An Insight Partners principal says the era of 'dumb payments' is over, and sees opportunities in using machine-learning to combat fraud

Byron Lichtenstein is a principal at Insight Partners, and sees most opportunity in the convergence between software and payments. Insight Partners focuses mainly on growth-stage software companies across verticals from education to social media to fintech, and it has invested in German neobank N26, business expense management startup Divvy, and payment fraud monitoring startup Sift. Here are the ways he sees payments and software coming together to find value in a changing industry. "Historically, we've always been software investors," Lichtenstein told Business Insider. "What's changed over the past two years that we found really interesting is that dumb payments don't really --obviously, they exist --but they're not really a thing anymore," Lichtenstein said.