What does it take to scale with AI? In this episode of the Pay It Forward Podcast, host Bria Bell, Vice President on the Payments Communications team, shares an excerpt from the March 2026 Global Town Hall. In it, Lori Schwartz, CFO of Payments, and Josh Pope, Global Head of Operations, talk about how AI is being applied across a business that moves millions of transactions a day. Lori and Josh share practical examples. They cover how AI has helped the sanctions screening team handle higher volumes while reducing manual outsorts. They describe a proof of concept in Chicago that uses robots to open envelopes and image their contents. And they talk about how AI can help teams find answers faster across 40+ countries and 400 products. They also discuss why AI transformation is about more than efficiency. They encourage colleagues to educate themselves, embrace the technology, upskill, and approach change with curiosity rather than fear. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of J.P. Morgan, its affiliates, or its employees. The information set forth herein has been obtained or derived from sources believed to be reliable. Neither the author nor J.P. Morgan makes any representations or warranties as to the information’s accuracy or completeness. The information contained herein has been provided solely for informational purposes and does not constitute an offer, solicitation, advice or recommendation, to make any investment decisions or purchase any financial instruments, and may not be construed as such. Any mentions of third-party trademarks, brand names, products and services are for referential purposes only and any mention thereof is not meant to imply any sponsorship, endorsement, or affiliation.© 2025 JPMorgan Chase & Co. All Rights Reserved.
What does it take to scale with AI? In this episode of the Pay It Forward Podcast, host Bria Bell, Vice President on the Payments Communications team, shares an excerpt from the March 2026 Global Town Hall. In it, Lori Schwartz, CFO of Payments, and Josh Pope, Global Head of Operations, talk about how AI is being applied across a business that moves millions of transactions a day.
Lori and Josh share practical examples. They cover how AI has helped the sanctions screening team handle higher volumes while reducing manual outsorts. They describe a proof of concept in Chicago that uses robots to open envelopes and image their contents. And they talk about how AI can help teams find answers faster across 40+ countries and 400 products.
They also discuss why AI transformation is about more than efficiency. They encourage colleagues to educate themselves, embrace the technology, upskill, and approach change with curiosity rather than fear.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of J.P. Morgan, its affiliates, or its employees. The information set forth herein has been obtained or derived from sources believed to be reliable. Neither the author nor J.P. Morgan makes any representations or warranties as to the information’s accuracy or completeness. The information contained herein has been provided solely for informational purposes and does not constitute an offer, solicitation, advice or recommendation, to make any investment decisions or purchase any financial instruments, and may not be construed as such. Any mentions of third-party trademarks, brand names, products and services are for referential purposes only and any mention thereof is not meant to imply any sponsorship, endorsement, or affiliation.© 2025 JPMorgan Chase & Co. All Rights Reserved.
Narrator (00:02):
Welcome to Pay It Forward, a podcast by J.P. Morgan Payments for J.P. Morgan Payments. Get to know our business and gain a better understanding of where we sit at the intersection of technology and finance. Did you know we move nearly $12 trillion dollars globally each day through over 170 countries and 120 currencies at more than 5,000 transactions per second? (1) Join us as we take you inside the stories, technology, and people that make it all happen.
Bria Bell (00:36):
Hi, I'm your host, Bria Bell, vice president on the payments communication team. Welcome back to another conversation in our AI miniseries. Today, we're tuning into an excerpt from a recent global town hall conversation featuring Lori Schwartz, CFO of Payments, former Global Head of Treasury Services and Josh Pope, our global head of operations for J.P. Morgan Payments. Together, they explore how AI is already transforming J.P. Morgan Payments business at scale. From processing millions of transactions each day to improving straight-through processing, reducing manual work, and creating new capacity for growth. You'll hear practical examples of how AI is being applied across operations, product, and client experience, along with the candid conversation on why embracing this technology now matters for every employee. With that, I'll hand it over to Lori and Josh.
Lori Schwartz (01:27):
All right. So the opportunities with AI seem endless. Josh and I will bring it a little bit back to home because while there's absolutely a rapidly changing environment with regards to AI, there's also a lot of experience we can pull from, but it wouldn't be me talking if I didn't first start with a story that I didn't give Josh a heads-up on. So maybe, gosh, a year, year and a half ago in the early days of my treasury services tenure, I made a trip down to Tampa, and I spent the time with the team doing a day in the life. And during this time, it was probably one of the most insightful and humbling experiences as I watched the payment transaction go across all of the different ingestion points, checks and so forth. And besides the learnings, which were fantastic and the quality and care of our entire operations team, there was something that kept happening, which is someone kept following me around to make sure that I didn't try to actually make any decisions in the system.
(02:27):
I hadn't been trained. I didn't know the processes and I didn't know how those platforms worked. But when I think about what AI is providing to us, it's a bunch of things. So one, the ability to rethink how those processes work, but also as our CIO at J.P. Morgan Payments, Sri has pointed out in an earlier episode, what becomes accessible to different types of people in different jobs as a result of AI. So I have a high degree of confidence that Sri will let me code and maybe one day Josh will trust me to operate. But speaking of that... so Josh, our business is a highly operational business. It's what our clients trust us to do. And so a lot of words come to mind, security, stability, resiliency. Can you just talk to us a little bit about how you have approached and embraced AI in that journey?
Josh Pope (03:21):
Yeah. So thanks, Lori. So I think about our business particularly from a treasury side, but also inclusive of merchant. We're super privileged to move millions of transactions a day. So, we are operating on an incredible scale and even though we have great straight-through processing, that little percent results in a lot of manual outsorts every day. We started this probably back in 2018 with our sanctions team. We were screening a very large number of transactions a day. Now we're screening even more. We were outsorting a considerable amount and now we've managed to reduce that number significantly. So we doubled our traffic and we've outsorted half of it. So it's a pretty amazing story. We're making great progress and I'll talk about that in a little bit about the future, but two examples where we use AI are investigations and reconciliation. It's driving real change for our business. What about product, Ms. Schwartz?
Lori Schwartz (04:17):
Well, it's one and the same, Josh. But no, I think we invest a lot in this business and while we're bankers at heart, we tend to measure that most by the dollars we spend and the people we have, which is super important, but it's also just the general capacity of change, which we can take on as a business at any given time. And so when we think about the three pillars of the Treasury Services strategy, I can say without any degree of question that none of them would be possible without the investments that we're making in technology, AI, and machine learning, because the speed, the scale at which we need to operate is frankly enormous. Really excited about some of the test cases that are going on. I know we're investing a lot with market expansion to try out some of where AI can help improve and expand those capabilities.
(05:02):
But just in general, we would not have been able to take the business from where we were to where we are, let alone where we want to go. So Josh, where do you see this going in the future?
Josh Pope (05:14):
One area that we're investing big in is robotics. And if you're ever in Chicago, there are actually robots, not just taking work from the people and bringing it back to where we have to discard the information. We actually now have proof of concept with robots that are actually opening up the envelopes with a vacuum, pulling it out and imaging it all with a robot. And we bought four more recently, which is pretty exciting. They not only looked at it from a receivables space, they actually reached out to consumer and community banking from a firm-wide lens and said, how could this apply to credit card, auto finance, mortgage lending and heavy document oriented spaces? So think horizontally for the firm and then working with the couple of other big bets that we want to make as inquiry management between cause and ops as well as onboarding and really looking at it from front to back the experience. What's the future for products?
Lori Schwartz (06:14):
So I would say in the pure product space, we're thinking about this across three fronts. So first and foremost, what can we do to enable the team? So I've been a product manager for the better part of two decades at this point. There is so much information across our team's heads. Right? It's 40 plus countries and growing, it's 400 products and growing and every combination, every component has a nuance, a tweak, a sell box, and the plethora of information that is just out there results in frankly, a lot of questions, a lot of emails, and a lot of time spent searching for those answers. Now some of this just seems super basic, super obvious, and frankly, the tools that we need are at our disposal, but a lot of what we need to spend our time on is also making sure the data is accessible, it's understandable and it's clear.
(07:03):
So one, we're trying to challenge ourselves, what can we do to enable the team, right? We talked for years about the value of this business, the automation we provide in helping our clients, their treasury staff go up the value chain. We now have that opportunity to continue to do that and frankly do that on accelerator pace with our own team. Then our products. So there's a lot that we leave in configuration in basic rules, if this, then that. You start to think about data ingestion, dynamic rules application, whether that be like liquidity investment or frankly, move my money where it needs to be. There's absolutely ways we can make our products smarter and more intuitive and better for our clients. And then of course, in partnership with Allie Villagra and the digital and design team, just helping those integration points be easier. I gave Ali credit where credit's due for two reasons.
(07:54):
One, access AI, way better terminology, so I hope it sticks, but also just the ability to ask simple questions and get simple information is really something that we've needed and I think we need to keep bringing those opportunities to the fore with our clients. So really excited about the opportunities. We're going to figure it out. We've got a great bench of strength and experience and again, always kudos and respect to what Josh and the operations team have done, but I think the opportunities of what these newer technologies are bringing are frankly only going to be limited by our imagination at this point, or not because they're agentic and can figure that stuff out. It's new, it's exciting. Be curious, try it out. By the way, I say that out loud as much to you as I do to myself in this regard, but it is an exciting opportunity ahead of us.
Josh Pope (08:40):
And I'll close it out here. So number one, educate yourselves, embrace it. Lack of embracement will replace you, not AI itself. Okay? So really critical message. Upskill yourself because we do think that is the future. And then three, I think it's very important to not operate in the culture of fear. And while we talk about operations, technology, service, which is a good portion of the Payments organization at large, don't operate with fear. We are privileged with growth and AI transformation is much more than just efficiency. It's how do we improve the client experience? How do we reduce risk? How do we absorb the great growth of non-interest revenue a year? It's how do we actually continue to scale this business with the great growth? So again, educate, embrace, upskill yourselves, and don't operate in fear because of AI. Innovation's been around forever. So thanks in advance.
Bria Bell (09:32):
That was Lori and Josh on what it looks like to apply AI in a business defined by scale, complexity and constant growth. What stood out most to me is that this conversation wasn't about AI as a distant future concept. It was about real outcomes happening now, reducing friction, improving client experiences, managing risk more effectively, and giving teams the tools to focus on higher-value work. Now, let me ask you, was there a moment where AI went from feeling like a big concept to something you actually rely on in your workflow or what's one small way you've personally started using AI that's made a difference? A simple use case that I'd encourage people to try first is that if AI feels intimidating, start with your personal life first. Use it to brainstorm your dinner menu for the week or build a travel itinerary for your next vacation.
(10:23):
You can even ask it to summarize what the internet knows about you based on a quick Google search, and that one tends to surprise people. Once you get comfortable with how it thinks and responds, those instincts will naturally carry over into how you use it at work. Their conversation was also about building an innovator's mindset, not to fear change, but to participate in it by learning, experimenting, and building new skills along the way. In a moment where technology is evolving quickly, curiosity and adaptability may be the most valuable capabilities any one of us can bring. Thank you again to Lori and Josh for sharing thoughtful insights and for highlighting how innovation is helping shape the future of payments. Stay tuned for the next episode of our AI miniseries where we'll continue exploring how this transformation is unfolding across our business from product to operations and beyond.
Narrator (11:13):
Thank you for tuning in to Pay It Forward, a podcast by J.P. Morgan Payments for J.P. Morgan Payments. If you're interested in exploring career opportunities at JP Morgan Payments, please visit jpmorgan.com/careers and enter the word payments for relevant opportunities. Stay up to date on the latest stories, technology, and people powering payments by subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform. Keep pushing boundaries and we'll keep moving the payments world forward one transaction at a time.
Sources
1: https://www.jpmorganchase.com/ir/annual-report/2025/ar-ceo-letters