holds a B.A. in communications and an M.B.A. from the University of Minnesota.

Michael Young is Founder & CEO of Photon Commerce. After leaving a Stanford PhD, Michael was an engineer at IBM prior to starting 3 venture-backed startups. He led advanced R&D programs funded by the Department of Defense, created hundreds of jobs, raised over $50M across his venture-backed startups, and took some to acquisitions. Photon Commerce’s payments AI and document understanding technology enables 1-click bill pay.

Photon Commerce provides white-labeled multi-layered AI-as-a- Service to fintech leaders, enabling them to bring new instant product experiences to market. Photon Commerce is like Plaid for B2B documents, enabling platforms to launch Generative Pretrained AI/ OCR to the market in as fast as 1 day. Photon Commerce is supported by the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center and Village Global, a venture firm funded by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.