They Said That: Notable Quotables for the Week of July 29

It was the thick of earnings season this week, but that didn’t mean PYMNTS’ interviews with key executives took a break.

Here are some of the most notable quotables for the week ending Aug. 2 in case you missed them.

We started the week with the latest installment in our “A Day in the Life of a CFO” series featuring an interview with CSG Chief Financial Officer Hai Tran, who told PYMNTS in “CSG CFO: ‘True Decision Support’ Is Digital Transformation’s Holy Grail” that the digital transformation sweeping across industries has impacted the finance function.

“The holy grail for digital transformation is to get to true decision support, where we’re really providing data-driven optionality and information and choices; where we fully analyze the implications of the path that we select,” Tran said, noting that “most companies don’t get there … you have to bring institutional knowledge to bear, and that’s where experience matters.”

Then we went for a deep dive into our “What’s Next in Payments” series with

In an interview for “Maverick COO Says Embedded Finance Drives Growth and Personalization in Digital Ecosystems,” Maverick Payments Chief Operating Officer Ben Griefer told PYMNTS that the integration of financial products and services into digital ecosystems is transforming commerce.

“With the advancements of technology and the platforms businesses rely on to run their operations, they are looking to integrate financial products to give their customer base more value,” Griefer said.

“On the flip side, it ultimately drives more revenue,” he added.

Data found its way into our series as well. In “All Signal, No Noise: How Item-Level Data Brings Retail and Banking Intelligence Together,” we found that unification is the key to unlocking maximum data potential, according to Banyan Chief Commercial Officer Mike Minelli.

“Unifying data views starts with recognizing that both banks and merchants are dealing with the same customer, but from different perspectives,” Minelli said. “The key is that they’re starting to realize they can help each other by providing signals.”

Embedded finance is shaping up to be one of the most talked-about trends of the year so far. In “Mastercard Sees Embedded Finance as Revolutionizing Digital Payments,” Jennifer Marriner, executive vice president, Global Acceptance Solutions, at Mastercard, said: “Embedding [payments and financial products] across the value chain and within all of the experiences that a customer is going through in that commerce environment is incredibly important.”

“B2B transactions have traditionally had a slower approval process, and B2B players have been slower to adopt new technology,” she added. “But what we’re seeing with a shift to digital is that there is now more data, more controls, stronger authentication coming into that B2B space, all the while bringing down the cost and improving the risk models. We’re definitely seeing on the B2B side a realization that there’s a way they can streamline their business through embedded finance.”

We picked up the international action later in the week with Debo Sen, head of payments at Citi Services. In “Citi Services Head of Payments Says Instant Is In as Global Dynamics Shift,” Sen highlighted the rapid adoption of these new payment rails in regions like Asia-Pacific and Latin America, with India and Brazil leading the charge.

In India, about 85% of all payments are made in real time, thanks to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, a testament to the country’s leap in digital payments infrastructure. Brazil follows closely with nearly 80% adoption. But this trend is not limited to emerging markets, she added, noting that the United States and the European Union are also advancing regulations and infrastructure to support real-time payments.

“We’ve been tracking the momentum in instant payments, or real-time payments, for a long time,” Sen said.

“The interesting thing is there is always a lot of conversation as to whether instant payments will cannibalize other methods of payment — but in fact, it is digitizing cash in those economies and eliminating cash in many cases,” she added.

And we ended the week with taxes. In “Mind Your B’s and P’s: IRS Notices and Penalties Loom for Unprepared Firms This Fall,” Wendy Walker, vice president of Regulatory Affairs at Sovos, said when information is missing or doesn’t match IRS records, hefty fines can accrue — and the administrative burden of keeping track of all those details is considerable. A proactive approach can help head errors off at the pass.

“If you’re in a company that does anti-money laundering practices or know your customer and you’re collecting a bunch of that information, unless you are actually verifying that TIN to the IRS database, verifying to [any] other database doesn’t matter from an IRS perspective,” Walker said.

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