00:00You're right now sitting on probably, I would think, probably one of the richest data sets
00:04out there in the world of finance. Talk a little bit about sort of that ecosystem that you have
00:10right now under FIS, and more importantly, what exactly it is you want to do to leverage that.
00:15Yeah, thank you, Romain, for having me. You're right. We have a fantastic data set. We serve
00:21every large financial institution all the way down to small credit unions around the world.
00:26And as part of that and providing them their technology, we have their credit card data,
00:30their debit card data, their core data, core banking data. And so we know everything about you
00:36because as you do those through your banks. And so that set of data that we provide back to our
00:42banks
00:42has become very valuable, as you can imagine, in an AI-enabled world where your bank wants to have
00:48all that information fed back to them in a real-time way so that they can hyper-personalize
00:53banking activities out to you or so they can help you do agentic commerce. So it's a pretty exciting
00:58place to be serving our financial institutions around the world.
01:02Well, I want to talk about agentic commerce because, I mean, unlike other parts of our society
01:08where we've seen AI agents deployed, this gets a little bit sensitive because you're kind of giving
01:14control. As a consumer, and for that matter, the bank as well, you're giving control over to this
01:20technology to make financial decisions, whether it's buying something or making some other financial
01:25decisions. So how do you approach that and make sure that you're structuring something, and more
01:29importantly, that you're backing something that is not only efficient, but also safe and sound?
01:34Yeah. Well, safety and security is what banks use FIS for. Every piece of technology we run
01:41or capability we provide has a trust-by-design implied inside of it. But with respect to agentic,
01:47bank. So, you know, as you decide that you want to let your agent make an agentic transaction on your
01:53behalf, we're the only provider that works on behalf of banks only. So that when that transaction
01:59comes to us, we know on behalf of your bank that it is an agent, in fact, that did that
02:04transaction,
02:05not you, even though it was authorized by you. And then the bank knows that it's an agentic transaction.
02:10And so to let it through or not let it through, and they can build fraud models on behalf of
02:15all that
02:15data to make sure that the agentic transaction that you want to go through goes through. And
02:19the one that's there as a bad guy of Ramon gets blocked. And so we're very, very focused. We were
02:25the first provider in market to have that capability alongside Visa and MasterCard. And so we are very
02:31excited to be able to do that. Are you finding that a lot of the banks and the financial institutions,
02:35are they pushing fast into this area or are they maybe being a little bit more cautious about it?
02:40It's a great question. I think banks take responsibility very seriously for you and your
02:47data and your privacy. So I would say they're making sure that if you want to do an agentic
02:53transaction, that they can do it on behalf of you. They're also making sure that if a digital Ramon
02:59shows up, that they have the capabilities to be able to block that and make sure that fraudulent
03:04transaction doesn't get through. So I would say they are doing what you would expect them to do,
03:10which is enable the activities you want and then make sure they block the fraudulent transactions
03:15you don't want. I am curious when we talk about kind of the future of commerce or payments or
03:19whatever you want to call it, I'm curious as to where the merchant fits in. And I just think about
03:24the recent sort of transformation that FIS has gone through, obviously selling off the remaining stake in
03:30WorldPay, buying the issuer business over at Global Payments. Is this the idea, is that kind of the future
03:35of banking and commerce is more with the issuer rather than with the merchant?
03:40Yeah, no, it's a great question. And I wouldn't say that we're all part of a integrated ecosystem.
03:45What I would say for FIS is we are solely focused on financial institutions and serving financial
03:51institutions. We have great, still great partnerships and connectivity with WorldPay that's now Global
03:57Payments. But we've separated the businesses and we think that makes a lot of sense because it allows
04:01us to focus on our customers, which are banks, and it allows Global Payments to focus on their
04:06customers, which are merchants. That's not to say the ecosystem doesn't work together, but it allows
04:11us to allocate capital more fully into one client segment. And it allows us to be more competitive,
04:16frankly, in what continues to be a very competitive environment.
04:19You put out some ambitious financial targets, including for a free cash flow of $3 billion,
04:24I think by 2028. You're confident you can still get there?
04:28I am very confident. We think though, well, first of all, we started out 2026 really strong. We've
04:34been outpacing our midterm expectations that we put out at our last investor day. But you're right,
04:40we're very, very focused on a $3 billion cash flow number post us paying down the debt we needed to
04:47acquire the total issuing business. And we think that's really differentiated and we have a lot of
04:51confidence around this. Any idea of whether there's going to be any sort of M&A
04:56in the immediate or short term future for FIS?
05:00Excuse me. For us? No, because we are very focused on getting our debt paid down.
05:05So you've been at the helm of FIS for a while now. You've obviously worked your way through
05:10a couple of big M&A deals to sort of get the company to where you want it. When you
05:15look five
05:15years down the road, what does that business look like? Does it look like what FIS is today?
05:20I think it does. I think we're focused on our financial institution, client base,
05:25big and small. I think our job is to help banks continue to grow, run and protect their business.
05:30So as you think about where we are in three to five years, it's making sure we have the products
05:35and
05:35services and technology that they need to continue to grow their business. And so I don't see us doing
05:41a major strategic transformative deal much like we've taken businesses apart and put them together.
05:46We obviously look at different opportunities, but I think we're in a really good spot with where we are right
05:52now.
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