Why C-Level executives must shift from compliance cost to payment intelligence strategy

For the executive management team of a card issuer or FinTech, the world of payment network rules (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and others) often remains a crucial, yet opaque, black box. It's a necessary task, managed by specialists, with the risk of non-compliance fines and significant reputational damage if mismanaged. This is the cost centre mindset of legacy compliance.

But what if this complexity could be transformed? What if the collective knowledge base of payment networks (the thousands of technical specifications, new fee structures, and mandates) was viewed not as a burden, but as strategic, quantifiable data driving enterprise value?

This is the thesis of Payment Intelligence, a discipline anchored by the Kajo platform. Kajo acts as the central source of truth for all network intelligence and, through Kajo Intelligence (Ask KI), our embedded AI Assistant, instantly demystifies complex mandates to bring actionable knowledge directly to the strategic boardroom.

Moving from reaction to orchestration

In a traditional model, the COO lacks real-time, consolidated visibility into the compliance status across 15+ markets and multiple card schemes. The CRO (Chief Risk Offer) can't efficiently audit whether a new mandate (say on instant payments or cross-border fees) has been correctly interpreted and operationalised by the relevant department (IT, Operations, or Finance). The risk is silent until the fine is issued for the mandate violation or the new fee is effective, reducing a product’s net profit.

The strategic shift required is to adopt a platform that provides continuous, real-time intelligence and full auditability of the entire compliance lifecycle. That's precisely what Kajo is engineered to deliver.

Expert-driven payment knowledge ingestion and automated workflows

Kajo manages knowledge and assigns responsibilities throughout the organisation in two critical ways:

Autonomous knowledge ingestion and classification: The shift from manual compliance to Payment Intelligence starts with structured data. Kajo uses a proprietary framework, developed by Rivero’s experts, to process all incoming scheme documentation. Our Kajo experts analyse and tag each scheme bulletin, converting raw documents into structured data points. This process is intelligent, going beyond mere keyword search. It extracts and classifies data based on:

• The specific products impacted (e.g., Commercial Cards, Virtual Cards).

• The internal processes affected (e.g., Fraud Operations, Clearing, IT Security).

• The applicable region and required audience (Issuer, Acquirer, etc.)

This expert-driven classification effectively pre-analyzes bulletins to reduce the manual workload and forms the trusted knowledge base for the entire organisation.

Workflow and task distribution: Based on granular, expert-tagged data, Kajo's engine acts as an operational agent, automatically generating the specific, auditable compliance task and routing it to the correct owner (e.g., the Card Payment Operations Manager) with the relevant expert interpretation attached.

This eliminates the manual triage by the Scheme Compliance team and ensures that the regulatory change is instantly embedded into the bank's operational workflow. Compliance management is therefore not outsourced, but digitally orchestrated.

Strategic value across the enterprise

By adopting Kajo, the C-Suite gains a single source of truth that aligns core functions, mitigating risk while unlocking efficiency.

For the COO: optimised operations and auditability

The COO gains full transparency into the operational readiness of the entire organisation regarding scheme rules. Dashboards provide a macro-level view of compliance status, highlighting potential bottlenecks or regions at risk before the deadline hits. This proactive visibility enables a genuine approach to planning upcoming compliance requirements, reducing the costly need for last-minute, reactive implementation sprints.

For the CRO/CCO: quantifiable risk reduction

The CRO or CCO can finally move beyond managing personnel risk (human error) to managing systemic, data-driven risk. Kajo provides an immutable audit trail showing when the scheme mandate was received, how it was categorised, who was assigned the task, and what evidence confirms its resolution. This level of transparency is invaluable during external audits and is a powerful tool for demonstrating regulatory responsibility and minimised oversights.

For the CFO: financial foresight and cost control

The integration of financial bulletins ensures the CFO's team never misses any financial updates. Beyond preventing fines, Kajo enables proactive financial strategy. For example, quickly identifying and acting on opt-out bulletins for scheme services that carry a fee but aren't utilised can lead to substantial, measurable cost savings and minimised unwanted non-compliance fines.

The future is knowledge-led scaling

The complexity of global payments is accelerating, driven by trends like real-time payments, new credential standards (Passkeys), and geopolitical regulatory divergence. Relying on manual, human-centric processes to manage this complexity isn't sustainable.

Payment Intelligence, facilitated by Kajo, is the foundational step for any card issuer aiming for scalable, multi-scheme, multi-region growth. It transforms compliance from a necessary cost into a lever of competitive agility and predictable risk management, providing the C-Suite with the algorithmic assurance needed to confidently drive digital transformation and focus on core revenue generation. Talk to our team to find out how Kajo can support your business.