The Trust 25: Meet the Leaders Defining the Future of Digital Trust
Discover Prove's inaugural Trust 25 honorees: 25 innovators advancing digital identity, fraud prevention, payments, customer experience, and AI commerce.
Key takeaways
- Introducing the inaugural Trust 25: Prove recognizes 25 innovators whose leadership and contributions are shaping the future of digital trust.
- Five categories of innovation: Honorees represent Identity, Payments, Customer Experience, Agentic Commerce, and Fraud & Compliance.
- Recognizing leaders across industries: The Trust 25 includes executives from banking, fintech, payments, technology, gaming, and digital marketplaces.
- Addressing the challenges of the AI era: Honorees are advancing solutions to AI-driven fraud, digital identity, authentication, autonomous payments, and trusted AI interactions.
- Defining the future of digital trust: Selected from hundreds of nominations, these leaders are helping establish how trust will be built, maintained, and strengthened in an increasingly digital economy.
What does trust mean in a world where 6 billion people are online, AI can manufacture convincing identities in seconds, and autonomous agents shop, transact, and act on our behalf? When the line between human and machine, legitimate and fraudulent, becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish, how do we know who, or what, we can trust?
These are among the defining questions of the modern, digital economy. And while technology is changing the nature of trust, it is people who will ultimately shape its future. The Trust 25 is Prove’s inaugural recognition program honoring 25 executives across Identity, Payments, Customer Experience, Agentic Commerce, and Fraud & Compliance who are shaping how trust works in the digital economy.
Recognizing the people building what comes next
The Trust 25 was created by Prove to celebrate the executives who are shaping the future of digital trust. As AI transforms how people and businesses interact, transact, and establish identity, the challenges surrounding trust have become more complex and important than ever. Prove established the Trust 25 to recognize the people tackling these challenges, advancing innovation, and building a safer, more connected digital economy.
THE TRUST 25
The Leaders Defining Trust in the Digital Economy
Trust is strongest when we build it together. Meet the 25 leaders shaping what trust looks like next.
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Selected from hundreds of nominations by an independent panel of industry experts, it honors 25 exceptional leaders in five categories:
- Identity
- Payments
- Customer Experience
- Agentic Commerce
- Fraud & Compliance
These innovators are pushing their industries forward by establishing persistent identity, combating increasingly sophisticated fraud, authenticating customers without unnecessary friction, securing faster and more autonomous payments, and enabling businesses to interact safely with AI agents.
Being named to the Trust 25 is a distinction that recognizes more than professional achievement. It celebrates the vision, leadership, and meaningful contributions of individuals whose work is influencing how trust is established, maintained, and strengthened across the digital economy. Together, these 25 leaders represent the people defining what trust means today and building the foundation for what it must become tomorrow.
Meet the Trust 25
Identity: Identity is evolving from a point-in-time verification exercise into something more persistent and continuous. The leaders recognized in this category are helping architect systems capable of establishing and maintaining trust throughout the customer relationship.
- Deniz Ertain - Sr. Director of Risk, eBay
- Neal Ostrov - Director of Product - Acquisition & Onboarding, FanDuel Group
- Chris Nygard - Director, Client Authentication and Identity Verification Technology, KeyBank
- Tom Schraufnagel - SVP, Authentication & Identity Product Leader, U.S. Bank
- Manjunath Siddappa - Director of Engineering, Uber
Payments: Money is moving faster, across more channels, and increasingly through interactions in which a human may not directly initiate every step. These innovators are helping rethink authentication and trust for a new generation of payment experiences.
- Amit Cheela - U.S. CEO, BVNK, A Mastercard Company
- Prateek Khamesra - Director of Product, Value Added Service (VAS), Visa
- Jeff Parker - Sr. Director of Fraud Prevention and Detection, AvidXchange
- Manpreet Singh - Engineering Leader - Identity, Stripe
- Kate Zakharava - SVP, Fraud Analytics and Innovation Leader, Bank of America
Customer Experience: The best digital experiences should not require businesses to choose between security and simplicity. The Customer Experience honorees are demonstrating how stronger identity signals can help organizations recognize trusted customers, reduce unnecessary friction, and apply additional scrutiny where risk actually exists.
- Regan Huisman Bryant - Director of Product Management, Fanatics Betting and Gaming
- Harsh Dev - Head of Product – Consumer, Transaction Risk & Credit Risk Platform, PayPal
- Derek Lanni - VP, Acquisition Fraud Strategy, Synchrony Financial
- Michelle Malish - VP, Digital Product Management Lead, Citi
- Naaz Nichols - CXO, Care.com
Agentic Commerce: AI agents introduce an entirely new participant into digital commerce. As agents begin shopping, paying, and taking action on behalf of people, businesses need new ways to establish authorization, consent, and accountability. The leaders in this category are helping build the standards, infrastructure, and experiences that can make agentic commerce trustworthy.
- Tomás Campos - CEO & Co-Founder, Spinwheel
- Angela Diaz - Sr. Risk Manager, External Fraud Oversight, TD
- Alfonso Gómez-Jordana Mañas - Co-Founder, Crossmint
- Kumar Senthil - CEO & Founder, firmly
- Gautam Poornachandra - Product Lead - Agentic AI Payments, Amazon
Fraud & Compliance: Fraud is becoming faster, more coordinated, and easier to industrialize. Generative AI is also making impersonation, synthetic identities, deepfake documents, and social engineering more accessible at scale. The leaders recognized here are advancing new approaches that combine signals, intelligence, and real-time decisioning to identify risk without unnecessarily penalizing legitimate customers.
- Karen Boyer - SVP, Financial Crimes, M&T Bank
- Andy Hodges - SVP, Authentication Analytics and Testing Innovation, Bank of America
- Brian Oh - Head of Product - Identity & Fraud, FIS
- Stacie Purcell - Fraud Solutions Executive, KeyBank
- Adam Wood - Managing Director, Client Protection and Scam Prevention, Citi
Honorees were selected using a defined scoring rubric by an independent judging panel of internal and external industry experts, including:
- Edward Sander - U.S. Fraud & Identity Leader, EY
- Melissa Shields - Head of Payments Strategy, VGS
- Peter Tapling - Managing Director, PTap Advisory
- Eric Woodward - CEO, FinatIQ
- Mary Ann Miller - VP, Fraud Executive Advisor, Prove
To learn more about the Trust 25 and the 2026 honorees, visit Prove.com/the-trust-25-awards.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The Trust 25 is an annual recognition program launched by Prove in 2026 to honor 25 executives shaping the future of digital trust. The inaugural award celebrates innovators advancing digital identity, fraud prevention, authentication, payments, customer experience, and agentic commerce. Honorees are recognized for their leadership, innovation, and contributions to building a safer, more trusted digital economy.
The inaugural 2026 Trust 25 recognizes 25 executives from leading organizations, including Uber, Amazon, Visa, PayPal, Citi, Bank of America, Stripe, eBay, and others. These leaders are driving innovation in digital identity, fraud prevention, secure payments, customer experience, and AI-powered commerce. The complete list of honorees, including their titles, companies, and award categories, is featured above.
The Trust 25 recognizes leaders across five categories: Identity, Payments, Customer Experience, Agentic Commerce, and Fraud & Compliance. Each category represents a critical area of innovation in the digital economy, from establishing persistent digital identity and preventing fraud to enabling seamless authentication, secure transactions, and trusted interactions with autonomous AI agents.
The 2026 Trust 25 honorees were selected from hundreds of nominations by an independent panel of industry experts using a defined scoring rubric. Judges evaluated nominees based on their professional impact, innovation, leadership, and contributions to advancing digital trust. The judging panel included industry experts from EY, VGS, PTap Advisory, FinatIQ, and Prove.
As artificial intelligence transforms digital interactions, businesses face growing challenges involving synthetic identities, deepfakes, AI-driven fraud, and autonomous agents acting on behalf of consumers. Digital trust requires organizations to establish who or what is behind an interaction, what they are authorized to do, and whether the interaction is legitimate. The Trust 25 recognizes innovators developing the technologies, strategies, and standards needed to make digital interactions more secure, seamless, and accountable.
Keep reading
Read the article: Prove Unveils The Trust 25, Recognizing Leaders From Uber, Citi, PayPal, Visa, and 20+ Other Organizations Solving the Hardest Problems in Digital IdentityProve announces the 2026 Trust 25, honoring 25 leaders from Uber, Citi, PayPal, Visa and more advancing digital identity, fraud prevention and AI-driven trust.
Read the article: Prove Unveils The Trust 25, Recognizing Leaders From Uber, Citi, PayPal, Visa, and 20+ Other Organizations Solving the Hardest Problems in Digital IdentityHonorees span banking, payments, gaming, and technology, reflecting the breadth of industries now confronting AI-driven fraud, authentication, and the rise of AI agents
Read the article: Marketplace Risk NYC Recap: How Uber Is Building Trust Globally in the Age of AI Explore how Prove is working with marketplaces like Uber to rethink digital marketplace trust with continuous identity verification to combat AI-driven fraud, strengthen safety, and reduce friction.
