Agentic Payments : Luke Grayland & AI Engineering at Scale : Alastair Jepps

We're back for another Practically AI Manchester!

This November, we're being hosted by the team at Bally's Interactive, with two brilliant talks exploring how AI is moving beyond experimentation and into real-world systems operating at scale.

From AI agents making payments on our behalf to personalisation systems serving hundreds of thousands of players, we'll be looking at the engineering, infrastructure and practical challenges behind making AI work in production.

As always, expect practical insights, real-world examples, no sales pitches and plenty of opportunities to meet others from Manchester's growing AI and software engineering community.

We'll also have our regular AI Spotlight, plus pizza, drinks and networking!

🎤 Talk 1: The Rise of Agentic Payments

Luke Grayland | Senior Software Developer, Conferma

What happens when AI agents start spending money on our behalf?

From booking travel and purchasing computing resources to managing everyday transactions, the payments industry is rapidly developing the infrastructure needed to let autonomous AI agents make purchases safely.

In less than two years, we've moved from theoretical concepts to emerging payment protocols from Google, Visa and Mastercard.

Luke will take us under the hood of this evolving landscape, exploring:

• How AI agents change the way we think about payment authorisation, identity, consent and trust.
• The different layers of the agentic payments stack.
• Google's AP2, Mastercard Agent Pay and Visa Intelligent Commerce.
• Why virtual cards, with their built-in spending limits and controls, are particularly well suited to autonomous agents.
• The challenges still to solve, including disputes, liability and merchant verification.

With standards still evolving, this talk offers a practical developer's perspective on one of the next big challenges for agentic AI.

About Luke

Luke is a Senior Software Developer at Conferma, a virtual card payments platform. He works at the intersection of payments infrastructure and emerging technology, with a particular interest in making complex technical subjects accessible.

🎤 Talk 2: AI Engineering at Scale

Alastair Jepps | VP Technology, Bally's Interactive

Building an AI-powered feature is one thing. Making it work reliably and cost-effectively for hundreds of thousands of users is another.
Alastair will share how the engineering team at Bally's Intralot is delivering Netflix-style, behaviour-driven personalisation across 700,000 players and five casino brands.

We'll explore:

• How to deliver personalised experiences at scale.
• The engineering and commercial considerations behind making AI cost-effective.
• Combining classical machine learning with AI and semantic matching.
• Using evaluations and error analysis to continuously improve products.
• Experimentation through A/B testing and contextual bandits.

A look at the practical engineering decisions involved in building, measuring and improving AI-powered products at scale.

About Alastair

Alastair is VP Technology at Bally's Interactive, working across technology and engineering within the gaming industry.

💡 AI Spotlight

We'll kick things off with our regular AI Spotlight!

A quick look at some of the interesting developments, tools and ideas emerging across the AI world.

A chance to catch up on what's happening, discover something new and get everyone thinking before the main talks.

📅 Agenda

18:00 – Doors open, pizza, drinks and networking
18:20 – Welcome and introductions
18:25 – AI Spotlight
18:35 – Luke Grayland: The Rise of Agentic Payments
19:15 – Alastair Jepps: AI Engineering at Scale
19:55 – Wrap-up and final conversations
20:00 – Event close
Timings are approximate and may change slightly.

📍 Venue

Bally's Interactive
60 Spring Gardens
Manchester, M2 2BQ

A huge thank you to Bally's Interactive for hosting us this month and generously providing the venue, pizza and drinks.
Support like this makes a real difference in helping us keep Practically AI free and accessible to the community.

About Practically AI

Practically AI is a community-led meetup bringing together software engineers, technology professionals and anyone interested in the practical application of AI.

Our focus is on real experiences, honest conversations and learning from people who are actually building and working with AI.

Whether you're experimenting with AI tools, developing production systems or simply curious about where the technology is heading, you're welcome to join us.

No hype. No sales pitches. Just practical AI, good conversations and a growing community.

Looking forward to seeing everyone on Thursday 19th November!