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In the fast-evolving world of global fintech, 2026 has become the year where "fast" is no longer enough; the industry is now demanding "smart." At the helm of this shift is Radi El Haj, CEO and Executive Director of RS2. With over 25 years of experience across the entire payments value chain—from issuing to cross-border settlement—Radi has steered RS2 to become the processing powerhouse behind some of the world’s most innovative financial institutions. Today, he joins The Founder to discuss why AI is quietly taking over the decision-making process in global commerce and why the next competitive edge won't be found in flashy apps, but in the invisible logic of the transaction itself.
Radi, you’ve spent over a quarter-century in the payments industry. Looking back to when you started in the late 90s, what is the one “constant” that hasn’t changed despite the digital revolution?
“Trust. That’s the constant. The pipes changed, the speed changed, the interfaces changed, but trust stayed the same. Back then, people trusted plastic cards and bank brands. Today, they trust invisible systems, algorithms, and platforms they never see. But the psychology hasn’t moved. People still want certainty that their money will arrive, that it won’t disappear, and that someone is accountable when things break.”
“What did surprise me is that technology didn’t replace trust, it just hid it. We moved it deeper into infrastructure. So the brand is no longer the app, the brand is the logic, the uptime, the decisioning, the reliability of the transaction. When payments work, nobody notices. When they don’t, everybody panics. That’s the real constant. Money still runs on confidence, not code.”
You were appointed CEO of RS2 in 2013. What is the most difficult lesson you’ve learned about scaling a global technology firm across 27 different countries?
“Speed without alignment breaks companies and that is the lesson. You can expand fast, open offices, sign clients, build teams, but if culture, governance, and product logic don’t scale at the same pace, everything fractures.”
“What I didn’t expect was how different ‘good execution’ looks across regions. In one market, speed wins. In another, trust wins. In another, regulation rules everything. You can’t copy-paste strategy, you have to build a core engine that’s stable and then let each region adapt around it.”
“The next step for any global firm is about coherence. One vision, one architecture, one standard of quality, with local freedom on top. Scale is about control without suffocation.”
The industry is obsessed with “Faster Payments,” but you’ve said “Smarter Payments” are the real story. What does a “Smart Payment” look like in 2026?
“A smart payment understands context. It knows who’s paying, where they are, what they’re buying, the risk profile, the currency exposure, the settlement route, and the regulatory rules, all before the transaction completes.”
“A smart payment routes itself, prices itself, secures itself, and adapts in real time. The consumer doesn’t see it, but the system makes a thousand micro-decisions in milliseconds.”
“By the end of 2026, the winning platforms won’t compete on milliseconds, it will be on judgment. Which engine makes better decisions at scale? Which system learns faster? Which infrastructure reduces friction without adding risk? That’s where advantage lives now.”
You’ve said AI is becoming the strategy, not just a feature. How should a Founder or Bank CEO change their organization to reflect that?
“Stop putting AI in a department, that’s the first move. AI isn’t a team, it’s a layer across everything. Product, risk, compliance, ops, pricing, customer experience, governance.”
“Structurally, founders need fewer silos and more cross-functional ownership. Engineers talking to compliance, data scientists talking to product, risk teams embedded in design, not reviewing it after. Culturally, leaders need to shift from managing people to managing learning systems. You’re now training decision engines. The real leadership job becomes setting the rules, the ethics, the boundaries, and the goals. AI executes inside that frame so strategy becomes architecture.”
RS2 deals with over 80 million transactions per hour. How is AI making “invisible” decisions in that split second between a tap and approval?
“In that moment, AI is doing triage. Risk scoring, routing, compliance checks, fraud patterns, currency logic, settlement pathways. All at once. But the key word is invisible. The consumer sees a green tick and the merchant sees approval. Underneath, the system is deciding which network to use, which rule to trigger, which market logic applies, and how to minimize exposure for everyone involved.”
“The power lies in selection. AI chooses the best path for the transaction, rather than the fastest one. Sometimes that means cost efficiency, sometimes compliance, sometimes risk reduction and sometimes reliability. Payments become orchestration.”
Many boards still see AI as mainly a fraud tool. What are the top three areas beyond fraud where AI is delivering the most ROI right now?
“First, routing and settlement optimization. AI decides where money should flow and that saves cost and reduces friction. Second, liquidity and treasury intelligence. Predicting flow, managing exposure, anticipating demand across currencies and corridors - that’s huge. Third, compliance automation such as interpreting regulatory logic, adapting rules, managing complexity across jurisdictions without slowing the business.”
“Fraud is visible, so boards focus there. But the real value is in the quiet areas: flow, structure, and control. That’s where margins live.”
With RS2 operating from Europe, North America, LATAM, APAC and MEA, how do you manage an “invisible” competitive edge across different regulatory landscapes?
“I believe that you build one brain and many skins but the core logic stays the same as the regulatory interpretation changes. We don’t fight regulation but we encode it by turning law into logic, rules into systems, and compliance into architecture. That way, every market becomes a configuration problem, not a rebuild problem.”
“The invisible edge is consistency – ensuring the same quality and same reliability. Same decisioning discipline but different wrappers, rules and local expressions. Infrastructure wins when it adapts without losing identity.”
RS2’s BankWORKS system uses modular design. In the AI era, does modular still matter?
“Yes, more than ever. AI systems need boundaries, structure and clear interfaces. Modular design lets intelligence evolve without breaking everything else. A monolithic self-optimizing system sounds elegant, but it’s dangerous because when it fails, everything fails. Modular systems let you test, isolate, upgrade, and evolve without chaos. The future is many smart components talking to each other cleanly.”
You aid the next competitive edge will be invisible. Where should entrepreneurs look for disruption if it’s not in the UI?
“I believe in logic, such as flows and decisioning. Look at how money moves and look at settlement layers, compliance engines, identity logic, risk routing, data interpretation, and orchestration. The next unicorns will be ‘boring’ – driving infrastructure, protocols, engines and systems. This is because the real power is under the surface now.”
With 121 currencies and complex cross-border settlement, what’s the biggest myth about the death of traditional banking?
“That fintech replaces banks. It doesn’t. Banks won’t disappear but will evolve into infrastructure. The real shift is that distribution moves to fintech, while trust, regulation, and settlement stay anchored in banking. The future is not either-or, but it’s interdependence.”
“People still want regulated institutions but they don’t want friction.”
How do you ensure transparency and trust when AI becomes the primary decision-maker?
“You design explainability into the system. Decisions must be traceable, auditable and interpretable. Trust comes from clarity because people accept automation when they understand accountability. Therefore, AI can decide, but humans must govern. The systems must explain themselves, logs taken and oversight built in. That’s how you scale intelligence without losing legitimacy.”
What is your bold prediction for the end of 2026 that no one is talking about?
“I believe that payments will stop being a product and become entrenched in background utility, like electricity. Always on, always assumed and never noticed – invisible. The brands that win will be intelligence, data, or infrastructure brands. That’s where the shift will happen, deep in the invisible engine of money. And most people won’t even realize it happened. That’s how you know it worked.”
