Irina Chuchkina

Irina ChuchkinaNov 11, 2026

Can't wait to be back to Singapore next week for the Singapore FinTech Festival, where I will be moderating a fascinating session! The backdrop for the discussion: Innovation in Payments has brought solutions to a lot of problems and removed most of the friction. 137 (!) countries now run instant payment systems around the clock. India's UPI processed more than 25 billion transactions in October alone. Paying has become fast, cheap and almost invisible. So if moving money is now the baseline, what creates value next? That's the question I'll be putting to a brilliant panel at the Singapore FinTech Festival: The New Economics Across the Payments Value Chain 📌 20 November, 12:15 to 13:00 SGT 📌 Festival Stage, Hall 1, Singapore Expo With: 🔹 Anuj Khosla, CEO, Digital Business, Hitachi Payment Services Pvt. Ltd. 🔹 Stephen Karpin, Regional President, Asia Pacific, Visa 🔹 Shinichiro Nishikawa, Head of Global Payments Strategy & Transformation, NTT DATA Japan 🔹 Yukinobu Saeki, Managing Executive Officer and Chief Executive for APAC, MUFG And of course, if you'll be at SFF, come and say hello.

Irina ChuchkinaNov 10, 2026

I’ve never had an assistant. I always assumed they were for more important people than me. Turns out you don’t need to be important. You just need to have an overloaded to-do list that needs help. Many of you know I’ve been a loud fan of Instinct and a proponent of agentic everything - including agentic commerce. Open X and you’ll drown in AI assistant takes, so I’ll spare you another one. Here’s a week of my experience instead: Since last week I’ve been testing Dream AI, an AI secretary born and bred in 🇬🇧Britain. I tried it out of curiosity after speaking with Charlie Cowley, Dream’s Founder. I’ve kept using it because it’s faster and, somehow, sharper than the others I’ve tried. Here is how it works: your assistant lives in your WhatsApp. You text her the way you’d text a friend, with half-sentences, screenshots and the “can you sort this”. It picks it up immediately and sends you options and reports. When and if something needs a phone call, a person in the background finishes the job and makes the call for you. Unlike Claude or ChatGPT, Dream messages you first when you need reminding of something, which is the whole point. If I remembered to ask, I wouldn’t need the reminder. About 50 requests in, it has: 💎 Sent me my morning briefs by 7am. I feel like a VIP, and it helps me stay on top of things. 💎 Untangled my mum’s visa application, which was a breeze of fresh air and a huge load off my shoulders! 💎 Drafted around 50 of my emails, all contextual and courteous. I loved the tone! 💎 Tracked deadlines and open loops, and chased my invoices with utter grace. 💎 Found my daughter a reasonably priced dentist, read the reviews and booked it. 💎 Created buffers in my calendar to keep me from running late. 💎 Flagged the £1 charity day at my son’s school, which my track record says I would have missed. 💎 Unsubscribed me from two dozen newsletters. In other words: a butler, a travel agent and a chief of staff, all in one WhatsApp chat. 👉 Most of the AI champions we hear about come from the Bay Area. I think we should celebrate our non-US AI champions louder. 🇬🇧 Dream AI is proudly UK-built and backed by 🇪🇺Speedinvest. Dream is currently invite-only. I have 50 invites to give away, link in the comments. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Irina ChuchkinaNov 2, 2026

What people in fintech say vs. what they (sometimes) mean: “Zero fees.” → The fees are in the FX rate. “We have 1 million registered users.” → 40,000 of them have ever made a payment. “We’re growing 30% month on month.” → We went from 10 customers to 13. “We have a viral referral loop.” → We pay people £20 to invite their mum. “Our activation rate is improving.” → We changed the definition of what counts as “activated”. “We’re data-driven.” → We have 4 dashboards and they all show different numbers. “We’re building a financial super app.” → We have a Figma prototype and a waiting list of 12 people. “We’re in late-stage talks with a tier 1 bank.” → Someone at the bank accepted our LinkedIn request. “We’re live in a pilot with a major bank.” → The pilot started 18 months ago, and the person who signed it has left. “Our licence application is imminent.” → It’s been in progress since 2024. “Our fraud rate is really low.” → We blocked half our real customers. “We’re expanding into new markets.” → The first market didn’t work. “We’re focusing on profitability.” → We ran out of investors.