The Interledger Community 🌱: Casey Ariel Dike'

When Tech Took the Mic: Lessons from AFROTECH on the Agentic Future of Finance

Casey Ariel Dike' — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 17:40:59 +0000

By Casey Ariel Dike’, Founder & CEO of Blaze Group, Contractor for the Interledger Foundation

At AFROTECH 2025, one session in particular stopped me in my tracks.
At a conference of more than 30,000 attendees, backed by some of the biggest names in banking and tech alike, it wasn’t a financial institution that stood out to me in its foreshadowing of the future of money. It was a technology company.

During his keynote, Jackson Aimiuwu of Amazon Web Services (AWS) walked the audience through a 3,000-year history of payments, threading stories of merchants and buyers through time: from barter commerce to monetary coins, from paper money and promissory notes to the credit era, from e-commerce (the dawn of the digital age) to the mobile commerce that defines today’s world of wallets, omnichannel sales, and global shoppers.

Jackson didn’t stop our imaginative journey there. He took us forward — predicting that we are on the brink of the next major transformation: The Agentic Commerce Revolution.

As he described it, AI agents will soon perform the tasks traditional banking rails handle today. They will run the decisioning, settlements, and operations of trade between buyers and sellers autonomously, intelligently, and instantaneously.

Having lived outside the United States — from Cape Town to Nairobi, and traveling across many parts of the globe — I fully agree with Jackson’s outlook. I’ve seen autonomous finance already deeply woven into capital systems beyond the U.S., where behavioral credit scoring gives more people access to credit than FICO scores ever have. Connecting that innovation all the way through to the disbursement of capital isn’t far-fetched.

And it’s no surprise that it was a tech company, not a bank, leading the conversation about the agentic future of finance.

I truly believe the most pivotal disruption in finance, particularly the work of cementing capital access as a human right, will come from outside the traditional banking system.

The world has seen this before. In 2007, Safaricom (a telecommunications company) launched M-PESA in Kenya. Today, less than two decades later, more than 59% of Kenya’s GDP flows through M-PESA. This is what happens when innovation is laser-focused on access rather than mere compliance.

Jackson also shared striking data: of the $96 trillion circulated globally each day, $8.3 trillion is cash. This means that 90% of the world’s money already moves digitally. That reality places us squarely at a tipping point.

AI represents a massive catalyst for digital financial inclusion — if shaped by the right dreamers. Yet this connection hasn’t fully clicked in many financial innovation circles led by executives and banking incumbents. The most imaginative applications aren’t emerging from boardrooms; they’re coming from dorm rooms.

At AFROTECH, I met Daksh Khanna, a Gen Z founder building CashBFF, an AI-powered text-messaging platform that turns financial coaching into friendly, human conversations. It’s simple. It’s intimate. And it speaks the language of his generation. His work is a glimpse of what’s possible when empathy, access, and automation meet.

There’s enormous room for the finance industry to be more imaginative about what AI can mean for democratizing payments. But maybe that imagination doesn’t need to come from us, the well-seasoned practitioners. Maybe it’s time we let Gen Z drive the magic and keep our eyes on the non-bank visionaries solving problems that banks have struggled to fix for decades.

The Agentic Financial Revolution isn’t coming. It’s already unfolding. And it’s being powered by people who believe that access should define how money moves through the world, not institutions.

It has me inspired. I’m excited to witness the disruption in real time.

About the Author

Casey Ariel Dike’ is the Founder and CEO of Blaze Group®, a finance innovation studio offering tools and frameworks that help overlooked communities own, protect, and scale their economic power. With a background in global corporate banking, Casey now focuses on reshaping capital access through financial education, fintech literacy, and equitable product design. She serves as a Strategic Lead for the Interledger Foundation, expanding their reach across financial institutions, colleges, and fintech communities concentrated in underbanked regions.

LINKS:

Company Website: blazegroup.io
Personal Website: iamcaseyariel.com
Instagram: instagram.com/blazegroup.io
Company LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/blazegroup
Personal LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/iamcaseyariel

Turning Headlines into Backyard Conversations: Lessons from the 2025 OFN Conference

Casey Ariel Dike' — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 13:20:09 +0000

By Casey Ariel Dike’, Founder & CEO of Blaze Group, Contractor for the Interledger Foundation

At the 41st Annual Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) Conference in Washington, D.C., more than 2,300 attendees gathered to explore how Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) can continue driving equitable access to capital amid significant shifts in the financial landscape.

One session in particular, called “Reframing Risk in Rural Investments,” offered lessons that resonated across the room.

Panelist Andrew Crosson, CEO of Invest Appalachia, reminded us that building trust in rural finance starts with language and listening. He encouraged practitioners to “turn headlines into backyard conversations,” grounding discussions in the priorities of the people we intend to serve rather than the buzzwords that dominate mainstream narratives.

He gave a compelling example: people respond more openly to “These solar panels can save you money this year,” _than to _“The effects of global warming will…” The first speaks to a person’s daily reality; the second, to a topic that can feel polarizing.

Then, with a smile, Crosson recalled a borrower who, after one such conversation, laughed and said, “All God’s children like to save money.”

The entire audience chuckled in recognition. We all saw our grandparents, cousins, and neighbors in that story. The moment underscored a universal truth: trust is built by meeting people where they are, not by asking them to step outside of it.

Throughout the conference, the Appalachian region emerged as a grounding metaphor for what’s required of community finance leaders today. Across sessions, speakers reinforced a central insight: capital moves only at the speed of trust.

While many conversations in financial inclusion lean digital — especially in fintech — this session reminded us of something critical: not everyone lives in a cashless society, and not everyone is fluent in digital tools. Across rural regions, far beyond hotspots like Oakland or Boston, practitioners reiterated that trust remains the most valuable form of currency.

I saw much of my own approach reflected in those conversations. In my work, I lead with listening. Every community has its own histories and everyday practices that shape how people relate to money. Those nuances aren’t obstacles, they’re anchors for designing the future. We can’t shift power dynamics toward the people without first understanding their reference points and realities.

I spoke about this at length on a recent episode of the Future|Money (F|M) podcast — hosted by Kokayi Issa and powered by the Interledger Foundation — where we explored what it truly means to shift economic power to communities. The episode is titled “From Big Tech to Community Education: Reimagining How Money Moves.”

At Blaze Group, in partnership with the Interledger Foundation and other global allies, our goal is not to save communities. Our mission is to equip them with the tools to save themselves. From catalytic capital to adaptable technology to accelerator programming, the infrastructure we build must be agile enough to be informed by those who are doing the building.

We’re not here to replicate models that force marginalized communities down pre-set paths. We’re here to empower them to chart their own.
And if that means turning headlines into backyard conversations, then I believe that’s a model worth following.

Through my work with Interledger Foundation, I’m helping bridge Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and fintech platforms to catalytic funding that supports digital financial inclusion. But the real work begins with trust — and that starts with listening.

For CDFIs, which are America’s first economic responders that are already embedded in historically underbanked communities, the goal isn’t to modernize for modernization’s sake. It’s to build systems that reflect the people they serve.

The OFN Conference was a week well spent. It was full of learning, connecting, and ideating for the world we’re shaping together. One that listens first, builds second, and always starts in the backyard.

About the Author

LINKS:

Company Website - blazegroup.io
Personal Website - iamcaseyariel.com
Instagram - instagram.com/blazegroup.io
Company LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/blazegroup
Personal LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/iamcaseyariel