In fraud and risk management, everyone is a change agent.

In this episode of Walk Your Talk, recorded in Zadar just after our QED conference held in May 2026, Vedrana Miholić talks with Sean Neary from Nexi about the evolving world of fraud prevention, risk management and AI.

With 20 years of experience in fraud and risk management services, Sean explains how fraudsters are now using AI at scale, creating more complex and nuanced attacks - and why fraud prevention has become a race between technology, analytics and increasingly sophisticated bad actors.

The conversation also touches on the future of payments, digital currencies, token transactions, quantum-related risks, and the idea of automated AI fighting automated AI. Beyond technology, Sean shares Nexi’s “change agent” mindset: fail fast, iterate fast, and give people the autonomy to act.

Finally, they discuss the wider social responsibility of the industry — especially the need for better financial literacy and education in a world where scams are becoming harder to recognize.

Walk Your Talk - podcast by CROZ

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:10

So, as an introduction, welcome everybody to another episode of this time not walk but sit but still walk your talk like uh the concept uh with Miri and myself with Micholic. I have uh this time a really interesting guest, Sean Neary. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Thank you, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Will you help me with your role, current role in an XC organization?

SPEAKER_02 0:35

I'm in charge for two sort of aspects for fraud and risk management services. Uh, one is the product and technology, so developing, delivering, ensuring it's working, and then the uh a sort of daily analytical operations, so managing of the rules and then prevention for that as well, yes.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

Okay, we will obviously talk a lot about fraud and how you deal with that. But before we start, uh you you came here in a very non-relaxed way, I would say. So there were a lot of changes with your travel plans and some cancellation of flights since we live in this era in which we we are living. Here, I mean at QED at our conference. And then you drove yesterday by yourself from Zagreb. Uh Nasim Talib uh two days ago mentioned those stressors that are very positive for us. So, do you do that often, or should we be very, very thankful that you I can't remember the last time I drove in in Europe. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

I think it's been well over five years since I left it.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

How was it driving on the road side?

SPEAKER_02 1:33

It wasn't a stressor at all. I think uh you've got you've got such amazing roads compared to the UK.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Uh, and it's very it's a very straightforward run up until the last 40 minutes.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

So many roundabouts. When I was driving on the wrong side, I was like, okay, everything is fine, but those roundabouts are like every I hit my first roundabout only about half an hour from here, and I've just made sure to follow the car in front of me.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

This is quite that go round the opposite way to the doing UK. That's the only thing that had me a little bit nervous, I must admit, yeah. But other than that, no, it's uh it's a beautiful drive. It's a very beautiful drive.

SPEAKER_03 2:07

I kind of wanted to ask you that at the end, but I will ask it now. So you deal with fraud like almost whole all your whole entire career, or yeah, yeah. Okay, and that's has been how many years?

SPEAKER_02 2:19

20. 20. So it's okay. Yeah, this year is marks my 20th year.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

So are you now being some kind defined by that in your life as well, private life? Do you expect like frauds or do you or are you more relaxed?

SPEAKER_02 2:32

I'm more relaxed. You know the entire I'm desensitized to it. I think it's the same in in our business in general. Uh we work with big numbers, you know, work in millions and everything else. So we're desensitized to that being a huge number.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

For for me, for fraud, yeah, you're right. Having such an exposure for a long period of time across the globe in general, in my previous roles, uh it's just normal life for me. It's nothing that I'd can that I consider or put onto my family or my my wife either. They just sort of protection's there now, I think. The technology's there.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

And this is interesting. Uh, when I was trying to discover a little bit uh and read about uh what you do, not only you in EXI but the entire uh industry, it seems to me that in fact, in card management system, uh this dealing with fraud is more advanced and better solved than compared with the fraud management in banking or some other industries. How come?

SPEAKER_02 3:31

It's regulated and defined better. So if you think of the the card space and how it was it was created, they created the schemes to get your money from your merchants, from the issuer, from the consumer. Uh so they put in a lot of protocols and procedures to make that work, like a business operating model. And in that, there are defined things you must then do. How you stop fraud, how you can recover funds, liability. So it's been around for a very, very long time.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Only the technology that stops fraud is what's been adapted. And that that general framework hasn't changed in a very, very long time. Just the liability aspect.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Uh, whereas if you go for account-to-account payments, for example, uh, that differs per sort of country, region, continent, um, and payment type, consumers or not. There isn't actually a general framework, or there wasn't at least a general framework. So if I scammed you to give me money, there wasn't a recovery or a liability schedule in place to figure that out. The loss was a loss. Um and it's harder to educate someone from being scammed. Systemically, it's quite hard to stop me pretending to be from procurement saying can you pay a bill or something else? Um, so it's that's a lot harder to solve, and there isn't a framework. But the UK, for example, they do now have a very well-defined liability schedule and a framework and a recovery framework that that exists. And the US are trying to adopt it as well, and some areas in elsewhere in the globe, like in Asia, Europe is now gonna get there, and PST3 is gonna is gonna do that.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

So you would say that regulation is not always bad. We had a really very lively uh panel session here about digital sovereignty, but it somehow connects with uh regulators, and it's always like a very slippery slope, right? It can slower the things and maybe m make it more complicated, but it solves then some problems, would you say?

SPEAKER_02 5:33

It solves them in the sense of if so if we look at the account-to-account side of fraud, the payment fraud, where you you know you were saying it was sort of less solved, the this liability mandate of where the both banks would hold the liability and they have to refund the customer no matter what. What that's done is that's solved the exco problem of not really investing in fraud or seeing it as a critical aspect. They just see it as a loss line and a cost line historically over sort of the decades. Now they realise this is fully regulated, it's now in the public eye, it's very politically charged in some countries, it's it's there in in parliament conversations. So the regulation has brought it to the top of the conversation point in the C-suite. So meaning we get funding, we we get we get we get investments and uh and we take it a lot more seriously in the entire chain of the business. So that regulation has definitely brought that to the table. To benefit to benefits the table. Compared to if I look at how how it was 10 years, 15 years, 20 years ago, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

But talking about history, very short history, but uh I would say that the industry, the card management industry, was a front runner when it comes to AI and adoption of AI as well. Because we have been in this same venue three years ago, and I remember when we were preparing for our I would say first AI panel, that we already laughed because we already already introduced something that we call traditional AI, which is now like a normal term, but at that point we were like, oh my god, something that we have been doing together, in fact, uh has been for some time here. And how do you see uh everything that we've done so far, all of us in the industry, a technology industry, I mean, and what awaits you in your role when it comes to AI that is different now?

SPEAKER_02 7:21

Yeah, I think again, if we look back at how AI was used over a very, very long period, as you say, it's been there for a long time. But it was costly and it was unique, and the skill sets were very rare.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

The investment is really high.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

High. And only some would do it, right? Exactly. And you needed a really good business case, and there was only a few companies that could do it, and then infrastructure costs were huge. It wasn't truly commoditized. Today it's commoditized with cloud computing, the cost of infrastructure going down, an exponential rate, and then access to different tools, there are multiple vendors, you have more competition, it's making it more accessible and cheaper to iterate and invest in.

SPEAKER_03 8:04

So maybe invest in something that's not so, let's say, mission critical, but that is more important for something else, either creativity or efficiency, which we maybe don't like so much, or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Yeah, like we've been discussing uh throughout this conference. It's it's we've done that, we've already done the critical tasks, as you mentioned, you know, lending, credit scoring, they've been using this for a long time, investment banking trading, they're moving it into fraud also. Uh, you say critical tasks, they've been solved. We're now just iterating and refining.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

We're now having a chance to look at the rest of the ecosystem, the operational aspect, the customer engagement.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

And we can now, with a lesser business case, and you don't have much as a return, but you have reputation and trust to build, you can afford to do that now and look at AI because of how cheap it is. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

I really liked what you said during the panel session earlier today about that we are constantly focusing how to lower maybe expenses or cut some workforce or whatever. How how I know it sounds harsh, but people are talking about it, and that creates, I would say, a lot of fear and everything.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 9:14

But maybe, but when we really look our lives, we just keep doing more and more and more, and it's never enough of time, and most of our team members are like overburdened. How do you see that like clash of what we are talking and what's really happening? And where do you see uh your teams uh and how they will embrace uh the benefits of AI?

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Yes, I think uh to your point, there's expectations of efficiency, and that and that will come. That will come. There will be some areas of businesses that can be truly automised and and and can be removed, and those people can be repurposed into the business to other functions, maybe into the AI itself. For me, as you say, fraud is in its complexity. I'm talking about the good side. If you think about how it's changed on the bad side, the fraudsters now have access to it. So, again, years ago it wasn't cost-effective for them to try and use AI, the return on investment they used just humans. Now they can use AI and they can use it at scale with no governance barriers or anything. So they're able to make more complex, more unique, and nuanced attacks, which means teams like mine and the technology side, product side, but also the analytical side, we're we're working with multiple complexities and we're trying to catch up to stop and get on top of that wave of fraud. So it's a sort of a race with them. It's a race, it's a race. And I'm not going to complain because it's kept me in a job for this long. Uh if we ever won the battle, I don't know what I'll go and do, as you say.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Perhaps I'll be a gardener or something. Um, but so for me, it's more, as you say, we're busier, so I'm not creating efficiency and I'll be able to reduce people or tasks. What I'll do is I'll be able to catch up.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

And I can actually be closer to that closing the gap in this tool. Of that long list and backlog of work that we're doing, these tools are going to help us reduce that backlog and then be able to focus sharper on the more critical tasks.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

But I will go back and I revisit again this Talib uh lecture yesterday where he said if you have been doing this successfully 20 years, for 20 years, and you're still successful in dealing with them, you will be successful in the end. There's a Lindy effect. So uh I suppose you will not need to become a gardener, but you will be a very good one. But do you see some other emerging technologies like I don't know, quantum, for example, in this race to be uh a new like AI in terms of that something that you will need to catch up uh with them? Yeah is it already on the table?

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Kind of, not from the quantum aspect. In in the talk that we saw earlier today, they were talking about crack cracking cryptography.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

And if you look again in this talk about the card space and even payment space, you know, we're looking at going to digital currencies, which are just large numbers, you know. And if you think about cards, we're talking past keys and token transactions. We're moving away from the traditional long 16-digit number, we're going to these these more cryptographic-based transactions. So that technology there, that could, if embraced and commoditized for the for the bad actors, that could be used as a tool to then simulate or crack and breach data. We heard it again, harvest data now, crack later. Well, the cards, as he also mentioned, in three years they're obsolete, but it might not be the case in the future, they could change that. So that that's very much out there. Okay, and it could just be automated AI fighting automated AI on both sides, and the humans are sat there watching. That's also I think what people think could be in ten years.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Uh, but for now, uh, the more threats. It's not far, right? It's not. But I think now, not on the quantum side, but there is more access to technology where you can do things like intercept pin numbers or tokens, and there's something called token relay attacks where I can then use an NFC to get your data in transit and then make you look like your mobile phone is in India or California spending whilst you're sat here next to me. Uh that should be an uncrackable transaction type, but that's already happening today, so it's a it's a true life effect. So now we're we're we're we're converging with cybersecurity, traditional fraud and technology. It's more and more critical now than just being operational.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

Okay. So that's sort of a collective, I would say, which was the topic of this conference. And we had uh you guys from Nexi and Girls, uh in fact, girls and you talking about collective power between business and technology and Gen AI and AI. Uh and uh I have been following this uh specific um well aspect of decision making for two years, and uh I have been talking with so many people. I don't know if it's my feeling, or there is a lot of like um in the market um pausing, like people are waiting for something. You are not for sure, Nexi, and this is why I'm asking you because I see that in some other industry or some other companies that uh there is always but let's wait to see what's going to happen between Anthropic and Open AI, or let's going to wait for to see what European Union is going to say, or let's wait until our people uh are more like bold. Uh, how do you see the role of collective and uh in in that dealing with this uh I would say being too slow?

SPEAKER_02 14:39

Yeah, I think uh you had it nicely at the end of the in the closing remarks of the conference where you were talking about agency and and being bold and and and act. That's what we're doing like at Nexi, is why why would we want to sit back when things are moving at such an exponential rate? If you sit back for too long, you're never going to catch up. Yeah. So lead the way, and and from our top management all the way down, that mentality is there.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

So this is very important. I would like to say fail fast. Fail fast, it's right. So it's through the whole organization, this feeling that we should all. I liked it with Renata when Renata, your colleague, uh talked about a creation example, and there was a very obvious this skin in the game from her side. Okay, we had a problem, business problem with sales, we solved it, and then we showed it to the group, and the group understood. So you would say that there that's an entire organization.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Yeah, yeah, and the term we're using actually, and that they've been running a training program from from again, it started from the C-suite and it's working its way downwards. Uh, change agents. Yeah, everyone is a change agent. Don't wait for someone to tell you your manager or uh the the chief exec to tell you what to do. If you have an idea, act, and then if it's scalable, we we spread it across our organization. But if some at least if everyone's doing something new, we can then fail fast, iterate, find what's working, and then we can hone in and then we can then push that across our group. And that's the mentality we have. Everyone is a change agent, you have the ability and the autonomy to then affect that change.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

Okay, so we touched a lot, I would say, business and technology, which is always like uh are the topics in this kind of conversations, and I always try uh at least uh partially to touch the society or individual, so that's like just on the other side of the spectrum. But uh uh we talked about this, how your family is now, how you you are in your private life handle the stuff like fraud. But what would you say? That was a question here during the conference. What should we teach our kids? What should we expose our kids to? So that one day they are able to lead this kind of conversation like the one you are doing now. So they stay in the game. What to do with it?

SPEAKER_02 16:54

I think it's sort of twofold, really. There is financial literacy.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

I think it's not taught at a young enough age. So and with regulation coming in, meaning you're guaranteed to get money back and everything else, we can see younger generations, they don't they don't play caution to how they spend their money because they know they can just get the money back.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Right? And that's scary. But they they will just go on to Facebook or Instagram or something, and they'll buy that handbag that's for five euros when it should be 500.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Because they know that they know if it's a scam, they'll get their money back. So I think more educational, financial literacy, and you know, education of what to look out for because it's becoming more and more prevalent. Scams, fake merchants, fake websites, uh, impersonation, romance scams is horrible. You see a lot of vulnerable people doing that. So, we, in the roles we're playing, we we have a social responsibility because we're in it day in, day out, we desensitized to push those messages to those who aren't in our environment and aren't working in our sector. Uh, and again, that's what we we must do. We must work with ourselves, with our customers, with the consumers directly to educate, and they can then re-educate. That that's that's all we really can do.

SPEAKER_03 18:08

Okay, good. Thank you. Uh, I think we covered pretty much uh everything. Uh hope you will have a safe uh flight back.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Uh just saw a lightning bolt come down then while we were talking, yes.

SPEAKER_03 18:22

So finally, we have a reason why we needed to sit and be inside.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

It's not like it was really the second one to send.

SPEAKER_03 18:29

Thank you once more, Sean. And looking forward to have you all at this conference again. Thank you. Sooner than thank you. Definitely. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye.