A Blueprint for Restoring Trust Online
Artificial intelligence is blurring the line between real and fake, making it difficult for businesses to trust people and the records they rely on.
The Payment Parallel explores the evolution of payment networks and offers a blueprint for the identity industry to restore confidence and unlock the digital economy.
Trust online is broken
Fraudsters are using AI to exploit outdated, fragmented identity systems—and no industry is safe.
Ensuring seamless, trusted authorizations
The payments industry built networks to combat fraud and secure authorizations at scale.
The Payment Parallel explores what the identity industry can learn to create a smarter, safer future.
A new framework for building trust online
Read how the financial industry overcame trust and security challenges to build the standard for trusted authorizations.
Insights that strengthen security and fight fraud
Learn key lessons from the payments industry that illuminate a new path towards creating fraud-resistant identity systems.
Gain a competitive edge in the digital economy
Understand how network-driven identity verification can create seamless, scalable customer experiences that strengthen your security without adding friction.
Now Live:
The Payment Parallel Podcast
Episode 1:
Lessons from Payments
Uncover the fascinating journey of payments—from paper checks to today’s credit cards—and discover why many authorizations still feel more like signing paper checks in the 1960s.
Episode 2:
Issuing Credentials
From the Diner’s Club card to Tap to Pay today, learn how the payments industry solved the multi-sided market dilemma between merchants and card holders.
Episode 3:
Authenticating and Authorizing Transactions
Learn about the technologies that connected merchants and banks to take payments from manual to automated, including fraud scoring and data sharing.
Episode 4: Consumer Protections in Payment Networks
Explore how societal and policy challenges reshaped fraud response in payments, built global trust, and offer lessons for the future of identity online.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
David Stearns
David Stearns is a software engineer and historian of technology. He is the author of Electronic Value Exchange: Origins of the VISA Electronic Payment System, which chronicles the evolution of VISA from a paper-based regional credit card program to a fully-digitized worldwide payment system. He has built software systems at Stripe, Adobe, and Microsoft.
