Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala have spent over 25 years in fintech across Banks, BigTech, and Startups. This is a podcast of them riffing on payments, fintech and everything in between.
A2Z Fintech
Claim This Podcastby Aman Narain & Zubin Vandrevala
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33 episodes
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Podcast Overview
Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala have spent over 25 years in fintech across Banks, BigTech, and Startups. This is a podcast of them riffing on payments, fintech and everything in between.
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Publishing Since
5/13/2025
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Recent Episodes
June 3, 2026
S2E16 — Polymarket, Kalshi and the People Who Knew First
<p>A US Army sergeant bet roughly $33,000 on Polymarket on an arrest he had just been briefed on, and turned it into the price of a house. A Google engineer read his own company's unpublished data and moved about $1.2 million into a private wallet.</p><p>On a public blockchain, both men left a trail the FBI could follow to the cent. That is the paradox at the centre of prediction markets: the transparency that makes them exploitable is the same transparency that makes them honest. Between September 2025 and April 2026, combined monthly volume on these prediction markets climbed from under $5 billion to about $24 billion, and in October 2025 the parent of the New York Stock Exchange committed around $1.6 billion to the largest of them.</p><p>Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala break down how prediction markets went from a forgotten Wall Street betting ring to information infrastructure, and the harder question beneath the boom: when a market knows before the news does, is the system working perfectly, or is it being robbed?</p><p>Key takeaways:<br>1. The transparency that makes these markets exploitable is exactly what makes them honest: the engineer who hid behind a wallet was traced by the same chain he trusted.<br>2. The political framing is a myth. On Kalshi, 80% of volume is sports and just 4% is politics.<br>3. ICE bought the data, not the casino: roughly $1.6 billion for a live probability feed it can sell to every bank and hedge fund on its network.<br>4. Volumes ran from under $5 billion a month to about $24 billion in seven months, with Piper Sandler projecting $8 billion in annual revenue by 2030.<br>5. A prediction market is not an oracle but a mirror, only as honest as the room it is in.</p><p>Topics covered:<br>- The two cold-open exploits: a Fort Bragg sergeant and a Google engineer who bet on what they already knew<br>- The intellectual lineage: Hayek on price as information, Hanson's futarchy, Tetlock's superforecasters<br>- Wall Street's unregulated political betting ring, and the $10m wagered on the 1916 election<br>- The modern revival: the Iowa Electronic Markets, Intrade's collapse, and the fall of PASPA<br>- How a prediction contract actually works, and the passport-versus-wallet divide between Kalshi and Polymarket<br>- The full board: Polymarket, Kalshi, PredictIt, Manifold, Metaculus, Robinhood, Interactive Brokers and DraftKings<br>- The data that reorders the story: prediction markets are now mostly a sportsbook in a derivatives licence<br>- The three forces behind the 2024-2026 boom: the KalshiEX ruling, the GENIUS Act, and a presidential endorsement<br>- ICE's ~$1.6 billion move on Polymarket, and why it bought the data and not the gambling<br>- The prosecution: four insider cases, reflexivity, and gambling at derivative scale<br>- The bull case in three layers: parametric insurance, macro hedging, and information infrastructure</p><p>Chapters:<br>Referenced in this episode: US Army Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke and Operation Absolute Resolve; the Google engineer "AlphaRaccoon" and the Year in Search exploit; the Israeli Air Force major and the June 2025 Iran briefing; the MrBeast editor's $4,000 Kalshi trade and $20,000 fine; Friedrich Hayek, Robin Hanson and futarchy, Philip Tetlock and the Good Judgment Project; the Wall Street curb-market and Tammany Hall betting ring, the 1896 and 1916 elections, and Governor Charles Evans Hughes; the Iowa Electronic Markets and their 1.34-point average error; Intrade and John Delaney; Murphy v NCAA; Polymarket on Polygon and Kalshi as a CFTC-designated contract market; PredictIt and Victoria University of Wellington; Manifold, Metaculus and Augur; Robinhood, MIAXdx and Susquehanna; Interactive Brokers and ForecastEx; DraftKings, Railbird and DKeX; KalshiEX v CFTC and CFTC chair Michael Selig; the GENIUS Act; ICE / Intercontinental Exchange and Jeffrey Sprecher; Piper Sandler's $8bn-by-2030 estimate; Boaz Weinstein and Saba; the 12 January 2026 single-day record of $701.7m; the Arizona pre-emption ruling and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz's ban.</p><p>Related episodes: S2E14 — Machines with Wallets, for the stablecoin-rails and GENIUS Act thread; [TBD — the Mastercard / BVNK stablecoin episode, confirm number].</p><p>Hosted by:<br><strong>Creators & Guests</strong> </p><ul> <li><a href="https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/aman-narain">Aman Narain</a> - Host</li> <li><a href="https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/zubin-vandrevala">Zubin Vandrevala</a> - Host</li> </ul><br>Aman Narain writes at amanwhoblogs.substack.com. Zubin Vandrevala is your payments provocateur.<p>Enjoying A2Z Fintech? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It is the single biggest signal to the Apple algorithm and how new listeners in our world find us.</p><p>For information and entertainment only. Not financial advice.</p><p>Transcript:<br><a href="https://share.transistor.fm/s/6d85f105/transcript" title="Click here to view the episode transcript.">Click here to view the episode transcript.</a><br> </p>
May 21, 2026
S2E15 — Sundar's Long Game: Google I/O 2026
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3U1YMGKUNM" title="Click here to watch a video of this episode.">Click here to watch a video of this episode.</a><br> Twelve hours after Sundar Pichai walked off the Shoreline stage, the recap industry was already ranking his Google I/O 2026 announcements top ten this, best five of that. Two former Googlers with 50 years between them think that misses the story.</p><p>On Wednesday 20 May, Sundar Pichai closed Google I/O 2026 with a 150-minute keynote that pulled together a 25-year arc. Google built the transformer in 2017. It declared itself an AI-first company at I/O 2016, six years before ChatGPT shipped. The press spent two years arguing Google was behind. Google I/O 2026 was the company quietly revealing it never was.</p><p>Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala break down five non-obvious reads on Google I/O 2026, drawing on their combined years inside Google and Google Pay. Not a top-10 list. Five reads on the long game.</p><p>Key takeaways:</p><ol><li>Google has spent 25 years building the AI foundation everyone else is racing to construct in 24 months, and at Google I/O 2026 it stopped pretending that head start did not exist.</li><li>Gemini Spark is not a chatbot. It is a category response: AI woven into the Google surfaces where most users already live their digital lives.</li><li>The Universal Commerce Protocol and AP2 are Google writing the TCP/IP of agentic commerce, with Shopify, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Gr4vy inside the standards body and AP2 donated to the W3C.</li><li>SynthID got two minutes of stage time and is the most underrated announcement of the day. Apple made privacy a moat; Google is making trust the next one.</li><li>Android XR, with Samsung as OEM and Warby Parker and Gentle Monster as the face brands, is the platform play applied to wearable hardware. Fashion is how you blend in, not how you stand out.</li></ol><p>Topics covered:</p><ul><li>Why search grew 19 per cent the year AI Overviews was meant to kill it</li><li>Vidhya Srinivasan, Antigravity, and the rebuilt search box</li><li>Gemini Spark as a category response, not a product</li><li>UCP, AP2, and the protocol coalition routing agentic commerce</li><li>The $5 trillion agentic commerce market and the fraud-liability question nobody is answering</li><li>Visa Trusted Agent Protocol versus Mastercard Agent Pay</li><li>SynthID, OpenAI, Nvidia, Eleven Labs, and the web's immune system</li><li>Android XR with Samsung, Warby Parker, and Gentle Monster</li><li>What banks, fintechs and merchants should build before Google I/O 2027</li></ul><p>Chapters: </p><p>Referenced in this episode: Google I/O 2026 keynote (Shoreline Amphitheatre, 20 May 2026); Sundar Pichai's "AI-first" keynote at Google I/O 2016; "Attention Is All You Need" (Google, 2017); AI Overviews and Search +19 per cent year-on-year; Antigravity demo from Vidhya Srinivasan; Gemini Spark from Josh and team, formerly NotebookLM; Universal Commerce Protocol with Shopify; Agent Payments Protocol with Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Gr4vy, donated to W3C; Visa Trusted Agent Protocol; Mastercard Agent Pay; SynthID coalition with OpenAI, Nvidia and Eleven Labs; Android XR with Samsung as OEM and Warby Parker and Gentle Monster as face brands; AlphaGo demo on Android XR.</p><p>Related episodes: [TBD]</p><p>Hosted by: <strong>Creators & Guests</strong> </p><ul> <li><a href="https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/aman-narain">Aman Narain</a> - Host</li> <li><a href="https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/zubin-vandrevala">Zubin Vandrevala</a> - Host</li> </ul><p>Aman Narain writes at amanwhoblogs.substack.com. Zubin Vandrevala is your payments provocateur, recording live from the Shoreline floor at 2 per cent battery.</p><p>Enjoying A2Z Fintech? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It is the single biggest signal to the Apple algorithm and how new listeners in our world find us.</p><p>For information and entertainment only. Not financial advice.</p><p>Transcript: <a href="https://share.transistor.fm/s/9fa1a267/transcript" title="Click here to view the episode transcript.">Click here to view the episode transcript.</a><br> </p>
May 6, 2026
S2E14 — Machines with Wallets: From Buy Button to Agentic Commerce
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-UWxqoly0" title="Click here to watch a video of this episode.">Click here to watch a video of this episode.</a><br> Patrick Collison says agents will soon account for<br>most online transactions. The Machine Payments Protocol that<br>replaces the buy button is now live, and Stripe, OpenAI,<br>Google, Meta and Microsoft have all signed on.</p><p>This week at Stripe Sessions 2026, the architecture of agentic<br>commerce stopped being a thesis and started being plumbing.<br>The Machine Payments Protocol, co-authored by Stripe and<br>Tempo, is live. ACP and UCP have settled the discovery layer.<br>Streaming payments are real. Software-as-a-subscription is<br>becoming software-as-a-stream. The buy button is being retired<br>in real time.</p><p>Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala close out the anniversary<br>Double Digest with part two: how money moves when the buyer<br>is no longer human. The 2026 Agentic Stack refreshed, the<br>four horsemen of agentic commerce mapped, the dark horse from<br>China called, the streaming-payments primitive that is<br>quietly rewiring every business model in the next five years,<br>and a six-twelve-twenty-four-month playbook for operators.</p><p>Key takeaways:<br>1. The buy button is being replaced by the Machine Payments<br> Protocol, Stripe and Tempo's "OAuth for money" primitive.<br>2. The four horsemen are playing distinct hands: Stripe wants<br> the rails, OpenAI wants the brain, Google wants to protect<br> search, Visa and Mastercard are fighting to remain a rail<br> rather than the rail.<br>3. Streaming payments end batch settlement; software-as-a-<br> subscription becomes software-as-a-stream.<br>4. The operator playbook is fix data hygiene first, pick a<br> protocol stack second, reimagine for streaming third.<br>5. Stripe is not the next Visa. Stripe is the next Google.</p><p>Topics covered:<br>- The 2026 Agentic Stack: discovery, execution, safety<br>- ACP and UCP, the two protocols solving merchant-to-agent<br> discovery<br>- MPP, the Machine Payments Protocol, and why it is becoming<br> the TCP/IP of agent payments<br>- Verifiable Credentials, Verifiable Intent, and the agent as<br> an actor with reputation<br>- One in six AI sign-ups being a bad actor, and the rise of<br> token theft as the new fraud vector<br>- The four horsemen of agentic commerce: Stripe, OpenAI,<br> Google, Visa and Mastercard<br>- The dark horse from China: Alibaba, Qwen, Taobao, Alipay,<br> and 120 million agent transactions in a week<br>- Streaming payments, software-as-a-stream, and the death of<br> batch settlement<br>- The CFO problem: reconciling billing at the granularity of<br> tokens consumed<br>- The six-twelve-twenty-four-month playbook for founders,<br> operators, and CFOs<br>- Why Stripe is not the next Visa but the next Google<br>- Anniversary reflections: 30 episodes, 128,000 words, and<br> the founder-mode payoff</p><p>Chapters:<br>Referenced in this episode: Stripe Sessions 2026; the Machine<br>Payments Protocol (Stripe + Tempo); the Agentic Commerce<br>Protocol (Stripe + OpenAI); the Universal Commerce Protocol<br>(Google); JD Sports as UCP launch partner; Visa Agentic Ready<br>APAC and LatAm expansion; the Mastercard-BVNK acquisition;<br>Lightspark on Bitcoin Lightning; Stripe's Tempo, Bridge, Privy,<br>Link and Metronome stack; the Fido Alliance agent-identity<br>work; Stripe Radar's token-theft defences; Alibaba's Qwen,<br>Taobao and Alipay; Reed Hastings, Steve Jobs and Andy Grove<br>as re-platforming references.</p><p>Related episodes: S2E13 — [TBD part one title], the "who" of<br>the Anniversary Double Digest; the Mastercard-BVNK breakdown;<br>[TBD prior agentic commerce episode covering OpenAI's Etsy<br>Instant Checkout].</p><p>Hosted by:<br><strong>Creators & Guests</strong> </p><ul> <li><a href="https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/aman-narain">Aman Narain</a> - Host</li> <li><a href="https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/zubin-vandrevala">Zubin Vandrevala</a> - Host</li> </ul><br>Aman Narain writes at amanwhoblogs.substack.com. Zubin<br>Vandrevala is your payments provocateur.<p>Enjoying A2Z Fintech? Leave a rating and review on Apple<br>Podcasts. It is the single biggest signal to the Apple<br>algorithm and how new listeners in our world find us.</p><p>For information and entertainment only. Not financial advice.</p><p>Transcript:<br><a href="https://share.transistor.fm/s/1bbc380b/transcript" title="Click here to view the episode transcript.">Click here to view the episode transcript.</a><br> </p>
33 total episodes available
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