President, Chief Operating Officer
Ingo Payments
Rusty Pickering is the President and Chief Operating Officer (and former General Counsel) of Ingo Payments, a full-service embedded finance platform for banks, fintechs and enterprise brands. Rusty was previously a partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. Rusty received his BS in Biomedical Engineering from Tulane University in 1991 and his JD cum laude from the University of Texas School of Law in 1994.
Instant payments are rapidly becoming foundational to modern banking—but access to rails like RTP and FedNow is no longer the differentiator. The real competitive advantage is shifting to orchestration. As payment flows fragment across multiple domestic and cross-border networks, banks must intelligently route transactions, manage real-time liquidity, embed fraud and identity decisioning, and deliver seamless customer experiences—all in milliseconds.
This panel brings together senior banking leaders to explore how orchestration is emerging as the control layer for instant payments. The discussion will examine how institutions are balancing speed with risk, integrating treasury and payments functions, and rethinking their technology stacks to avoid fragmentation and vendor lock-in. Panelists will also address where new value is being created—from data and premium services to AI-driven routing—and how banks can position themselves to compete in an ecosystem increasingly shaped by fintechs and real-time network operators.
At stake is a critical question: will orchestration become a core banking competency—or a commoditized layer controlled by others?