In this episode of the Connector Podcast, host Koen Vanderhoydonk interviews Jerome, founder of Givani, about the launch of Ingram, the company's new AI branch. Ingram introduces a novel product that embeds payment capabilities directly into AI chatbots, allowing customers to pay while conversing with the bot. Jerome explains the motivation behind the product, citing the evolution of chatbots from simple button‑based interfaces to natural language interactions, and how embedding payments creates a new paradigm for customer‑business relationships. He outlines the company's three‑layer expertise—fintech, cybersecurity, and AI—and positions Ingram at the intersection of these domains. The discussion covers potential use cases, target customers (both B2C services and B2B firms with AI chatbots), and the integration approach, which involves modifying prompts and adding client‑side code rather than a traditional API. Jerome emphasizes responsible AI, noting that businesses must tailor prompts to keep the AI aligned with desired scripts. The conversation also touches on broader AI trends, the rapid advancement of models since ChatGPT’s 2022 release, and the regulatory lag that creates a “Wild West” environment. Jerome shares his expectations for the upcoming DFS conference in December, highlighting networking and inspiration. Contact details (jerome@ingram.tech, ingram.tech) are provided at the end.
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Welcome to the Connector Podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting fintechs, banks, and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Koen Vanderhoydonk as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets.
Welcome to another episode of the Connector Podcast in collaboration with Fintech Belgium. And we're running up to DFS in December. And today I have with me Jerome. Jerome, who are you and where you work for?
Hello.
Hello.
So I'm Jerome. I've been in tech for about 20 years now. And 7, 8 years ago now, I founded Givani. I live in Brussels. Givani is in Belgium. And today we are announcing Ingram.
Ooh, tell us more. An announcement. That's always something you like. What is Ingram about?
Ingram is our new AI branch, and we're inaugurating it with a completely new product, which is embedded payments for AI chatbots.
And what does that mean for the general audience?
It means that customers will be able to pay directly when talking to an AI chatbot. This enables completely new ways to pay. It enables completely new paradigm of a relationship between the customers and the, the business.
Could you give us a few examples maybe?
Well, today you have more and more companies adopting AI chatbots to replace sort of their antiquated customer support chatbots, the ones where you only have a couple of buttons to, to answer. And they're orienting themselves more and more towards very natural ways to interact with the customer. And the next step in that is enabling the customers directly to pay for the service from the chatbot itself.
Wow, that's really innovation.
We hope so.
Cool. And when you talk about this, would you self— would you then consider yourself more as an AI company? Because bots are a lot to do with AI nowadays. Or would you consider yourself as a payment company?
We sit right in the middle. Goveni's background was always in fintech. Our biggest partner, Stripe, has really enabled us to be a player in the fintech space. And we've always had our 3 layers of expertise: fintech, cybersecurity, and AI. AI has really boomed in the past year, and we're seeing a lot, a lot of demand. So this is why we've decided to enable a whole new branch of the business to be centered around AI.
And if you look at the the overarching business as we speak. So, I mean, we talk about AI. Do you see other applications where AI can enhance the customer experience or in general finance? So fintech at the top?
I think this is a very, very new field. We're having every single day a ton of discussions around the role of AI not just in the fintech space, but in the commercial space as a whole.
Mm-hmm.
And it's difficult to say where it's going to go because we don't want to just remove humans from the equation in where businesses interact with their customers. But at the same time, it also enables businesses to Talk to more of their customers rather than have them be faced with extremely impersonal menu trees, extremely impersonal hierarchical trees that do not solve their problems.
Mm-hmm.
Now the customers have the ability to explain more of what their problem is to the AI and have a more bespoke experience. at scale.
Is this also why Ingram was founded? Is that the foundation of why you want to have payments into that chat experience?
We want to enable businesses to use AI more responsibly and in more interesting ways as well. Because most companies are just not tech companies, even today. And non-tech companies will easily go for solutions which have been kind of mass-produced for businesses of that type. And Ingram will want to offer a much more bespoke experience. This is why we're trialing this new product.
What would be your ideal customer for this new product?
We're looking for B2B B2C, we're looking for B2C services that wants to trial new ways for their customers to pay for their products. We're also looking for B2B businesses that offer AI chatbots and want to expand the capabilities of their chatbot.
Well, we're heading up to the 8th of December. We'll have the Make a Cool Event DFS. What are you expecting from the event?
Well, this will be my first DFS. I'm not really sure what to expect.
Your maiden flight.
Ah, yes. So I always love these types of trade shows. I really like the networking aspect. I really like meeting new people, finding new problems. I always find these events are very inspirational as well, and for the team as well, it's very inspirational. We will have a booth there, of course. And I'm not sure what else to expect at this point.
Well, it's great that you're coming to DFS, and I'm sure it's going to be a very interesting one when it's— even if it's your first one. For me, I've been like going many, many years. And I think the theme for this year, it's about AI and regulations. And then you talked about it a little bit briefly, but you say responsible AI, but how actually could you guarantee that there is responsible AI in the experience that you bring with Ingram?
So the way our product works, the end business is responsible for tweaking the prompts, making sure that The AI follows the script it's given, just as that AI would be responsible for— just as the business would be responsible for keeping the AI in line with the script for customer support and so on. We don't offer a prepackaged AI chatbot. We enhance the ones that the businesses already have. We enhance the ones that The business already have.
And how would you then typically integrate with the existing chatbots? How does that work? Is that an API integration? Yes.
So we are— it's not an API integration. We are changing the prompt itself and adding some client-side code. So this requires— some level of access to the existing AI, but that is something that most AI chatbot solutions offer today. But of course, we're also looking to work with AI solution providers themselves in order to add this capability for them.
Well, a few times you mentioned the word prompt, so it almost brings me automatically to ChatGPT. What is your view on ChatGPT? What will we see in the financial industry?
So I remember where I was on December 1st, 2022. For me, that is the date. Of course, it's the date when ChatGPT was released, and I immediately saw the potential. I showed it to several of my friends, many of them who are not in tech yet. And I remember a couple of them were like, how is this any different from this or that? And then I started talking about the impact that AI can have when it has so much autonomy. And it has improved a lot since, and we're seeing a huge amount of improvement in the AI field, a huge amount of improvement in the models. So it's not just about where it is now, but it's also about how fast it's going. Regulations, I mean, we've seen this before. Regulations will have to catch up eventually. But for now, it feels very much like the Wild West.
Oh, that's a heavy statement. Elaborate, please.
In tech, we very often don't have up-to-date regulations with the capabilities of the technology. With AI, it has never been more true. Not just because the capabilities are evolving at a crazy pace, but also because on the other extreme, you have many people, including regulators, who have these ideas about the capabilities of AI that are completely off the mark. So it can be both in what they can do and what they cannot do. So it's important to keep a conversation with AI experts and people well knowledgeable in the domain to ensure that the regulations don't impede the potential of progress, but also—
Right.
are in line with the realistic capabilities of AI today and in the next couple of years.
Makes sense. Jerome, we're almost at the end of this podcast. So I was wondering, if people want to contact you and get to know more insights about Ingram, where should they go to?
Well, you can reach out to jerome@ingram.tech. Our website is ingram.tech. And we're looking forward to seeing you there.
Thank you very much. Thanks for having you. It was great insights. Looking forward to the kickoff of the new product. And thank you also to the audience. Stay tuned for more fintech news. Bye-bye.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Connector Podcast. To connect and keep up to date with all the latest, head over to www.koenvanderhoydonk.com. Jointheconnector.com or hit subscribe via your podcast streaming platform.
