Why i2c Sees Opportunity in Economic Turbulence

Watch more: i2c: Client Engagement and ‘Thoughtful Acceleration’ Key to Navigating Uncertainty

In times of uncertainty, there’s often only one acceptable direction for businesses: forward.

“Money must keep flowing,” David Durovy, senior vice president transformation at i2c, told PYMNTS during a discussion for the “What’s Next in Payments: Trade Offs” series.

The broader economic backdrop is hardly encouraging, as rising interest rates, geopolitical tensions and inflationary pressures are forcing many FinTech and banking leaders to re-evaluate their strategies. Yet i2c sees these headwinds as an opportunity, Durovy said.

“If we slow down, our clients slow down — and we don’t let that happen,” he said.

Rather than retreating into operational conservatism, i2c is betting that long-term relevance will belong to those who invest deliberately and intelligently through uncertainty, he said.

The company has chosen what Durovy called “thoughtful acceleration.” This approach is more than just optimism. It’s based on a conviction that payment flows don’t stop when the market stalls. They simply change direction.

For i2c, that means doubling down on product agility, client listening and scalable architecture, ensuring its partners can keep up with shifting demands.

“We’re not ignoring caution,” Durovy said. “But we’re not immobilized by it either … We’re having more client conversations than ever before. And not just about contracts or capabilities, but about what they’re seeing, what they’re struggling with, what they need.”

That level of intimacy with clients gives i2c a broader radar. Clients in high-growth segments are pushing forward with digital offerings, embedded finance and next-gen card programs. Others, particularly those exposed to rising fraud risk or tightening credit conditions, are taking a more conservative stance.

Today’s payments landscape is not one-size-fits-all. It’s build-what-the-market-demands, in real time.

While traditional processors rely on rigid, geography-specific codebases that require custom builds for every market, i2c has taken the opposite route. Its platform is unified, cloud-native, and designed from the ground up to be modular and adaptable.

“Configurability is part of our secret sauce,” Durovy said. “It allows us to deploy capabilities globally without having to reinvent the wheel every time.”

This approach reduces time to market for clients. A digital wallet product built for the United States can be adjusted for launch in the Middle East or Europe without overhauling architecture. It’s a structure that supports innovation and scale, without the traditional trade-offs.

One of the loudest signals i2c has picked up from clients is the growing concern around fraud, particularly as digital transaction volumes surge and fraud vectors grow more sophisticated. Rather than react to fraud as it happens, i2c is investing in prevention. Central to this strategy is artificial intelligence, not just as a buzzword, but as a tool for real-time pattern recognition, behavioral analysis and anomaly detection.

To that end, i2c has developed a multi-layered fraud strategy that includes AI rules engines and machine learning models that ingest and analyze vast streams of transactional data. The goal is to create a dynamic, learning-based system that can evolve alongside emerging threats, including synthetic identities and coordinated fraud rings.

“Prediction is the new protection,” Durovy said. “We’re using AI to get ahead of fraud, to spot vulnerabilities before they become breaches.”

Beyond fraud, i2c also deploys AI to support compliance, enhance transaction predictability and drive performance consistency.

“We’re applying AI where it delivers real operational lift,” Durovy said.

This includes overhauling mobile interfaces, streamlining workflows for client institutions, and building UX frameworks that support real-time engagement.

“We’ve underinvested in this as an industry,” Durovy said. “Payments should be seamless, intuitive, even delightful. That’s what modern users expect.”

As the digital economy matures, payments are no longer a static utility — they are the connective tissue of global commerce. From embedded finance to instant cross-border settlements, the space is being redefined in real time.

“Our job is to lead change, not react to it,” Durovy said. “That requires not just vision but execution discipline — how do we build fast, scale smart and always stay connected to the client?”

In that vein, i2c has embraced a partnership-first mindset, collaborating with key players such as Visa, Mastercard and other global networks. These aren’t just channel partnerships; they’re co-development relationships that shape product direction, standards and go-to-market strategies.

“The work we’re doing now sets the pace for what’s next,” Durovy said. “And we’re not letting up.”

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