Leaders In Payments: Recent Episodes
Greg Myers
Hear directly from C-level executives in payments/fintech about industry trends, successful strategies, products, services, and what the future holds for the payments/fintech industry. We cover the entire industry from merchant acquiring, payment processing, ISOs, payfacs, fraud, security, issuing, b2b, fintech, to start-ups, if it goes on in payments we will be talking about it.
This episode is part of our Embedded Finance Podcast Series, exploring the strategies, opportunities and challenges shaping the future of embedded finance. The series is leading up to Embedify ’26, the Embedded Finance Summit for vertical SaaS leaders, taking place October 13 in Lehi, Utah. To learn more visit embedify2026.com.
In this episode I sat down with Conn Byrne, Executive Director of Integrated Payments at Payroc, to get practical about what embedded payments and embedded finance really mean for vertical SaaS leaders who want to scale without burning engineering time.
We dig into Conn’s three-part framework for making embedded finance work in the real world: the cardholder and merchant experience (where retention is won or lost), the developer experience (how fast your team can integrate and customize), and the partnership experience (what happens after launch when something breaks, priorities shift, or you need roadmap clarity). Along the way, we talk about what’s driving demand right now, from private equity expectations to the explosion of AI-built software platforms that can enter a vertical overnight.
We also map the natural product path after embedded payments: lending built on payment data, banking capabilities that improve funding speed and reduce fees, and add-ons like payroll that can turn your platform into a true operating system for your customers. If you’re evaluating an integrated payments partner, planning a migration, or trying to decide how far to go beyond payments, this conversation gives you a grounded checklist and a longer-term view.
And a special thanks to Payroc for being a supporting sponsor at the summit this year.
Merchant onboarding is where growth goes to die, and where fraud quietly sneaks in. We sit down with Noam Izhaki, Co-founder and CEO of Ballerine, to unpack why the payments stack can feel real-time and automated while KYC, KYB, underwriting, and compliance still depend on slow investigations, scattered systems, and ever-growing analyst teams.
We walk through Noam’s journey from building early online platforms in Tel Aviv to learning hard lessons in remittances and then at Wix, where the same merchant risk challenges showed up at scale. That experience led to Ballerine: a platform designed to help merchant acquirers, PSPs, marketplaces, card ecosystem players, and banks bring their policies and data into one place and use AI agents to automate decisions across the seller lifecycle, from onboarding through ongoing monitoring. We also dig into how this differs from traditional fraud and compliance point solutions that provide signals but still leave the hardest part, judgment, to humans.
Then we zoom out to the future of payments: agentic commerce, agents buying from other agents, and a world where creating “a business” is cheap, fast, and sometimes fake. Noam shares what he’s seeing around fraud industrialization, including transaction laundering as a service, and why the biggest advantage may be becoming a true trust layer for the internet with real-time, global risk decisions.
If you’re building for scale, ask yourself whether your plan requires hiring your way out of risk. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a payments leader who’s feeling the pressure, and leave a review with your biggest question about AI in merchant risk.
Payments is getting smarter, faster, and more automated and that makes one question feel urgent: where does trust come from when the tech starts acting on our behalf? We sit down with Marielle Mekkaoui, Head of Marketing at Payabli, to talk about why the future of payments is still human, even in an AI-first era.
We get into what embedded payments should actually look like inside vertical SaaS platforms, and why “embedded” cannot be a checkbox feature. Marielle breaks down Payabli’s view of the full money lifecycle with pay in, payout, and pay ops, and why solving only for payment acceptance leaves platforms stuck with operational mess. We also talk about go-to-market realities in B2B fintech marketing, the return of in-person events, and how education keeps customers confident as products become more complex.
Then we zoom out to AI in payments and what’s next, including agentic commerce and the difference between bolting on AI versus building intelligence into the foundation. Marielle shares a grounded framework for due diligence: ask how AI is trained, demand transparency, and keep a human in the loop for the moments that matter most, like disputes, fraud, and support.
If you care about embedded finance, intelligent payments, and leadership that doesn’t lose the human story, you’ll find it here.
Checkout is getting faster, smarter, and more invisible, but the stakes feel more human than ever. We talk with Jaime Hawkins, Managing Director, North America at Ingenico, about what it takes to build technology that quietly works in the background while people stay front and center. From her roots in industrial engineering to years of client-facing operations, Jaime explains how process thinking and data analytics shaped her into a different kind of commercial leader and why one mentor’s blunt advice changed the direction of her career.
We also dig into what is actually powering modern commerce: not only sleek payment terminals, but platforms and open API integrations that help partners reduce complexity and build tailored point of sale experiences. Jaime shares why payments are “no longer just about taking a payment” and how merchants can turn everyday interactions into actionable intelligence, from understanding customer behavior to improving store performance and delivering personalization like loyalty snapshots and targeted offers.
Trust is the thread running through everything. As embedded payments, digital wallets, automation, and even digital assets evolve, Jaime argues that innovation must move hand in hand with security and confidence or commerce starts to crack. Looking forward, we explore the shift from physical hardware to digital interactions driven by biometrics, AI, IoT, and conversational commerce, and what merchants risk losing as the checkout moment gets thinner and thinner.
Payments are getting smoother on the surface, but the real story is what happens underneath when something changes, breaks, or needs to scale fast. That’s why our conversation with Ann Berkmeier, Chief Administrative Officer at Dash Solutions, centers on a simple idea with big consequences: companies don’t scale by accident, they scale by design. From her early work in large-scale banking migrations to leading global transformation programs and now operating at the intersection of people, AI enablement, and strategy, Ann shares how to bring clarity to complexity without losing momentum.
We talk about what “the future is human” looks like in the payments industry as automation accelerates. Faster and more seamless transactions are great, but experience is what leaders must keep front and center: simple, secure, reliable, and valuable for everyone involved. Ann also breaks down the trust equation in fintech and payments technology, including why the 1% of moments when payments do not go as planned is where accountability, communication, and ownership become the real differentiators.
AI is the turning point, but not in the usual “do more tasks faster” way. Ann makes the case that the biggest impact of AI in payments is the opportunity to step back and redesign the company around what’s now possible. We get practical about implementation too, including building AI as a team capability, rolling out tools thoughtfully, and prioritizing initiatives where they create better client, partner, and employee experiences. We also cover mentorship, leadership principles, and direct advice for the next generation of women entering payments and fintech.
AI is racing into payments, but the uncomfortable truth is that speed without trust turns into risk fast. We sit down with Garima Chaudhary, VP of Financial Crime and Compliance AI at ThetaRay, to unpack what it really takes to modernize AML and sanctions compliance while keeping humans accountable for outcomes.
Garima shares her career journey from engineering and operational risk into the high-stakes world of financial crime, where “follow the money” reveals both how economies grow and how criminal networks adapt.
We get specific about why legacy rules-based transaction monitoring creates overwhelming false positives, and how behavioral AI can spot anomalies across customer segments and peer groups, improving detection without punishing legitimate people and small businesses with blunt, one-size-fits-all rules. Along the way, we talk about the human cost of financial crime and why compliance decisions can either protect vulnerable communities or unintentionally lock them out of the financial system.
The theme “the future is human” shows up everywhere: explainable AI, human-in-the-loop review, and the governance and documentation needed to defend decisions to auditors and regulators. Garima also looks ahead to agentic payments, where AI agents buy and move money on our behalf, forcing a rethink of identity, delegated authority, and what “normal behavior” even means in fraud and AML models.
If you care about fintech, payments innovation, and building compliant products that scale, this conversation will sharpen your thinking.
Payments are not just transactions anymore. They are software experiences, API connections, and full business operating systems, and that shift changes what leadership looks like across fintech. We sit down with Kim Molinaro, Head of ISV at Fiserv, to trace her path from fashion-focused marketing and early sales roles into 24 years in payment processing and partner growth, and to unpack what makes the ISV channel such a powerful engine for scale.
We get specific about embedded payments: why modern merchants rarely want a standalone terminal, how software platforms bake payments into the product, and how ISV partnerships can reach thousands of businesses at once while lowering churn. Kim also shares how ecosystems like Clover reflect a broader move toward bundled commerce: payments plus banking tools, lending, apps, and value-added services that keep businesses running in one place.
Then we go straight at the big tension in the industry: automation and AI. Kim explains what “the future is human” means to her as a leader, including where AI tools like copilots help teams move faster and where human thinking still has to stay in the driver’s seat. We talk about trust, transparency, accountability, and the emerging impact of agentic AI that can find and buy on behalf of people, raising new questions about authorization and confidence in what machines choose.
If you care about fintech leadership, embedded finance, ISV strategy, and building trust in modern payments, this conversation will give you practical ideas you can use right away.
Payments look like pure software until you move countries, get hit with fraud, or watch a “guaranteed” settlement date slip. That’s where the real story starts, and it’s why I loved talking with Kristin Reischel, Senior Director of Solutions and Partner Marketing at Rapyd, for our Women Leaders in Payments Month series sponsored by Payroc.
Kristin shares a refreshingly honest career path: Boulder, Colorado roots, a fine art degree, a pivot into computer science, then early years at IBM where every hour was billable and accountability was immediate. From there, she follows what energizes her most, working closer to customers, shaping stories, and eventually landing in payment product marketing. We talk about what product marketing means in fintech and how it connects product teams, partners, and real business needs, from local payment methods to faster money movement.
Our theme is “the future is human,” and Kristin makes it real. Automation, AI, and embedded payments keep expanding, but trust is still built by people who test systems, respond when things break, and make judgment calls when fraud and risk show up. She also unpacks the cultural side of global payments, comparing credit habits in the US with the UK’s banking realities, Germany’s cash preference, and the mobile payments leadership seen across Africa and parts of Southeast Asia.
We close with what she’s watching next: stablecoins, crypto adoption on familiar card rails, and the convergence of AI with agentic commerce and microtransactions. If you care about the future of payments, fintech trust, and practical leadership lessons, this conversation delivers.
Payments don’t fail as an abstract metric. They fail for a freelancer waiting to get paid, a small business trying to accept the locally normal method, or a customer who gets told “we don’t support how you pay.” That’s why our conversation with Clarice Lehman, Alternative Payments Operations Lead at DLocal, keeps landing on one theme: the future of payments has to stay human, even as the industry gets more automated, embedded, and AI-driven.
We start with Clarice’s journey from Uruguay to fintech, including a pivotal dinner-party moment that redirected her MBA path to MIT, followed by consulting at BCG, and a return to DLocal to lead strategy and operations across alternative payment methods. We unpack what “APMs” really include (instant payments, wallets, cash-based options, BNPL operations, card-present initiatives, and crypto operations) and why delivering a consistent cross-border payments experience is hard when every market’s infrastructure looks different underneath.
Then we get practical about leadership and trust: why smarter systems can’t mean more exclusion, what transparency should look like when AI makes decisions, and why reliability and accountability are non-negotiable when downtime or a wrong decline hits. Clarice also shares the trend she’s most excited about: AI-driven credit and underwriting using alternative data, and how that can expand access to capital for consumers and SMBs that traditional credit bureaus overlook.
If you care about emerging markets, payments strategy, fintech leadership, and building products that actually include people, this one is for you.
Payments are getting smarter and more automated, but the real question is simpler: are we making life easier for the humans behind every transaction? For Women Leaders in Payments Month, we’re joined by Kimling Lam, Chief Marketing Officer at Fortis, to talk about what “the future is human” actually looks like inside fintech, embedded payments, and modern go-to-market teams. Special thanks to Payroc for sponsoring this year’s series and supporting the advancement of women across the payments industry.
Kimling shares her career journey from Wellesley and broadcast journalism to TV news reporting, software sales, and leadership roles across major payments brands before stepping into her current CMO role. Along the way, we dig into how strong storytelling becomes a growth advantage in fintech marketing, why CEO sponsorship and networks can change a career trajectory, and what it really takes to turn ambiguity into strategy that drives pipeline and revenue.
We also explore the practical impact of generative AI and large language models on marketing workflows. Kimling explains why marketers are shifting from writing everything manually to orchestrating faster, more scalable work streams while protecting brand voice and applying human judgment. From there, we zoom out to B2B payments and accounts receivable, including the pain of “swivel chair accounting,” the importance of human-centered design, and why trust in payments feels invisible until something breaks.
If you care about customer experience, embedded finance, women in fintech leadership, and where AI helps or hurts, you’ll get a lot from this conversation.
Payments are getting faster and more automated, but the hardest part stillisn’t the tech. It’s trust. We talk with Rachel Costello, VP of Platform Growth at Maverick, about why the future of payments is human and how leaders can keep empathy, judgment, and real partnership at the center while AI and automation reshape everything around us.
Rachel shares her career path into fintech, from early work in ad tech and e-commerce to revenue operations and growth roles, and why payments became the perfect place to combine strategy, go-to-market, and customer impact. We also dig into what she’s building today: strategic partnerships, embedded payment strategy, and the infrastructure that helps software platforms deliver seamless commerce experiences.
A big theme is embedded payments and embedded finance, and what it actually means when a software platform becomes a commerce platform. We break down the customer journey, preferred payment methods, and the practical outcomes businesses want: less friction, faster scaling, and simpler ways to get paid. Along the way, Rachel makes the case for fundamentals, customers don’t buy buzzwords like AI or APIs, they buy the results those tools deliver.
We wrap with leadership lessons, mentorship, and advice for the next generation of women in payments: raise your hand before you feel ready, get comfortable being uncomfortable, and choose a culture that fits how you work and grow.
A failed payment is never just a technical error. It’s a customer stuck at checkout, a merchant losing revenue, and a moment where trust is either reinforced or broken. We sit down with Alexandra Dolia, co-founder and COO of Akurateco, to talk about what payments leadership looks like when you refuse to treat the industry like a black box and you build teams that can explain what’s happening end to end.
Alexandra shares her path from Ukraine to a formative year in the United States as a teenage exchange student, then into fintech almost by accident through a contact center role. That early frontline experience shaped how she thinks about customer support, payment failures, and operational details that quietly define the client experience. We also unpack the leadership philosophy that came from working in a culture where knowledge is shared, not guarded, and how she’s applied it by developing people through structured internal education.
From there, we get practical about the future of payments: embedded checkout, automation, and why “the future is human” isn’t anti-technology. It’s a reminder that technology should sharpen judgment, not replace it. Alexandra breaks down how companies earn trust through transparency, honesty when things go wrong, and consistency over time, then points to a major shift reshaping global commerce: the fast-growing mix of alternative payment methods, from wallets to account-to-account and local rails, and the rising need for payment orchestration.
Payments look instant and invisible until something goes wrong. That’s when you find out whether you’re working with a faceless system or a team you can actually trust. We sit down with Alex McCandless, EVP of Marketing and Training at Payroc, to get specific about what “people powered” really means in fintech and why transparency and access to real decision makers still matter in a world of automated transactions.
Alex shares her career journey from the agency world into payment processing, plus what she learned scaling from a scrappy startup environment into a platform shaped by 27 acquisitions. We talk about the challenge of bringing many brands under one Payroc umbrella without forcing a one-size-fits-all playbook, and how culture integration requires real discovery, humility, and a willingness to borrow the best tools and processes from every team.
We also dig into the future of payments and the role of AI in fintech. Alex makes the case for AI-assisted operations, not AI-powered relationships, and connects that to embedded finance, SaaS, and the push toward more holistic experiences across card-present and card-not-present payments. On trust and security, she explains why “secure” should be baseline, why trust is earned one transaction at a time, and how the 1% edge cases can define your reputation. We close with what she’s watching next, including agentic commerce, machine-to-machine payments, and how marketing teams are adapting for LLM search and more qualified inbound leads.
Payments are getting smarter, faster, and more automated, but the stakes are still deeply human. I sit down with Gunita Bindra, CRO of Paymode New Business Development at Bottomline, to talk about what it takes to lead in fintech when AI is reshaping how decisions get made and how money moves.
Along the way, Ganita shares her path from computer science in India to roles in software engineering, solution consulting, product management, and now leading sales and partnerships in the B2B payments world.
We explore what “the future is human” means when technology can feel like it’s in the driver’s seat. Gunita lays out why leaders in payments need to embrace change while building for enduring excellence, not just short-term success. We also get practical about the customer experience behind every transaction: how product-minded empathy shows up in sales conversations, why understanding small business payment pain matters, and how transparency turns into trust when your platform can clearly explain where a payment is, why it’s there, and what happens next.
Then we look forward at agentic commerce and the idea of payments that can route themselves with humans still in the loop. Gunita offers a grounded take on job evolution, the skills that stay valuable, and the mindset shift leaders need right now. We close with direct advice for women entering payments and fintech: network early, ask for what you want, build a business case, and learn negotiation without apology.
In this milestone 500th episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast, I bring together seven respected leaders from across the payments ecosystem for a special look at the state of the industry.
Rather than a traditional one-on-one interview, this episode features perspectives from Jim Oberman, CEO of Payroc; Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore, President of SoFi Tech Solutions at SoFi; Greg Cohen, CEO of Fortis; Alex Shtilman, CEO and Co-Founder of Rapyd; Steve Pinado, CEO of NMI; Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect; and Derek Dean, CEO of Flute.
Each guest shares their view on three important questions: what shift they are seeing in payments right now, what is still harder than it should be, and what the industry should be preparing for over the next three to five years.
The conversation covers the continued rise of embedded payments, the role of software in reshaping distribution, the growing importance of stablecoins and real-time money movement, the impact of AI and agentic commerce, and the ongoing need to simplify the merchant experience. Guests also discuss the friction that still exists behind the scenes, from onboarding and reconciliation to fraud, false declines, global commerce, regulation, and legacy infrastructure.
Episode 500 is both a celebration of the first 500 conversations on the podcast and a forward-looking discussion about where payments is headed. It reflects how much the industry has changed, how much complexity still needs to be solved, and how much opportunity remains ahead for payments leaders, fintech innovators, software platforms, banks, and the broader commerce ecosystem.
A special "thank you" to all who have listened, watched and participated over the last 5+ years. And now on to the next 500!
Checks still power a shocking amount of insurance money movement, and that single fact creates slow claims, higher operating costs, and an open door for fraud. Greg Myers sits down with Ian Drysdale, CEO of One Inc, to talk about what it really takes to drag property and casualty insurance payments into a modern digital payments era without breaking the workflows carriers rely on.
We unpack how One Inc handles both sides of the insurance payments stack: premium payments (inbound merchant acquiring) and claims payouts (outbound disbursements). Ian shares what “scale” looks like in this vertical, from a huge vendor network that already includes the auto body shops, doctors, and lawyers insurers pay every day, to the complex edge cases that traditional payment processors rarely touch. Think mortgage endorsements after major home damage, lienholder payoffs on total-loss auto claims, and the growing need for insurer-to-insurer settlement use cases like subrogation.
Fraud is a different beast in insurance, too. The risks aren’t about someone buying a TV with a stolen card; they’re about claims fraud, identity fraud, account takeovers, and payments getting intercepted or redirected. Ian explains how data, controls, and hands-on investigation work together to make sure claims payouts land with the right person or business, especially when payouts can run through PayPal, Venmo, push to debit, Visa Direct, and Mastercard Send.
We also zoom in on the premium payment experience gap. Policyholders, especially younger ones, expect Apple Pay, Google Pay, flexible billing dates, and a frictionless mobile flow, and network tokens help reduce failed payments by keeping card credentials current behind the scenes. You’ll leave with one blunt question Ian wants the industry to face: when will insurers write their last check?
Mailing checks to pay off a credit card in 2026 sounds like a joke, but it is still a real debt consolidation workflow at scale. Greg Myers sits down with Jose Bethancourt, Co-Founder and CEO of Method, to unpack why liability payments are uniquely messy and what it takes to make them feel as seamless as modern fintech promises.
Jose shares his path from growing up in South Texas near the Mexico border to building products at UT Austin, then turning a personal problem into a company. GradJoy started as a way to help new graduates understand student loan debt, interest rates, and payoff strategies, but it quickly revealed a deeper issue: people often cannot even locate their liabilities, and credential-based financial data access is brittle. Method tackles that with an identity-based financial connectivity API that, with consent, can find student loans, credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, and personal loans, then enable two-way flows that support both reading data and sending payments to creditors.
We also get into what this unlocks for underwriting, personalization, and better customer outcomes, plus how it can reduce errors and fraud compared to manual PAN entry and back-office check operations.
Jose lays out a forward-looking view of AI in payments, agentic payments, and a world where an AI agent can securely analyze your debt, shop for a better APR, and execute payoffs. Finally, we step back to discuss consumer demand for speed, why ACH still shapes reality, and how RTP and FedNow may push expectations even further.
Fraud doesn’t usually announce itself with a flashing warning sign. It shows up as a chargeback, a fake account that looks “normal,” or an account takeover that slips through the exact same checkout flow your best customers use. Greg Myers sits down with Tamas Kadar, Co-Founder and CEO of SEON, to unpack how modern fraud actually works and how digital businesses can protect revenue without burying users under friction.
Tamas shares the origin story that started with a real loss: a crypto checkout experiment that got hit by fraud almost immediately. That experience turned into years of studying how fraudsters operate and, eventually, into SEON’s mission: help businesses prevent fraud, verify identities, and stay compliant in real time using the minimum data points companies already collect, like an email address or phone number, plus hard-to-fake device and digital footprint signals. We dig into when step-up verification makes sense, how to reduce false positives, and why trust and safety teams deserve to be seen as revenue drivers, not cost centers.
The conversation goes deep on AI in fraud prevention beyond the buzzwords. Tamas explains where classic machine learning helps, where it breaks, and how LLMs can speed up investigations by summarizing cases, surfacing patterns earlier, and reducing the “five tabs per investigation” problem. We also explore the shift toward headless software, where analysts can ask questions in natural language and get answers from the system of record without clicking through a UI, while still keeping decisions explainable with human-readable rules.
We close with what’s next: synthetic identities, deepfakes, account takeover, stablecoins and changing payment rails, plus the rise of agentic commerce where good agents and bad bots can blend into the same traffic.
A “successful” card payment can still leave merchants waiting days to actually access their money, paying layers of fees along the way, and carrying fraud risk that never truly goes away. That gap between authorization and settlement is where cash flow gets squeezed, reconciliation gets messy, and margins get quietly taxed, especially as more commerce shifts to e-commerce and other card-not-present channels.
We sit down with Marshall Greenwald, Founder and CEO of IoniaPay, to talk about changing the infrastructure behind merchant payments. Marshall walks us through how IoniaPay moves funds from a consumer’s card to a merchant’s bank account in real time, why that matters more than ever, and how collapsing a fragmented chain of 6 to 10 parties can reduce cost and complexity. He also explains the fraud angle: instead of relying on tools that “guess,” merchants want stronger certainty that a transaction is truly authorized by the cardholder.
We also get practical about where this fits best right now. Marshall shares why iGaming, travel, and healthcare see outsized value, how instant settlement can unlock meaningful working capital that would otherwise sit in float, and how the company goes to market through a mix of direct enterprise relationships and a broad reseller network. From there, we zoom out to the future of payments: multi-channel commerce, orchestration, interoperability challenges across a massive US ecosystem, and the broader shift from top-layer UX innovation to foundational payment infrastructure.
If you care about real-time payments, merchant cash flow, fraud prevention, and what “modern rails” should actually look like for everyday commerce, this conversation will give you a few sharp questions to bring back to your team.
A $400,000 B2B card payment sounds simple until a processor flags it, the finance team cannot reconcile it, and the invoice sits open while DSO creeps up. That gap between delivering product and collecting cash is where B2B payments either become a growth engine or a constant operational headache.
I sits down with Thomas Cecil, Co-Founder of PAYRA, to unpack how modern accounts receivable automation actually works when you have real scale like thousands of invoices per month and customers paying by card, ACH, wire, or check. We talk through PAYRA’s approach to the invoice-to-cash cycle, why deep ERP integrations matter more than glossy dashboards, and how automated payment reconciliation into the general ledger eliminates the manual posting that blocks adoption. Thomas also explains the practical details finance teams care about, like handling surcharging and posting to multiple GL entries without breaking the books.
We also zoom out to where B2B payments is headed: partnering with ISOs instead of trying to replace them, using AI agents to pull invoice metadata from legacy ERPs with limited APIs, and the growing opportunity in cross-border receivables. Thomas shares why stablecoins may reduce correspondent banking friction and why workflows and value-added services are becoming the real business model behind payments.
AI is moving from “helpful assistant” to autonomous actor, and payments leaders are about to feel the difference. I sit down with Russell Moore, Co-Founder and CEO of Amotivv, to get concrete about what breaks when generative AI and agentic AI leave the lab and touch regulated data, customer outcomes, and real money movement.
We talk through why so many AI initiatives stall after a promising proof of concept: not because the model is useless, but because teams cannot control the context, prove what happened, or satisfy audit and compliance requirements at scale. Russell explains Amotivv’s three-layer view: persistent AI memory you own, a governed workspace for using any model, and a verification layer (including cryptography and append-only records) that produces tamper-resistant, independently verifiable proof of what AI did, which tools it used, and what policies allowed it.
We also dig into practical realities that every fintech team runs into fast: model selection and token costs, why caching and routing matter, and how platform lock-in sneaks in when your vendor effectively owns the memory. On the policy side, we discuss the pace of AI regulation, why the EU AI Act is a useful north star for building “bomb-proof” guardrails, and what it means to be able to prove both usage and non-usage of AI as expectations tighten.
If you’re building AI for fraud, marketing, customer support, underwriting, or agentic commerce, this is a roadmap for making it trustworthy.
Payments don’t fail because teams lack ambition, they fail because the infrastructure can’t keep up with what customers expect. We sit down with Mike Milotich, CEO of Marqeta, to unpack how modern issuer processing is changing card issuing from a rigid bank product into configurable, real-time payments infrastructure built for innovation.
We trace Mike’s 20-year journey across American Express, PayPal, Visa, and now Marqeta, and use that ecosystem view to explain what actually makes a card program work: issuer economics, consumer behavior, local market nuance, and the ability to iterate fast. Along the way, we break down what Marqeta does as an API-first, cloud-based issuer processor operating at global scale and high reliability, and why “building blocks” beat one-size-fits-all platforms when you’re trying to launch, learn, and adjust.
Then we look ahead at the biggest growth opportunities in card issuing and embedded finance: multinational issuing on a single stack, flexible credentials that can behave like debit, credit, and BNPL, and a broader product continuum that meets customers where they are in their financial journey. We also dig into personalization of rewards, AI-driven experiences, risk and fraud tooling, stablecoin-backed cards for faster cross-border movement, and the early shape of agentic commerce.
If you care about the future of payments, card issuing, and customer engagement, this episode is for you.
Payments are speeding up everywhere, but the real story is what that speed breaks and what it demands from the people running the rails. I’m joined by Jennifer Barker, Global Head of Payments and Trade and Depositary Receipts at BNY, for a clear-eyed conversation about what’s changing in the payments industry and what leaders should do next when complexity keeps piling up. From her journey through consulting and nearly two decades in payments to leading multiple global roles at BNY, Jennifer brings a practical view of how money actually moves at scale.
We unpack the biggest pressures she hears from clients right now: navigating countless payment systems worldwide, balancing faster settlement with fraud controls, and fixing the friction that still plagues cross-border payments. Jennifer explains why interoperability matters so much and why clients don’t want another new network to manage. They want outcomes: get it there fastest, safest, and most economically, with the right data attached. That data angle shows up again when we talk about ISO 20022 and why richer payment information can be just as valuable as the payment itself.
We also dig into the always-on future and why 24/7/365 is more than a technology upgrade. It’s an operating model challenge, with staffing, treasury workflows, and decisioning that must work nonstop. Finally, we zoom out on trends like AI in payments for anomaly detection and smart routing, and we tackle the stablecoin question with a grounded take on what really matters in cross-border: transparency, predictability, and reliability.
Paper checks are the easiest payment method to hate and one of the hardest to remove. They are slow, expensive, fraud-prone, and deeply baked into legacy workflows. Greg Myers sits down with Steven Faust, CEO of Dash Solutions, to unpack what it really takes to modernize business payouts and why disbursements have become one of the biggest growth engines in the payments industry.
We dig into how Dash builds configurable payments software that supports multiple use cases through a single platform, from wage payments and rewards to B2B expense management and large-scale disbursements like refunds, reimbursements, and royalties. Steven explains why distribution matters as much as product, including how banks and software platforms use embedded payments and API-based connectivity to turn on modern payout capabilities faster for their customers.
The conversation goes deep on “payee experience” as a competitive advantage: clear communication, faster delivery, stronger security, and real choice in how recipients receive and use funds. We also explore where AI fits, not as a buzzword, but as a practical way to monitor activation steps, identify friction, and recommend improvements that lift engagement and KPIs across the payout journey.
If you lead payments, product, or ops, you will leave with a sharper view of the disbursements opportunity and a clearer sense of what “modernization” should look like in the real world.
Moving money is easy to describe and brutally hard to do well at global scale. When your network supports thousands of clients across 90+ countries and touches thousands of currency pairs, you start to see a different map of what’s changing in payments and what’s just noise. Greg Myers sits down with Debo Sen, Head of Payments, Services at Citi, to unpack what that vantage point reveals about the future of institutional payments.
We get specific on why payments have become strategic for corporate growth, customer experience, and working capital. Debo explains how “always-on” is more than 24/7/365 uptime, it’s about payments being embedded and invisible inside real business workflows. You’ll also hear a sharp reframing of real-time payments as “just-in-time” optionality for treasury, along with a practical example of how holidays and global supply chains expose the limits of legacy rails.
From there we dig into cross-border payments trends, including faster velocity across the ecosystem and the remaining friction that lives in the last mile. Debo shares how banks and fintech partnerships can expand endpoints like wallets, debit cards, and instant payment schemes while keeping resiliency and safety at the center. We also cover tokenization and blockchain use cases that are already operating at scale, plus what agentic commerce and AI-driven transactions could mean for controls, standards, fraud, and trust.
If you care about real-time treasury, cross-border payments, payments infrastructure, tokenized deposits, and bank-grade security, this episode is for you.
The mid-market is where tech decisions get dangerous. You are big enough that uptime, security, and delivery speed matter every day, but you are not big enough to burn cash on massive consulting retainers or absorb the fallout from a shaky vendor. That “valley in the middle” is exactly where David Robinson lives, and it is why he built Stratos Development Group to offer right-fit technical leadership, managed services, and software development that feels structured without being out of reach.
We walk through David’s journey from building early electronic medical record software in healthcare to leading engineering at a venture-backed startup, and then into entrepreneurship. From there, we get practical about what mid-market teams actually struggle with: competitors using the same licensed infrastructure, product roadmaps hijacked by one or two big customers, and the need to own real intellectual property and architecture to keep a competitive edge.
For payments, fintech, and ISO leaders, the conversation goes deep on what Stratos is seeing right now: consolidation, tougher differentiation, and the technical friction that can make or break net-new deals. David shares how ISOs can approach technology enablement and custom integrations, plus the bigger opportunity of moving from ISO to ISV. If you already have a book of business, you also have a built-in feedback loop, faster validation, and a clearer path to launching software that your clients will actually pay for.
We also tackle AI and the “vibe coding” era, including why agentic development can boost productivity but cannot shortcut PCI, SOC, or HIPAA compliance. If you want to modernize safely and win in a more competitive market, this one is for you.
Cross-border payouts are one of those problems everyone complains about and then quietly accepts: high fees, slow settlement, and endless workarounds to get money into the hands of real people. I sit down with Cyril Mathew, Co-Founder and CEO of Latitude, to talk about why “faster money movement” only matters when the recipient can actually spend it in local currency, not just hold a stablecoin balance.
Cyril walks through the career path that shaped his view of payments infrastructure, from scaling partnerships at Facebook to seeing the payout pain firsthand at Uber, then helping launch international expansion at Coinbase and working on USDC. That experience leads to a hard-earned lesson from Stripe: even if stablecoins let you reach 100 countries, adoption stalls if users cannot convert easily into pesos, reals, or other local currencies to pay for everyday life. The real product is the bridge between stablecoins and fiat, built with compliant rails, strong controls, and the “boring” payment details that enterprises demand.
We break down what Latitude is building with its Liquidity Network, how stablecoins can reduce cross-border payment costs, and why real-time settlement can cut the need for prefunding and complex treasury float. We also cover where the biggest growth opportunities are showing up right now, including creator economy payouts, contractor payments, AI data labeling, fintech apps going global on day one, and the looming question of how AI agents may transact across borders.
If you care about stablecoins, blockchain payments, real-time payments, or global payout infrastructure, this episode is for you.
A “credit card fee” can protect your margins or quietly create compliance risk, and the difference usually comes down to one word: clarity. We sit down with Jim Oberman, CEO of Payroc, to unpack credit card surcharging in a way that merchants, software platforms, and payments teams can actually use, without hand-waving and without confusing it with every other fee customers see at checkout.
We start with the fundamentals: what surcharging is, why it exists, and why it applies only to credit cards, not debit or prepaid. Then we cut through the biggest source of mistakes by separating four commonly mixed concepts: surcharging, dual pricing, convenience fees, and service fees. From there, we get practical about the rules that matter in the real world, including Visa’s 3% surcharge cap becoming the de facto standard, Mastercard’s different limit, and how brand enforcement programs and secret shopping can expose sloppy implementations.
The bigger story is why surcharging has taken off so fast. Technology now makes it possible to present buyer choice at the exact moment of payment, across online and in-person experiences, with options like debit, ACH (electronic check), and emerging rails like real-time payments. Jim explains why embedded payments and ISVs increasingly treat surcharging as more than cost recovery: it can be a strategic feature, a trust-builder, and a way to keep reconciliation and settlement clean for merchants at scale.
Final settlement sounds great until you’re the one holding the fraud and compliance risk. That tension sits at the heart of my conversation with Pete Glyman, Founder and CEO of Coinbax, where we explore what it will actually take for stablecoin payments to work for banks, credit unions, and serious fintech programs.
Pete shares his path from building and selling a fintech platform to leading digital asset strategy work, and why the regulatory climate and the rise of blockchain, tokenization, and stablecoins pushed him back into founder mode. We get concrete about the real blockers to adoption: not speed, but controls. We unpack how smart contracts can support payment workflows people already trust, including escrow, lockup periods, delays, and even reversibility, while layering in fraud mitigation, OFAC screening, and multi-party account verification. The goal is simple: make on-chain payments feel safe, compliant, and operationally usable inside existing bank compliance systems.
We also look forward. Pete explains why cross-border payments are an obvious early win, why domestic “wire-like” payments could be rebuilt with programmability, and why agentic payments could create an entirely new machine-to-machine economy. We close with a direct challenge to payments leaders: stop waiting, start tinkering, and learn the rails firsthand.
Gift cards have a branding problem and it’s costing the payments world a big idea. Alex Preece, CEO and Co-Founder of Tillo, joins us to make the case that gift cards aren’t really “gifts” at all. They’re programmable stored value, a modern redemption rail that can sit inside bank apps, fintech wallets, cashback programs, employee rewards, refunds, and payouts. Once you see them as a payment instrument, the market looks a lot less like novelty and a lot more like infrastructure.
We dig into how Tillo built a two-sided marketplace that connects thousands of retail brands with the businesses that want to reward customers and employees. Alex explains why a single API matters in a fragmented global ecosystem, what it takes to support multi-country catalogs, and how better tooling and transparency can make brands more confident partners. We also talk about a surprising insight: most volume is self-use, not gifting, because people are optimizing everyday spending by converting earned value into higher-impact rewards.
We zoom out to the bigger payments trends reshaping rewards and loyalty: the demand for real-time gratification, the opportunity created by open banking and faster payments like RTP and FedNow, and the emerging push toward “global but local” benefits that actually work when customers travel or live abroad. If you’re building in payments, loyalty, or fintech growth, this is a practical look at where rewards infrastructure is heading and why it can change behavior at the moment of decision.
“Instant” payments are usually a well-designed illusion. The customer experience feels real-time, but behind the scenes money still crawls through delayed settlement, fragmented rails, and market-by-market workarounds. That gap is exactly where stablecoins start to look less like hype and more like infrastructure.
We sit down with Tony Tom, CRO and Co-Founder of Stable Sea, to unpack how enterprise stablecoin payments can improve cross-border payments, shorten settlement times, and reduce the operational drag that finance teams accept as normal. Tony shares how his journey through payments led him to Block and then to building Stable Sea, plus what he learned by watching stablecoin adoption accelerate outside the US. We talk liquidity, on-ramp and off-ramp realities, and why “bank-grade” processes matter when you’re moving serious volume.
A big part of the conversation centers on trapped cash: revenue stuck in markets with capital controls or limited FX access, from Argentina to Nigeria and beyond. We also explore stablecoin treasury management, the need for a single view across wallets and bank accounts, and how automation and rules-based movement can turn visibility into action. Finally, Tony lays out why regulated, Wall Street-aligned tokenized real world assets may be the bridge that pulls stablecoin settlement deeper into mainstream enterprise payments.
Vertical SaaS wins when it feels like it was built by someone who has actually done the job, and that same principle is reshaping payments and fintech. We sit down with Brad Pinneke, Head of Enterprise Business Development at Worldpay (is now Global Payments), to unpack why vertical SaaS platforms have become the day-to-day operating system for small businesses and why “embedded payments” is no longer a nice add-on. When the workflow lives inside the software, money flow becomes unavoidable, and the platform that handles both can deliver a cleaner experience and a stronger business model.
We dig into what customers now expect from modern payment processing inside software: one login, one system of record, one support layer, and a single source of truth that connects checkout, settlement, reporting, and reconciliation. Brad explains how natively integrated payments can reduce back-office headaches, improve trust, and increase retention, plus what separates platforms that weave payments into the fabric of the product from those that simply tack it on.
Then we get practical about the hard parts. Selling money is not the same as selling software, and the margin for error is smaller when uptime, compliance, PCI, funding, and fraud risk are on the line.
We close with the next wave: AI in fintech and how AI plus payments data can turn a system of record into a system of action through predictive cash flow, risk modeling, automated pricing, and standout fraud detection.
The payments world is full of shiny objects. The hard part is deciding what actually matters to clients and then delivering it safely at global scale. I’m joined by Rich Clow, Head of Innovation and Strategies for Global Payments Solutions at Bank of America, for a grounded look at how a large financial institution evaluates emerging payments technology, turns strategy into products, and keeps the focus on real outcomes like faster settlement, better data, and lower fraud.
We unpack what payment volumes and behavior patterns reveal right now: why most transactions are still domestic, why ACH remains a workhorse, and why cross-border payments are still largely wires running through SWIFT. Rich explains where real-time payments (RTP) are gaining traction, how data requirements can slow adoption, and why improving ERP integration is a turning point for reconciliation, payouts, and just-in-time corporate payments that support smarter liquidity management.
From the treasury perspective, the conversation gets practical: streamlining accounts payable and accounts receivable across checks, ACH, wires, cards, lockbox, and virtual cards, while upgrading security and fraud prevention with layered controls. We also go deep on digital treasury and AI, including CashPro Forecasting, CashPro Chat, and mobile approvals, plus how “always-on” 24/7 banking changes operations, investigations, and even how upgrades are handled.
If you care about payments innovation, real-time payments, treasury management, AI in banking, fraud prevention, and digital payment strategy, you’ll get plenty to take away.
Waiting 47 days to get paid for work you already finished is more than annoying, it’s a cash-flow killer. I sat down with Garima Shah, President and Co-Founder of Biller Genie, to talk about the unglamorous part of payments that decides whether a business thrives: accounts receivable. We get practical about what actually slows payments down and why “just run the card” ignores the messy reality of invoicing, accuracy, and collections.
Garima explains how accounts receivable automation tightens the whole workflow. Send invoices on time, protect data integrity so the right customer gets billed correctly, and give people an Amazon-like way to pay with a simple button for credit card or ACH. That shift can take a typical service business from getting paid in weeks to getting paid in days. We also dig into the real-world benefits beyond money, like saving 10 to 15 hours a week of admin work and giving owners time back.
We also unpack what makes Biller Genie different in the payments ecosystem: a partner-first model built for banks, processors, and ISOs, deep payment gateway integrations, and bi-directional sync with accounting platforms like QuickBooks and Xero to support clean payment reconciliation. Garima shares where she sees growth in AR software, how AI in payments is accelerating product and insights, why stablecoin acceptance is “easy but early,” and what industry consolidation means when two partners suddenly become one.
If you care about SMB payments, B2B invoicing, AR automation, and the future of merchant services, this one is packed with ideas you can use.
Owning payments sounds like a power move until the real bill shows up. We sit down with Brock Robertson, CRO at Payroc, to unpack how payment strategy for software platforms is shifting again and why so many vertical SaaS leaders are stepping back from the “everyone should be a Payfac” era.
We trace the evolution from payments as a bolt-on utility to embedded payments as a true growth engine, then get honest about what “control” actually requires: underwriting, compliance, disputes, fraud monitoring, security, systems, and specialized teams. Brock shares what he’s hearing from software companies that tried to become payments companies and felt their brand identity drift away from the features that made them win in the first place. If you have global expansion plans, we also dig into how regulation and operational complexity multiplies fast.
From there, we explore what a modern referral partnership model looks like today, including hands-off referral, hybrid co-sell, and approaches that preserve customer experience while reducing operational burden. The thread that ties it all together is trust: transparency, support, aligned economics, and the confidence to represent each other well when your customers’ money is on the line.
If you’re evaluating integrated payments, payment processing partners, APIs, or the Payfac path, this conversation will help you choose the level of involvement that fits your team and your product roadmap.
Payments alone rarely make a software platform unforgettable. The moment merchants start using your product to access working capital, manage cash flow, move money through payouts, and keep reconciliation tight, the relationship changes. I sit down with Whitney Ganibegovic, Senior Sales Executive at Worldpay (now part of Global Payments), to unpack why embedded finance is quickly becoming one of the most practical drivers of retention, account growth, and long-term platform value for ISVs and software platforms.
We get specific about what platforms still underestimate: embedded finance does not have to be a massive multi-year build with a new compliance team and a brand-new support motion. With the right partner infrastructure, platforms can add value-added financial tools while staying focused on the vertical software that made them successful. Whitney shares why expanding from embedded payments to a broader financial suite can increase customer lifetime value, lift revenue per merchant, and create real platform dependency because these tools plug directly into daily workflows.
We also dig into where many rollouts go wrong. “Embedded” does not automatically mean adopted, so go-to-market timing, vertical nuance, and marketing automation matter. Whitney explains why working capital is often the simplest entry point, how payments data enables smart pre-qualification, and which metrics go beyond surface-level revenue: multi-product adoption, engagement, cash flow penetration, contribution margin, retention, and net revenue retention. The guiding image we keep coming back to is the “nonstop flight” experience: one login, one place to operate, fewer handoffs, less stress.
If you care about embedded finance, fintech strategy, and building software platforms merchants cannot replace, listen now.
Your churn dashboard might be accusing your product of something your payments stack actually did. When a renewal charge fails, customers can disappear even if they still want what you sell, and that “involuntary churn” quietly drains ARR, wrecks retention analysis, and forces teams to make the wrong fixes.
In this episode I sit down with Charles Rosenblatt, CEO of Butter, to unpack how subscription businesses can recover revenue from failed card payments using machine learning. We get specific about why many dunning programs rely on simple retry schedules, and how an ML-driven approach can choose the right moment for each invoice based on patterns in card and issuer behavior. Charles also shares how Butter works globally and plugs in as an abstraction layer on top of existing processors, so merchants can improve recovery without ripping out their current setup.
Then we look ahead: Butter is expanding from reactive recovery to predictive modeling that helps companies anticipate payment failures before they happen. Charles walks through real operational scenarios across telehealth, AI subscriptions, physical subscription boxes, and gyms, where a predictive score can guide whether to ship, whether to pause access, and how to reduce wasted CAC. We also talk about using anonymous card transaction variables without PII, and where AI is genuinely useful versus just hype in the payments industry.
If you run subscriptions, payments, billing, or growth, you’ll leave with a clearer way to separate product churn from payment friction and a roadmap for improving revenue retention. Subscribe to Leaders in Payments, share this episode with a teammate, and leave a review with your biggest churn question.
The moment AI agents can buy things for us, payments stop being a simple “click to pay” problem and become a trust problem. Greg Myers sits down with Sanjay Saraf, SVP and Global Chief Product Officer for Merchant Solutions at Fiserv, to map out what agentic commerce really means for merchants, ISVs, and the broader payments industry as software moves from assisting the shopper to acting for the shopper.
We break down the simplest definition: customers set intent and rules, then an AI agent handles discovery, decisioning, and transaction execution. That shift challenges infrastructure built on the assumption that a human is present for authentication, authorization, and confirmation. Sanjay explains why the biggest change is the trust layer and how dispute resolution, refunds, and chargebacks must evolve when an autonomous agent initiates the purchase.
We also dig into the emerging network frameworks shaping agentic payments, including Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and Mastercard’s Agent Pay Acceptance Framework. One emphasizes whether the agent is authorized to act, while the other emphasizes proving customer intent with a traceable record. From there, we talk practical implementation: how providers like Fiserv aim to make this seamless for integrated merchants, why SMBs can’t be left behind, and why “agentic discovery” may become as important as traditional SEO for product catalogs.
Finally, we cover where early ROI may show up first, especially through reduced fraud, fewer disputes, and clearer authorization, along with real-world use cases in travel and high-impact B2B invoice and supplier payments. Subscribe for more conversations on the future of payments, and if this helped you, share it and leave a review so more builders can find the show.
Most payments teams obsess over money in, then act surprised when slow payouts drive churn, support tickets, and lost growth. Greg Myers sits down with Ran Grushkowsky, Co-Founder and CEO of MassPay, to unpack why “time to money” is becoming a product feature and why the companies that treat payouts as strategy will outpace the ones that treat it as plumbing.
We get into what MassPay actually does for corporate clients that need global payouts across multiple endpoints: local bank deposits, mobile wallets, cash pickup locations, push-to-card via Visa Direct, and even crypto. Ran explains the real challenge behind modern payout infrastructure: fragmentation. RTP, FedNow, wallets, and countless country-specific rails create a maze of integrations, compliance requirements, and operational risk. MassPay’s answer is a proprietary network with deep redundancy in every market plus smart routing that weighs speed, compliance fit, and total cost, not just the cheapest per-transaction quote.
Ran also shares what’s reshaping the space right now: stablecoins as a cross-border speed and hedging tool, the shift toward embedded compliance that lets platforms control their own onboarding and payout experience, and how AI is already improving payout success rates through data normalization and faster reviews. We close with leadership lessons on where the real moat is headed in fintech and why payouts can move from cost center to profit center.
Your BNPL strategy can’t be “pick one provider and hope.” When you sell across borders, buy now pay later becomes a payments infrastructure problem: different countries, different regulations, different checkout habits, and a constant pressure to keep conversion high without turning your team into an integration factory.
We sit down with Cihan Duezguen, CEO and Co-Founder of Green Banana, to unpack a focused approach to payment orchestration built specifically for BNPL. We talk through why merchants and payment service providers are asking for a single, harmonized API that can connect to multiple BNPL providers while staying invisible to the shopper.
Cihan explains what it means to be an agnostic infrastructure layer, why Green Banana doesn’t run its own risk or credit checks, and how neutrality creates flexibility for merchants that need to change providers as requirements shift.
From there we zoom out to the bigger payments trends Cihan is watching: stablecoins as a back-end innovation that could unlock new value for PSPs, banks, and merchants, plus the rise of agentic commerce where AI agents buy products through voice prompts and automated flows. If those changes land the way he expects, the retailers and payment leaders who prepare now will win the next generation of checkout UX.
Payments is full of noise: legacy processors, vendor sprawl, duplicate onboarding, and merchants who just want their money faster. We cut through it by showing a pragmatic path from point products to a unified embedded finance stack that actually scales. With Jaris founder and CEO Chris Aristides and VP of Platform Partnerships Matt Thomas, we unpack why “foundation first” beats bolt-on every time and how to make it work across multiprocessor portfolios without ripping out your core.
We start with the playbook behind winners like Square and Stripe: remove complexity, unify the experience, and make multi-product adoption effortless. Then we translate that into the realities of processors and ISOs. Chris explains the banking backbone - independent RTN, sponsor bank alignment, and vertically integrated ledgers—that makes settlement reliable and compliant. Matt breaks down managed settlement as the key unlock: a dynamic funding layer that normalizes Fiserv, TSYS, Worldpay, and Elavon flows, enabling split settlement, instant payouts, and automated loan repayment without custom builds for each backend.
From there we stack the products merchants actually use. Lending remains a high-margin anchor with powerful retention, while instant payouts reach a far larger share of the base with a clean pay-as-you-use model that works on weekends and holidays. High-yield savings ties it together for cash management, all delivered through one onboarding, one golden merchant record, and a white-labeled UI that honors sub-ISO relationships and trust. The result is tangible: fewer forms, faster activation, clearer visibility for ops, and a material lift in retention and revenue.
If you lead partnerships, product, or operations at a processor or ISO, this conversation gives you a concrete framework to touch the other 95 percent of your merchants, modernize onboarding, and launch new revenue lines through a single integration. Subscribe, share this episode with your team, and leave a review to tell us which product you’d launch first.
Fraud doesn’t wait for your roadmap. We sat down with Jess Kirkpatrick, VP of Risk and Fraud at Worldpay now part of Global Payments, to unpack how platforms can move beyond checkbox KYC and build a living risk program that protects growth, strengthens brand trust, and prepares for Payfac readiness. With experience spanning community banking, 17 years at PayPal, and global risk leadership, Jess brings a clear, practical lens to what proactive actually looks like.
We start by challenging the biggest myth in payments: set it and forget it. Jess outlines four risk vectors (identity, intent, business model, and financial stability) and shows why continuous monitoring across all four beats a one-time screen. She explains how shared liability works in embedded payments, why payment providers still own card brand and regulatory obligations, and how true partnerships pair education, tooling, and joint governance.
From there, we go deep on good friction: enhanced onboarding for higher-risk profiles, step-up checks on unusual behavior, and periodic reviews that are framed as protection, not punishment. Jess shares how clear communication turns compliance into service, preventing the “why are you asking this now?” backlash that costs you trust and churn.
To close, Jess gives three high-impact moves for this quarter: modernize KYC/KYB and tighten onboarding, ramp up ongoing monitoring with alerts for sudden shifts, and train frontline teams while explaining controls to merchants. Measure success beyond loss rates by tracking retention of your best merchants and brand health around trust and safety.
What does it actually take to secure a payments company in an era of sophisticated, well-funded cybercriminals? In this first episode of The Trust Advantage Series, brought to you by Payroc, host Greg Myers sits down with David Edwards, Payroc's Senior Vice President of Information Security, for a candid and eye-opening conversation about modern cybersecurity in the payments industry.
With 30 years in technology — spanning private banking, retail, and payments — David brings hard-won perspective to the questions keeping payments executives up at night. Sparked by a real-world ransomware attack on a payments company, this episode cuts through the compliance checkbox mentality to explore what genuine, operational security actually looks like.
David and Greg cover a wide range of critical topics: why passing audits doesn't equal being secure, how AI has radically changed the phishing threat landscape, the three pillars of identity and vulnerability management, and why resilience — not prevention — is the new gold standard. David also breaks down Payroc's layered approach to ransomware defense, how the company integrates acquired platforms without creating security gaps, and the right questions ISVs, ISOs, banks, and merchants should be asking their payment partners.
Whether you're a developer, a risk officer, or a business owner processing transactions, this episode delivers a masterclass in why security isn't just an IT issue — it's everyone's job.
What if checkout was the growth engine instead of an add-on? We sit down with Ismael Wrixen, CEO of ThriveCart, to explore how a payments-first platform can power the modern creator economy from a $99 template to a $10,000 mastermind without locking you into a brittle tech stack. Ismael breaks down how ThriveCart layers affiliates, an LMS, and marketing automation on top of payments, then uses smart funnels to turn checkout into predictable revenue.
The conversation gets especially interesting around financing. As ticket sizes rise, traditional BNPL hits limits on geography and amount. Enter Thrive Pay Installments: interest-free plans using a customer’s existing card limit, delivered globally in USD, CAD, GBP, EUR, and AUD. Early data shows 3.3x higher average order values, approvals jumping from ~40% to ~85%, and checkout time collapsing to five seconds. Merchants still get paid up front; buyers spread payments over three, six, or twelve months with no new loan application, no extra friction.
We also zoom out to the bigger picture of the creator economy and AI. Demand for reskilling surges as companies retool, and creators step in with specialized courses and coaching across finance, business, wellness, and AI. Ismael shares why flexibility is non-negotiable—keep your payment funnel, swap your LMS, integrate with 50+ tools, and sell globally with automated taxes and e-invoicing support coming online. We discuss where LLM commerce is heading, why human-in-the-loop purchasing still matters, and how adaptive pricing and localized experiences unlock international growth.
If you care about conversion, funding bigger baskets, and building a stack that won’t trap you as AI reshapes the landscape, this is your roadmap.
In this first episode of a new series on the Leaders in Payments podcast, host Greg Myers sits down with Chris Aristides, Founder and CEO of Jaris, to explore what it truly takes for payments companies and ISOs to remain competitive as the market shifts toward owned, embedded finance experiences.
Chris brings an unconventional background to the payments world, having spent 22 years in the hedge fund industry as an analyst and portfolio manager before making the move into building a company. The conversation begins with the origin story of Jaris, which set out to bring a Square Capital-style lending product to the broader payments market. Rather than following the typical merchant cash advance route, Chris made the deliberate choice to build on a bank-backed model with a modern tech stack, prioritising regulatory alignment and a foundation flexible enough to eventually expand into multi-product banking services.
A significant portion of the discussion centers on the complexity of working with legacy payment processors. Unlike vertical SaaS platforms, which offer high conversion and seamless integration, the legacy world is fragmented, running on outdated infrastructure with no easy outlet to plug into. Jaris has spent years building around this challenge, developing its own cloud-based core and processor-agnostic settlement infrastructure to bridge that gap.
Chris also addresses the broader vision, making the case that lending alone is insufficient and that engaging the full merchant base requires a suite of products including instant payouts and commercial banking. He closes by framing Jaris not as a disruptor, but as a complement to the existing infrastructure, doing the hard work the industry has long needed done.
In this episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast, host Greg Myers sits down with Alex Dewison, Director of Digital Solutions at Global Payments, to explore the rapidly evolving world of online commerce and checkout experiences. Alex brings a rich background to the conversation, having started his career in software development before moving into payments at Worldpay, where he worked with major UK retailers like Tesco and Next, and eventually transitioning into his current role overseeing digital product strategy across Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
The discussion covers how consumer payment expectations have shifted dramatically, with digital wallets now accounting for over twenty percent of transactions and instant refunds becoming a baseline expectation rather than a perk. Alex argues that friction at checkout is no longer tolerable and that the industry is moving toward what he calls "invisible" or zero-click commerce, where the act of paying becomes seamlessly embedded in the shopping experience itself.
The conversation also tackles the tension between platform simplicity and merchant control, the dangers of offering too many payment options, and the importance of localizing payment methods when expanding internationally. Alex shares practical guidance on how merchants can reduce cart abandonment by addressing surprise fees, slow page loads, and poor mobile optimization.
On the topic of AI, Alex separates genuine near-term value, such as intelligent payment routing and adaptive fraud detection, from the longer-term hype around fully autonomous AI agents. He closes with a pointed message for e-commerce leaders: in 2026, your payment experience is your product, and the winners will be those who relentlessly remove friction rather than add features.
Payments leaders are feeling the squeeze of shrinking margins, price-driven churn, and rising expectations from merchants who want funding that feels as seamless as a card transaction. We sat down with Aarati Soman, Head of Product at Parafin, and Jaron Ruckman, Product Manager at NMI, to map the new playbook: embedded lending that meets merchants where they already work, backed by real-time data, AI-driven underwriting, and modular infrastructure that launches fast and scales cleanly.
We unpack how moving capital inside your existing workflows changes the relationship with your merchants. Instead of sending them to third-party portals or closed ecosystems, you present pre-underwritten offers based on sales data, bank transactions, and relevant third-party signals. Machine learning models spot revenue patterns, seasonality, refunds, disputes, and expense profiles; LLMs structure unstructured data to speed decisions. The impact is tangible: faster approvals, fairer pricing, higher eligibility for SMBs that banks often overlook, and the kind of stickiness that turns payment processing from a commodity into a growth engine.
Aarati outlines how Parafin carries the heavy lifts - capital, risk, servicing, and compliance so partners can focus on distribution and experience. Jaron shares how NMI’s API-first approach and embeddable components get partners live with offers before any deep development, with the option to integrate more tightly over time. We explore strategic positioning against Stripe and Square, why contextual placement at the point of pain drives adoption, and where product innovation is headed: fit-for-purpose capital for inventory spikes, equipment, payroll, and beyond. We close with practical advice on choosing partners - breadth of products, ease of integration, transparency, and program durability so you avoid costly rip-and-replace cycles and deliver fast funding your merchants trust.
Fraud hasn’t disappeared - it got smarter. Organized rings now aim upstream at SaaS platforms and ISVs that embed payments, where a single gap in onboarding, transaction logic, or refund flows can be scaled into thousands of attacks overnight. We sit down with Brian Rust, SVP and Deputy Chief Information Security Officer at Worldpay, to map the real fraud journey (entry, action, exit) and the concrete moves product and security leaders can make right now to protect merchants and brand trust.
We start with the why: platforms offer leverage. Brian explains how bots and AI generate convincing synthetic businesses that pass weak KYC, and what early signals still break the spell - impossible form completion times, IP and address mismatches, and brand-new domains claiming long histories. From there, we dive into the middle of the kill chain: card testing. You’ll hear how velocity spikes, elevated decline rates, and geo anomalies betray large-scale testing and how adaptive limits for new merchants can contain losses and prevent network penalties. Then we confront refund abuse, where attackers exploit trust by refunding to different instruments or flooding high-value returns. The fix isn’t blanket friction - it’s precision: refund-to-original-card only, refund velocity caps, and targeted reviews that slow bad actors while keeping good customers moving.
Brian lays out the layers that matter now: device fingerprinting, behavioral analytics, and transaction monitoring that can halt suspect money movement before funds leave your orbit. He also makes the case for a fraud-cyber fusion model, aligning teams and intelligence using frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK to anticipate tactics as cyber and financial motives blend. Finally, we close with three actions you can ship this quarter: audit onboarding with bot controls and threat modeling, enforce velocity controls that adapt as trust grows, and tap your processor’s data and filters (AVS, CVV) to harden defaults.
If you lead product, risk, or engineering for a payments-enabled platform, this conversation gives you a practical blueprint to raise attacker costs, protect your merchants, and guard your reputation.
Ever launched a beautiful product only to watch payments derail the experience? We sat with Viktoria Soltesz - founder of PSP Angels and the Soltesz Institute - to map the hidden decisions that make or break money movement. From onboarding demands and documentation to routing choices and settlement timelines, Viktoria shows how banking and payment flows now shape product, compliance, data, and brand trust. The takeaway is bold and practical: treat payments as strategy, not plumbing.
We dig into messy, real-world stories: a global group juggling multiple entities, providers, and file formats; a luxury e-commerce brand whose purple checkout clashed with a green identity and crushed conversions; and a marketplace shut down over a single high-risk SKU. Viktoria explains why “cheapest fees” can cost the most when integration pain, risk appetite, and provider incentives are ignored. She also exposes conflicts in referral-driven deals and makes the case for an ethical, merchant-first approach that starts with a comprehensive payments health check.
The conversation builds toward a clear solution: appoint a Chief Payments Officer. This role owns the end-to-end flow, negotiates with a holistic lens, and adapts strategy to each market - whether that means leveraging UPI in India, adopting open banking in the US, or planning redundancies that protect authorization rates and cash flow. We also scan the horizon: instant payments in the EU, QR adoption beyond Asia, and the rise of agentic commerce where AI discovers, orders, and pays. With new rails come new risks - refunds, disputes, and fraud models must be redesigned for machine-initiated purchases.
If you care about lower fees, fewer shutoffs, stronger UX, and faster global expansion, this is your playbook. Learn more about PSP Angels here and The Soltesz Institute here.
Viktoria has also written two books both available on Amazon and here.
Moving Money How Banks Think
The CPayO - The Chief Payment Officer The Role Which Doesn't Exist (But Should!)
If your AR feels like a maze of phone calls, spreadsheets, and “we’ll match it later,” this conversation shows a cleaner path. We sit down with Fauwaz Hussain, Senior Director of B2B Partnerships and Strategy at Global Payments, to break down what actually speeds cash and what quietly stalls it. From card-not-present realities to complex terms and partial shipments, we map the B2B differences that make order-to-cash harder and the practical changes that remove friction fast.
We get specific about embedding payments inside your ERP so invoices, settlements, and the general ledger line up automatically. That shift kills rekeying errors, collapses department silos, and gives support, sales, and finance the same live truth. Security gets stronger when card data never touches email or recorded calls, and PCI compliance becomes manageable when you use certified, cloud-based vaults and enforce simple rules like “no cards by phone.” Fauwaz explains why publishers like Microsoft, SAP, and Sage now run tighter marketplaces, how VARs and ISVs evaluate payment apps, and why a one-stop provider reduces risk across gateways, vaults, and processing.
We also cover the cash-flow moves that work right away: self-serve portals with open invoices, one-click payment links by email or text, stored credentials for auto-pay, and accepting multiple methods from ACH to single-use virtual cards. Then we look forward - AI-driven cash application, predictive delinquencies, Level 2/3 data validation, and API-first architectures that connect e-commerce, field service, and ERP into a single payment fabric. If you’re leading AR, finance, or operations, you’ll leave with a clear playbook to modernize without compromising compliance.
Money keeps moving while the world sleeps, and the rails behind it are evolving fast. We sit down with Pat Antonacci, Chief Product Officer at The Clearing House, to break down how CHIPS, ACH (EPN), and RTP each power a different promise - liquidity, scale, and always‑on finality and why that mix is reshaping how businesses and consumers move funds.
Pat explains why CHIPS dominates high‑value cross‑border flows and how its netting algorithm delivers 30:1 liquidity savings that matter on volatile days. We trace ACH’s steady rise, including same‑day and intraday growth, and dig into record holiday peaks that reveal the hidden rhythms of settlement. Then we go deep on RTP: eight years in, 98% of U.S. real‑time traffic, rising daily volumes, a $10 million limit, and use cases spanning account‑to‑account moves, brokerage funding, wallet top‑ups, gig payouts, loan disbursements, and tuition deadlines that can’t wait until Monday.
The conversation tackles big questions: Are rails competing or complementing? Where are checks being displaced? How do Request for Payment and ISO 20022 unlock cleaner data and fewer exceptions? We explore the 2026 landscape - APIs, cloud, AI‑driven fraud controls, open banking momentum and why the smart strategy is matching the rail to the job: ACH for routine batches, RTP for precise timing and finality, and CHIPS for high‑value, cross‑border certainty. Pat also previews The Clearing House roadmap, from broader RTP ubiquity and fraud tools to extended CHIPS hours that bring wires closer to continuous availability.
If you care about how money actually moves and how that movement shapes cash flow, customer trust, and the broader economy, this conversation is your field guide.
In this Signal Series episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast, I sit down with Matt Downs, President, Integrated and Platforms at Global Payments, to unpack the biggest platform-payments shifts heading into 2026. Coming off the newly closed Worldpay and Global Payments combination, Matt shares what scale means for ISVs and platforms, and why payments is no longer “just a feature.” It is a growth engine that touches product, operations, and trust.
The conversation breaks into three practical themes: embedded payments, embedded finance, and AI-driven fraud. Matt explains how platforms are moving toward richer embedded experiences that extend beyond checkout into the full workflow, including onboarding, chargebacks, disputes, and support. At the same time, platforms are feeling pressure to expand into adjacent financial products such as working capital, banking services, cards, and payroll. He also points to a common blind spot: many leaders do not benchmark how competitors are using payments and financial services to differentiate their core product. That competitive context should directly shape the roadmap.
On fraud, Matt argues that 2026 demands an end-to-end mindset. Threats now show up earlier in the lifecycle, operate in real time, and adapt quickly using AI, deepfakes, machine-to-machine attacks, and automation. He outlines the “non-negotiables” for security and compliance, including layered defenses that protect the entire transaction journey, from the first web visit through refunds and disputes, without adding so much friction that it slows growth.
If you are an ISV or platform executive building your 2026 plan, this episode will help you pressure-test your partnership strategy, prioritize embedded finance by vertical, and make smarter decisions to stay ahead while avoiding costly execution pitfalls.
Money is changing faster than most teams can update a roadmap. We sit down with Farooq Malik, Co-Founder and CEO of Rain, to unpack how stablecoins and tokenized dollars are moving from crypto headlines to the hidden plumbing of real payments - powering card programs, cross-border payouts, and embedded finance at enterprise scale.
Farooq breaks down Rain’s vertically integrated stack: pay-ins and payouts across ACH, wires, and Visa; support for dozens of stablecoins on 11 blockchains; and account logic that makes tokenized value feel like a familiar account, not a science project. We dig into a standout use case - a margin-backed credit card where each swipe triggers instant receivable financing in stablecoin - cutting working capital needs by about 80% and transforming the unit economics of card programs. He also shares how one API can issue regulatorily compliant products in multiple markets, letting global platforms pay creators, freelancers, and merchants in “international dollars” without stitching together country-by-country integrations.
We explore the surge in institutional interest fueled by emerging regulatory clarity, the 30x volume growth Rain has seen in the last 12 months, and why broader rules could unlock 10x–100x adoption across the ecosystem. Farooq contrasts Rain’s approach with reseller patchworks, highlighting the benefits of being a principal Visa member and owning the core of the stablecoin stack. Beyond stablecoins, we touch on open banking, the rise of global-first consumer apps, and how nomadic work patterns are forcing finance to follow people, not addresses.
If you lead payments, product, or finance, you’ll leave with a clear view of where tokenized money creates immediate value: better card economics, faster global disbursements, and simpler enterprise integrations.
Forget the hype - small merchants need tools that actually work when a line forms and a card won’t tap. Andrew Helms, CEO USA at SumUp digs into a merchant-first approach that puts transparency, service, and growth at the center of payments. Andrew shares his unconventional path from Middle Eastern studies and consulting in Dubai to entrepreneurship, scaling Home Chef through acquisition, and ultimately leading SumUp’s U.S. team from Boulder Colorado. That global lens shapes a practical strategy: localize for U.S. realities like tax complexity and tipping, keep pricing honest, and answer the phone when a sale is on the line.
We unpack how SumUp’s integrated ecosystem - payments, POS, invoicing, banking, lending, and loyalty - helps brick-and-mortar stores thrive. The spotlight is on inventory-heavy retail: convenience stores, liquor shops, toy and pet stores juggling large catalogs, aging stock, and tight margins. Andrew explains how POS plus loyalty surfaces what’s expiring, what’s stuck, and which promotions move units, turning shelf data into cash flow. He’s candid about competitors’ junk fees and makes the case for clear contracts and seven-day live support that’s moving toward 24/7 coverage.
Looking ahead, Andrew separates signal from noise on stablecoins, instant payments, and AI. Cross-border settlement and faster payouts hold real promise if they reach main street, while selective AI can power insights and smarter support without replacing the human layer. He also taps SumUp’s global footprint for “crystal ball” learnings - from Brazil’s Pix to London’s kiosk boom - and shows how to translate those wins for U.S. merchants. We close with career advice to ask better questions and a call for ethics in payments: long-term success depends on enabling small businesses to build community, repeat revenue, and resilience. If you care about the future of main street retail, this conversation brings strategy you can use today.
Money that waits for Monday is losing ground to rails that never sleep. Greg sits down with Edward Woodford, CEO and Founder of zerohash, to explore how stablecoins and tokenized deposits are reshaping cross-border payments, account funding, and global payouts for merchants, platforms, and marketplaces. From MIT roots to building one of the largest movers of stablecoins, Edward explains why velocity of money matters and how interoperability solves the messy reality of assets, chains, and compliance at scale.
We dig into concrete use cases: topping up trading or gaming balances instantly, paying freelancers in the Philippines or Brazil with automatic local currency conversion, and using stablecoins as a dependable 24/7 rail. Edward breaks down why abstraction is the unlock - users shouldn’t pick chains or tokens, they should just send money. He also shares why banks are poised to become the biggest on- and off-ramps as regulatory clarity lands, and why tokenized deposits may deliver stronger economics for financial institutions than issuing their own stablecoins.
Looking ahead, Edward maps a world of vertical integration, where processors launch their own networks and potentially bank charters, compressing costs and aligning incentives across the stack. He makes the case for streaming payments as a catalyst for financial resilience and agentic commerce, where instant settlement reduces payday lending and powers software-to-software transactions. The result isn’t crypto vs. traditional - it’s connected plumbing that makes payments faster, cheaper, and more inclusive.
If you care about the future of payments, cross-border commerce, and the real-world path from crypto rails to everyday use, this conversation offers a clear blueprint.
Payments shouldn’t feel like a maze. We sit down with Kurv’s CEO, Afshin Yazdian, to unpack how a legacy “lifestyle business” evolved into a modern payments platform by stripping out friction, investing in human-centered service, and doubling down on tools that make small businesses stronger. From tap-to-pay on everyday smartphones to faster access to funds, the strategy centers on clarity and speed so owners can focus on sales, staff, and customers - not statements and support tickets.
Afshin walks us through his unconventional path from law to leading roles at iPayment, Priority, and Paysafe before acquiring and rebranding EMS as Kurv. He shares what it took to rebuild operations, unify a new leadership team, and scale applications and activations nearly 10x in 18 months. We explore why transparent pricing, intuitive onboarding, and self-service matter just as much as getting a live expert on the phone, and how that blend becomes a moat in a commoditized market.
We also dig into the high-stakes frontier of AI and fraud. With more digital leads and synthetic identities hitting underwriting queues, Kurv deploys machine learning to protect onboarding and e-commerce merchants while preserving approval rates. Add in real-time payments for better cash flow and a truly omnichannel approach - retail, field services, and online and you’ve got a playbook for SMB payments that is powerful without being complicated. Along the way, Afshin makes a strong case for culture as strategy: communicate clearly, care for people, and let that pride carry through every interaction.
If you’re building, selling, or relying on payments, this conversation will leave you with practical ideas for simplifying workflows, reducing risk, and earning loyalty.
What if account-to-account payments felt as dependable as swiping a card? We sit down with Keith Raphael, Co-founder and CEO of Straddle, to explore how a trust-first approach can transform ACH, RTP, and FedNow into fast, reliable options that product teams and finance leaders can actually count on. Keith’s journey from hardcore compliance to building a unified API offers a rare, inside look at what it takes to replace “file uploads and hope” with identity-led orchestration and clear, real-time visibility.
We unpack the core idea that money moves at the speed of trust and how the lack of a strong identity layer has kept A2A stuck in 1970s-era uncertainty. Keith explains how Straddle combines KYC, fraud detection, open banking connectivity, tokenization, and multi-rail routing to solve the “where is my money” gap for subscriptions, stored-value wallets, remittances, marketplaces, and B2B flows. We also dig into US-specific headwinds: no regulatory mandate for open banking or instant payments, incumbent pricing strategies that protect debit economics, and the resulting friction for adopters.
From the rise of platforms and embedded finance to direct-to-rail integrations and the cautious reality of stablecoins, Keith lays out a pragmatic roadmap for scaling bank payments without sacrificing compliance or customer trust. The lesson from Stripe and Square still stands (simplicity wins) but it now applies to ACH, RTP, and FedNow.
Cash flow used to mean waiting and worrying. Today, it can mean deciding and doing. We sit down with Ana Garcia of JPMorgan Payments and James Chi of Block to unpack how real-time payments are reshaping the small business playbook - turning every sale into instantly usable working capital and replacing uncertainty with visibility you can act on.
Ana pulls back the curtain on how instant payments actually work: APIs or portals trigger transactions, banks authenticate and screen for fraud and compliance, networks like The Clearing House RTP clear and settle, and funds land in seconds with instant confirmation. James maps those capabilities to real merchant needs - Square’s instant transfers to linked accounts, immediate spend via Square Checking, and faster marketplace payouts for merchants - showing how speed enables on-time payroll, proactive inventory management, and smoother refunds.
We also get real about adoption. Many owners still don’t know they can move money this fast, so education in context is key - surfacing instant options exactly when cash is tight. On safety, both leaders emphasize layered defenses: identity checks, behavioral analytics, transaction limits, and step-up authentication, proving you don’t need to trade security for speed.
Looking forward, we explore request for payment for cleaner collections, the march toward near-universal bank coverage, and the promise of cross-border instant payments that could redefine supplier and marketplace flows. If you care about liquidity, predictability, and customer trust, this conversation shows how real-time payments turn pressure into momentum.
This episode is part of our special series on The Future of Modern Payments sponsored by The Clearing House.
The backbone of the economy is feeling both confident and squeezed, and we wanted to get specific about what actually helps. In this episode I sit down with Shruti Patel, Chief Product Officer for Business Banking at U.S. Bank, to unpack fresh small business data and the concrete tools that turn payments into faster cash, lighter admin, and clearer decisions.
We start with the Small Business Perspective survey: high optimism paired with pressure from inflation, tariffs, and supply chain uncertainty. Shruti explains why access to working capital and lower operating costs remain top priorities, and how owners are already using AI to sharpen marketing, streamline service, and simplify back office tasks. From there, we dig into U.S. Bank’s strategy shift from methods of payment to jobs to be done - bundling what matters so owners can open, accept, pay, and reconcile without the swivel-chair fatigue.
You’ll hear how Business Essentials merges a no-fee operating account with Elavon acquiring, a free mobile reader, and same-day funds to ease cash flow. We explore Cashflow Central for bill pay across card, ACH, and e-check, plus embedded payroll via Gusto that replaces separate subscriptions many owners used to carry. Shruti also walks through spend management tied to small business cards, giving real-time controls and visibility.
Looking ahead, we separate signal from noise on stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and agentic commerce, and we map where AI will make an impact in 2026 - faster underwriting, smarter support, and fewer steps for the jobs that happen every day.
If you run a small business or build for them, this conversation lays out a practical blueprint: consolidate workflows, shorten time to cash, and adopt AI where it saves hours, not just headlines.
In this episode, we dig into how modern SaaS platforms turn payments into a core product, a revenue engine, and a defensible moat without breaking customer trust or slowing product velocity. With NMI’s CMO Peter Galvin and Product Director Luis Peña, we unpack the real path from “just accept cards” to a fully integrated commerce stack that handles fraud, chargebacks, compliance, and omnichannel experiences at scale.
We start with the SaaS payments maturity curve: ship fast with basic acceptance, then refine UX with tokenization and branded flows, and finally operate payments as a true business line with pricing strategy and revenue share.
From there, we explore the tough stuff most teams underestimate - risk management, underwriting discipline, and the operational muscle needed to keep approval rates high while keeping losses and support tickets low. If you’re wondering when you’ve outgrown your current processor, we outline the telltale signs and how to plan a migration that is modular, phased, and invisible to your merchants.
Omnichannel is also a major focus. We break down card-present choices like Tap to Pay, offline-capable devices for field service, and cloud APIs for always-connected point of sale - all while tying in text-to-pay, QR codes, wallets, and ACH via open banking.
Beyond lending, we also highlight high-impact add-ons: instant payouts, network tokenization, invoicing, and loyalty programs that raise approval rates, reduce churn, and boost margin. And we look ahead at what’s next: stablecoins for cross-border efficiency, open banking data for smoother experiences, and agent-driven discovery that transforms how buyers find and pay for products.
Growth shouldn’t stall at the border. We sit down with Peter Dougherty, President of Spreedly, to unpack how an open payments platform helps global brands launch faster, reduce vendor risk, and optimize authorization rates without ripping out their stack. Peter traces the evolution from card‑centric orchestration to a broader layer that now includes tokenization, a secure token vault, fraud and KYC options, and connections to multiple processors and alternative payment methods. The takeaway: best‑of‑breed no longer means complexity and long timelines - it means resilience, data‑driven choices, and faster expansion.
Peter also looks ahead to a future where agents become the front end of commerce. Discovery, selection, and purchase compress into milliseconds, and payments infrastructure has to keep up. We dig into how mandates, consent, and spending limits will work when agents transact on our behalf; how liability flows when something goes wrong; and why token management becomes the backbone for secure, delegated payments. He shares why platforms that can safely feed agents with PCI‑sensitive data will win as volumes surge across regions and rails.
We ground the hype in reality too. Payments is the fastest moving oil tanker - innovation is constant, but adoption takes time. EMV took decades; stablecoins still trail cards and the fastest‑growing APMs. For leaders, the smart move is to build behind an abstraction layer that lets you A/B test processors, adopt new methods, and swap tools without disruption.
If you’re pushing into new markets or preparing for agentic commerce, this conversation will help you rethink checkout, time to market, and resilience at scale.
Subscriptions aren’t enough anymore. We dig into why the next wave of software winners are building full commerce platforms where payments are invisible to users yet central to growth. With NMI’s CMO Peter Galvin and Product Director of Developer Experience, Luis Peña, we unpack how vertical SaaS turns checkout into a native, on-brand experience that drives revenue, cuts churn, and opens the door to embedded finance.
We start with the big shift: horizontal tools are giving way to vertical platforms that automate every workflow and own the moment of payment. From dentist offices to gyms and home services, merchants want one system that books, bills, and gets them paid. Peter explains how integrated payments changes the business model - subscription fees plus payments monetization and new fintech lines like working capital - while strengthening loyalty through a consistent, secure merchant and consumer experience.
Luis takes us into the build. He shares a practical roadmap for developer-friendly adoption: onboard merchants within your app, collect card data with tokenization and design for webhooks, and exception paths from day one. We talk sandboxes, test suites that simulate real failure modes, and AI-friendly docs that make it easier for modern teams to ship quickly without cutting corners. Then we zoom out to the data advantage - interchange optimization, card mix insights, network tokenization, and benchmarking that inform pricing, conversion, and cross-sell strategies.
The takeaway is simple: treat payments as a growth engine, not a bolt-on. When software controls the workflow and the commerce flow, the product becomes stickier, the economics improve, and customers stop thinking about payments at all.
If you run a small or mid-sized retail business and feel stuck between legacy tools and rising customer expectations, this conversation is your playbook for breaking through. We sit down with Unzer CEO Robert Bueninck to unpack how bundling software and payments helps merchants deliver seamless experiences across in-store and online without enterprise budgets or heavyweight integrations.
Robert traces his journey from early Klarna days to leading Unzer’s “payments and beyond” ecosystem, and lays out why the mid-market is the most underserved (and most promising) space in European commerce. We dive into the practical ways software plus payments drives real outcomes: faster onboarding, unified reporting, and simpler support when QR ordering, click-and-collect, or in-store returns marry e-commerce and POS. He explains Unzer’s focus on food services, beauty, and apparel, and how a clear build-partner boundary keeps products sharp while letting merchants scale when complexity grows.
We also dig into Europe’s unique payments fabric. Alternative payment methods and account-to-account rails already dominate online checkout in markets like the Netherlands and Belgium, changing merchant economics with lower cost and instant funds. BNPL fills the buyer-protection gap, while policymakers push toward a pan-European A2A framework and greater vendor independence. Robert separates hype from habit on agentic commerce and stablecoins, arguing that adoption only happens when the new flow truly makes life easier for shoppers and staff and that’s where the mid-market wins.
Looking ahead, Robert outlines Unzer’s growth bets: expand combined software and payments across core markets, bring all products to all regions, and help “make Germany digital” as a foundation for broader European reach. If you care about SMB retail, omnichannel checkout, A2A payments, BNPL, and the future of European payments infrastructure, you’ll find plenty to act on here.
Fraud losses are climbing, checks are supposedly fading, and yet check fraud is hitting all-time highs. We sat down with Mike Timoney, a payments veteran now leading secure payments work at the Federal Reserve, to unpack that paradox and chart a path to stronger defenses across banks, fintechs, and businesses of every size. The conversation moves from frontline realities to system-wide fixes: why paper is still a prime target, how modern scams bypass technology to persuade people, and what practical tools can help teams react faster than criminals can pivot.
Mike shares a global-to-local career arc (from international banking to ACH, wires, and cards) before taking on fraud across channels and ultimately joining the Fed. That perspective shapes a clear mission: keep the U.S. payment system trusted and reliable by educating the industry, building relationships, and mapping threats without prescribing vendors.
We dive deep into two new resources: a check fraud mitigation toolkit with visual examples, pattern tells, and tips like positive pay; and a scams mitigation toolkit that decodes phishing, smishing, and business email compromise through case studies and actionable defenses. Both are designed as short, usable modules that help community banks train staff and help larger teams keep pace with evolving tactics.
We also tackle the hard part: collaboration and transparency in a fragmented U.S. landscape. With thousands of institutions and varied state privacy rules, information sharing is tough - but not impossible. Mike outlines privacy-enhancing approaches that share patterns, not identities, so institutions can broadcast what criminals are doing without exposing who was hit. AI features throughout the episode as a double-edged sword: it supercharges detection and accelerates response, while giving fraudsters new ways to scale social engineering. The key is narrowing the response gap through better models, faster signal exchange, and continual education.
Walk away with three priorities: make fraud everyone’s job through constant micro-education, keep learning as tactics shift, and share signals across your peer network. If this conversation helps you see a new control, training idea, or partnership opportunity, subscribe, share the episode with your team, or contact Mike for more information.
Most software teams still think of payments as a chore. We take you inside the playbook that turns it into a growth engine. I sits down with NMI CTO Phillip Goericke to unpack how embedded payments evolved from a basic checkout to a full-stack platform that handles onboarding, underwriting, payouts, analytics, and even embedded finance. The conversation is straight talk on what actually works when you’re shipping fast and scaling globally.
We dig into the architectural choices that matter: start with a no-code drop-in to activate revenue quickly, then progress to low-code SDKs and finally full APIs when you need deep control. Phillip shares where platforms stall - manual KYC, fragmented global rules, and data blind spots and how a modular approach fixes these without ripping out your stack. You’ll hear how compliance-as-a-service, network tokenization, and adaptive 3D Secure can raise approval rates, reduce fraud, and simplify audits while keeping the checkout experience seamless.
Looking ahead, we explore why identity, compliance, and data are the foundation for embedded finance. Philip outlines NMI’s unified experience that brings payments, onboarding, insights, and new services like business capital into one place. We also tackle AI with clear eyes: use it to augment decisioning and anomaly detection, but wrap it with deterministic controls so money-critical outcomes are consistently right. The key takeaway is a mindset shift: stop treating payments as a feature and start using it as a strategic lever for revenue, retention, and product velocity.
If you’re building software with transactions anywhere in the flow, this is your blueprint for turning payments into a competitive moat. Subscribe for more deep dives, share with a teammate who owns monetization, and leave a review to tell us what topic you want next.
What if paying with crypto felt as effortless as tapping your card? We sit down with Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect, to unpack how stablecoins, smarter wallet-to-app messaging, and a new wave of SDKs are collapsing the gap between crypto checkout and the one-click experiences consumers expect.
Jess traces her path from investment banking to early Bitcoin research to leading a network that connects 700 wallets to 70,000 applications and moves hundreds of billions in value. We dig into the real merchant story: slashing fees from the typical 2–3% card rates to basis points, settling in seconds instead of days, and opening doors in markets where stablecoins are already everyday money. The caveat has always been clunky UX - QR codes, chain selection, gas fees - but that’s changing fast as partners like Coinbase Commerce, Mesh, and Privy streamline onboarding and data sharing.
We explore two frontiers set to unlock the next wave of growth. First, in-store payments, where WalletConnect’s new POS SDK aims to meet the speed and reliability of retail environments and is already rolling out with partners in Asia. Second, recurring payments, where crypto’s push model needs safer, revocable permissions to mirror subscriptions without sacrificing user control. Along the way, we zoom out to embedded finance, where neobanks become financial hubs offering custody, trading, and wealth tools, and to data privacy, where wallets enable selective disclosure so users share only what’s needed for shipping, KYC, or age checks.
Enjoy the conversation, and if it sparks ideas, subscribe, share this episode with a colleague, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.
Recorded live from the PayTech Women Leadership Summit in Atlanta, this episode brings together an inspiring cross-section of executives, founders, coaches, and industry veterans who are shaping the human side of leadership in payments and fintech. A special thank you to our episode sponsor, Global Payments.
Across fast, heartfelt conversations, one thread is impossible to miss: influence grows when community grows. You’ll hear how clarity of purpose fuels confidence, why intentional relationships compound over time, and how investing in your own presence, skills, and courage creates opportunities that span roles, companies, and career chapters.
Valissa Pierre-Louis opens by grounding influence in self-awareness - truly understanding the value you bring and aligning your strengths to what the business needs most. She underscores the power of relationships that amplify that value. Outhay Lovan builds on that with a call to boldness, especially for those who don’t see themselves as natural extroverts. Her message is simple: step into discomfort, expand your network, and watch your impact grow.
Executive presence takes center stage with Eileen Nebhut, who highlights the importance of coaching, feedback, and stakeholder support systems. She notes that the Summit’s unique “vibe” comes from leaders who intentionally pay it forward. Audrey Blackmon emphasizes being intentional with time and staying rooted in authenticity and integrity - two qualities she sees as non-negotiable for long-term influence.
From the organizational lens, Dr. Gail Burgos encourages women to take risks, stretch beyond their functional lanes, and embrace curiosity as a pathway to growth. FIS’s Kristen Slink brings a powerful distinction between mentorship and sponsorship, urging women to advocate for one another and elevate voices not yet in the room.
Margie Kreutz adds a powerful mindset shift—reframing “risk” as courage—and reminds women that staying too long in a comfortable role can quietly stall advancement, while brave, timely moves create momentum and open doors.
Longtime industry leader Linda Perry reminds professionals to stay deeply informed—follow the trends, read widely, and understand the ecosystem so you can chart where you want to go. And to close, Jonathan O’Connor spotlights the magic of “playing in traffic” - putting yourself in the flow of conversations, peers, and opportunity during a moment of massive industry transformation.
If you care about accelerating your career, building meaningful connections, or leading with purpose in a competitive, fast-changing landscape, this episode offers practical insights you can put into motion today.
Payments shouldn’t break just because a card changes. We sat down with leaders from NMI, G+D and Mastercard to unpack how network tokenization has moved far beyond basic security to become the backbone of higher approvals, fewer chargebacks, and smoother recurring billing. If you care about conversion, fraud, and customer lifetime value, this conversation goes straight to the signal.
Tiffany Johnson, CPO at NMI, Mark Van Horn, Digital Solution Lead, North America at G+D and Ryan Francis, Vice President, Digital Product at Mastercard start the episode by clarifying what network tokens are and how they differ from traditional vault tokens, then dig into the metrics that matter: consistent 3–6 percentage point authorization uplift, real-world portfolio wins that stretch even higher, and measurable savings from reduced retries and smarter routing. You’ll hear how merchant-bound and device-bound tokens give issuers reliable context, why lifecycle management keeps subscriptions uninterrupted, and how those improvements cascade into lower operational costs and stronger retention.
From there, we look ahead. Tokens are becoming the default for card-not-present payments and will extend into open banking and account-to-account flows. With AI on the rise and agentic commerce coming into view, tokens provide portable trust - binding identity, device, and permissions so agents can transact safely on our behalf. The guests share how G+D and NMI make token adoption turnkey for ISVs and platforms, and how Mastercard is scaling token rails to power seamless, intelligent commerce.
If you’re an ISV, platform, or merchant seeking higher approval rates and lower fraud without adding friction, this is your blueprint.
Money shouldn’t take days to arrive while business waits. We sit down with Miles Paschini, CEO and co-founder of FV Bank, to unpack how a licensed digital bank can make crypto feel like normal banking - without the wallet headaches, exchange hops, or private key anxiety. Miles traces his journey from prepaid telecom innovation to Wavecrest’s pioneering crypto cards, and explains why building FV Bank meant controlling the value chain: the bank license, the compliance stack, and the tech.
We dig into how FV Bank issues traditional accounts with ACH, wires, and cross-border payments, then layers in bank-native wallet addresses for USDC, USDT, and PYUSD. That lets a merchant accept a stablecoin payment that lands as USD deposits, or send a million dollars internationally in minutes with on-chain settlement and integrated sanctions screening. Inside the bank, FVNet provides instant client-to-client settlement, turning treasury into an always-on function and freeing working capital from the friction of multi-day delays.
Miles also explores the future: stablecoin growth accelerated by clearer regulation, peer-to-peer payment via X402 that removes chargebacks and middlemen, and how agentic and machine-to-machine commerce will quietly reshape e-commerce and everyday life. We touch on risk and compliance fundamentals - BSA/AML first, crypto-native forensics layered on top and why specialization in fintech and blockchain is a durable advantage. Looking ahead, FV Bank plans to expand Visa issuing, launch BIN sponsorship globally, and introduce Bitcoin-collateralized lending for long-term holders.
If you care about faster settlement, lower risk, and payments that work at internet speed, this conversation maps where banking is headed and how businesses can get there without becoming crypto experts.
Money doesn’t just move; it travels across rules, rails, and risk decisions that either create trust or destroy it. In the first of three episodes, we sit down with Sal Karakaplan, Chief Strategy Officer at The Clearing House, to explore how a century-old operator keeps reinventing the core of U.S. payments while shipping modern capabilities at scale. From instant settlement to tokenized data, this is a close look at what it takes to wire an economy for speed without sacrificing safety.
We start with the foundation: what TCH runs under the hood - RTP, CHIPS, EPN, and check image exchange - and why reliability and advocacy both matter when you’re operating the plumbing. Sal opens the strategy playbook: scan market trends, pick where to build, buy, or partner, and relentlessly prioritize use cases that create measurable customer value. That lens frames a practical take on open banking, where market innovation and regulation advance in parallel. Expect straight talk on security, DDA tokenization, liability clarity, and user consent that’s simple for people and robust for compliance.
RTP steps into focus with concrete momentum: growing daily volumes, expanding bank enablement, and use cases that resonate; account-to-account funding, B2C disbursements, merchant settlement, insurance payouts, and early wage access. We get real about adoption hurdles in a fragmented banking market and how to make the business case stack up. Beyond speed, the conversation highlights ISO 20022 and data-rich messages that reduce reconciliation friction and sharpen risk controls - critical for CFOs, treasurers, and operations leaders chasing working capital gains.
Then we tackle stablecoins with a bottom-up filter: where do they outperform existing rails? Cross-border stands out, from remittances to marketplace payouts, alongside emerging hypotheses in tokenized settlement. Sal lays out the next 3–5 years: push RTP to ubiquity, evaluate DLT and tokenized deposits with discipline, lean into AI for commerce and fraud defense, and elevate security and data as first-class features. It’s a pragmatic roadmap for banks, fintechs, and enterprises that want real outcomes, not buzzwords.
Recorded live from the PayTech Women Leadership Summit in Atlanta, we bring you a rapid, energizing tour of leadership lessons from executives, board members, and rising voices shaping the future of payments and fintech. A special thanks to our episode sponsor Global Payments.
Across crisp conversations, a common theme emerges: community multiplies competence. You’ll hear how curiosity fuels influence, why relationships beat résumés, and how owning your personal banner outlasts any company logo.
Chrissy Wagner (FIS) opens with a hard truth many leaders overlook—self care is strategy. When your cup is full, you lead with clarity and generosity. Margaret Weichert draws on three decades across Bank of America, First Data, Accenture, EY, and The Clearing House to champion curiosity as a daily practice: learn the tech, the processes, and the business context so every presentation connects to customer value and shareholder outcomes. That framing travels across product, risk, and operations, especially as rails evolve and real-time becomes table stakes.
Relationship building gets tactical with Rebecca Walden (Corvia), who shares how to deepen ties beyond LinkedIn: Zoom coffees, thoughtful introductions, timely articles, and in-person meetups that convert weak ties into trusted allies. Executive coach Cynthia Knowles underscores investing in purpose and skills, noting that the summit creates rare neutral ground where fierce competitors become generous collaborators. Melissa Desjardins (Protiviti) offers a powerful structure—build a personal board of directors who challenge your assumptions and push you to take bold steps, then return the favor for others.
From the talent pipeline, Laura Gibson Lamothe (Georgia FinTech Academy) shows how belonging accelerates careers, especially for those who haven’t always seen themselves reflected in leadership. Kathy Kmiotek urges leaders to own their personal banner—your story, your value proposition—through every career shift. And Naomi Donaldson (FISERV) connects the dots across industry change, from cash and checks to crypto, stablecoins, and agentic commerce, while navigating the realities of growth, family, and leadership on a shared stage with industry rivals.
If you care about payments innovation, career momentum, or simply leading with purpose in a competitive market, this conversation delivers practical, repeatable moves you can use today.
The fastest way to win more ISO and agent deals isn’t adding more vendors; it’s sharpening the story. We sit down with John Barrett and Andie Hill from Payroc to unpack how a focused core product strategy transformed recruiting conversations, accelerated close rates, and unlocked real wins in the SMB space. This is the third and final episode in our three-part series titled: Focus. Build. Win.
John breaks down the four-part recruiting pitch that sets expectations and gets to fit fast: who Payroc is as a full-service acquirer, what the core solutions do, how infrastructure and culture support partners as customer number one, and where international expansion opens future lanes. Andie takes us into the field results: near sellouts of their terminal twice in a year, a step-change in win rates, and tangible gains when SMBs finally get pay by text, lightweight invoicing, and a polished countertop experience without enterprise POS cost or complexity. Service verticals like auto repair and landscaping benefit from simple scheduling, mobile-friendly payments, and fewer keyed transactions -practical improvements that agents can demo and merchants adopt quickly.
We also walk through a vertical ISO case study that shifted to sending 95 percent of its business to Payroc after repeatable onboarding, underwriting alignment, and responsive support outperformed legacy processors. Throughout the conversation, feedback loops drive the roadmap: trade show questions, CRM win-loss data, and partner demos surfaced the need for features like scheduling, which moved from request to release. The core message is clear; focus doesn’t mean fixed. The stack evolves, but the promise stays consistent: fewer products, better execution, stronger support, and a go-to-market that respects the time of the people closest to the merchant.
Europe isn’t one payments market; it’s dozens of overlapping preferences, currencies, and rails that can make cross‑border growth feel like threading a needle. We sit down with David Rintel, CEO of Finby, to explore how a one‑stop, proprietary stack can tame that complexity while giving merchants real control over speed, features, and cost. From rebranding TrustPay to Finby to securing a new European license, David shares why staking out a distinct identity matters when your strategy is to build infrastructure, not just resell it.
We dig into what merchants actually need to win in new countries: curated payment methods that fit both their target market and their business model. David breaks down where cards still win, where local methods like BLIK and iDEAL dominate, and how recurring billing, chargeback rules, and settlement flows shape conversion and risk. He explains why direct scheme memberships beyond cards unlock first‑mile access to features, lower latency, and better product roadmaps and how a unified API can turn new market launches into configuration rather than fresh builds.
Regulation gets real, too. EU‑level rules rarely land uniformly; national transpositions drive edge‑case complexity, while mandates like SCA and instant payments remake the pipes. David’s advice is blunt and useful: stop trying to predict the winning rail and instead design for adaptability - teams, partners, and tech that bend without breaking. If you’re leading payments for a cross‑border brand, you’ll leave with a clearer playbook for method selection, integration depth, compliance guardrails, and the mindset to stay ahead of constant change.
In the second episode in our three part series titled: Focus. Build. Win, I sit down with James Derby, EVP of Merchant Facing Product at Payroc, to unpack how a core product strategy transformed scattered tools into a focused growth engine for partners and merchants. Instead of mastering dozens of third‑party options, the team picked a few products to go deep on, built vertical features that matter, and tightened the feedback loop from sales floor to roadmap.
James walks through Roc Terminal+ for broad processing needs, Roc Giving for nonprofits, and Roc Services for field service teams, including a new scheduling component aimed at competing upmarket. The thread tying it all together is software-led sales: lead with the operational win and let payments follow. That shift brings faster deployments, better support, and real economics for ISOs and agents, with an 8–11% margin lift on new core placements and lower attrition as support improves. Owning the gateway and settlement stack gives Payroc the control to integrate acquisitions, standardize security, and ship features at speed without vendor drag.
We also get into the commercialization playbook: building a business case with sales input, targeting underserved MCCs, choosing build vs. white label, and running disciplined pilots before GA. Post‑launch, James emphasizes data, not vibes - tracking adoption, revenue, support quality, and direct merchant feedback to keep product-market fit tight. Looking forward, tap to pay continues to rise, standalone terminals slowly recede, and consolidation among large processors creates room for agile teams that ship vertical SaaS with integrated payments.
If you care about turning product focus into partner success, this conversation delivers practical detail you can use.
The U.S.-to-LATAM corridor is heating up fast, and the rules of getting paid are changing even faster. We sit down with PPRO’s Therese Hudak to unpack fresh insights from their new Almanac, spotlighting what actually moves the needle for conversion and growth across Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina. From the meteoric rise of PIX in Brazil to the quiet power of cash vouchers in Mexico, we break down the methods your customers already use and why adopting them can transform your cross-border results.
We explore how real-time bank transfers and digital wallets are overtaking traditional rails, what super app ecosystems like Mercado Pago, Nubank, Rappi, and PicPay mean for reach and retention, and why local acquiring often beats cross-border processing on authorization rates, costs, and customer trust. You’ll hear concrete examples of local-only card schemes, the hidden fees that trigger chargebacks, and practical ways to present clean, transparent pricing that keeps buyers coming back.
We also dive into vertical-specific tactics. Retail remains the growth engine with fashion, electronics, and beauty leading spend, while mobile-first behavior and social commerce reshape discovery and checkout. Gaming and SaaS face unique subscription hurdles as issuers scrutinize merchant-initiated transactions; we share ways to align with LATAM’s installment culture and use wallet flexibility to lift acceptance. To wrap it up, we provide a simple checklist: activate local access, accept the right methods, manage performance - to help you enter, learn, and scale with confidence.
If LATAM is on your roadmap, this conversation gives you the playbook to act now. Visit ppro.com/almanac to learn more.
If you’ve ever tried to pivot a payments company from vendor sprawl to a product-led core, you know the hardest part isn’t the code - it’s the conviction. Greg Myers sits down with Payroc CEO Jim Oberman in the first episode in our three-part series titled Focus. Build. Win. to trace the inflection point that moved the company from relying on third parties to building and owning the core stack merchants now expect. We dig into the strategy behind choosing focus over FOMO, why omni and embedded experiences changed the rules, and how a disciplined product roadmap turned into a growth engine for partners and merchants alike.
Jim opens the playbook on capital allocation and scale: a two-pronged approach that combined careful acquisitions of mature distribution with targeted technology buys to accelerate the roadmap and extend globally. We talk about integrating WorldNet and BlueSnap, rebranding decisively, and the operating principle that all new business must board on the core platform. The result is a clear throughline from M&A to product to outcomes, including core-platform growth near 37% year over year while legacy assets provide the cash to fund tomorrow.
Execution is where it gets real. Jim shares how Payroc built a weekly cross-functional steering committee to avoid politics, return every debate to customer impact, and keep teams from chasing shiny objects. We explore the shift to vertical focus - unattended payments like vending, laundry, car wash, parking, and kiosks - where contactless demand is compounding. Data sits at the center, with a unified lake that reconciles to financials, enabling honest prioritization and faster, clearer decisions.
We close with lessons learned and what’s next: helping founder teams let go without losing their spark, centralizing support even if it’s expensive, and keeping a “never again” list to avoid unwinnable arenas. The next chapter is about sales execution and taking global capabilities to mid-market clients that are ready to expand.
Cash flow shouldn’t depend on how many supplier portals your customers force you to use. We sit down with Bill360 president Kevin Sisk to unpack how true accounts receivable automation flips the script for small and midsize B2B companies, turning invoice chaos into a clean, controlled path to getting paid. Kevin’s journey from the Marine Corps through major processors and complex joint ventures to his first startup gives him a rare vantage point on why back-office change is hard and why now is the right time to make it stick.
We break down the pain most owners know too well: dozens of buyer-driven AP systems, manual steps, scattered approvals, and aging invoices. Kevin explains how Bill360 couples AR software with embedded payment facilitation to remove handoffs and deliver one accountable partner. The result is faster payments, automated reminders and dispute handling, and a full audit trail even as teams change. We also explore why a B2B-first design matters, where live human support fits into a “light touch” platform, and how partnerships with vertical software vendors complete industry workflows without forcing users to switch systems.
The conversation digs into the network effects that emerge when suppliers invite their buyers into a shared environment - suddenly the platform sees real relationships and behaviors instead of isolated transactions. That visibility powers smarter insights and, with AI, personalized recommendations that improve cash flow, reduce friction, and even execute actions with user consent. We zoom out to the broader payments landscape too: real-time rails, cross-border options, embedded finance and lending, and the rising need for security as fraudsters adopt AI. If you’re ready to reduce DSO, standardize invoicing, and bring clarity to collections, this episode is a blueprint for modernizing receivables without adding complexity.
Ruston Miles, Founder and Chief Strategy and Development Officer at Bluefin and I start with the origin story: telecom roots, fiber‑rich Tulsa, and the overlooked reality of call centers that needed real‑time authorizations long before shopping carts ruled the web. Ruston explains why Bluefin moved into security early - serving higher ed, nonprofits, and faith‑based media where brand trust is everything and how that path led to P2PE. Then comes the turning point: a decision to decouple encryption from acquiring, offer P2PE as a service, and even power competitors. That platform approach now supports around 150 devices across 17 manufacturers and underpins airlines, transport systems, fuel networks, and more, often quietly and often by requirement.
From there, we look ahead. Network tokens are rising, wallets are changing, and AI is pushing commerce from clicks to intent. Ruston separates hype from reality, showing how today’s “agentic” automation schedules deliveries and completes checkouts, while tomorrow’s agents will present payment credentials securely without platforms ever seeing raw card data. That shift demands virtual P2PE, inter‑agent boundary mediation, and standards that let authentication and encryption travel with the transaction. We also get practical: how Bluefin’s P2PE‑as‑Proxy reduces integration pain, why security must keep pace with innovation, and what skills newcomers need as software continues to digest payments.
If you care about payments security, PCI, P2PE, tokenization, gateways, ISVs, and the future of agentic commerce, you’ll find plenty to take back to your roadmap.
In the final episode of Powering Payments Together: How Payroc Helps ISVs Scale Smarter, we turn the spotlight on CenterEdge Software and their journey to building a payments program that drives real business value. Leslie Legel, Director of Payments at CenterEdge, joins the conversation to share how Payroc has become a trusted partner in helping them overcome challenges, strengthen their platform, and deliver a seamless experience for their clients.
Leslie explains why payments are mission-critical for family entertainment centers, where more than 90 percent of transactions are digital and downtime isn’t an option. From July 4th waterparks to cashless operations, reliability isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s the foundation of customer satisfaction. She reflects on a tough lesson learned when a gateway integration didn’t meet expectations, and how those setbacks ultimately led CenterEdge to develop a more reliable and scalable payments strategy.
The episode also explores how CenterEdge built and branded “CenterEdge Payments,” giving them control over the customer journey and creating a more transparent, feature-rich solution for their clients. Leslie shares how Payroc stood out as a partner, not just for their technology and APIs, but for their willingness to understand CenterEdge’s business, answer tough questions, and provide the tools and flexibility needed to scale.
Finally, Leslie offers advice to ISVs navigating the high-stakes world of payments: do your homework, know your limitations, and find a partner who is as invested in your success as you are. Looking ahead, she discusses how CenterEdge and Payroc will continue to grow together, exploring new solutions and opportunities to strengthen their offering in the family entertainment space.
Bridging the gap between Treasury, Accounts Receivable, and Accounts Payable represents the critical "last mile" in financial automation. John Rubenetti, President of B2B Payments at Deluxe, reveals how leading organizations are connecting these traditionally siloed functions to create seamless, intelligent financial ecosystems.
The challenge isn't implementing individual automation solutions—it's connecting them. "The friction shows up in the handoffs," Rubenetti explains. When data and money flow through disconnected systems, finance leaders lose visibility and control. True transformation happens when organizations align technology, people, and processes to create end-to-end financial workflows.
Many CFOs underestimate the complexity of integration. They may believe they understand departmental processes but miss critical dependencies or manual workarounds. Data quality becomes another stumbling block—if information isn't clean today, automation won't deliver promised insights. Rubenetti advises starting with a clear vision, taking a phased approach, and choosing partners who understand both the technology and change management aspects.
The conversation explores how modern thinking must accompany modern tools. While dashboards provide visibility, embedding intelligence directly into workflows creates transformative value. Instead of merely reporting numbers, advanced systems prioritize actions, handle exceptions through AI, and trigger automated responses—shifting from static reporting to dynamic decision support.
Rubenetti highlights three significant B2B payment trends: mid-market automation (where 70% still lack automated AP/AR processes), enhanced security (as "fraud thrives in manual processes"), and payment modernization. Despite technological advances, paper checks remain surprisingly prevalent, particularly among small and mid-sized businesses who value the detailed information that accompanies them.
Deluxe has evolved far beyond its reputation as "the check company" to become a comprehensive payments and data organization. Their solutions now span the entire financial ecosystem—from treasury management to merchant services—helping businesses move money faster, safer, and more efficiently while maintaining the data integrity essential for strategic decision-making.
Ready to complete your financial automation journey? Start by mastering the basics before pursuing flashier technologies. The foundation you build today will determine your success tomorrow.
Dive into the transformative world of B2B payments with Brandon Spear, CEO of TreviPay, as he reveals how their platform is revolutionizing trade credit for businesses worldwide. Operating across 32 countries and primarily serving enterprise clients, TreviPay has created a comprehensive solution that manages the entire order-to-cash cycle - from credit applications and underwriting to invoice generation, collections, and cash application.
What sets TreviPay apart? Their global underwriting platform delivers real-time credit decisions while combating sophisticated fraud schemes that have become increasingly convincing in the AI era. By generating invoices on behalf of merchants, they enable powerful data management capabilities that solve industry-specific challenges. For automotive manufacturers, this means enforcing contract pricing across dealership networks, reducing pricing errors from one-in-three to approximately one-in-thousand. For businesses expanding internationally, it eliminates the complexity of producing tax-compliant invoices across diverse jurisdictions.
The pandemic marked a turning point for B2B payments, exposing the vulnerabilities of manual processes when employees couldn't be in the office. Rising interest rates further accelerated adoption as working capital became more expensive, pushing companies to optimize receivables management. These market shifts have positioned TreviPay for explosive growth - they estimate a $20 billion revenue opportunity emerging in their target markets over the next 5-7 years.
Perhaps most importantly, Brandon emphasizes that payment experiences directly impact customer loyalty: "Experience loyalty is becoming more important than brand loyalty." Businesses that offer accurate invoices and flexible payment options capture a larger share of wallet - a powerful reminder that even the most technical aspects of payments ultimately come down to creating exceptional customer experiences.
Swift's colossal impact on global finance remains largely invisible to most people, yet its messaging infrastructure moves the world's entire GDP every 2-3 days. Leigh Amaro, Head of North America for Swift, pulls back the curtain on this financial powerhouse in a fascinating conversation about the present and future of global payments.
Founded in 1970 as a cooperative, Swift now connects approximately 11,000 financial institutions across 200 countries, processing an astounding 50+ million messages daily with just 3,000 employees worldwide. "We're like the backbone of financial services around the world," Amaro explains, highlighting Swift's role in providing secure messaging and value-added services like sanction screening and fraud detection.
The payments landscape has transformed dramatically in recent years. What was once a "black box" process with unpredictable delivery times has evolved into a system where 90% of payments reach beneficiaries within one hour. This revolution in transparency comes through innovations like Swift's GPI tracker, addressing a major pain point for corporate treasurers who previously couldn't predict when payments would arrive.
Looking forward, several developments promise to reshape global payments. The implementation of ISO 20022 in November will create a richer data layer enabling enhanced compliance, error reduction, and automation. Digital assets - including tokenized money and stablecoins - represent another frontier where Swift aims to support financial institutions through secure messaging. Meanwhile, AI continues to transform fraud detection and pattern recognition across the payment ecosystem.
Amaro's passion for women's education and mentorship shines through as she shares the story of her great-grandmother, born in 1905, who emphasized education's importance despite having to leave school at age 11. This personal connection drives her work supporting women in technology and developing mentorship communities. Her advice for those entering payments? "Trust yourself more and don't wait for permission. No one has it figured out, no one's got all the answers... The sooner you believe in yourself, the sooner others will too."
In this revealing conversation with Conn Byrne, Executive Director of Integrated Payments at Payroc, we uncover the secret sauce behind their remarkably successful ISV program.
Having fallen into payments during a six-week temporary position that turned into a 14-year career, Byrne brings a wealth of experience from his journey with WorldNet (acquired by Payroc in 2022) to his current role leading integrated partnerships. His perspective reveals why payment integrations fail when they focus solely on revenue shares rather than comprehensive support.
"My team is pretty wide at this stage," Byrne explains, describing how Payroc surrounds partners with experienced business development resources, highly skilled sales engineers, integration engineers, and their newest differentiator - a dedicated go-to-market team. This collaborative, high-touch approach means partners never wonder where to turn when challenges arise or opportunities emerge.
The conversation explores how Payroc has built a truly omnichannel solution supporting over 50 payment terminals alongside comprehensive card-not-present options. Byrne illustrates this advantage through compelling examples like car wash operations, where a single integration handles everything from license plate recognition with tokenized payments to unattended terminals, mobile POS, and subscription billing.
Looking forward, Payroc continues expanding its capabilities through their cloud integration method (allowing implementation in under a week), enhanced API suite, and expanded hardware support - particularly for Android devices and unattended solutions. The company's flexible partnership models create multiple entry points for ISVs at different growth stages.
The most telling insight? When Payroc recently gathered their largest partners for an advisory council, the recurring themes weren't about technology or pricing - they were about trust, flexibility, and the journey they'd shared together. Some partners who began with small referrals 7-10 years ago have grown alongside Payroc into sophisticated payment operations.
Our Modern Finance series continues with episode three, featuring Steve Buchberger and Heather Dawood from Deluxe. We explored why more than 80% of businesses are still managing accounts payable manually — and the insights may surprise you.
The pair explain how today's finance professionals are caught in a challenging paradox: highly skilled individuals spending countless hours on manual tasks, serving as the frontline against fraud while having little time to implement strategic improvements. This has created peculiar workplace phenomena like "CFO Tuesdays," where executives come into the office specifically to manually process ACH payments – a clear misuse of talent and time.
Beyond the inefficiencies, we explore the very real risks these outdated methods create. From human error and payment delays to check fraud and the burden of managing sensitive banking information, these challenges affect both operational efficiency and vendor relationships. As Heather pointedly observes, "Financial fraud was a white collar crime. Now it's an everyone crime."
The conversation takes an encouraging turn as we unpack Deluxe's innovative approach to AP automation. Their solutions integrate directly with businesses' ERP systems to simplify payment processes regardless of method, while their recent acquisition of CheckMatch from Kinexys by J.P. Morgan creates a more secure digital alternative to mailing checks. Perhaps most compelling is how these improvements translate into stronger vendor relationships – offering payment choice, ensuring timely delivery, and providing transparency transforms the payment process from a potential friction point into a relationship-building opportunity.
What stands out most is how Deluxe reframes AP from an operational burden into a strategic advantage. By delivering secure, streamlined processes and giving vendors more choice and transparency, automation transforms payments into a foundation for stronger, more trusting business relationships.
In the first episode of our three-part series with Payroc, Powering Payments Together: How Payroc Helps ISVs Scale Smarter, I sit down with Payroc President Adam Oberman to explore the shifting landscape of integrated payments. Once seen as a simple feature, payments have now become the financial backbone of successful software companies.
Adam explains why the relationship between ISVs and their payment partners has never been more strategic. The most successful software providers now generate 20–40% of their revenue through payments, making it a critical driver of both growth and valuation. As he puts it, “ISVs don’t outgrow payments - they outgrow their payment partners.”
We discuss how market expectations have evolved dramatically. ISVs are demanding global payment capabilities from day one - multi-currency processing, cross-border compliance, and frictionless user experiences are now table stakes. At the same time, the integration process itself has shifted toward low-code solutions that enable faster deployment without sacrificing functionality.
What stands out most in Adam’s perspective is the human element of payments. Clean APIs may get an integration live, but it’s strategic guidance, problem-solving, and white-glove support that build long-term partnerships. “People do business with people,” Adam emphasizes, highlighting why technical capability must always be paired with trust and service.
Looking ahead to 2026, Adam predicts payments will no longer be viewed as a utility but as a core competitive advantage. Companies that fail to prioritize their payment strategy risk falling behind more agile competitors not just in features, but in valuation and market position.
Whether you’re an established ISV or just beginning to explore embedded payments, this episode offers essential insights into selecting a partner who can scale with you, adapt to change, and deliver value far beyond transaction processing.
What happens when you give ambitious entrepreneurs around the world the financial tools previously reserved for multinational corporations? John Caplan, CEO of Payoneer, reveals the transformative impact of enabling truly global commerce for small businesses on this episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Payoneer serves as a "foreign bank alternative" for 2 million active customers in virtually every country worldwide. With $80 billion in payment volume flowing through their platform annually and $7 billion in customer funds held in balance, Payoneer has established itself as a trusted financial partner for global entrepreneurs. Caplan explains how their multi-currency accounts and payment solutions help businesses receive international payments and manage global operations without the delays and excessive fees of traditional banking.
The diversity of Payoneer's customer base highlights the universal need for better cross-border financial services. From goods exporters in China selling on Amazon to business process outsourcers in the Philippines, software developers in Argentina, and marketing firms in Dubai – Payoneer empowers businesses across sectors to participate in the global economy.
Caplan's own journey to Payoneer reflects the value of fresh perspectives in payments. With an entrepreneurial background spanning Arizona Iced Tea, Starbucks, Ford Models, and transforming Alibaba.com from $800M to $3.5B in revenue, he brings cross-industry experience to financial services. He emphasizes that payments should evolve beyond mere "pipes and plumbing" to become truly value-accretive services, and encourages career-switchers to question industry conventions with persistent "why" questions that drive innovation.
Looking ahead, Payoneer is expanding further into B2B payments, exploring stablecoins and blockchain for treasury operations, and developing workforce management tools – all aimed at making global business operations seamless for ambitious entrepreneurs. For listeners interested in financial innovation that empowers global commerce, this episode offers valuable insights into how technology is democratizing access to the world economy.
Jonathan O'Connor brings a unique global perspective to the payments landscape as Division President of Third-Party Payments at Synovus, the oldest bank in Georgia. His journey from Dublin, Ireland to becoming a key player in Atlanta's "Transaction Alley" reveals how traditional banking and cutting-edge fintech can create powerful synergies.
At Synovus, community remains the cornerstone of their approach. With $61 billion in assets, 244 branches, and nearly 5,000 employees, the bank has built its reputation on exceptional customer service and deep community engagement. O'Connor leads three key divisions: merchant services supporting bank customers, a sponsorship bank division enabling ISOs and fintechs to process card transactions, and a Money as a Service operation. What truly sets them apart is their consultative approach - they don't just provide payment processing but help businesses leverage payment data for growth while protecting against fraud.
O'Connor's wealth of global payment experience shines throughout the conversation. From conducting Y2K reviews across Africa to witnessing the birth of e-commerce with early versions of now-giants like Adyen, his career spans continents and transformative industry shifts. Now firmly established in Atlanta's fintech ecosystem as Vice Chairman of Fintech Atlanta, he's passionate about positioning Synovus at the heart of "Transaction Alley" where 70% of global payments flow through.
His enthusiasm for mentoring the next generation of payment professionals is evident as he shares his work with UGA students launching their own payment company. His advice resonates for anyone in the industry: "Be passionate but link passion with purpose. Be curious, embrace change, build your brand, and play in traffic." Looking ahead, O'Connor sees transformative changes on the horizon with agentive AI, stablecoins, and blockchain reshaping how payments function - though he cautions that technology continues outpacing regulation.
Discover how Synovus is bridging traditional banking with payment innovation and why Jonathan believes we're on the cusp of the most significant transformation the industry has ever seen.
Jared Ronski, Co-founder and President of Payarc, takes us behind the scenes of how modern payment technology is empowering independent sales agents and merchants alike.
The conversation reveals Payarc's unique approach to partner relationships, where "growth through alignment" isn't just a catchy phrase but a business philosophy that has kept agents loyal since the company's earliest days. At a time when margins are under pressure and regulations constantly shift, Payarc has doubled down on relationship equity, transparency, and technological innovation.
The spotlight shines on Payarc's groundbreaking PIE AI pricing advisor, a tool that transforms the traditionally time-consuming process of statement analysis into a streamlined, self-service experience. "It's like having a seasoned sales coach whispering in your ear during merchant conversations," Ronski explains. This AI-powered assistant helps agents confidently navigate complex pricing structures, even in challenging verticals like microtransactions where interchange economics can quickly erode profits if mishandled.
What truly sets Payarc apart is their approach to agent relationships – treating them "like enterprise customers" with dedicated support teams, shared dashboards showing real-time data, and proactive risk monitoring that spots potential issues before they affect merchant processing. While some industry voices have long predicted the decline of the agent model, Ronski sees the opposite trend, with Payarc signing new agents daily and creating pathways for them to thrive in evolving markets.
Listen now to discover how Payarc is turning payment complexity into opportunity and building lasting partnerships one transaction at a time.
Pat Moye, Executive Director of Product Innovation at Deluxe, unveils the surprising reality of accounts receivable departments still trapped in manual processes despite technological advances elsewhere in business. As he aptly points out, AR professionals often describe themselves as "cash detectives," spending valuable time hunting down payment information across disconnected systems - a critical bottleneck in business cash flow.
The heart of modern AR transformation isn't flashy AI algorithms but rather solid data foundations. Pat emphasizes that payment information typically exists across multiple fragmented systems: "The data from ACH and wire payments is with the bank. The data from lockbox payments is with a company like Deluxe. The data about open invoices is in their ERP." This fragmentation creates significant challenges when attempting to implement automation, as these disparate data sources must first be unified and standardized.
Organizations seeking to modernize their AR operations should resist the temptation to overhaul everything at once. Instead, Pat advocates for an agile approach that tackles specific pain points incrementally: "Don't think about making these big swings. Think about the incremental gains you can have by just changing some pieces of the puzzle." This methodical journey begins with consolidating basic payment data sources before expanding to incorporate unstructured data and advanced analytics - allowing teams to transform from operational cost centers into strategic business partners.
Discover how Deluxe has evolved beyond its 110-year history as "the check company" to become a comprehensive payment and data solutions provider, helping businesses eliminate AR friction points and accelerate cash flow. Whether you're just beginning your automation journey or looking to enhance existing capabilities, this episode offers practical insights for finance leaders ready to transform their receivables operations.
Zac Schneiderman shares a deeply personal journey from political science student to VP of ISV at Payarc, where he's become a driving force behind the company's innovative approach to payment integration for software platforms.
What does it take to build successful partnerships in the fast-evolving payments ecosystem? For Schneiderman, it begins with understanding what software companies truly need: feature-rich payment solutions that deliver reliability, flexible pricing models, and exceptional support. "Speed to revenue is the name of the game," he explains, detailing how Payarc's approach combines cutting-edge technology with human expertise to activate partners quickly.
The conversation reveals fascinating insights into the integration process – often the make-or-break moment for ISV partnerships. Schneiderman estimates a third of signed contracts fall apart during integration, which is why Payarc invests heavily in dedicated sales engineers, weekly check-ins, and robust sandbox environments. Their proprietary AI tool, PIE AI, represents the next frontier, helping debug code and streamline developer experiences.
Looking toward the future, Schneiderman predicts a significant "decoupling of SaaS and payments" as technology evolves at breakneck speed. Software companies will increasingly rely on specialized payment partners rather than building in-house payment departments. Meanwhile, AI applications continue expanding beyond integration support to include lead generation, external developer tools, and merchant conversion campaigns.
Ever wonder what it takes to transform a basement startup into a global payments powerhouse processing over a quarter trillion dollars annually? In this fascinating conversation, Taylor Lauber, CEO of Shift4, reveals the remarkable journey that's taken the company from a small payment processor to an innovative force reimagining commerce across 75 countries worldwide.
Taylor's own path to leadership wasn't straightforward. After beginning his career at Merrill Lynch and Blackstone, he initially resisted joining Shift4 despite his teenage connection to founder Jared Isaacman. His skepticism about the sustainability of the payments business model eventually gave way when he recognized that Shift4 wasn't just riding a fintech wave but actively creating their future through strategic innovation and problem-solving. "This was not luck," Taylor explains. "This is a team that can identify opportunities and manufacture success."
What sets Shift4 apart in the crowded payments landscape? According to Taylor, it starts with humility – "If we stand still, we will not survive" – coupled with the ambition to tackle problems others avoid. Unlike competitors who choose a single strategy, Shift4 employs a three-pronged approach: building proprietary solutions when necessary, acquiring strategic assets that shouldn't be standalone features, and partnering intelligently where ownership might alienate collaborators. This flexibility has allowed them to serve diverse markets from single-location restaurants to massive enterprises like casinos and stadiums.
Taylor offers particularly valuable insights about global expansion opportunities. While integrated payments have reached relative maturity in the United States, international markets remain in the "early innings," with payment experiences often resembling those in the U.S. from 15-20 years ago. This represents an enormous opportunity for companies that can adapt proven solutions to new cultural contexts.
Listen now to discover how Shift4 balances innovation with execution, and how Taylor maintains his own equilibrium between leading a global enterprise and preserving sacred family time around the dinner table.
Stepping into the world of small business banking requires a fresh perspective, and that's exactly what Eyal Lifshitz brought when he founded Bluevine twelve years ago. Having watched his father run a physical therapy practice, Eyal witnessed firsthand the financial challenges small business owners face daily. Today, as Bluevine's CEO, he's transformed that understanding into a revolutionary banking platform serving over 750,000 small businesses across America.
Traditional banking has long overlooked the unique needs of businesses generating less than $5 million in annual revenue. These companies represent half of the U.S. GDP and typically operate without finance departments, leaving owners to handle everything from payroll to invoicing themselves. Bluevine's solution? A comprehensive financial operating system that brings checking accounts, credit products, accounts payable, and receivable management together in one digital platform.
What makes Bluevine truly stand out is its branchless, digital-first approach. While most banks still require small business owners to visit physical locations weekly, Bluevine delivers a fully online experience with no monthly fees and competitive yields on deposits. This approach resonates particularly with younger entrepreneurs who expect the same digital convenience in business that they enjoy in personal banking.
Looking ahead, Eyal sees several transformative trends reshaping small business finance: accelerating adoption of digital-first banking, demand for real-time payment capabilities across all rails, and integration of AI-powered financial guidance.
Listen to Eyal's full interview for insights on breaking free from traditional banking limitations and embracing the future of small business finance.
We’re proud to kick off our four-part Modern Finance series with a conversation with Deluxe's Yogs Jayaprakasam, SVP, Chief Technology & Digital Officer.
AI isn't just changing treasury - it's completely reimagining how financial teams operate, transforming them from back-office functions into strategic business advisors.
Yogs Jayaprakasam reveals how treasury departments are leveraging artificial intelligence to solve age-old challenges in revolutionary ways. While treasury has always focused on managing liquidity, cash flow, risk, and compliance, today's AI-powered tools are eliminating manual workloads and enabling real-time, data-driven decision making that wasn't possible before.
The impact is already measurable. Document extraction accuracy has jumped from 65% to 95% using AI agents, dramatically reducing the need for manual matching and reconciliation. This frees treasury professionals to focus on strategic questions: What's driving cash flow delays? Why are dispute rates increasing? How can we optimize working capital? Real-world implementations at companies like McNaughton McKay demonstrate how these technologies improve not just receivables functionality but credit management as well.
What makes today's AI revolution different from previous technological advances? As Yogs explains, "AI is moving at a speed I haven't seen before in my 25+ year career." The convergence of big data, cloud computing, and specialized hardware has created perfect conditions for transformative change. Yet the fundamentals remain constant - treasury's core problems haven't changed, but how we solve them has.
For treasury leaders looking to navigate this transformation, Yogs recommends his "3×3" talent development framework, tailoring AI skills development across both proficiency levels and career stages. The message is clear: AI is here to stay, and the organizations that thrive will be those that embrace these technologies while maintaining unwavering focus on solving their customers' financial challenges.
To learn more visit: https://www.deluxe.com/receivables-management/cash-application/
What happens when you combine lightning-fast payments with sophisticated identity verification? James Neville, CEO of Yaspa, reveals how his company is transforming financial transactions by connecting these two critical elements.
Yaspa stands at the cutting edge of real-time payment processing, offering the fastest account-to-account transfers across Europe with expansion plans for the US market. But speed is just one part of their innovation. The company's true differentiator lies in how they package these payments with bank-based identity verification and financial health assessment using proprietary machine learning algorithms creating a comprehensive solution especially valuable for regulated industries.
The gambling sector has become a particular focus, where Yaspa works closely with regulators to establish affordability standards and identify markers of potential gambling addiction. This approach represents a fundamental shift in how payment companies view their responsibilities: not just moving money, but ensuring transactions are appropriate and safe for all parties involved.
With a recent $12 million funding round from Discerning Capital, Yaspa is establishing an Atlanta office, strategically positioning themselves in one of America's payment technology hubs. Neville sees significant opportunity to shape the US regulated gaming market while it's still in its relative infancy, bringing lessons learned from Europe's more mature regulatory environment.
Looking toward the future, Neville offers fascinating insights on everything from stable coins and central bank digital currencies to the potential (and limitations) of agentic AI in payment flows. He challenges conventional wisdom about account-to-account payments at point-of-sale, highlighting how consumer habits and technical constraints create barriers that many industry observers overlook.
Tune in to discover how payments and identity verification are converging to create safer, faster, more intelligent financial ecosystems.
From her journey through marketing roles at large payments companies to building out the marketing function at Paysafe, Alisa Barber, CMO reveals the continuous learning and adaptation required to thrive in the rapidly evolving payments landscape. Her leadership philosophy centers on providing clear direction while creating space for team members to shine, emphasizing that growth comes not from singular defining moments but from getting better every day: "What we did yesterday is not good enough for tomorrow."
Women bring unique strengths to payments, Barber explains, particularly empathy and a deeper understanding of consumer experiences. This perspective is invaluable when designing products and building systems, especially considering women make many household financial decisions yet are underrepresented in the industry. Their collaborative leadership style becomes increasingly crucial as artificial intelligence transforms payments – a change Barber predicts will be "as big as the internet was."
The conversation explores mentorship's vital role in career development, with Barber noting that while most of her mentors were men, she now prioritizes mentoring women to provide the guidance she lacked early on. Her practical advice for aspiring payment professionals? Embrace change, speak up, view challenges as opportunities, and invest in relationships – because in an AI-driven world, human skills will differentiate the truly successful leaders.
Whether you're a seasoned payments veteran or considering entering this dynamic industry, this episode offers valuable insights on navigating leadership with authenticity, building inclusive teams, and preparing for the technological transformation reshaping our financial landscape.
“This episode contains explicit language and may not be suitable for all audiences.”
The journey from developer to co-CEO of a global payments provider isn't for the faint of heart. Monika Liikamaa knows this firsthand. As the co-founder of Enfuce, she's built a company that processes cards for 24 million cardholders worldwide, pioneering cloud-native solutions when the industry thought it impossible.
Monika's story begins in northern Sweden, where Finnish parents raised a future engineer who would transform multiple industries. After cutting her teeth in telco during Finland's Nokia boom and subsequent crash, she found herself building a bank from scratch as a consultant. This experience sparked a revelation – she was a builder at heart, drawn to challenges others deemed too difficult. When offered the chance to create a financial institution capable of handling three countries, three currencies, two time zones and revolving credit, she couldn't resist.
What makes Monika's leadership philosophy stand out is its refreshing directness. "Openness, honesty and trust," she explains, form the bedrock of effective leadership. She advocates for diversity not as a checkbox exercise but as a competitive advantage. With approximately 50% male and female employees representing over 20 nationalities, Enfuce harnesses diverse perspectives to create more effective payment solutions. This approach acknowledges a simple reality in payment design: women make the majority of household payment decisions, yet have historically been underrepresented in designing those very systems.
Perhaps most revealing is Monika's response to crisis. When UNICEF needed relief cards for Ukrainian refugees, her team delivered in days what normally takes months. This experience crystallized what drives her – solving meaningful problems that make a tangible difference in people's lives. It's the same spirit behind the "Fortitude Pledge" she launched, challenging payment industry players to combat human trafficking and financial crime.
For those looking to enter the payments industry, Monica offers practical wisdom: understand problems deeply, gain perspective from different sides of the table, and remember that no company has been built exactly like yours before.
Redefining leadership requires authenticity, cross-functional collaboration, and a willingness to embrace non-linear career paths. Kari Wilhelm, SVP of Data Strategy and Commercialization at Worldpay, embodies these principles as she navigates the complex intersection of payments technology and data innovation.
In this fascinating conversation, Kari reveals how her unconventional journey from economic research in Hong Kong to management consulting at McKinsey ultimately led her to the payments industry. Rather than viewing her diverse background as a limitation, she's leveraged these varied experiences as strategic assets that provide unique perspectives on complex business challenges. As she notes, "I've really experienced that kind of non-linearity as more of a strength rather than a setback."
Kari offers profound insights on modern leadership, emphasizing the importance of building inclusive team cultures, setting clear expectations, and providing the necessary tools for success. She highlights how the pandemic has transformed leadership dynamics, creating new challenges for maintaining collaborative environments across dispersed teams. Her practical solutions for adapting leadership approaches in virtual settings demonstrate her thoughtful, pragmatic approach to team management.
The conversation explores the unique strengths women bring to payments leadership, particularly their ability to work cross-functionally and build consensus across stakeholders. Kari observes that women often excel at listening deeply to understand underlying needs rather than just surface requests, allowing them to craft solutions that address fundamental issues and build alignment across diverse groups.
As leader of Worldpay's data strategy initiatives, Kari provides fascinating glimpses into how AI and data analytics are transforming the payments landscape. Her current focus on leveraging Worldpay's vast transaction data to provide merchant insights represents the cutting edge of payments innovation, with potential to reshape how consumers discover and purchase products.
Whether you're a payments veteran, an aspiring leader, or simply curious about the human elements that drive technological innovation, Kari's perspective offers valuable guidance on navigating today's complex business environment with authenticity and purpose.
The payments landscape is undergoing dramatic transformation, demanding new approaches to leadership and innovation. Karen Xu, Chief Financial Officer for North America at Ingenico, brings a fresh perspective on navigating this evolution while balancing personal and professional priorities.
Growing up in Shanghai's French Concession sparked Karen's curiosity to explore the world, eventually leading her to America with a full scholarship to Emory University. After building expertise at consulting powerhouses and industrial giants like GE and Honeywell, Karen made the pivotal transition to Ingenico seeking greater impact in a private equity-backed environment. Within months of joining, she transformed the North American region into the company's top performer across all financial metrics.
Karen shares a defining moment when her first-grade son wished for "mommy to be happier," prompting her career pivot from a demanding global CFO role requiring 70-hour workweeks to her current position. This recalibration allowed her to maintain leadership impact while reclaiming family time - a decision she reflects on with satisfaction rather than regret.
The conversation explores why payments is more welcoming to women than traditional manufacturing sectors, and why this matters when women influence 70-80% of payment decisions. Karen believes women's natural empathy, collaborative approach, and diverse perspectives drive innovation essential for the industry's future.
For emerging professionals, Karen offers wisdom gained from mentors who shaped her approach to leadership: "bloom where you are planted" and develop the ability to see what others cannot. The most successful payment solutions will combine trust, ease of use, and scalability - with women leaders positioned to excel by staying close to customer needs and leveraging data insights.
Aglika Dotcheva's journey from organizing student strikes in post-communist Bulgaria to becoming CFO of Riskified is a masterclass in resilience and adaptive leadership. With just $3,000 in her pocket and dreams of a better future, Agi arrived in New York, eventually studying at Columbia University before finding her path in fintech.
What makes Agi's story particularly compelling is how she transformed setbacks into stepping stones. When her investment banking offer disappeared during an economic downturn, she pivoted to a tech company project that unexpectedly revealed her passion for the intersection of finance and technology. Nearly a decade ago, she joined Riskified as their first finance hire, building their financial infrastructure from scratch and guiding them through multiple funding rounds to a successful IPO in 2021 – remarkably accomplished during the height of the COVID pandemic.
Throughout our conversation, Agi shares profound insights on modern leadership, emphasizing that while strategic vision remains essential, adaptability has become increasingly crucial in today's rapidly changing business landscape. "Effective leaders must be able to adapt their strategies and remain flexible," she notes, reflecting on how Riskified has navigated various growth cycles. She also highlights the unique strengths women bring to the payments industry, including heightened resilience from overcoming biases, greater empathy, and superior collaborative skills – all vital for innovation in tech environments.
For those aspiring to leadership in finance or fintech, Agi offers golden advice: don't be just a "numbers person." She emphasizes that true strategic leadership comes from understanding the business fundamentally, maintaining a continuous learning mindset, and – perhaps most importantly – viewing challenges as opportunities for growth. As she beautifully summarizes: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Listen now to discover how this philosophy has shaped one of the most dynamic leaders in fraud prevention technology.
What happens when bold career moves and authentic leadership philosophy unite? Just ask Outhay Lovan, Chief People Strategy Officer at VizyPay, who transformed from LinkedIn observer to executive leader by taking an unconventional path that started with "stalking" the company online.
In this captivating conversation for Women Leaders in Payments month, Outhay reveals her remarkable journey from human resources management into the payments industry. Born in Laos with parents from Laos and Thailand, and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, her story exemplifies how strategic networking and stepping outside comfort zones create unexpected opportunities. After watching VizyPay's culture unfold on social media for months, she attended their office opening, boldly introduced herself to leadership, and ultimately created her own executive path.
Outhay's leadership philosophy centers on a delicate balance that many strive for but few master: combining flexibility and empathy with clear accountability. "I want to be a leader that I would want," she explains, having experienced her share of ineffective management throughout her career. This authenticity has helped build VizyPay's standout culture in the payments space. She particularly highlights empathy as women's critical contribution to the industry, enabling stronger relationships and innovative thinking.
The conversation explores how payment technologies are evolving, with Outhay noting the generational divide between her occasional check-writing and her children's fully digital payment habits. She stays innovative through industry networking groups and advises upcoming women leaders to "be bold, be curious" while advocating for themselves: "No one's going to fight harder for you to succeed than yourself."
Listen now to discover how empathy-driven leadership and strategic boldness can transform both organizations and careers in the rapidly evolving payments landscape.
From humble beginnings as a mathematics student in India to overseeing Citi's payments operations across 94 countries, Debopama Sen's 29-year journey offers valuable lessons for aspiring leaders. Her perspective on leadership is refreshingly practical: find the signal amidst the noise, articulate a clear strategic vision, and focus on helping your team excel. "It shouldn't be about the leader," she emphasizes, noting that in today's AI-driven landscape, the competitive edge comes from developing adaptability, critical thinking, empathy, and collaboration rather than just accumulating knowledge.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Debo discusses the inevitable shift toward real-time, 24/7/365 payment systems. This isn't merely a trend but a fundamental transformation that businesses must embrace to remain competitive. As she points out, even if your current business model doesn't demand instantaneous transactions, your customers, suppliers, or partners will eventually pull you in that direction. Citi has positioned itself at the forefront of this evolution with innovations like real-time liquidity solutions and 24/7 dollar clearing.
Perhaps most inspiringly, Debo shares wisdom on mentorship and using your voice as a female leader. "You have a voice and therefore you have a responsibility to use it," she advises younger women in the industry. She encourages professionals to proactively seek mentors beyond formal corporate programs, noting that most leaders are eager to give back. Her collaborative approach to leadership - viewing partnerships between traditional institutions and Fintechs as opportunities where "one plus one makes five" - exemplifies how diverse leadership styles can drive innovation in payments.
Join us for this thought-provoking conversation about redefining leadership through influence, impact, and innovation in the evolving payments landscape.
"The ability to juggle multiple projects and priorities is on a different level with working mothers," observes Lena Hackelöer, CEO and founder of Brite Payments, during our illuminating Women Leaders in Payments episode. Five years after launching her company focused on account-to-account payments in Europe, Lena brings fresh perspectives on leadership, innovation, and diversity in the rapidly evolving FinTech landscape.
Having cut her teeth at Klarna during its early growth stages, Lena's journey from marketing professional to FinTech founder offers a blueprint for aspiring women leaders. She challenges the notion that technical backgrounds are prerequisites for success in payments: "Don't shy away from the challenge just because you don't have a technical background. That's a really common misconception." Instead, she advocates gaining comprehensive understanding of business operations across departments, creating value through perspective rather than siloed expertise.
What truly sets European payments apart right now? Lena highlights the game-changing instant payment regulation enabling 10-second transfers across the entire Eurozone. This cross-border capability is transforming how merchants and consumers interact with money, positioning account-to-account transfers as a formidable alternative to traditional card processing. With Brite Payments now operating across 27 European markets, Lena's insights into the region's payment transformation arrive at a pivotal moment.
Her leadership philosophy balances high performance expectations with collaborative support - rejecting both the command-and-control approach and the ultra-consensus models that can slow innovation. This middle path creates space for diverse voices while maintaining the decisive momentum essential in FinTech. For women navigating this dynamic industry, Lena's structured mentorship approach, including strategically pairing board members with executives for built-in guidance, offers a replicable model for nurturing talent.
Listen now for practical wisdom from a leader who's building the future of payments from the ground up.
What happens when your work drains rather than energizes you? For Ahalya Vijay, VP of Product Operations at Worldpay, this realization sparked a pivotal career transformation from consulting to product leadership in payments.
In this illuminating conversation for Women Leaders in Payments month, Ahalya shares her global journey from Singapore to the crossroads of product and technology transformation. With remarkable candor, she reveals how an exercise mapping her energy levels across various projects led to a career-defining revelation: her superpower lies in cross-functional leadership, bringing diverse perspectives together to create tangible solutions.
At WorldPay, Ahalya leads Product Operations across three critical domains: strategy planning, analytics reporting, and operating model transformation. She describes product management as "a constant game of trade-offs," requiring data-driven decision-making to prioritize initiatives with limited resources. Her collaborative leadership style enables her to be a bridge between business functions while empowering team members to reach their potential.
The conversation ventures into artificial intelligence's transformative impact on payments, with Ahalya detailing how Worldpay is embedding AI into products while developing responses to its implications for tokenization, fraud prevention, and KYC. She also highlights open banking's potential growth in the US market, with Worldpay planning significant product launches in coming quarters.
Perhaps most valuable is Ahalya's distinction between mentorship and sponsorship. While mentors advise, sponsors "solve for your potential before you're aware of it," creating opportunities by advocating for you in rooms where you aren't present. Her advice for women in payments? "Own your impact and your story. Become comfortable talking about yourself because you're your best advocate."
Andie Hill's career defies traditional paths. From searching newspaper classifieds to becoming Executive Vice President of Agent Sales at Payroc, her journey illustrates how authenticity and relationship-building create leadership success in the payments industry.
"Being relevant and authentic" defines modern leadership for Hill. Throughout our conversation, she dismantles the myth that leaders must present a perfect image, emphasizing instead that showing up as your genuine self - even on difficult days - creates stronger connections and more effective outcomes. This philosophy has guided her through positions at industry giants including First Data, Vantiv, and Visa before her current role at Payroc.
Technology emerges as both challenge and opportunity throughout our discussion. As Hill notes, "We just feel like we started to really get a good handle on integration and ISVs, and now here comes AI." She predicts even more seamless payment experiences in the near future, such as phone-to-phone transfers happening with a simple tap rather than through apps. This perspective emphasizes how payment professionals must constantly anticipate and adapt to technological shifts.
Perhaps most valuable for emerging professionals is Hill's insight on mentorship. Rather than formal programs with rigid schedules, she credits casual conversations at industry events and networking opportunities for her most transformative professional relationships. "Some of the best mentorship I've ever had were the people that I've met sitting at a registration desk," she shares, encouraging young professionals to proactively seek these connections rather than waiting for formal introductions.
Have you considered a career in payments? As Hill advises, "Don't let the noise scare you." Despite its technical complexity, the industry remains accessible and rewarding for those willing to embrace learning. Take the first step - reach out to someone in the field today and start your own payments journey.
Maggie O'Toole's remarkable journey from arriving in Chicago from Poland with just $300 to becoming Chief Client Officer at Dash Solutions exemplifies the power of mindset and determination in creating extraordinary outcomes. Her story serves as both inspiration and blueprint for anyone looking to make their mark in the payments industry.
With disarming candor, Maggie shares the formative experiences that shaped her leadership philosophy – from bartending jobs in her early days to orchestrating client success strategies at a Fortune-recognized innovative company. She reveals how focusing on possibilities rather than limitations became her superpower, allowing her to navigate unfamiliar terrain without a support system and ultimately thrive professionally.
At the heart of Maggie's leadership approach is a profound understanding that business success stems from human connection. "Businesses are people, and people want to do business with who they like and trust," she emphasizes, highlighting how Dash Solutions differentiates itself through exceptional service built on relationships. This philosophy drives her work transforming how companies handle payment operations across healthcare and other sectors traditionally slow to embrace digital innovation.
Maggie offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective on modern leadership, advocating for situational approaches tailored to team members' growth journeys rather than one-size-fits-all management. She stresses the importance of psychological safety in fostering innovation, encouraging teams to "question everything" and imagine what might be possible if failure wasn't an option. For women navigating career advancement, her advice to "find your tribe" rather than just pursuing job titles resonates as both practical and profound.
Discover the evolution of leadership in the payments industry through the lens of someone who's lived it. Sheffali Welsh, Chief Operating Officer of The Clearing House, brings a unique perspective shaped by her unconventional journey from cognitive science studies to overseeing operations for America's only private payment network operator.
The payments landscape demands a special kind of leadership – one that balances innovation with stability, risk-taking with prudence, and technical expertise with people-centered approaches. Sheffali articulates how leadership in financial services has transformed from the hierarchical, top-down model of decades past to today's collaborative, empowering style that connects employees to purpose and embraces flexibility. Her experiences navigating the 2008 financial crisis as chief of staff to Citigroup's global CFO provided invaluable lessons about leadership during turbulence that continue to shape her approach today.
What sets great leaders apart? According to Sheffali, it's "grit" – that powerful combination of passion and perseverance particularly evident in women who've had to play the long game in their careers. She makes a compelling case for how this quality is perfectly suited to the payments industry, where innovations like real-time payments require both visionary thinking and patient execution.
Her insights on the distinction between mentorship and sponsorship illuminate why women still need more advocates who will speak up for them when they're not in the room. Looking ahead, she's watching the emerging digital assets and stablecoin landscape as payments' next frontier.
Listen now and discover why playing the long game through strategic lateral moves might be your best career strategy in the dynamic world of payments.
What happens when the primary users of an industry's products aren't well-represented in its leadership? Serena Smith, Chief Client Officer at i2c, tackles this fundamental question in a fascinating exploration of women's influence in the payments ecosystem.
The stark reality? Women drive 85% of consumer purchases across categories but hold only 27% of C-suite positions in financial services. This disconnect creates a leadership opportunity that Serena has embraced throughout her remarkable career journey, which began in a bank's mailroom and led to executive roles spanning global payment operations.
Serena shares the pivotal risk that transformed her career trajectory - pitching a new remittance processing business directly to FIS's executive team when her position was threatened by an acquisition. This bold move not only saved her job but catapulted her career forward, embodying her philosophy that calculated risk-taking and authentic leadership are essential for success.
Her battle with cancer represents another transformative chapter, reshaping how she approaches leadership: "I'm not the same person I was before cancer. I'm stronger, wiser, more alive." This experience taught her to lead with purpose, gratitude, and a heightened awareness of what truly matters.
As payments become increasingly personalized, Serena emphasizes that tomorrow's successful payment solutions must adapt to consumers rather than the reverse. At i2c, she helps clients navigate this evolution through a flexible technology stack that supports global payment processing needs across 90+ countries.
For aspiring women leaders, Serena's advice is clear: own your story, recognize your unique perspective as strength, develop deep business knowledge, and both seek and provide mentorship. The future of payments needs diverse voices at the table, especially from those who understand consumer needs firsthand.
Billi Jo Wright's unconventional journey from working in her uncle's sheet metal factory to executive leadership in payments spans nearly three decades and offers powerful lessons about persistence, adaptability, and betting on yourself. Without a college degree but armed with boundless curiosity, Billi Jo navigated through various roles across issuing and acquiring before finding her passion in risk management, where she's thrived by approaching old problems with fresh perspectives.
Two pivotal moments shaped her career trajectory: first, when she returned to work after having four children in 18 months, eventually becoming her family's sole breadwinner; and second, when she left what seemed like a dream role at a large company to join a smaller startup where she could drive meaningful change. Both decisions required tremendous courage and self-confidence—qualities that continue to define her leadership approach.
For Billi Jo, modern leadership centers on empowerment. She builds high-performing teams by deliberately seeking diverse perspectives and complementary skill sets, then creating high-trust environments where people can thrive. This collaborative approach has proven successful through multiple acquisitions, demonstrating that effective leadership isn't about command-and-control but about enabling others to succeed.
Looking toward the future of payments, she's closely watching how artificial intelligence will transform both operational capabilities and fraud vectors. Her balanced perspective embraces innovation while remaining vigilant about emerging risks - exactly the thoughtful approach needed in today's rapidly evolving payment ecosystem.
For those building careers in payments, especially women, Billi Jo emphasizes networking, finding mentors who exemplify the leadership style you aspire to, and securing sponsors who will actively advocate for your advancement. Her advice to "get uncomfortable" acknowledges that growth often happens outside our comfort zones. Ready to transform how you think about leadership and risk in payments? Listen now and discover strategies that can elevate your approach to both.
What happens when you build direct connections to over 350 real-time banks and wallets worldwide? You create what Thunes CEO Floris de Kort calls "the smart superhighway to move money around the world."
The limitations of traditional cross-border payments are all too familiar for businesses operating globally. SWIFT transfers take days, lack transparency, come with hefty fees, and stop completely on weekends and holidays. Thunes is revolutionizing this outdated model by enabling real-time payments across 130 countries and 80 currencies through direct connections to financial institutions and alternative payment methods.
During this revealing conversation, Floris explains how Thunes has built a powerful competitive advantage through direct integrations with payment endpoints like GCash in the Philippines and M-Pesa in Kenya. Unlike competitors who rely on chains of aggregators, these direct connections deliver higher transaction success rates, more cost-efficient processing, and faster issue resolution when problems arise.
Perhaps most compelling is how Thunes' services are enabling financial inclusion in emerging markets. By facilitating immediate payments to mobile wallets, they're helping unbanked individuals participate in the global economy - like ride-share drivers in Africa who can now receive instant payment, purchase fuel, and continue earning without traditional banking infrastructure.
With licenses now secured in all 50 U.S. states and a new office opening in Atlanta, Thunes is positioned for aggressive growth in American markets, particularly serving U.S. companies with global payment needs.
Step into the world of payment innovation with Pierre Aurel, Chief Product Officer, and Norman Frankel, Chief Growth Officer at Stanchion Payments as they demystify SoftPOS technology - the revolutionary software turning ordinary smartphones into powerful payment terminals.
SoftPOS fundamentally transforms how merchants accept payments, enabling any NFC-capable Android or iOS device to process contactless transactions without specialized hardware. This breakthrough eliminates barriers for small businesses, sole proprietors, and mobile vendors who previously couldn't justify the expense of traditional payment terminals. As Norman reveals, one European bank reported that 25% of all their acquired transactions came from SoftPOS applications just one year after launch - a testament to the technology's rapid adoption.
Security concerns have been meticulously addressed through rigorous standards including PCI MPOC, creating a protected environment for processing sensitive payment data on everyday devices. While implementation requires significant investment from software providers to meet these standards, the end result delivers enterprise-grade security with consumer-grade simplicity.
The technology has found unexpected champions across diverse sectors. Churches embraced it during the pandemic for contactless donations, government mandates in countries like Romania and Greece accelerated adoption for tax compliance, and major retailers including Walmart and Decathlon deploy it for queue-busting and business continuity during outages.
Looking ahead, Pierre envisions improvements in NFC antenna technology to enhance the payment experience, deeper integration into everyday applications, and the blurring of lines between e-commerce and in-person payments. For merchants considering the switch, the benefits are compelling - potential savings of $300+ compared to terminal rental costs, enhanced payment flexibility, and no more missed sales due to uncharged or malfunctioning hardware.
What happens when you combine the merchant benefits of pay-by-bank transactions with the consumer rewards typically reserved for credit cards? Matt Brennan, CEO of Spire, reveals how their groundbreaking approach is transforming everyday payments across America.
Brennan walks us through Spire's innovative branded payment solution that powers merchant-specific programs like Shell's "S-Pay." By partnering with Discover Network, Spire issues 16-digit PANs linked to consumers' bank accounts - creating a hybrid payment that works on existing terminals while settling via ACH. This elegant solution eliminates the traditional hurdles that have limited pay-by-bank adoption at physical points of sale.
The beauty of Spire's approach lies in its true win-win nature: merchants dramatically reduce processing costs while offering substantial rewards (like 15-20¢ off per gallon or 5% store discounts), and consumers enjoy immediate benefits without accumulating credit card debt. This value proposition has fueled remarkable growth, with Spire now accepted at 55,000 locations representing 65% of branded fuel retailers nationwide.
With 750,000 bank accounts linked and transaction volumes growing 200% in just seven months, Spire is clearly tapping into unmet consumer needs. Brennan identifies two key adopter groups: tech-savvy younger consumers comfortable with alternative payment methods, and financially-conscious "savvy savers" seeking rewards without additional debt. As consumer debt concerns continue to rise and open banking makes account linking increasingly mainstream, Spire is positioned at the intersection of major financial trends.
Digital commerce security stands at a critical crossroads, with an average of 66 third-party vendors present during the typical e-commerce checkout flow. Each of these represents a potential security vulnerability that could compromise your customers' payment data. Few understand this landscape better than Rui Ribeiro, Co-Founder and CEO of Jscrambler.
Ribeiro's journey began in Portugal with a computer science background that led him through the banking industry before identifying a crucial gap in 2014: client-side security. What started as a broad security mission has evolved into specialized protection for payment processes, with Jscrambler now serving major e-commerce platforms across airlines, retail, and hospitality sectors.
The timing couldn't be more relevant. With the PCI Council's recent release of PCI DSS v4, client-side security has moved from a best practice to a compliance requirement. Companies must now implement strategies that protect cardholder data by securing JavaScript and payment pages while detecting unauthorized access - exactly what Jscrambler specializes in.
"Security should never be a barrier for innovation," Ribeiro emphasizes. His company's approach allows businesses to continue adding frictionless checkout features while ensuring third parties can't access sensitive payment information. This balance becomes increasingly challenging as merchants integrate chatbots, payment calculators, installment options, and other tools that improve customer experience but potentially expand the attack surface.
The future of payments is shifting dramatically as consumers demand more options and businesses seek better ways to assess risk. John Gordon, CEO of ValidiFI, takes us deep into how bank account behavior data is becoming the missing puzzle piece in understanding consumer reliability beyond traditional credit scores.
Gordon explains how ValidiFI sits at the critical intersection of compliance and fraud prevention, helping businesses meet NACHA's WEB debit rule requirements while gaining valuable insights into consumer payment patterns. By analyzing factors like bank account changes, previous negative balances, and account relationship patterns, ValidiFI provides powerful signals that predict payment outcomes and identify potential fraud before it happens.
What truly sets this conversation apart is Gordon's perspective on consumer financial empowerment. He notes how payment preferences are evolving rapidly, with account-to-account transfers growing yearly and programs like Target's RedCard demonstrating the power of bank-account-linked payment methods. The conversation explores how real-time payment networks and non-credentialed bank verification are creating new opportunities for businesses to offer seamless, secure payment experiences that consumers actually want to use.
Ready to rethink how you validate customer payment information? Listen now and discover strategies that go beyond basic compliance to deliver real business value while meeting evolving consumer expectations.
Max Galash takes us on a fascinating journey through the rapidly evolving cryptocurrency landscape as CEO of Coinchange, a global crypto brokerage and asset management platform with offices in Warsaw and Toronto.
Having pivoted from a direct-to-consumer approach following the collapse of major players like Celsius and BlockFi, CoinChange now focuses exclusively on B2B relationships with crypto operators, exchanges, neobanks, and payment platforms. What sets them apart in this emerging space is their multi-manager investment approach – rather than simply offering tokenized T-bills like many competitors, they employ various managers deploying different trading strategies to create customized, principle-protected structured products.
The conversation provides remarkable insight into how stablecoins are revolutionizing global payments, especially in emerging markets where access to USD-denominated products is limited. "Stablecoins are a bridge between banking, trading, exchanges, crypto and remittances," Max explains, highlighting their crucial role in enabling global settlements within seconds. His prediction that blockchain will become the backbone of settlement networks rather than remaining consumer-facing technology aligns with moves by financial giants like BlackRock and JP Morgan, who are already settling billions through private blockchains.
Ready to understand how cryptocurrency is reshaping global finance? Listen now to hear Max's complete insights and predictions for this transformative industry.
We’ve officially reached 400 episodes of the Leaders in Payments Podcast - and what a journey it’s been. I’m incredibly proud of this milestone and truly grateful to our listeners, guests, and community. With over 375 guests featured, we’ve uncovered countless insights from the best minds in the business.
To celebrate episode 400, I sat down with Barry McCarthy, President and CEO of Deluxe. Barry takes us on a fascinating journey through the transformation of a century-old company once known primarily for check printing into a modern payments and data powerhouse.
What does a company do when its core business faces digital disruption? For Deluxe, the answer was bold reinvention. McCarthy reveals how the company now processes approximately $3 trillion annually across four integrated business lines: merchant services targeting mid-market businesses, B2B payments focused on accounts receivable/payable management, data-driven marketing leveraging one of the industry's largest consumer databases, and their legacy print operations.
The conversation explores how Deluxe has strategically repositioned itself at the intersection of payments, data, and artificial intelligence. McCarthy shares specific examples of how they're applying AI to solve real business problems, from matching payments to invoices to identifying high-converting marketing leads. His vision for the future of payments is particularly compelling – a world where payment processing becomes as invisible and omnipresent as electricity, simply working in the background without conscious thought.
Whether you're a payments industry veteran or just beginning your fintech career, this milestone 400th episode delivers rich insights on corporate transformation, the future of embedded payments, and the strategic application of artificial intelligence in financial services.
As CEO & Co-Founder of Sling Money, Mike is transforming how we think about sending funds across borders by making international transfers as effortless as sending a text message.
During our conversation, Mike reveals how a personal experience moving USDC between the UK and San Francisco sparked his vision. The transfer itself was instant and free, but everything around it felt clunky – "like using a Unix command line from the 80s." This insight led him to create what he calls "the macOS or iPhone of stablecoins," abstracting away all of the complexity.
Sling's elegant approach allows users to add money through local payment methods in 75 countries, convert to stablecoins behind the scenes, and send funds globally in just seconds. Recipients can withdraw to their local currency almost instantly, never needing to understand the underlying technology. The use cases range from practical (managing finances across multiple countries) to spontaneous (buying someone a beer across continents) – transactions that were previously impossible or prohibitively expensive.
Mike places this innovation in a fascinating historical context, comparing the evolution of international payments to what happened with telecommunications and streaming video. Just as we no longer think twice about "long-distance calls," he envisions a future where the concept of "international payments" disappears entirely.
Ready to experience the future of global money transfer? Download Sling Money today and join the community making international payments instant, free, and frictionless.
Frank Arellano, founder and CEO of Revolv3, peels back the curtain on a staggering $600 billion problem plaguing the payments industry that few executives fully understand. False declines - legitimate transactions incorrectly rejected by payment processors - account for a shocking two-thirds of all credit card declines. For subscription-based businesses, this translates into devastating levels of involuntary customer churn.
Drawing from his 25 years of experience at companies like Ingram Micro and Experian, Frank explains how Revolv3's intelligent payment optimization platform tackles this challenge head-on. Unlike traditional payment gateways, Revolv3 analyzes over 100 different data elements in every transaction to build trust with issuers and dramatically improve approval rates. The results speak volumes: merchants using Revolv3's platform achieve an average 14% increase in approval rates and nearly 30% growth in total revenue from decline management alone.
What sets this conversation apart is Frank's holistic view of the payments ecosystem and its future trajectory. He predicts embedded finance and predictive capabilities will dominate the next few years, with increased focus on tokenization and regulatory compliance over the next decade.
For professionals entering the fintech space, Frank offers invaluable advice: understand how money moves throughout the entire ecosystem, rather than focusing on just one aspect.
The world of payments is undergoing a radical transformation, and at the heart of this revolution stands Wix Payments. In this compelling conversation with co-heads Vova Tsukur and Amit Sagiv, we uncover how this powerhouse is reshaping financial services for small businesses across 190 countries.
What makes Wix Payments truly special? It's not just another payment processor. By leveraging deep user knowledge gathered through their platform, they've crafted a frictionless onboarding experience that allows merchants to start accepting payments almost immediately. This approach has become a lifeline for small businesses often rejected by traditional providers despite being legitimate operations.
"We see the customer in a holistic way," explains Amit. "We understand their identity really well and can assess risk more accurately than standalone payment providers." This insight enables their unique multi-processor strategy, intelligently routing transactions across various payment partners to optimize approval rates and performance.
The future vision they share is equally fascinating. From AI-powered risk management that's already transforming their operations to a world of "real-time everything" where payments, settlements, and payouts happen instantaneously. Vova even predicts a future where "payments become naked, free from UX," with AI agents autonomously conducting transactions based on predefined parameters.
Both leaders emphasize that embracing AI isn't optional in today's payment landscape. "The fraudsters don't wait to adapt—they adapt fast," Amit warns. "By the time you catch up to one threat, they've already moved on to something more sophisticated."
Darryl Hicks, founder and CEO of FlexPay, takes us behind the scenes of a problem costing subscription businesses millions each month – failed payments and the resulting involuntary customer churn.
From his early days cleaning toilets in his parents' commercial cleaning business to consulting for major telecom companies in the Twin Towers, Darryl shares his unique journey to founding a company that's now processing billions of transactions using sophisticated AI. What began as a solution he built for his own subscription businesses has evolved into a mission to fundamentally transform how payments work.
FlexPay stands apart through deep partnerships with financial institutions, sharing crucial data that has traditionally been siloed between merchants and issuers. This approach allows their machine learning models to continuously improve. For subscription businesses experiencing millions in monthly failed payments, even small improvements in recovery rates translate to substantial revenue.
The conversation reveals how payment system opacity creates unnecessary friction for legitimate commerce. When issuing banks make decisions without transparency – whether declining transactions due to suspected fraud or based on undisclosed policies against certain merchant categories – both businesses and consumers suffer.
While excited about innovations like stable coins, Darryl remains pragmatic about the future of payments: "I would not bet against Visa and Mastercard." Rather than trying to replace traditional rails, he's focused on reducing friction within existing systems through better data sharing and transparency. For entrepreneurs, he emphasizes the importance of building strong advisory boards and following your natural passions.
Dan Battista, CEO and Partner at Factor4, takes us on an journey through the rapidly evolving gift card landscape. With genuine passion and deep industry knowledge, Dan reveals how Factor4 has grown from just 3 employees to 22 staff serving over 21,000 merchants in just a decade.
The conversation illuminates Factor4's remarkable approach to customer service – answering emails within 10 minutes and phones within two rings – which has become their true competitive advantage. Unlike competitors owned by large payment processors, Factor4 focuses exclusively on gift and loyalty solutions, allowing them to devote 100% of their investment and attention to perfecting these offerings.
Dan walks us through the transformation of gift cards during the pandemic era – from traditional plastic cards to essential digital solutions delivered via email and SMS. What was once a "nice-to-have" became a critical business necessity, pushing Factor4 to develop comprehensive omnichannel capabilities that seamlessly connect online and in-store experiences.
Particularly compelling is Dan's insight into loyalty programs as customer relationship management tools. When pandemic restrictions hit, merchants suddenly realized they had no way to communicate with their regular customers about changing hours, outdoor dining, or reopening plans. Factor4's customized loyalty solutions filled this gap, helping businesses build valuable customer databases while driving repeat business.
The conversation also explores Factor4's innovative approach to technology, including their development of iOS and Android apps that enable gift card transactions without additional hardware – simply using a smartphone camera to read barcodes. This adaptability has allowed them to integrate with over 50 different POS systems and expand internationally across ten countries.
What happens when you combine identity verification with payment precision? That's the question Ben Turner set out to answer when he founded Verituity, a company transforming enterprise disbursements by focusing on verification at every step of the payment process.
Drawing from his experiences at Network Solutions in the early days of e-commerce, Turner recognized that payment fraud and errors stem from an identity problem. When businesses can't confidently verify who they're paying, millions of dollars are lost to mistakes and fraudsters.
Turner challenges conventional thinking about payment speed and modernization. While most conversations focus on real-time capabilities, he argues that what enterprises truly need is payment precision and cash optimization. "Real-time is more valuable often on the debit side than it is on the credit side," Turner explains, highlighting how businesses want to optimize when funds leave their accounts rather than simply accelerating all payments. This insight transforms digital disbursements from potential risk into strategic cash management tools.
Ready to transform your approach to enterprise disbursements? Discover how Verituity's verification-first model can eliminate payment errors, reduce fraud risk, and optimize your cash management. Connect with Verituity to learn more.
Ever wondered how pest control, landscaping, and janitorial companies are being transformed through innovative financial technology? Jacob Olins, SVP & GM of Fintech at WorkWave, takes us deep into the world where field service management software meets cutting-edge financial services.
WorkWave has positioned itself as the operating system for field service businesses, providing everything from customer acquisition tools to mobile apps for technicians. But what truly sets their platform apart is how they've revolutionized payments and financial services within these traditional industries. Olins walks us through their journey from payment reseller to full Payment Facilitator, giving them complete control over the customer experience and unlocking new revenue opportunities.
The most fascinating aspect of our conversation reveals how embedded financial services are solving real business problems. For companies struggling with customer retention, WorkWave's card-on-file and subscription capabilities have helped transform one-off service calls into recurring revenue streams. Their consumer financing partnerships make large emergency services affordable for homeowners. Perhaps most impressive, their earned wage access feature has increased employee retention by over 30% by allowing hourly workers to access earned wages before payday.
Ready to understand how the $13 trillion banking industry is being reshaped by innovative software platforms? Listen now and discover insights that might forever change how you view the intersection of software and financial services.
Meet Jeff Shea, the co-founder and CEO of Under who's revolutionizing how payments companies onboard merchants. Drawing from over two decades in payments and fintech, Jeff has created a digital account opening platform that's solving one of the industry's most persistent challenges.
Under helps payments companies streamline merchant onboarding through integrated identity verification, automated risk assessments, and simplified application collection. Serving over 100 payments organizations across the United States, the company primarily works with wholesale ISOs, payment facilitators, payment processors, and software companies that monetize payments. Jeff explains that their platform bridges the gap between disjointed point solutions that many companies currently cobble together, creating a seamless experience from lead generation through merchant approval.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Jeff discusses the future of payments and underwriting. He predicts continued growth in embedded and verticalized payments as more software platforms own their payment stacks. Looking further ahead, he believes payments will become increasingly commoditized, with differentiation coming from how platforms manage identity, trust, decisioning, and merchant experience. Most compellingly, Jeff references a McKinsey report predicting that traditional underwriting will disappear within a decade, replaced by artificial intelligence, deep learning, and machine learning. These technologies promise faster approvals for legitimate merchants while more effectively identifying problematic applicants.
Ready to transform your merchant onboarding process? Discover how Under can help you approve the right merchants faster while reducing risk at under.io.
What happens when you combine decades of payment industry expertise with a mission to solve one of the most overlooked problems in business banking? Brian Bailey, President of Clip Money, joins us to reveal how his company is transforming the way businesses handle cash deposits.
Despite the rapid growth of digital payments, cash still accounts for nearly 30% of all in-store transactions. Yet for decades, businesses have been forced to operate within an antiquated system - physically carrying cash to bank branches during limited hours, using paper deposit slips, and lacking visibility into their deposit lifecycle. With a network of 7,000 deposit locations across North America, Clip Money offers a revolutionary alternative that saves businesses 40-60% on deposit costs while providing next-business-day credit.
Bailey walks us through Clip's innovative shared network model that includes smart safes in shopping malls, deposit-enabled ATMs in partnership with NCR Atleos, and over-the-counter services through Green Dot's retail network. This infrastructure allows businesses to make deposits on their schedule, closer to their locations, while gaining full digital transparency through Clip's software platform. The result is a win-win proposition - businesses improve cash flow and reduce costs, while financial institutions can move cash handling outside their branches.
Drawing from his extensive background at NCR and Cardtronics, Bailey shares valuable insights about payment infrastructure evolution, regulatory challenges for fintech innovators, and the future of shared payment networks.
Mary Kay Bowman takes us behind the scenes of BILL's mission to transform financial operations for small businesses through an expertly crafted blend of software and financial services. As EVP and GM of Payments and Financial Services, she brings decades of experience from pioneering roles at Amazon, Square, and Visa to tackle the challenges that interrupt the daily flow of small business finance.
The conversation reveals how BILL serves as both operational software provider and financial partner to thousands of small businesses across every industry vertical. Working alongside 8,000 accounting firm partners, the platform handles everything from accounts payable and receivable to employee expense management, while supporting transactions across 130 currencies. What truly sets BILL apart is their seamless integration of workflow management with money movement – creating a system that doesn't just process payments but optimizes cash flow at every step.
Looking toward the future of payments, Bowman offers a refreshing perspective on the balance between frictionless technology and necessary visibility. While consumer payments often aim to disappear into the background, B2B transactions require strategic visibility at critical moments. This nuanced understanding comes from Bowman's remarkable journey through the evolution of digital payments, beginning at the dawn of internet commerce when she volunteered to tackle the "bumpy intersection" between money movement and technology.
Ready to transform your business's financial operations? Discover how BILL's intelligent platform can help your small business thrive by automating the noise and complexity of everyday finance, letting you focus on what truly matters.
Dustin Siner, Chief Revenue Officer at Payarc, brings 27 years of payments industry expertise and a fascinating journey that began with a psychology degree and a brief stint as a rehabilitation counselor. His therapeutic background proved surprisingly valuable in navigating the complex payments landscape, where relationship building remains the cornerstone of success despite technological advances.
Fresh from Payarc's recognition as ISO of the Year at the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), Dustin reveals the secret behind their meteoric rise - "The Payarc Way." This philosophy, built on integrity, empathy, courage, knowledge, and caring, guides how the company supports its network of 1,400+ independent agents, ISOs, and ISVs who generate an impressive 95% of their business.
While many competitors devalue the independent agent channel, Payarc doubles down on relationships with dedicated managers, responsive support teams, and proprietary technology platforms designed exclusively for partners. Their Partner Hub provides comprehensive tools for the entire sales process, from application to approval, while their suite of payment solutions offers partners competitive advantages in a crowded marketplace.
What truly distinguishes Payarc is their approach to artificial intelligence through their PIE AI program. Rather than replacing human interaction, they enhance it - helping partners analyze statements with PIE Agent Advisor, predict customer churn with PIE Churn, and enable merchants to gain business insights through natural language queries with PIE Merchant Advisor.
For agents, ISOs, and ISVs seeking a partner that values relationships as much as innovation in an increasingly consolidated market, Payarc offers a refreshing alternative where technology and humanity work together to drive mutual success.
Allen Kopelman, CEO and Founder of Nationwide Payment Systems, takes us behind the curtain of the rapidly evolving payments landscape, sharing insights gained from his fascinating career transition from restaurant chef to payments industry leader. Since founding his company in 2001, Allen has navigated multiple industry transformations, positioning his business to thrive amid technological disruption.
The conversation reveals a fundamental shift in merchant priorities: "Today businesses are buying tech first, merchant services second." This observation frames Allen's provocative assertion that "Software is the new ISO."
Looking ahead, Allen identifies several critical trends reshaping payments: the dominance of software-driven solutions, the impact of the FTC's "click-to-cancel" rule on recurring transactions, and potential interchange fee adjustments from card networks. He offers a compelling perspective on artificial intelligence as well, revealing how his company has leveraged AI to dramatically improve SEO performance and predicting that "people who know how to use AI will replace people who don't use AI."
Ready to gain insights from a payments veteran who's successfully navigated decades of industry evolution? This episode delivers practical wisdom you can apply immediately to your payments business or career.
Andrew Riabchuk's journey from building a payment gateway prototype as a computer science student in Ukraine to founding Akurateco—a global payment orchestration platform—reveals how technical expertise shapes fintech innovation. During our conversation, Andrew offers a fascinating perspective on what payment orchestration truly means beyond simple transaction routing: it's about creating value, reducing complexity, and enabling businesses to scale globally with minimal friction.
The technical side of payments is becoming increasingly sophisticated while consumer experiences grow more seamless. Andrew explains how Akurateco navigates this paradox by providing a platform that handles the complexity behind the scenes, allowing their clients—payment service providers, banks, and enterprise merchants—to focus on their core business. With over 50 pre-integrated financial partners accessible through a single integration point, businesses can quickly expand into new markets and offer localized payment methods without the traditional technical burden.
What stands out most about Andrew's approach is the emphasis on partnership over mere service provision. Their "payment team as a service" concept reflects a deeper understanding that payments success requires both advanced technology and human expertise. As payment verticals become increasingly specialized for specific industries, and as cryptocurrency gradually moves toward mainstream adoption, Andrew's insights offer a valuable roadmap for navigating the evolving payments landscape.
Want to learn more about streamlining your payment operations or explore how payment orchestration could transform your business? Connect with Andrew and the Akurateco team to discover strategies that could simplify your technical infrastructure while expanding your global reach.
Blockchain technology is finally crossing the threshold from speculative promise to practical implementation, and Will Martino is at the forefront of this transformation. As President and Co-Founder of Kadena, Will brings unique credentials to the blockchain space—having built JP Morgan's first blockchain payment system before leaving to solve the fundamental limitations preventing enterprise-grade adoption.
The blockchain industry has struggled with a persistent trilemma: how to achieve security, decentralization, and scalability simultaneously. Kadena's breakthrough comes through its innovative ChainWeb architecture, which horizontally scales proof-of-work consensus without corresponding increases in energy consumption. "Right now we have 20 chains that are all in a single network, braided together using proof of work," Will explains. "When we go from 20 to 40, we actually increase our efficiency by 2x for basically no cost."
This technical achievement arrives at a pivotal moment. Financial institutions that once insisted on private blockchains are now actively exploring public blockchain integration following BlackRock's successful SEC-approved protocol launch. This shift has created unprecedented opportunity for proof-of-work blockchains like Kadena that offer stronger security guarantees than proof-of-stake alternatives.
Beyond the technical architecture, Will's team is addressing critical user experience challenges through SpireKey—a decentralized authentication system inspired by Sweden's Bank ID that transforms smartphones into hardware wallets. Having lived through the early, sometimes painful days of blockchain development (including lost wallet keys worth thousands), Will is committed to making the technology accessible to everyone.
Check out kadena.io to explore how this next-generation blockchain is building the infrastructure for crypto's inevitable mainstream adoption.
Joe Mach, CEO of North America at Castles Technology, reveals how this fourth-largest player in payment terminals has captured massive market share while flying under the radar. Their secret? Over 60% of everything they sell doesn't bear their name - it's white-labeled for partners who trust them enough to put their own brands on the technology.
Castles' success stems from their deep technical expertise and customer-first approach. Based in Taiwan ("Technology Island"), they innovate faster than legacy providers, delivering not just hardware but comprehensive solutions tailored to specific industry challenges. Their movement from basic terminal management to true Mobile Device Management capabilities enables remote troubleshooting, geofencing for security, and even AI-powered predictive maintenance.
Looking forward, Mach identifies three transformative trends: the rising influence of specialized software vendors, seamless integration of AI with payments, and the emergence of SoftPOS technologies on consumer devices. These innovations address the expectations of younger consumers who simply won't tolerate friction in their shopping experiences.
As an "accidental CEO" who rose through sales and commercial roles, Mach's leadership philosophy centers on growth - not just for shareholders, but as a vehicle to create opportunities for employees. Listen now to discover how Castles Technology is transforming the payment landscape for merchants of all sizes.
The payments ecosystem is evolving rapidly, creating both challenges and opportunities for every player in the industry. In this thought-provoking conversation with Alexander Renzi and Aleks Teichman of MAPP Advisors, we dive deep into how ISOs, ISVs, banks, and fintechs can navigate this changing landscape.
Alexander and Aleks bring unique perspectives from their decades of experience across all facets of the payments industry. They offer invaluable insights into the practical realities of growing a payments business today. Their firm, MAPP Advisors, works collaboratively with companies across the ecosystem, providing actionable guidance rather than theoretical advice.
For ISOs facing unprecedented pressure from all angles – regulatory scrutiny, processor competition, and integrated payments solutions – the message is clear: adapt or perish. The most successful ISOs are evolving beyond transaction processing, building deeper relationships with merchants through value-added services.
Bank-fintech partnerships represent another critical evolution in payments. What was once a vendor-client relationship has transformed into essential collaborative partnerships. Banks are no longer just fine print on merchant applications – they're strategic partners whose sustainability and approach are key considerations for fintechs and ISOs alike.
Whether you're running an ISO, developing payments technology, or working within a financial institution, this episode offers strategic insights to help you navigate growth, regulation, and partnerships in today's complex payments landscape.
What happens when you build a payment processor focused on extraordinary customer service and cutting-edge technology? You become the ETA 2025 ISO of the Year. Jared Ronski, co-founder and President of Payarc, reveals the journey from small startup to industry award-winner in this engaging conversation.
Ronski shares Payarc's origin story, which began with a friendship between himself—then a payment agent—and entrepreneur Zach Martinez. Frustrated by how larger processors often sacrificed service as they scaled, the duo created Payarc with a clear mission: do everything better while putting customers first. This philosophy, known as "the Payarc Way," prioritizes meaningful relationships over transactional interactions.
Technology serves as Payarc's second pillar of success. Their team is developing practical AI applications that address real industry challenges, including merchant churn prediction, risk assessment tools, and self-service capabilities for agents. By focusing on reducing friction in the payment process, they've created seamless experiences that partners rave about—including ISV integrations described as "one of the easiest" their partners have ever conducted.
Ready to experience payment processing that combines technological innovation with genuine service? Discover how Payarc's unique approach could transform your business one payment at a time.
This episode is sponsored by American Express. In the latest Leaders in Payments episode, Greg Myers speaks with R.J. Ancona, Vice President and General Manager, B2B Product, Partner and Client Management at American Express, about the evolving B2B payments landscape. With 24 years at Amex, R.J. has seen firsthand how digital transformation is reshaping payments, making transactions faster and more efficient.
Buyers aim to optimize working capital, while suppliers want faster payments -yet late payments remain a challenge. According to Amex Trendex, 26% of business leaders have stopped working with a buyer or supplier due to slow payments.
To address these challenges, Amex is investing in automation and fintech partnerships. Recent collaborations with Boost and Versapay are streamlining virtual card acceptance and AR automation, helping suppliers reduce manual work and accelerate cash flow. AI and automation continue to drive efficiency, security, and better customer relationships in the payments ecosystem.
R.J. emphasizes that one-size-fits-all solutions no longer work. Businesses must customize payment strategies, maintain open communication, and leverage technology to stay competitive. As B2B payments evolve, trust, speed, and efficiency will define success.
This episode is sponsored by American Express. Dean Leavitt, founder and CEO of Boost Payment Solutions, takes us behind the scenes of a revolution happening in enterprise-level B2B payments. Founded to fill a critical gap in the market, Boost has spent 16 years perfecting technology that streamlines how large organizations pay their suppliers.
At the center of our discussion is the transformative power of virtual cards – single-use payment instruments that dramatically enhance security while simplifying operations. Unlike traditional payment methods that require companies to maintain sensitive banking information of thousands of suppliers, virtual cards create a secure, automated payment flow that dramatically reduces fraud risk. As Dean proudly shares, Boost has never experienced a single chargeback or fraud loss in its entire history.
The conversation spotlights Boost's groundbreaking collaboration with American Express, featuring their patented Boost Intercept technology. This innovation solves a persistent pain point in virtual card adoption by converting what were once manual, email-based payment processes into fully automated, straight-through experiences. The partnership enables American Express corporate customers to shift more spending to virtual cards while eliminating operational friction for suppliers receiving these payments.
Beyond the technical details, Dean shares insights into the "PARTS" framework (Pricing, Automation, Reporting, Timing, Security) that guides their approach to payment optimization. The conversation reveals how thoughtful technology implementation creates genuine win-win scenarios for both sides of the transaction equation, making this a fascinating exploration of how innovation is reshaping corporate financial operations.
This episode is sponsored by American Express. Cash flow shouldn't be a constant struggle. Yet for many mid-market companies, the path from invoice to payment is filled with unnecessary friction, manual processes, and frustrating delays that hurt both the bottom line and customer relationships.
Barrett Smith, Chief Payments and Customer Operations Officer at Versapay, reveals how accounts receivable automation is transforming finance operations for growing businesses. Drawing from his extensive background in payments and financial analytics, Smith shares practical insights on how automation creates measurable improvements in cash flow while elevating the finance department's strategic value.
The conversation tackles common pain points like the persistence of paper-based processes (imagine entire floors filled with invoice file cabinets), the challenges of managing increasing invoice volumes without proportional staffing increases, and the critical need for real-time financial visibility. Most compelling is how automation shifts finance teams from being perceived as back-office gatekeepers to becoming drivers of positive customer experiences.
Whether you're struggling with slow cash conversion, limited financial visibility, or simply want to free your finance team from manual data entry to focus on strategic initiatives, this episode provides a roadmap for leveraging AR automation to transform your business operations. The future of finance isn't just about counting money - it's about making it flow more efficiently through your organization.
Arik Shtilman, CEO of Rapyd, joined the Leaders in Payments podcast to discuss the company’s growth, industry trends, and the impact of AI and crypto on fintech. Over the past two and a half years, Rapyd has shifted its strategy from rapid expansion to profitability, achieving profitability in late 2024. This shift required streamlining operations, focusing on high-margin markets, and reducing headcount growth. A significant milestone was Rapyd’s $610 million acquisition of PayU, expected to finalize soon.
Shtilman highlighted major macroeconomic shifts, including changing interest rates and geopolitical events, which have influenced the company’s approach. He believes AI will revolutionize financial services, comparing its impact to the rise of the internet in 1998. Rapyd has already integrated AI into compliance, financial operations, and customer support, leading to faster onboarding, improved risk assessment, and reduced operational costs. AI-driven efficiencies are expected to shape the competitive landscape, favoring companies with advanced automation.
On crypto, Rapyd initially stayed cautious but has now embraced stablecoins for settlements and payments, anticipating further mainstream adoption. Looking ahead, Shtilman predicts continued consolidation in fintech, AI-driven efficiencies, and an industry transformation that will reshape how financial services operate in the coming years.
Dive into the fascinating world of digital payments in our latest episode featuring Ariel Tiger, CEO of EverC. We explore the intricate landscape of risk management as the payments industry evolves at an unprecedented pace. With the surge in online merchants post-pandemic, fraud is on the rise, transforming the way companies approach security.
Discover how EverC combines innovative technology with risk intelligence to equip businesses with the tools they need to intercept illegal activity before it occurs. Ariel shares his perspective on the dynamic role artificial intelligence plays in this context, suggesting that incorporating AI doesn't just enhance operational efficiency; it’s essential for sustainability in the ever-changing payment ecosystem.
Listeners will gain insights into the challenges facing digital commerce today and learn why building strong foundations in compliance and adaptability is key for future success. Whether you are a startup entering the fintech space or an established player navigating new technological advances, this episode offers valuable takeaways for everyone.
Explore the world of payment processing in our engaging conversation with Dustin Magaziner, CEO of PayBright. From his beginnings as a college entrepreneur to leading a successful company, Dustin shares invaluable insights into what sets PayBright apart in the increasingly competitive payments landscape. We discuss the vital role of independent sales agents (ISOs) in the industry, unpacking their challenges and the changing dynamics driven by technology.
Dustin delves into PayBright's commitment to ethical practices and superior support for their partners. He explains how understanding technology is crucial for agents to thrive and how embracing innovations can lead to future success. The conversation also touches on the potential of AI to transform operations and improve customer service quality in the payments sector.
Whether you’re an aspiring agent, a seasoned executive, or simply curious about the payments industry, this episode offers a rich perspective on navigating its complexities. Join us in understanding how to elevate your approach and stay ahead in your career!
In the latest episode of Leaders in Payments, Greg Myers speaks with John Minutaglio, CTO of Payarc, about the role of artificial intelligence in payments. Payarc, a rapidly growing payment processor, has built a reputation for providing high-touch service to merchants and agents. Their focus has always been on fostering strong relationships, and AI is now playing a crucial role in enhancing that experience.
John explains that Payarc’s AI strategy is centered on augmenting human interactions rather than replacing them. Their AI framework, called PIE, assists customer support teams by providing insights and recommendations, allowing representatives to respond more efficiently and personally to merchant needs. One significant use case is churn prediction, where AI analyzes data to identify merchants at risk of leaving. By proactively alerting human representatives, Payarc can engage with customers before they churn, leading to increased retention.
Another powerful application of AI at Payarc is in developer support. Their AI tools help software providers integrate Payarc’s payment solutions more effectively by analyzing code and identifying errors, reducing the need for complex troubleshooting. AI also enhances fraud detection, particularly in mitigating ACH reject fraud. By analyzing behavioral patterns and external data sources, Payarc can identify suspicious activities before they escalate into financial losses.
John highlights that AI in payments is not just about automation but about using intelligence to drive better service, security, and efficiency. As AI continues to evolve, Payarc aims to remain at the forefront, leveraging advanced models to improve customer confidence, reduce fraud, and enhance the overall payment experience.
Unlock the secrets of mastering payment operations with Jo Phillips and Will Corbera, the Co-founders and Co-CEOs of Payabli. Discover how their revolutionary unified API and infrastructure stack is transforming the SaaS landscape by streamlining the often-overlooked world of payment operations. Jo and Will take us through their inspiring journeys in the payments industry, revealing how Payabli is making it easier for software companies to efficiently manage the complexities of Pay In, Pay Out, and Pay Ops. Learn about the critical behind-the-scenes aspects of processing payments, such as merchant boarding, underwriting, risk monitoring, and fraud prevention, all aimed at enhancing the entrepreneurial economy.
Gain insight into future trends and strategies ready to redefine payment operations. From the sophistication of AI tools designed to combat fraud and streamline underwriting processes to real-life success stories like a property management company revolutionizing its payment facilitation capabilities, this episode is packed with practical examples. Explore the strategic importance of onboarding and empowering merchants, and understand why an API-first approach is key to seamless integration and scalability.
Unlock the secrets of real-time merchant intelligence with Oban MacTavish, the innovative co-founder and CEO of Spade. Discover how his early fascination with stock trading and technology laid the foundation for launching Spade in 2021. Oban reveals how Spade revolutionizes card payment data by integrating firmographic insights for fraud prevention and payment optimization, setting new standards in the US market. With ambitious expansion plans on the horizon, you'll learn how Spade is transforming the way card issuers comprehend consumer spending patterns.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the world of data security, a crucial aspect of B2B operations. Oban details the significance of operating without personally identifiable information (PII) and achieving SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, ensuring rigorous security protocols are in place. From humble beginnings during the pandemic to creating a comprehensive data network for banks, Oban shares the challenges and triumphs that have defined Spade's journey. Beyond the professional realm, he gives us a glimpse into his personal life, sharing his passion for cooking and exploring culinary delights with his wife's baking prowess. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone interested in fintech innovation, entrepreneurship, and the stories that drive groundbreaking ideas.
In this episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast, host Greg Myers speaks with Rochelle Blease, President of G2 Risk Solutions, about her career journey, the role of G2 in the payments ecosystem, and the evolving landscape of risk and compliance. Rochelle shares her background, from studying law and working in litigation to transitioning into fintech, where she discovered a passion for business strategy, acquisitions, and regulatory compliance.
G2 Risk Solutions, a pioneer in merchant and payments risk, helps financial institutions, payment facilitators, and large digital platforms detect and prevent fraudulent activities. Rochelle explains how G2 leverages its proprietary Merchant Map, a sophisticated network that tracks fraud patterns and identifies illicit transactions globally. She emphasizes the critical role of data and expertise in staying ahead of well-funded fraudsters, particularly as digital commerce grows rapidly in emerging markets.
The discussion also touches on the increasing impact of AI in fraud detection and the challenges posed by evolving regulations. Rochelle highlights her passion for understanding customers and solving complex problems, as well as her personal interests in philanthropy, music, and family. She offers advice to young professionals entering the fintech space, encouraging them to explore their interests and embrace change.
Unlock the secrets to navigating the ever-evolving fintech landscape with Thomas Mueller, co-founder and CEO of Rivero. Discover how his journey has fueled his passion for innovation, leading to the creation of Rivero's transformative products, Kayo and Amico. Kayo is set to redefine compliance management for banks, while Amico promises a revolutionary approach to fraud recovery and dispute management. Thomas shares insights into the company's strategic expansion, focusing on banks with large card portfolios and harnessing a global SaaS model to make waves in both established and emerging markets. Plus, learn about their formidable partnership with Visa, which is shaping Rivero's distinct presence in the industry.
Thomas paints a vivid picture of the changing payments landscape, emphasizing the diversification of payment methods and the imperative for banks to adapt swiftly. We also delve into the personal side of entrepreneurship, exploring Thomas’s love for travel and cultural experiences, and his advice for budding fintech entrepreneurs who wish to break into the B2B payments sector. This episode is a call to action for those eager to innovate and build partnerships that bring specialized solutions to the financial world.
In this second episode of our three-part series with Payabli, we dive into their Pay Out product and explore how SaaS platforms are transforming money movement. Jo Phillips and Will Corbera share how they identified gaps in the market and built a unified API that enables software companies to embed and monetize payouts seamlessly. They discuss how traditional payout models often fail to maximize efficiency and revenue, and why SaaS platforms should go beyond simple merchant settlements.
This episode breaks down the growing role of embedded managed payables and on-demand payouts, showing how software platforms can streamline vendor payments while creating new income streams. Jo and Will also highlight the impact of virtual card issuance as a revenue driver and explain why integrating both accounts receivable and payable within a single platform is a game-changer. Tune in to learn how embedded payouts are shaping the future of fintech and SaaS payments.
In this episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast, host Greg Myers speaks with Jo Phillips and Will Corbera, co-CEOs of Payabli, about how modern payment infrastructure is transforming vertical SaaS platforms.
Jo and Will highlight the growing shift from legacy payment systems to embedded payments, allowing software companies to seamlessly integrate payment acceptance while unlocking new revenue streams. Payabli’s approach is built around the three Ps: Pay In, Pay Out, and Pay Ops, offering a unified API infrastructure that simplifies payments and enhances user experiences.
The conversation dives into the challenges SaaS companies face when monetizing payments—ranging from fragmented solutions to a lack of control over user experiences. Payabli solves these problems by providing a developer-friendly API and no-code solutions that allow businesses to customize their payment offerings effortlessly.
Additionally, they discuss the importance of pricing flexibility, interchange optimization, and split funding, catering to the unique needs of different industries. With a strong focus on innovation, Payabli is expanding into AI-powered solutions, real-time payments, and digital lockbox technology to further streamline payments.
This episode underscores why embedded payments are no longer optional for SaaS platforms—they are a strategic necessity.
Get ready to uncover the hidden intricacies of the B2B payments world with Perryn Holtrop, the innovative mind behind PayNation. Known for transforming payment efficiency in the manufacturing, distribution, and wholesale sectors, Perryn reveals how his company sets itself apart by seamlessly integrating with accounting and ERP systems to cut down on double entries. This episode promises to enlighten listeners about PayNation’s client-centric approach, focusing on consultative solutions rather than price wars, and tackling the unique challenges faced by middle-market businesses in the US.
Join Perryn and me on a reflective journey through his entrepreneurial past, from early days in auto security to managing comedy acts and ultimately staking his claim in the payments industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. Personal anecdotes highlight how the flexibility of the payments field allows for a rewarding balance between business and family life, including his daughter's athletic pursuits and his son's brief stint with cold calling. Explore the often misunderstood world of payments as we distinguish the field’s opportunities and challenges, making this episode a must-listen for seasoned professionals and newcomers alike.
Unlock the future of self-service payments as Elyssa Steiner, Chief Marketing Officer at Cantaloupe, joins us to uncover the latest innovations redefining the commerce landscape. Elyssa brings her extensive experience in marketing and self-service technology to our discussion, offering a compelling look at how Cantaloupe is leading the charge with cutting-edge payment solutions and analytics. We explore the profound shift towards cashless transactions, heightened by the global pandemic, and the ripple effects this has on consumer habits and business operations. From vending machines to futuristic smart stores on university campuses, Elyssa paints a vivid picture of a cashless world where convenience and technology go hand in hand.
Our conversation delves into the transformative power of AI and emerging technologies that are set to revolutionize consumer experiences and retail operations in 2025 and beyond. Discover how AI is making shopping more personalized through clever recommendations and dynamic pricing, while helping businesses optimize with predictive analytics and smarter inventory management. We're taking a close look at innovative technologies like weighted shelf systems and seamless mobile integration that promise frictionless payment experiences, particularly in entertainment venues. Elyssa shares insights on the challenges and triumphs of scaling these advanced solutions and how Cantaloupe continues to push the boundaries in retail technology. This is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the evolving world of self-service commerce and the digital payment revolution.
Carlos Vega, Co-Founder & CEO of Tesorio, joins us to share his remarkable journey from Panama to the U.S. and back, offering a fresh perspective on revolutionizing financial operations. Discover how Tesorio is transforming the post-sales processes for industries like B2B SaaS, manufacturing, and professional services by enhancing cash flow predictability. With a fully distributed team across the Americas, Tesorio is addressing inefficiencies head-on, replacing outdated methods with innovative solutions. Gain insights into Carlos's vision and how his experiences have shaped Tesorio's mission, including its seamless integration with financial and CRM systems.
The episode takes an intriguing turn as we explore future trends in the payment industry, focusing on the concept of "convergent evolution" in software development. We delve into how increased competition is shifting focus from traditional competitive advantages to data-driven strategies and brand reputation. Carlos sheds light on how reimagining cash flow as a data problem can optimize forecasts through network thinking and data connectivity. Uncover the challenges of extended payment terms in B2B transactions and the potential transformation of accounts receivable and payable for enhanced efficiency.
Join us as Amanda Crocker, the dynamic COO of SWIVEL, shares her captivating journey from the sun-soaked shores of Southern California to the heart of Texas, with academic stops in Reno along the way. Discover how Amanda is steering SWIVEL's innovative payment platform to serve financial institutions, credit unions, and the K through 12 market across the U.S. Her insights into targeting mid-market credit unions and smaller community banks with a blend of direct sales and strategic partnerships reveal the company's unique competitive advantage, all under the trusted SWBC umbrella. Amanda's passion for integration capabilities stands out, making Swivel a name to watch in the competitive payments landscape.
Our conversation then takes a fascinating turn as Amanda recounts her diverse career path, spanning industries like mortgage servicing, non-profit, manufacturing, and tech giants such as Microsoft and Facebook. Her experiences offer valuable lessons on the evolution of digital advertising and payment systems, and the importance of building strong company cultures. She also shares personal anecdotes about her love for outdoor adventures with her family and her adventurous pets. Aspiring professionals in the payments industry will find Amanda's advice inspiring, as she emphasizes creativity and the power of teamwork.
Artie Minson, President and CEO of LeafLink, takes center stage, sharing his journey from New York to the forefront of the cannabis tech industry. As a leader in B2B technology, Artie guides us through LeafLink's innovative ecosystem, connecting licensed cannabis brands and retailers with groundbreaking solutions to industry challenges. Discover how LeafLink is transforming the commerce landscape through its unique "pay on sell-through" tool, easing working capital pressures and ensuring secure payments. Artie's insights into LeafLink's strategic banking innovations reveal a commitment to tackling the underbanked nature of cannabis businesses, promising streamlined operations and efficiency gains in key states like Michigan, Colorado, and Mississippi.
Setting the stage for a revolution in cannabis payments, we explore the complexities and cash-dependent nature of this emerging market against the backdrop of federal legalization. Our conversation with Artie highlights LeafLink's all-in-one technology strategy, designed to integrate payment systems and deliver an e-commerce experience tailored for cannabis providers. Artie's career trajectory, from media and tech CFO roles to leadership at WeWork and LeafLink, reflects a passionate drive to redefine commerce in this dynamic space.
Join us as we chat with Alek Koenig, the visionary CEO and founder of Settle, who shares his journey from the streets of Poland and Texas to leading a groundbreaking company that is redefining backend software for CPG businesses. Alek dives into how his experiences at Capital One and various fintech startups equipped him with the skills to launch Settle, a platform that seamlessly integrates accounts payable, procurement, inventory management, and working capital solutions. Discover why Settle has shifted its focus from early-stage founders to finance executives as it scales, and how it leverages innovative go-to-market strategies like direct sales and partnerships with accounting firms.
Alek also offers a glimpse into the future of fintech, highlighting the industry's move towards integrated solutions that combine payments, accounting, and financing, while maintaining a cautious stance on blockchain due to regulatory challenges. He reflects on the entrepreneurial spirit that runs through his family, sharing insights on tackling meaningful challenges and maintaining a balance between work and family life. Aspiring fintech entrepreneurs will find Alek's advice invaluable - emphasizing the importance of gaining experience at successful companies to identify the problems worth solving. Tune in to learn how Settle is on a mission to revolutionize finance and operations for CPG companies and beyond and find out how you can become part of this exciting journey.
Unlock the secrets of e-commerce success for small businesses in the UK with insights from industry leaders Chintan Gandhi and Rob Ward of Worldpay. Discover how small and medium-sized businesses in the UK can transform their digital strategies by embracing innovative payment solutions. As Director of Strategic Planning and Go-to-Market, Chintan shares his expertise on navigating the UK e-commerce landscape, while Rob Ward, Product Director for eCommerce, provides a roadmap for integrating Worldpay's cutting-edge solutions into any business model. Learn to tackle common merchant challenges and elevate your online presence by implementing actionable strategies and best practices that are essential in today’s digital economy.
Join us as we explore the future trends that will redefine the e-commerce arena for SMBs in the UK. From digital wallets to cryptocurrencies, find out why diversifying your payment options is more crucial than ever. Hear from Chintan and Rob about the transformative role of AI and blockchain in enhancing customer experiences and securing transactions. You'll also get an exclusive peek into Worldpay's product roadmap, highlighting the innovations that promise seamless onboarding and robust support. Worldpay's commitment to empowering small businesses in the UK with tailored solutions is clear, and this episode is your ticket to staying ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving world of e-commerce.
Curious about how fintech companies are reshaping the landscape for high-risk industries? Our latest episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast features an engaging conversation with Ben Haguel, CEO of TCB Pay, who provides a firsthand account of his journey from Paris to becoming a prominent figure in the US payments sector. Ben’s insights promise to enrich your understanding of the complex world of high-risk payment solutions, highlighting how TCB Pay’s pioneering technology sets them apart. Learn how this innovative company tackles challenging sectors like telemedicine and crypto exchanges, ensuring compliance and security while driving growth across the US and European markets.
Join us as Ben shares TCB Pay's distinctive approach to creating and managing their own technology solutions, discussing the strategic emphasis on the issuance of prepaid corporate credit cards and efficient payment processing. With a focus on reducing risk through technology and legal compliance, Ben provides a deep dive into how TCB Pay caters to high-volume clients and the rigorous measures employed to uphold integrity. Get ready for compelling insights into the future of payments and discover how TCB Pay is strategically positioning itself to be a leading player in the evolving fintech landscape.
Unlock the strategies that make Worldpay a leader in the UK e-commerce scene with insights from our distinguished guests, Chintan, Richard, and Sarah. Discover the art of transforming prospects into loyal customers through innovative payment solutions and a focus on the merchant lifecycle. Chintan reveals the secrets behind WorldPay's go-to-market strategy, emphasizing the power of targeted outreach and consultative sales. Meanwhile, Richard sheds light on how his team empowers small to medium-sized businesses with tailored e-commerce solutions and technical expertise. With Sarah at the helm of customer experience, learn how operational strategies differentiate Worldpay in a competitive industry.
Explore how WorldPay's bespoke approach aids SMBs in selecting and implementing the most effective payment solutions. From solution consultation to seamless integration, uncover how Worldpay's implementation team collaborates with businesses to optimize their payment systems. Sarah discusses the unmatched importance of exceptional customer support, featuring a multi-channel approach that includes 24/7 service and an interactive online portal. Learn how WorldPay assists new customers in mastering their portal experience, ensuring they manage their accounts efficiently from day one. This episode is packed with actionable insights to enhance your e-commerce operations and deliver unparalleled customer experiences.
Scarlett Sieber, the dynamic Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at Money 2020, takes us through the fascinating transformation of the event from its humble beginnings in Las Vegas to becoming a global powerhouse in the fintech ecosystem. She shares her journey from the scenic landscapes of Durango, Colorado, to the energetic cityscape of New York City, detailing how her diverse experiences have shaped her professional path. Listeners will gain a unique perspective on Money 2020's strategic pivot towards a fintech-centric approach and its role in fostering the complexity and collaboration that define today’s financial services industry. As we prepare for the next Money 2020 event in the US, Scarlett offers an insider's peek into the innovative themes and engaging experiences that await attendees.
Beyond the evolution of Money 2020, Scarlett recounts her professional growth, emphasizing the importance of networking and diverse professional experiences, whether through co-founding a startup or advising NASA on cross-industry innovation. She provides practical advice for making the most of fintech conferences, underscoring the importance of strategic preparation and the power of personalized follow-ups. Discover the varied session formats at Money 2020, such as the interactive briefing stage and Off the Record sessions, designed to cater to all learning levels and promote community building. Whether you're new to fintech or a seasoned veteran, this conversation offers valuable insights and inspiration on navigating the future of financial technology.
Unlock the secrets to thriving in the UK's competitive e-commerce landscape with insights from WorldPay's very own Chintan Gandhi and Rob Ward. Join us, along with these industry leaders, as we explore how WorldPay is revolutionizing payment solutions to help merchants face modern challenges head-on. With Chintan's strategic know-how in payments and Rob's unique transition from law to a decade of experience at WorldPay, we promise a comprehensive look at how businesses can enhance their payment processing efficiency. From simplifying onboarding to crafting bespoke checkout experiences, our discussion unravels WorldPay's dedication to offering seamless, digital-first solutions tailored for businesses large and small.
Immerse yourself in a conversation about the crucial elements of payment security and management. Discover how WorldPay's 3DS Flex and tokenization can fortify your transactions while maintaining a smooth customer experience. You'll also gain insights into the powerful analytics and real-time data offered by the WorldPay dashboard, all designed to empower merchants with better control and understanding of their sales trends. Whether you're looking to streamline compliance checks or explore alternative payment methods like pay-by-link and pay-by-phone, this episode equips you with actionable strategies to ensure your e-commerce venture not only survives but thrives.
In episode 358 of the Leaders in Payments podcast, I interview Henry Helgeson, the recently appointed CEO of BlueSnap. Helgeson shares his journey from founding Merchant Warehouse to leading BlueSnap, a global payment facilitator specializing in B2B payments and payment orchestration. He explains BlueSnap’s focus on providing payment solutions in 47 regions, helping businesses with complex global payment needs.
BlueSnap excels in offering local acquiring and reducing cross-border fees, making transactions smoother for businesses with multinational operations. Helgeson also discusses the importance of partnerships with ISVs and ERP systems, highlighting BlueSnap’s ability to cater to mid-market businesses. Looking ahead, he predicts continued growth in card-not-present payments, increased use of AI, and challenges related to fraud as AI tools become more accessible to malicious actors. Helgeson expresses excitement about BlueSnap’s future growth and his decision to come out of retirement to lead the company.
Unlock the secrets to safeguarding your e-commerce business from the pitfalls of card-not-present fraud and boost your checkout conversion rates with insights from industry experts Chintan Gandhi, Director of Strategic Planning and Go-To-Market, and Gordon Barclay, Director of Business Development at Worldpay. You'll discover how pervasive fraud can cost small and medium businesses dearly, and why chargebacks are more than just a financial setback—they can cripple your ability to process future payments. Chintan and Gordon share their extensive experience and strategies to mitigate these risks effectively.
Struggling with high rates of cart abandonment? You're not alone—54% of digital shoppers leave transactions unfinished due to repeated payment retries. Gordon Barclay explains how Worldpay's innovative solutions, including the integration of Apple Pay and Google Pay, can provide a seamless checkout experience that keeps customers coming back. By adopting a consultative approach, Worldpay aligns merchant needs with current consumer trends, ensuring that businesses remain competitive and customer-centric. Tune in to discover actionable strategies and flexible payment integration solutions designed specifically for small business owners in the UK looking to thrive in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape.
Curious about the future of B2B payments and their security? Learn from Shai Gabay, co-founder and CEO of Trustmi, as he unveils his journey from a small town near Tel Aviv to creating a groundbreaking payment security platform in the U.S. Discover how TrustMi is revolutionizing industries like pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and hospitality by safeguarding $185 billion in transactions and preventing $5 billion in errors and fraud. Gain insights into the evolving landscape of cyber threats and understand the necessity of modern solutions to stay ahead. Shai's experience from military intelligence to entrepreneurship offers a compelling narrative on leveraging technology to tackle complex business issues.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology and finance. Shai Gabay's journey and TrustMi's achievements provide a compelling narrative of innovation, security, and the future of B2B payments. By subscribing and engaging with the podcast, listeners can stay informed about the latest trends and insights shaping the financial landscape.
What if you could revolutionize the onboarding process for business financial services? Join us in an inspiring conversation with Sal Rehmetullah, co-founder of Worth, as he shares his incredible journey from a Pakistani immigrant in Dallas to a trailblazer in the payments industry. Growing up in a family of serial entrepreneurs, Sal's entrepreneurial spirit was nurtured from a young age. He walks us through his academic pursuits and early career in equity research and consulting, before highlighting the impressive growth of Stacks Payments, which he co-founded with his sister. Discover the inspiration behind Worth and how it’s set to transform the onboarding experience for SMBs by integrating services like bank verification, KYB, and identity verification into a seamless solution.
In this episode, we also explore the future of payments and fintech, predicting a shift towards consumer-like experiences for SMBs fueled by digitization and AI. Sal shares his vision for building a legacy in payments, emphasizing diversity and inclusion in lending practices and aiming to create a business credit score system as impactful as FICO. Get a glimpse into Sal’s personal aspirations, from fostering talent to possibly owning an NBA team, underscoring his belief in the unifying power of sports. Don’t miss out on this episode packed with forward-thinking insights and inspirational stories from one of the industry's most dynamic figures.
Ever wondered how small and medium-sized businesses can not just survive but thrive in the complex world of ecommerce? You’re about to find out. Join us as we sit down with Chintan Gandhi and Rob Ward from Worldpay, two industry veterans who share their fascinating career journeys and insights. From Chintan’s move from India to the UK and his deep-rooted experience in payments to Rob’s transition from law to a decade in the payments sector, this episode offers a rich tapestry of personal stories and professional wisdom. Together, they shed light on the dynamic evolution of ecommerce in the UK and how Worldpay’s global expertise can be a game-changer for SMBs looking to make their mark online.
COVID-19 has reshaped many industries, and we plunge into its profound impact on the restaurant sector in the US and the UK. Discover how traditional establishments, including countryside pubs, have pivoted to embrace online and curbside services. The conversation dives into the rise of mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, now dominating over 50% of UK transactions. We delve into the pressing challenges SMB merchants face, such as fraud, security, cash flow, and conversion rates. Learn how Worldpay’s advanced solutions, including cutting-edge fraud detection and strong customer authentication, are paving the way for merchants to navigate these hurdles effectively. Packed with actionable strategies, this episode is an essential listen for anyone looking to master the ever-evolving ecommerce landscape for SMBs in the UK.
Can technology outsmart digital deception? Join us on Leaders in Payments as we welcome Andrew Bud, the visionary founder and CEO of iProov, who is leading the charge in biometric verification and fraud prevention. Andrew takes us through his fascinating journey, from his upbringing in London to his education at the University of Cambridge, and his diverse professional experiences across the UK and Italy. We delve into the mission of iProov, a company that ensures individuals' identities are verified remotely through cutting-edge "liveness" detection. Discover why this technology is crucial in high-stakes scenarios like financial transactions and password resets, and how it serves pivotal sectors such as government, financial institutions, and healthcare.
Curious about the intersection of AI and security? Andrew sheds light on the growing threat of deepfakes and how iProov is pioneering innovative solutions to combat these AI-generated frauds. Learn about their unique method of using unpredictable color illumination to differentiate between real faces and deepfake attempts, a fascinating approach that keeps fraudsters at bay.
Andrew's love for mountain hiking beautifully parallels his journey in the payments industry, highlighting the importance of passion in one's career. Tune in for his valuable advice for newcomers to the fintech world and hear his heartfelt ambition for future employees at iProov, inspiring them to take pride in their work and continue pushing the boundaries of digital identity verification.
Ever wondered how the fintech world is reshaping global payment and spend management? This episode of Leaders in Payments features Pedro Batista, CEO of Payhawk in the UK, who reveals the journey that took him from Porto, Portugal, through heavyweight fintech companies like CurrencyCloud and Plaid, all the way to his current role. Pedro shares invaluable insights into Payhawk's mission to streamline and automate financial operations for businesses, emphasizing real-time visibility, vertical integration, and fraud detection. Whether your company has frequent travelers, is scaling rapidly, or needs more efficient global spend management, Pedro's expertise will provide a roadmap to enhanced financial efficiency.
Discover the innovation disparity between consumer financial technologies and B2B payment systems as we dissect the infrastructure evolution with Pedro. From the potential of blockchain in developing economies to the impact of real-time payment systems like FedNow, this episode offers a comprehensive outlook on the future of payments. Listen as Pedro discusses his passion for leveraging AI to optimize customer service and operational efficiency, along with the importance of adapting to regulatory shifts. We wrap up with Pedro's personal interests in traveling and sports, and his strategic advice for newcomers in the payments industry. Don't miss out on Pedro's vision for Payhawk's future, driven by real-time technology and exceptional customer support.
Ready to unlock the secrets behind efficient check processing and robust payment solutions? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Shai Stern, CEO and Co-Chairman of CheckAlt. Shai takes us through his incredible journey from Teaneck, New Jersey, to the helm of a pioneering company in the payments industry. Despite the digital age’s lean towards electronic transfers, discover why checks still hold significant value in today's payment landscape. Shai also dives into the sophisticated security measures CheckAlt employs to combat the ever-growing issue of check fraud.
In this episode, we tackle the cash flow challenges faced by small businesses that rely heavily on check-based payments. Shai introduces a groundbreaking API designed to capture and deposit checks within business applications, eliminating the need for mobile banking. Learn how industries like property management, healthcare, and utilities can streamline their accounts receivable processes, enhancing efficiency with a unified software solution for checks, ACH, and card payments. Shai underscores the importance of exceptional customer service, a commitment that sets CheckAlt apart from competitors.
But Shai’s insights go beyond payment processing. Hear about his entrepreneurial journey, from defying expectations in the SEC filing space to expanding a small entity formation business into a nationwide service provider. Aspiring fintech professionals will find invaluable advice on continuous learning, dedication, and understanding the consequences of your actions. With personal anecdotes and profound life lessons, Shai’s story embodies the spirit of hard work, innovation, and community responsibility. Don’t miss this inspiring episode with a true leader in the payments industry.
Curious about how to build a fintech business that champions financial inclusivity? Join us for a captivating conversation with Pat Napoli from Appressa, where we explore his remarkable journey from New Jersey to making waves in the payments industry. Pat shares how Appressa supports consumers who’ve been declined by prime banks, helping them secure credit cards through near prime and subprime banks. Discover how Appressa's innovative technology, paired with their strategic partnership with Prove, works to rehabilitate credit scores for millions of Americans, making a significant impact on the issue of credit card declines.
Get inspired by Pat’s deep commitment to community service and his passion for inner-city education, exemplified by his involvement with St. Benedict's Prep in Newark, NJ. Together with his partner, Chris Mettler, Pat draws on experiences from MBNA and other renowned financial institutions to create a tech-driven solution for those with non-prime credit scores. As we wrap up, Pat offers invaluable advice for aspiring fintech professionals, underscoring the growing importance of data science in the rapidly evolving payments landscape. Don’t miss this insightful episode, packed with trends, strategies, and personal stories.
Curious about how loyalty points might soon replace cash and credit at your favorite stores? Join us as we sit down with Jonathan Silver, CEO of Engage People, and Len Covello, CTO of the same company, to unravel the groundbreaking "Pay With Points" technology. Discover how this innovative system transforms loyalty program points into a versatile payment method, making checkout smoother for members and more profitable for retailers. Jonathan and Len shed light on the significant advantages this offers to loyalty programs, members, and merchants alike, and discuss the compelling business case behind this game-changing payment option. They also share revealing insights from a recent consumer survey, showcasing the high demand for loyalty currency amidst the economic downturn and why points are seen as more stable compared to buy now, pay later plans and cryptocurrencies.
But we're not stopping there. We also explore the future horizons of loyalty points in various retail landscapes—from gas stations to grocery stores and small businesses. Jonathan and Len reveal how major brands are successfully rolling out pay-with-points systems and the vision of loyalty points becoming an integral part of everyday transactions. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on the fascinating future of loyalty points in payments!
Can real-time payments revolutionize your grocery shopping experience? Join us as we sit down with David Watson, President and CEO of The Clearing House, to uncover the transformative journey from its 170-year history to becoming a modern-day alternative to the Federal Reserve Bank. From high-value payment wires to ACH transactions and instant payments, David breaks down the extensive range of services The Clearing House offers and addresses the persistent myth that checks are disappearing.
David's professional odyssey, spanning two decades in banking across various countries, offers a unique lens on the critical importance of user experience in payment technologies like Apple Pay and Zelle. We also explore the potential role of crypto and blockchain in the payments ecosystem, emphasizing the stringent safety and regulatory standards these technologies must meet.
Passionate about fostering innovation and creating a secure environment for financial institutions, David provides invaluable advice for aspiring professionals in the payments or fintech industry: pursue what you love and remain open to change. Tune in for a deep dive into the dynamic and ever-evolving payments landscape and the exciting opportunities it presents.
What does it take to embed a people-first strategy in a rapidly growing global fintech company? Join us as Caitlin Shetter, Chief People Officer at Nuvei, shares her transformative journey and the strategies she employs to align people operations with organizational vision and values. This episode promises a treasure trove of insights for any business leader aiming to foster a supportive and engaging workplace culture.
We dive into the extensive wellness programs at Nuvei, reflecting the company’s commitment to both mental and physical well-being. From Employee Assistance Programs to global fitness challenges, Caitlin explains how initiatives like the Nuvei games and One Nuvei day build a vibrant and connected community. She also underscores the importance of personalized support and mentorship, particularly for women early in their careers, offering a blueprint for creating a workplace where everyone feels they belong.
Lastly, Caitlin offers invaluable career advice for young women looking to advance in their fields. She highlights the significance of building a "circle of trust," taking risks, and pushing beyond comfort zones. With an agile team driving culture and development at Nuvei, Caitlin also discusses effective methods for measuring the success of organizational programs using both quantitative and qualitative data.
Ever wondered how a prolific payments technology company gets started? Join us on Leaders in Payments as we chat with John Mitchell, CEO and Co-Founder of Episode Six, who recounts his intriguing journey from Colorado Springs to Austin, Texas. You'll gain insights into how Episode Six is innovating the payments landscape, helping financial institutions and brands move away from outdated systems. Discover the versatility of their platform that caters to a wide range of clients—from small banks to global financial behemoths—and learn how Episode Six's unique ability to virtualize hardened cores supports seamless international operations.
John Mitchell dives deep into the story behind the founding of Episode Six, starting from a significant moment in 1999 that set the stage for building one of the largest prepaid processors. Fast forward to 2015, and the journey of Episode Six's creation unfolds, highlighting early triumphs like securing contracts with HSBC and Japan Airlines. Listen as John shares the highs and lows of penetrating the financial institutions market and emphasizes the importance of perseverance. Alongside his professional journey, John also opens up about his personal passions and provides invaluable advice for aspiring fintech professionals. Don't miss this engaging and insightful conversation with a true leader in payments technology.
In today's episode, key leaders from NMI discuss how Gen Z and millennials are shaping the payments landscape and what businesses need to do to stay relevant. Tiffany Johnson, Chief Product Officer, starts by explaining how these generations influence payment preferences. Millennials, having witnessed the rise of the internet, exhibit diverse payment preferences ranging from cash to digital wallets, prioritizing quality, service, sustainability, and convenience. Gen Z, as true digital natives, expects seamless, mobile-first payment experiences and highly values privacy and security. Johnson emphasizes the importance of embedded payments and creating secure, seamless consumer experiences for NMI stakeholders.
Vijay Sondhi, CEO of NMI, further explores the evolving payment preferences of these generations, noting that Gen Z primarily uses digital wallets and mobile payments, viewing their phones as extensions of themselves. Both generations are quick to abandon brands with friction-filled payment processes, favoring seamless, secure, and convenient methods. Sondhi highlights the potential of biometrics for secure authentication and the transformative role of AI in payments, which could shift focus towards enriching life experiences. He underscores the need for businesses to rapidly adapt, adopt scalable and inclusive payment solutions, and think like Gen Z to remain competitive.
Kate Hampton, Chief Strategy Officer at NMI, concludes the discussion by emphasizing the importance of omnichannel strategies and payment orchestration in meeting the expectations of Gen Z and millennial consumers. Omnichannel strategies provide a consistent, connected, and seamless shopping experience across multiple channels, including in-person, mobile, online, and unattended. Consumers seek to eliminate friction by having various payment options contextually presented at the right time. For merchants, the challenge lies in integrating these payment methods while maintaining their brand’s customer experience. Hampton explains that payment orchestration involves configuring and coordinating complex payment processes to create a smooth and differentiated experience. When done right, payment orchestration is invisible, ensuring effortless payments and enhancing overall customer experience and brand loyalty.
This episode is a summary of three NMI podcast episodes - please visit NMI to listen to each separate episode.
How does one rise to become a powerful voice in the payments industry? Join us for an exclusive conversation with Bunita Sawhney, Executive Vice President of Consumer Products and Processing at Mastercard, who shares her remarkable journey from Newport Beach to New York. We'll uncover the deeply supportive family environment that nurtured her, her academic pursuits at Cal Berkeley and Columbia, and her dynamic career spanning retail banking and product innovation. Bunita's insights into her role at Mastercard and her passion for promoting gender diversity through the Women's Leadership Network provide a compelling narrative for anyone interested in leadership and empowerment.
Explore the complex challenges female leaders face today, including underrepresentation and gender pay gaps, and how Mastercard is making strides to overcome these barriers. Bunita offers a candid look at her own career challenges and the importance of mentorship programs. She also discusses the mission of the 30% Club and offers invaluable advice for young women eyeing a future in the payments industry. This episode is a treasure trove of inspiration and practical tips, showcasing Bunita's dedication to fostering an inclusive and equitable corporate landscape. Tune in to discover her guiding principles for success and her unwavering commitment to empowering women in the business world.
What if you could tap into the mind of a key player in the payments industry and learn the secrets behind managing $2 trillion in daily transactions? Join us for a compelling conversation with Margaret Weichert, Chief Product Officer at The Clearing House, as she takes us through her inspiring journey from upstate New York and Georgetown University to the helm of one of the most significant institutions in the financial world. Margaret shares her rich background and reveals how her upbringing and education paved the way for her impactful career.
Margaret's expertise shines through as she discusses the complexities of leadership and team dynamics, offering valuable insights into effective communication and decision-making. She candidly addresses the unique challenges faced by female leaders, including strategies to navigate unconscious biases in the workplace. Listen to Margaret recount her bold transition from the payments industry to a political role within the US federal government, where she learned crucial lessons in governance and service that profoundly impact her current role in a not-for-profit organization.
The episode wraps up with a focus on the importance of mentorship in the payments industry. Margaret emphasizes the significance of building lasting, mutually beneficial relationships and provides practical advice for newcomers. Margaret’s candid reflections and expert advice offer a rich narrative that will resonate with anyone interested in leadership, mentorship, and the evolving world of payments. Don't miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights from a true leader in the field.
How do you carve out a trailblazing career in the competitive world of payments? Join us in an inspiring conversation with Kathleen Pierce Gilmore (KPG), SVP and Global Head of Issuing Solutions at Visa, as she takes us through her journey from her early days in Las Vegas to her current leadership role in Bethesda, Maryland. KPG's responsibilities at Visa involve spearheading a team that offers innovative issuing solutions, loyalty programs, and digital enablement tools, all designed to help clients better engage and retain consumers. Her vibrant storytelling and passion for her work make this episode a must-listen.
KPG's career story is nothing short of remarkable. From her formative years at McDonald's, where she honed her leadership skills, to her strategic roles at American Express and Capital One, she has always been driven by guiding principles of intention and serendipity. Listen as she recounts her dynamic stints at PayPal and the startup world, ultimately leading to her impactful role at Silicon Valley Bank. Each step in her journey is filled with insightful lessons on career growth, resilience, and the importance of vision and passion in leadership.
In a candid discussion, KPG opens up about the challenges she faced as a female leader in the corporate landscape. We also delve into the significance of mentorship and the power of stepping out of one's comfort zone. Concluding with reflections on the value of time and appreciation, this episode offers a heartfelt look at the experiences and wisdom of a pioneering woman leader in payments.
Discover the captivating journey of Dru Armstrong, CEO of AffiniPay, as she shares her unique path from growing up in Los Angeles influenced by her father's legal profession to taking the helm of a fintech powerhouse. Dru’s story is a testament to hard work, resilience, and the high expectations instilled by her entrepreneurial parents. She reveals how AffiniPay transformed from serving associations to dominating the legal and professional services payments landscape, while offering a personal glimpse into her life through a fun icebreaker segment.
From law to management consulting, private equity, and ultimately the CEO role, Dru Armstrong's career transitions are nothing short of inspiring. She emphasizes the pivotal role of mentors and sponsors in her journey, the shift from relying solely on analytical skills to the importance of emotional intelligence, and the critical need for trust-based teams. Dru candidly discusses the unique challenges she faced as a young CEO and underscores the importance of aligning with ethical investors and colleagues to achieve sustainable success.
Tune in to hear Dru's insightful reflections on leading through strategic change and growth, particularly in a thriving company like AffiniPay. She shares her thoughts on the value of mentorship, the importance of resilience in overcoming setbacks, and the joy of finding career roles that align with personal passions. Whether you're entering the fintech sector or navigating your own career path, Dru’s experiences and advice offer valuable lessons on authentic leadership, the power of mentorship, and the fulfillment of impactful work.
Curious about the journey from a small town in France to leading a global financial platform? Gabrielle Bugat, CEO of G+D ePayments, shares her incredible story and the principles that guided her to success. From her education at MINES ParisTech to her international career across Texas, Mexico, and Germany, Gabrielle reveals how she navigated each challenge and opportunity with resilience and ambition. She opens up about her current role, leading financial platforms within G&D Group, and the strategies she employs in managing strategy, product development, and talent across continents.
Discover the guiding principles that have shaped Gabrielle's leadership style, emphasizing collective intelligence, being outcome-driven, and maintaining a business-centric approach. Gabrielle recounts her early days as a young manager, the pivotal experiences that honed her leadership skills, and the unique challenges faced as a female leader. Listen as she shares practical strategies for fostering teamwork, breaking down silos, and leading acquisitions with humility and respect. Her stories, from simple team-building exercises to navigating post-merger environments, offer valuable lessons for leaders at any stage of their career.
The importance of mentorship and career growth is a key highlight of our conversation with Gabrielle. She delves into stepping out of one's comfort zone, adapting to new cultural norms, and the value of informal mentorship and networking. Gabrielle emphasizes the significance of soft skills, self-belief, and continuous learning, particularly for women in the workplace. Her insights and personal anecdotes provide a powerful message of encouragement for anyone pursuing their goals with determination. Tune in to be inspired by Gabrielle Bugat's journey and the wisdom she's gained along the way.
Carly Brush's career trajectory is nothing short of inspirational, a true testament to the power of resilience, innovation, and mentorship. In this enlightening podcast episode, Carly Brush, SVP of Human Capital Management at DailyPay, delves deep into her fascinating journey from an aspiring fashion designer to a key leader in the fintech industry. Her story is one of navigating through professional hurdles, leveraging mentorship, and constantly stepping out of her comfort zone to achieve growth.
Carly's story isn't just about success—it's about the growth that comes from challenges and the invaluable role of mentorship. She provides candid insights into overcoming professional hurdles, including a pivotal project failure at DoorDash, and underscores the importance of stepping out of comfort zones. Carly also offers practical advice for young women eyeing a career in fintech, emphasizing collaboration, continuous learning, and the satisfaction of working with dedicated colleagues. Tune in to gain inspiration and actionable wisdom from Carly Brush as she discusses her remarkable career and contributions to the fintech landscape.
Our latest episode of Leaders in Payments focused on women leaders in our industry, takes you through Tiffany Johnson's inspiring path, characterized by resilience, empathy, and a relentless drive for innovation. Tiffany uncovers her role at NMI, comparing it to an "air traffic controller," where she orchestrates everything from market insights to technical solutions.
We dive deep into Tiffany's core leadership principles, emphasizing the critical importance of empathy and relationship-building. Hear about her unconventional career path, likened to a rock wall, and how it prepared her to tackle challenges with a "yes" mentality and curiosity. Learn about the supportive women's professional network at her company, and get practical advice for young women aiming to break into the payments industry. From maintaining confidentiality to fostering professional growth, Tiffany's insights are invaluable for anyone looking to navigate and thrive in the ever-evolving payments landscape.
In conclusion, Tiffany’s leadership principles, emphasis on mentorship, and commitment to building a supportive professional network provide valuable insights for anyone looking to thrive in the payments industry. Whether you're a young professional or an experienced leader, Tiffany's experiences and advice offer inspiration and practical guidance for navigating and succeeding in the ever-evolving world of payments.
Unlock the secrets to a thriving career in the payments industry with our special guest, Gretchen Bender, Senior Vice President at MAPP Advisors. Gretchen's journey from Springfield, Illinois, through her academic pursuits at the University of Arizona and UC Irvine, to her pivotal move to Las Vegas in 2010, is a testament to the power of seizing unexpected opportunities. Learn how she stumbled into the payments industry in 1996 and discover the unique role MAPP Advisors plays in the fintech advisory market, specializing in mergers, acquisitions, and payments processing. Gretchen offers an insider’s view into the tailored approaches MAPP Advisors uses to bring unparalleled value to their clients, from portfolio evaluations to payments monetization.
In this episode, we also delve into the transformative power of mentorship and diverse work experiences. Gretchen shares invaluable advice on proactively finding mentors, especially for those in smaller companies, and underscores the importance of internships in navigating the payments and Fintech landscape. We discuss the enriching experiences gained from working in both large and small companies, and how these experiences can be a springboard for entrepreneurial success.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone aspiring to make their mark in the payments industry. Gretchen Bender’s journey and insights provide a wealth of knowledge and inspiration. From the importance of mentorship and diverse work experiences to the unique approaches taken by MAPP Advisors, there is something for everyone in this episode. Whether you are just starting out in your career or looking to take the next step, Gretchen’s advice and experiences will provide valuable guidance and motivation. Tune in to discover the secrets to a thriving career in the payments industry and learn from one of the industry’s leading experts.
This special episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast offers a wealth of knowledge and insights from three trailblazing women leaders at Stax Payments —Paulette Rowe, Jenn Reichenbacher and Lisa Roberts.
Paulette Rowe, the CEO of Stax, provides a compelling narrative of her career journey, from consumer banking to leadership roles at PaySafe and Meta. She emphasizes the importance of mentorship and professional development, sharing her experiences of stepping out of her comfort zone and taking on significant leadership roles. Paulette's journey is a testament to the power of mentorship and the impact it can have on one's career trajectory.
Jenn Reichenbacher, the Chief Marketing Officer, brings her extensive experience in the payments space to the table. She discusses her journey through various companies like Merchant Warehouse, EverCommerce, and her current role at Stax, where she focuses on driving growth through innovative marketing strategies.
Lisa Roberts, the General Counsel, offers a unique perspective from her 25-year legal career. She highlights the importance of understanding the broader business context and the role of legal compliance in the evolving payments landscape. Lisa’s insights are particularly valuable for those looking to navigate the complexities of legal and compliance issues in the fintech industry.
But it's not just about payments and technology; it's also about people and relationships. Paulette, Lisa, and Jenn open up about the power of mentorship and professional development within the industry. From building a "personal board of directors" to stepping out of one’s comfort zone with initiatives like executive rotation programs, discover how these leaders foster growth and collaboration at Stax. Whether it’s through lunch and learns or workout groups, they emphasize the importance of maintaining a growth mindset and creating a supportive community. Tune in for an enriching conversation that promises to leave you inspired and enlightened about the possibilities in the payments industry.
Have you ever felt the weight of imposter syndrome or the glass ceiling holding you back? Kristy Duncan, the inspiring founder and CEO of Women in Payments, shares her transformative journey from her early days on a small hobby farm outside Toronto to becoming a leader in the payments industry. This special edition of the Leaders in Payments podcast, celebrating Women Leaders in Payments Month, kicks off with a fun and personal rapid-fire round, giving you a glimpse into Kristy's world beyond her career.
We then delve into the heart of Kristy's professional evolution, discussing the significant barriers that women encounter in the workplace. Christy candidly addresses the challenges such as the sticky floor and crisis leadership roles and shares her invaluable strategies for overcoming these obstacles. Learn how mentorship, a robust professional network, and constant feedback have been her guiding principles for success. You'll also hear about pivotal experiences and personal anecdotes that shaped her resilient mindset and career trajectory.
In the final segment, Kristy offers heartfelt reflections on the importance of mentorship and the inspiring role her daughters have played in her life. She emphasizes how mentorship and sponsorship can propel emerging leaders to new heights and recounts her own experiences with formal and informal mentoring. Kristy's dedication to her career and her family's encouragement provide a powerful narrative on balancing professional ambitions with personal life. This episode is packed with insights and encouragement for anyone looking to break barriers and empower women in their careers.
Prepare to be inspired by Nino Maisuradze, the Chief Operating Officer at Ingenico North America. Nino's story is a compelling narrative of resilience, adaptability, and leadership that spans continents—from her roots in the country of Georgia to her current influential role in Atlanta, Georgia. With a diverse educational background in Germany and extensive experience in the payments industry, Nino brings a wealth of knowledge and unique insights that are both enlightening and motivating.
The episode begins by exploring Nino's background, highlighting the significant cultural and educational experiences that have shaped her professional journey. Growing up in Georgia during a time of civil unrest, Nino learned the value of resilience and adaptability at a young age.
The conversation then shifts to the role of mentorship in empowering female leaders. Nino emphasizes the importance of normalizing the challenges that women face in leadership roles and the immense value that diversity and inclusion bring to organizations.
Nino's journey is a testament to the power of resilience, adaptability, and the importance of mentorship. Her story serves as an inspiration for aspiring leaders, particularly women, to stand tall in the face of challenges and to continuously seek growth and improvement. The episode not only provides a wealth of knowledge about the payments industry but also offers practical advice on leadership, empowerment, and the significance of diversity and inclusion.
Unlock the secrets of Omnicommerce with Yael Barak, VP of Product Management at Worldpay, as she shares her expertise on creating seamless commerce experiences for small businesses. From micro merchants to small enterprises, Yael reveals how Worldpay’s extensive capabilities—from card payments to e-commerce and niche verticals—are revolutionizing the way merchants connect with customers. Discover how advancements in AI are enabling hyper-contextualized scenarios, offering the perfect product at just the right moment.
Commerce360, an omni-channel solution designed by Worldpay, is a central focus of the discussion. Yael provides an in-depth look at its diverse functionalities, from handling retail locations and online sales to managing call centers and services, all through a central dashboard. This comprehensive solution allows businesses to streamline their operations and manage various aspects of their business from a single platform, enhancing efficiency and reducing the complexity of running a business.
The episode concludes with a discussion on the broader implications of these advancements for the future of commerce. As AI and other technologies continue to evolve, the potential for new business models and innovative solutions will only grow. Worldpay's commitment to supporting small businesses and helping them navigate this rapidly changing landscape is evident throughout the conversation, highlighting the company's dedication to empowering merchants with the tools and resources they need to succeed.
In the latest episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast, host Greg Myers engages in a compelling conversation with Carlos Navarro, CEO of Corvia. Carlos takes us on an insightful journey through the company's strategic maneuvers and innovations. Discover why Corvia's focus on the SMB space and higher-risk areas sets them apart, and how their location in Austin, Texas, along with substantial investments in risk and compliance systems, gives them a significant edge. Carlos shares the company's impressive growth trajectory, robust partner ecosystem, and cutting-edge solutions for boarding and transaction monitoring, offering listeners a comprehensive look at what makes Corvia a standout player in a crowded market.
Carlos also opens up about his personal journey, from founding a small consulting firm to holding pivotal roles at industry giants like IBM and JP Morgan, ultimately leading him to Corvia's helm. With a passion for mentoring and talent development, Carlos provides invaluable career advice for new graduates eager to break into the fintech world. Listen as he recounts his tenure on the Junior Achievement board in Atlanta, his role as a high school football coach, and his love for college football. Packed with personal anecdotes and professional wisdom, this episode is a treasure trove for anyone keen on understanding the dynamic landscape of payments and fintech.
Unlock the secrets of seamless Omnicommerce as we dive into Worldpay's Commerce360 product set with Shae Orrick, Senior Product Manager, and Yael Barak, VP of Product Management. Discover how small businesses can thrive by integrating payment acceptance across multiple channels into one robust merchant portal. Developed in partnership with GoDaddy, Commerce360 not only simplifies payments but also comes packed with marketing services and social media connections. Learn how the three concepts—Connect, Run, and Grow—are tailored to help businesses set up payments, streamline operations, and expand their customer base effortlessly.
Ever wondered how friction impacts your business? Friction can turn customers away and complicate your business operations, but Commerce360 tackles this head-on. Yael and Shea shed light on how their solution bridges the gap between online and in-store experiences, smoothing out payment processes and making interactions easier for both consumers and merchants. Imagine consolidating multiple systems into one user-friendly portal, much like having a smartphone for all your business needs. Plus, the sleek design of the Commerce360 terminal adds a touch of modern flair and credibility. Tune in to see how this innovative tool can transform your business operations and elevate your customer engagement.
The world of payments is rapidly evolving, and Ingenico's SoftPOS technology is at the forefront of this revolution. In this episode, Mike Barnes, Sales Director and Head of Banks and Acquirers at Ingenico, dives deep into the innovative features and capabilities of SoftPOS, offering valuable insights into its integration, customization, security, and future evolution.
SoftPOS is a game-changer in the payments industry as it transforms any NFC-enabled mobile device into a seamless payment terminal. This means that merchants can accept payments on their smartphones or tablets, unlocking a world of possibilities. Mike Barnes emphasizes the importance of clear communication and ongoing collaboration between partners and Ingenico during the integration process.
Security and payment flexibility are paramount in the world of payments, and SoftPOS by Ingenico delivers on both fronts. SoftPOS is an app-based solution that simplifies transactions, protects sensitive data, and ensures the highest level of security with stringent PCI certifications and software-based security measures.
We share compelling success stories, like how SoftPOS provided reliable payment solutions during network outages, and explore the future evolution of SoftPOS. Learn how customer feedback is driving the development of new features such as DCC, loyalty programs, and installment payments, setting the stage for SoftPOS to revolutionize the payments landscape for SMBs and retailers worldwide.
Unlock the secrets of omnicommerce and revolutionize your business with insights from Shea Orrick, Senior Product Manager at Worldpay. Ever wondered how to provide a seamless, unified shopping experience across multiple channels? Our latest episode promises to break down the complex world of omnicommerce into actionable steps that can help you adapt to ever-changing consumer buying habits. You'll gain valuable knowledge on how integrated systems and data can enhance the consumer experience while making business management more effective.
Shea guides us through the journey of adopting omnicommerce solutions, often discovered through online research, ads, and trusted partners like banks. We dive deep into the top three pain points these solutions address—simplifying business operations into a single portal, improving inventory management through key business insights, and keeping customers happy with efficient, cost-effective marketing strategies. Learn about Worldpay's Commerce360, a powerful tool designed to streamline your operations with features like a robust payment system, seamless website integration with GoDaddy, and comprehensive marketing and inventory management tools.
Shea provides an exclusive look at Commerce360's future plans, including an online order option for merchants not ready for a full-fledged website, advanced user management tools, and the integration of AI technology to make inventory management a breeze. With Worldpay and GoDaddy's combined expertise, you can expect continuous improvements and innovative features that future-proof your business.
Can you imagine turning every software company into a payment powerhouse? That's exactly what Jo Phillips and Will Corbera, co-CEOs of Payabli, are doing. In this episode, we chat with Jo and Will about their groundbreaking work in the payments industry, transforming software businesses by providing a unified API for payment acceptance, issuance, and operational management. From Jo's roots in his grandfather's jewelry business in Southern California to Will's multicultural upbringing across Miami, Barcelona, and Costa Rica, you'll hear about the personal journeys that led them to joining forces at Payabli.
Jo and Will share insider advice for newcomers to the payments industry, underscoring the value of understanding the payments value chain, having a mentor, and focusing on a specific vertical. Plus, they express their gratitude to their hardworking team and announce exciting job openings at Payabli, offering a golden opportunity for aspiring fintech professionals. They also encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to take the leap into the fintech space, highlighting its potential for disruption and innovation.
Navigating the ever-evolving landscape of the payments industry can be a daunting endeavor, but with the right insights and guidance, it can also be an area ripe with opportunities for growth and innovation. In a recent episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast, Brent Rose, CEO of EPSG, offers a wealth of knowledge gleaned from his 30-year journey in the payments sector. Brent's background is deeply rooted in the Midwestern values of integrity and hard work, which have played a significant role in his ascent to the helm of EPSG.
The podcast episode delves into the transformative journey of EPSG from a sales-centric organization to a full-service acquiring payments provider. This shift underscores the company's strategic investments in technology and infrastructure, which are crucial for staying competitive in the rapidly changing FinTech arena. Brent emphasizes the importance of supporting small merchants, particularly in the densely populated New York-New Jersey metro area, highlighting the unique challenges and rewards that come with catering to this segment.
Brent's personal stories, including his experiences in youth sports coaching underscore the parallels between his coaching philosophy and his professional ethos. As EPSG continues to make strategic strides in the payments industry, Brent's insights offer valuable lessons on resilience, strategic thinking, and the power of enduring relationships in business.
How did a pre-med student from Yale end up transforming the landscape of chargeback mitigation? Join us as Qi Cao, the co-founder and CEO of Chargeblast, reveals his fascinating journey from life science consulting and hedge fund analysis to pioneering tech-forward solutions in the payments industry. Discover how Chargeblast is slashing chargeback rates by up to 99% for hyper-growth startups using Stripe and Shopify. Get an insider look at the unique strategies Chargeblast employs, the pivotal role of social media for business growth, and the significance of strategic partnerships with industry giants.
This episode also uncovers the incredible potential of Generative AI in optimizing chargeback alerts across sectors like health, subscription SaaS, and e-commerce. You'll hear about the latest trends in payments, including the future of peer-to-peer transaction chargebacks and the crucial role of card tokenization. Qi also shares his personal passions, from daily workouts to mentoring a diverse team, offering invaluable advice for anyone venturing into the fintech or payments space. Don’t miss out on the practical tips and inspiring stories packed into this compelling conversation!
Ready to uncover how consumer demographics are transforming the payments landscape? Join me in a fascinating discussion with Yael Barak, VP of Product Management and Kari Finley, Senior Director of Global GTM from WorldPay. They share their unique perspectives on how omnicommerce is evolving and why it's crucial for merchants to provide seamless experiences across all channels.
We dive deep into the generational preferences shaping payment trends. Discover why Gen Z is so comfortable with mobile transactions and willing to share personal data for convenience, while millennials lean towards buy now, pay later options and loyalty programs. Gain insights into the ongoing relevance of point-of-sale and cash transactions for Gen Xers and baby boomers, highlighting the diverse needs that must be met within the payments ecosystem.
Lastly, we explore the impact of COVID-19 on omnicommerce adoption across generations. Hear how the pandemic accelerated digital commerce, even among older consumers, and brought lasting changes to shopping habits. Our conversation also tackles the challenges faced by smaller merchants in implementing omnicommerce solutions and underscores the importance of providing multi-channel experiences to attract younger consumers. Plus, learn how WorldPay's omnicommerce solutions streamline operations, making it easier for businesses to integrate and reconcile various processes. Don't miss this comprehensive look at the future of commerce!
The financial industry has been undergoing a remarkable transformation, a topic comprehensively discussed in the latest podcast episode featuring Sarah Biller, Co-Founder of Fintech Sandbox. In a world increasingly driven by digital innovation, data has become the lifeblood of financial technology growth. This growth is not only reshaping the way we think about finance but also integrating tech into sectors as diverse as healthcare and the automotive industry.
Sarah's journey is as fascinating as it is insightful, starting from her roots in West Virginia and culminating in her significant contributions to the Boston entrepreneurial ecosystem. She has been instrumental in aiding fintech startups to flourish by providing invaluable data access—ranging from market tick data to eclectic weather patterns—free of cost. This initiative supports the startups' growth at a critical stage, without the hindrance of data procurement expenses.
Moreover, the episode touches upon the values of community and collaboration. These values are ingrained in Sarah's approach to fostering a supportive environment where entrepreneurs can connect and thrive. It's this belief in the collective that underpins the podcast discussion, as it reveals how financial services can seamlessly merge into various industries to optimize transaction experiences and enhance risk assessments.
In an era where financial transactions and corporate expense management are undergoing revolutionary changes, it's critical to stay ahead of the curve. Our latest podcast episode features Rick Fletcher, Group President of Corpay Payables, who shares his extensive knowledge and insights into mastering global expense management and embracing payment innovations.
Rick discusses the complexities of managing corporate expenses, particularly for middle-market companies. He points out that while larger banks might overlook these businesses, Corpay thrives by offering comprehensive services tailored to their needs. This approach not only empowers companies to make better financial decisions but also ensures policy compliance through customized financial tools.
As the market for financial outflows and payment solutions becomes more dynamic, Rick emphasizes the importance of fusing technology with human-driven processes. This blend is pivotal for creating specialized card programs that complement broader expense management strategies. Furthermore, the efficiency of back-office operations is crucial for executing payments, managing working capital, and preventing fraud.
This episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast introduces listeners to Bob Kaufman, the visionary founder of ConnexPay. His narrative not only shed light on the inception and growth of his company but also on the broader trends shaping the future of B2B payments. ConnexPay stands out in the payment industry as a disruptor, successfully handling both incoming and outgoing payments. It's a feat that sets them apart in a market where competitors often focus on just one aspect of the transaction.
The discussion delved into the enduring prevalence of credit card use in the travel and e-commerce sectors, highlighting the advantages they offer, such as security and dispute rights. Bob contrasts this with the challenges presented by alternatives like PayPal and blockchain, noting the importance of simplicity and legal dispute mechanisms for consumer confidence. Furthermore, the episode emphasized the influence of Generation Z, whose expectations for digital-first, frictionless experiences are driving innovation in the payment space.
In a world where digital innovation is constantly reshaping the commercial landscape, understanding the evolution of omnicommerce is essential for businesses and consumers alike. Yael Barak, VP of Product Management at Worldpay, sheds light on this very transformation during this latest collaboration between the Leaders in Payments Podcast and Worldpay.
The discussion begins with an exploration of omnicommerce and its nuanced existence in today's economy. The fusion of brick-and-mortar stores with e-commerce platforms has revolutionized consumer expectations, with businesses now required to meet their customers wherever they are. This seamless blend of physical and digital shopping experiences has given rise to a new economy that thrives on accessibility and convenience. As we delve deeper, Yael explains how Worldpay is at the forefront of this revolution, providing scalable payment solutions that cater to a diverse range of clients, from nimble local shops to expansive enterprise networks.
Yael also touches on the importance of understanding the varying needs of different verticals. For instance, mobile payment solutions that may be ideal for a contractor may not suit the needs of a restaurant that utilizes QR codes. It is this keen sense of specificity that has allowed Worldpay to craft payment solutions that resonate with individual merchant requirements, providing a frictionless purchasing process that enhances the customer experience.
As the digital age continues to advance, the line between physical and online commerce blurs even further, paving the way for an omnicommerce ecosystem that is as boundless as the technology that fuels it. Businesses that embrace this revolution, with guidance from industry leaders like Yael Barak and companies like Worldpay, will be well-positioned to succeed in the digital economy that awaits us.
In an industry where financial inclusion and innovation are paramount, the latest episode with Arad Levertov, Co-founder and CEO of Sunbit, stands out as a beacon of progress. The episode focuses on how Sunbit is revolutionizing the financial landscape for essential services such as auto repairs and healthcare, by offering hassle-free financing options to consumers. With a staggering approval rate of 90% for applicants, Sunbit's approach is not only inclusive but also indicative of a significant shift in consumer lending practices.
The impact of Sunbit's technology is not limited to the consumer experience. The company's innovative approach extends to its partnerships with merchants and the development of an ecosystem that transcends payment processing. Sunbit's emphasis on sales, partnerships, and the use of data analytics underscores the importance of a holistic approach to financial services—one that benefits all stakeholders involved.
As the fintech landscape continues to evolve, companies like Sunbit are at the forefront, steering the industry towards a more inclusive and customer-centric future. Arad's foresight and leadership have positioned Sunbit as a pivotal player in the fintech revolution.
In a world where convenience is king and technology reigns, the realm of live event payments is undergoing a revolutionary transformation. Jake Stone, Chief Revenue Officer of Cantaloupe, graces us with his insights in a recent podcast episode, highlighting the seismic shift towards self-service and mobile payments in stadiums, entertainment venues and festivals. This move is not only enhancing the fan experience but also significantly augmenting venue revenue—a double win for the industry.
The emergence of Generation Z as a driving force in the economy is shaping how payment systems evolve. Their mobile-first mindset and preference for digital solutions are paving the way for venues to rethink their service models. And as we cast our eyes towards the horizon, the future of event payments looks cashless and frictionless. Technologies such as AI and biometrics are on the cusp of redefining convenience and personalization. But this transformation isn't solely about the technology; it's about the human experience. These advancements in payment systems are designed to keep fans immersed in the event, reducing the time spent waiting in line and increasing the time spent enjoying the spectacle.
In conclusion, the path towards a cashless, high-tech future in live event arenas is not just inevitable; it's already underway. The innovations spearheaded by companies like Cantaloupe are setting a new standard in the industry. As we embrace these changes, we're not just witnessing the evolution of payment systems; we're participating in the redefinition of the live event experience itself.
The banking industry, long characterized by its stability and resistance to change, is currently undergoing a radical transformation, primarily driven by the rapid advancements in financial technology. The latest episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast, featuring Booshan Rengachari, Founder & CEO of Finzly, offers a deep dive into this seismic shift, particularly focusing on how mid-sized and community banks can harness the power of fintech to revolutionize their operations.
A significant part of the discussion centers on Finzly's ascent as a formidable player in the finance technology space. Bhushan recounts the initial focus on foreign exchange and international banking, leading to the development of a unified platform for various payment systems. Finzly's innovation allows banks to transition seamlessly from outdated systems to cutting-edge infrastructure capable of real-time processing and adaptability. This technology leapfrogs the constraints of legacy systems, empowering banks to offer sophisticated financial products rapidly.
In summary, this Leaders in Payments Podcast episode is more than just an exploration of financial technology; it's a story of transformation and the people who drive it. As the industry looks towards a future where money moves in real-time and banking operations become more customer-centric, pioneers like Booshan Rengachari andd companies like Finzly are at the forefront, shaping the new financial landscape.
In an age where financial technology is rapidly evolving, small businesses are often left grappling with outdated banking systems and cumbersome loan processes. The latest episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast presents an eye-opening discussion with Luke Voiles, the CEO of Pipe, who shares his story from his humble beginnings in Sherman, Texas, to the forefront of the fintech revolution.
Pipe's business model is groundbreaking, focusing on integrating financing options within the software platforms businesses use every day. Voiles explains that traditional banking systems, with their rigid structures, are no longer adequate for the dynamic needs of modern enterprises. He envisions a world where accessing capital is as simple as clicking a button when issuing invoices or running payroll—a future where financial services are embedded within the tools entrepreneurs use to manage their operations.
In sum, the episode paints a picture of a financial ecosystem that is more inclusive, efficient, and supportive of small businesses, with fintech companies like Pipe leading the charge in revolutionizing access to capital. It's a testament to the power of technology in democratizing financial services and empowering business owners to achieve their aspirations with the right tools and resources at their fingertips.
In a rapidly evolving financial landscape, technology continues to play a pivotal role in shaping how we manage and interact with money. This shift is most evident in the domain of loan management and digital banking, a topic discussed in our recent podcast episode featuring Rhett Roberts, the Co-Founder and CEO of LoanPro. The episode takes listeners on a journey through the intersection of loans and technology, revealing how this convergence is leading to more seamless financial experiences for consumers and institutions alike.
The LoanPro platform was born from a need to manage diverse loan types more efficiently, emerging as a versatile solution in a field of specialized loan management systems. Its unique ability to consolidate the management of various loan types onto a single platform has not only improved user experiences but has also increased operational efficiency.
Rhett's personal evolution is equally as compelling as his professional achievements. From earning his first income at a shooting range to venturing into car dealerships and ultimately into the tech space, his entrepreneurial spirit shines through. He also discusses his philanthropic work with the charity 'Become More,' linking his efforts in Cambodia to a broader vision of enriching lives.
As the financial sector continuously evolves, it is vital to understand how traditional banking is merging with fintech innovation to craft the future of finance. In the latest podcast episode, we are introduced to Cross River, a financial institution that has not only witnessed but also contributed to this evolution. The episode offers an in-depth exploration of how Cross River, under the guidance of Adam Goller, EVP, Head of Fintech Banking has developed a unique niche at the crossroads of technology and traditional banking.
The 2008 financial crisis is known for its destructive impact on the global economy. However, it also provided the impetus for innovation and the creation of new business models in the banking industry. Cross River was birthed during this tumultuous period with a vision to redefine banking by integrating cutting-edge technology into the traditional financial sector.
The podcast highlights the need for a resilient ecosystem in modern banking—one that can withstand the pressures of regulatory changes and market fluctuations. Cross River's journey serves as a case study for other financial institutions navigating the convergence of fintech and traditional banking.
Unlock the secrets of protecting your company's bottom line with Rich Schalabba, the CEO of Payment Integrity Partners, as we dissect the crucial yet frequently ignored issue of financial leaks in the retail world. In our conversation, Rich peels back the layers of the payment landscape, revealing how his firm's cutting-edge technology and rigorous methods meticulously sift through mountains of transaction data to recover lost revenue for retailers. It's a masterclass in securing the financial fortitude of large organizations, ensuring that every penny is rightfully placed.
Learn how Payment Integrity Partners is changing the game in the recovery audit industry, boasting a distinctive blend of deep client connections, bespoke audits, and proprietary technology that outmatches the competition. Rich divulges how their rapid audit process is not merely about reclaiming funds but is a strategic move towards fortifying future financial practices.
Rich also shares his professional journey and the passion that led him to found Payment Integrity Partners. His personal narrative is one of entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to excellence in service, a testament to the company's success and the value they provide to their clients.
The digital transformation of community banks is not just a buzzword; it's a vital pivot towards sustaining relevance and competitive edge in an increasingly tech-centric financial world. The latest episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast, featuring Carey Ransom, Managing Director of BankTech Ventures, provides a deep dive into this transformation.
BankTech Ventures stands out by directly involving bankers in the investment process, ensuring the solutions not only fit the banks' needs but also resonate with the communities they serve. The organization acts as an R&D arm, navigating through the plethora of available fintech options to guide community banks toward top-tier, strategic solutions. This careful selection is driven by a dual focus on cost reduction and revenue enhancement, targeting both customer-facing and internal processes.
The episode is a must-listen for anyone in the banking or fintech industries, as well as for those interested in how technology reshapes traditional business models. With a comprehensive examination of the state of community banking and the strategic use of technology, the podcast stands as a testament to the transformative power of fintech and the enduring spirit of community banking.
Ever wondered how a leader in the payment processing world thinks and innovates? Zach Martinez, the CEO of PAYARC, joins us to peel back the curtain on the intricate workings of digital transactions and customer relations. With a blend of Philadelphia grit and global savvy, Zach takes us through his formative years, from Boston University to the vibrant streets of Madrid, before steering PAYARC to $5 billion in annual merchant volume. He passionately discusses the bedrock of their success: a commitment to humanizing customer service in an industry where automated responses have become the norm, and how their new payment facilitator product is set to redefine the market.
Beyond the technical aspects of payment processing, Zach shares his commitment to a philosophy known as extreme ownership, inspired by former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink. This philosophy, according to Zach, is the cultural bedrock that has allowed PAYARC to cultivate resilience and accountability at every level of the organization. By championing a mindset that encourages employees to embrace and learn from failure, Zach fosters an environment of continuous improvement and leadership development.
Embark on a journey through the intricate world of financial compliance with Natasha Vernier, the Co-Founder and CEO of Cable, as she joins me, Greg Myers, on the Leaders in Payments podcast. Natasha takes center stage, weaving the story of Cable's inception and its mission to equip compliance officers with a robust platform for pinpointing regulatory slips and control failures. The company's unique SaaS model is not only redefining compliance monitoring but is also scaling to serve a variety of financial institutions, big and small. Together, we discuss Natasha's impressive transformation from finance to the forefront of the fintech revolution. We also uncover the origins of Cable's distinctive name and its pivotal role in crafting agile, compliant financial services.
As we progress through the episode, the focus shifts to the transformative power of automation in compliance testing within the banking sector. Natasha likens automated banking controls to the essential dashboard alerts in a car, pointing out the need for similar advancements in financial services. The dialogue explores the intriguing concept of the 'bank of Taylor Swift,' suggesting a future where financial services are woven into consumer platforms that people already use and love, further emphasizing the role of technology in appealing to the tech-savvy Gen Z demographic.
Unlock the future of transactions as you ride along with Tom Nipper, Global Head of Energy and Mobility at JP Morgan Payments and Markus Kuhnt, Co-Founder and Chief Technologist of Starfish, two titans in the realm of mobility and in-vehicle payments. They don't just predict the next wave of consumer convenience, they're creating it. Our conversation weaves through the intricate network of digital payment technologies that are transforming your car into an extension of your wallet. Imagine breezing through transaction points as if they were green lights, thanks to the innovative partnership between JP Morgan Payments and Starfish that's steering the industry towards a frictionless payment experience.
This episode is a journey through the rapidly evolving ecosystem of automotive OEMs and how they're engaging with consumers well beyond the showroom floor. With vehicles becoming platforms for secure and seamless buying experiences, the industry faces the challenge of aligning with futuristic transportation, such as autonomous driving, while maintaining a user experience that rivals leading mobile wallet providers. We navigate the complex roads of EV charging and biometric advances with insights that shine headlights on the importance of customer-centric design in mobility payment solutions. Buckle up for a ride into a future where every stop is an opportunity for a transaction as smooth as your drive.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mkuhnt/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomnipper/
In our latest podcast episode, Hamed Arbabi, CEO and Founder of VoPay, provides a comprehensive look into the world of financial technology, sharing the journey of VoPay from its inception to its current role in the industry. We delve into the company's impact on the embedded payments ecosystem and its innovative approach to integrating payment solutions into various digital platforms. Hamed sheds light on how VoPay's advanced API is driving change across sectors, including insurance and healthcare, and the significance of strategic partnerships in revolutionizing financial operations within ERP systems.
Hamed’s entrepreneurial spirit shines through as he recounts his journey from starting a business to navigating the complexities of the payment industry. The discussion serves as an inspiring guide for entrepreneurs and established professionals alike, illustrating the potential for personal growth and the realization of ambitious goals through perseverance and strategic thinking.
This week on Leaders in Payments Podcast, we journey through the symbiotic relationship between banks and tech firms, discussing the tailored support Treasury Prime offers to community and regional banks. Co-Founder and CEO of Treasury Prime, Chris Dean’s expertise is not just theoretical; it's grounded in the practical challenges of real-time reconciliation, settlement, and the adaptive strategies banks are employing to lead in this fintech renaissance.
We examine what truly differentiates Treasury Prime in the fiercely competitive fintech industry. From their unique direct integrations with core banking systems to the anticipation of industry consolidation and heightened regulatory pressures, Chris provides guidance on maintaining the delicate balance of innovation and compliance.
Through his dual passion for startup culture and beekeeping, we explore the parallels between the precision required in fintech and the meticulous care needed for apiary management. It's an episode rich with personal anecdotes and professional insights.
Unlock the potential of women entrepreneurs across the globe with insights from Jane Prokop, Mastercard's dynamic leader for SMEs, who joins us to shed light on the unique obstacles women in business face. Discover the sweeping impact of small and medium enterprises and grasp the specific challenges that hold back women founders, from the limited access to venture capital to the intricate labyrinth of securing bank loans. Jane doesn't just expose the issues; she shares Mastercard's robust toolkit of digital resources and educational programs that are leveling the playing field and fostering success for women in business.
Learn about the groundbreaking initiatives, including the Hello Alice Small Business Mastercard and the Women by Design program, that are tailoring support to the needs of these trailblazing women. Revel in the stories of resilience and innovation as Jane paints a picture of a future where women's business ventures flourish, supported by a network of mentorship, state-of-the-art digital tools, and collaboration among governments, nonprofits, and private sectors. And for the small businesses reeling in a post-pandemic economy? Jane unveils how Mastercard's innovative products are not just a lifeline but a launchpad into a thriving digital-first future.
As the visionary behind Paymentwall, Honor Gunday, Founder and CEO, reveals the remarkable transformation of his company, which began as a specialized payment solution for gamers and has since expanded to a global gateway, mastering over 150 local payment methods. In the vibrant crossroads of Istanbul and Miami, Honor's rich cultural experiences and academic endeavors at Stanford University fueled his passion for innovation, setting the groundwork for his ventures in tech. Gain priceless wisdom from Honor's entrepreneurial journey, which maps out how he navigated from managing fraud prevention to embracing the world of alternative digital payments.
Hear firsthand how Honor's linguistic agility transcends the personal, becoming a strategic asset in the diverse world of international commerce. As we unravel the compelling narrative of Honor's career, from the challenges of payment processing within the travel industry to his ventures like FasterPay and Terminal3, the roadmap for aspiring professionals in fintech becomes clearer. Discover the treasured virtues of knowledge, trust, and becoming indispensable, and how they forge the path to success in the dynamic intersection of technology, commerce, and innovation.
Unlock the transformative power of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in the payments industry with Motie Bring, the visionary CEO of PPRO. This episode promises enlightening strategies that can help your business thrive by embracing the multitude of benefits a diverse workplace offers. Motie, with his rich experience leading a frontrunner in local payment solutions across Europe and Latin America, shares how PPRO's deep-rooted commitment to DE&I not only distinguishes them but also catalyzes their financial and cultural growth. Learn from his insights on the tangible impact of a varied workforce on innovation and success, and why nurturing this diversity is an essential belief, not just a statistic, at the core of their company.
This episode guides you through practical steps for fostering an inclusive environment at every stage of your business's development, from ambitious startups to expanding enterprises. Discover why transparency in sharing diversity data and recognizing individuality during recruitment can be game changers for businesses seeking to boost innovation and stay ahead of the curve. Motie illuminates the path toward an inclusive workplace, highlighting the ongoing efforts and humility required to address gaps in DE&I practices. Join us for a candid conversation that not only broadens your perspective but also equips you with the wisdom to spearhead change within your organization.
Unlock the future of transactions with Ingenico's Tony Walsh in our latest episode, where we explore the revolutionary SoftPOS technology. This innovation is reshaping how merchants interact with customers, shedding the shackles of conventional payment hardware. By leveraging NFC-enabled Android and iOS devices, SoftPOS is not just a glimpse into the future of digital payments, but a stride into a world where mobile and contactless transactions seamlessly integrate into our daily commerce.
During our conversation, Tony illustrates the practicality and versatility of SoftPOS, painting a picture of a business landscape that's both agile and cost-effective. From bustling cafes to expansive enterprise retailers, this technology tailors to the unique needs of any business. Learn how SoftPOS is transforming the restaurant industry by simplifying pay-at-table services, reducing hardware attrition, and envision a retail environment where line busting becomes the norm.
By embracing Ingenico's SoftPOS, we are unlocking payment freedom and taking a significant leap towards the future of commerce. This episode not only educates but also inspires a rethinking of how we engage in transactions, both as consumers and businesses.
Joining me this week in the first of a four-part series on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is Monica Eaton, the CEO of Chargebacks911. Monica's start-up story in the fintech space serves as a beacon for aspiring women in technology and finance. As a pioneer in the payments industry, Monica shares her trajectory from being a merchant grappling with chargebacks to helming a company with global reach. Her story isn't just a personal triumph; it's a roadmap for other women who aim to shatter the proverbial glass ceiling in a sector traditionally dominated by men.
Monica's commitment to empowerment isn't confined to her corporate achievements. Her initiative, LIFT, is a testament to the potential mentorship holds in elevating women within the fintech space. LIFT connects female professionals with C-suite executives, fostering an environment where wisdom, experience, and guidance flow freely, thus nurturing the next generation of female leaders.
Through mentorship, education reform, and a commitment to DE&I, Monica is forging a path for inclusive growth and empowerment in fintech and beyond.
Brazil's financial sector is experiencing an unprecedented digital transformation, a subject which Carlos Netto, the Co-Founder and CEO of Matera, tackles with keen insight in our latest podcast episode. This revolution is centered around Pix, Brazil's instant payment system that has flipped traditional banking on its head with its user-friendly interface and cost-effective transaction model. As we explore this phenomenon, it's evident that Pix has not only altered how transactions are conducted but also democratized financial services, fostering inclusion for those who were previously marginalized from the banking system.
In discussing the intricacies of Pix, Carlos provides an analysis that is both comprehensive and insightful. Pix's integration into everyday life in Brazil, from street vendors to e-commerce, signals a profound cultural shift. Its omnipresence has not only simplified transactions but has also encouraged the banking sector to innovate and remain competitive. The "Pix by the Numbers" report, as dissected in the podcast, underscores the system's sweeping success and its potential to inspire similar transformations globally.
In summary, the podcast episode featuring Matera Co-Founder and CEO Carlos Netto is not just a conversation about the current state of digital banking in Brazil but a deep dive into the possibilities that fintech holds for the future. It is a story of innovation, inclusion, and the relentless pursuit of excellence. The episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in understanding the dynamic interplay between technology and finance and the transformative power it holds.
As we navigate through an ever-evolving financial landscape, it's leaders like Kirk Coleman, President of Q2, who are at the forefront of revolutionizing how banks and credit unions serve us. This episode is a treasure trove of insights, from the seamless integration of digital banking experiences to the resilience of checks in an age of instantaneous payments. Kirk's journey from Ohio to the helm of Q2 in Austin is as compelling as the innovative solutions he champions, bringing a personal touch to the complex world of banking technology.
Kirk and I delve into the current state of play in the payment industry, where challenges abound but so do opportunities for those willing to adapt and innovate. We explore the intrigue of mergers and acquisitions, the quiet before the storm of 2024, and how banks are finding value in efficiency over expansion. The episode peels back the layers on the scalability of new payment systems and the shifting generational talent within the banking sector, offering a clear view of what it takes to succeed in this rapidly changing environment.
Topping off our conversation, Kirk shares pearls of wisdom on achieving a balance between a demanding career and a fulfilling family life, emphasizing mentorship and the adaptability required within the payments and financial services sectors. He also encourages us to chip away at the complexities that often muddle the financial services industry, advocating for collaboration towards simplicity, security, and improved customer service. Join us for this enlightening discussion that's as much about the heartbeat of financial innovation as it is about the human stories that drive it.
The digital payments landscape is rapidly evolving, driven by innovative technologies and a pressing need for more personalized customer experiences. In episode 301 of the Leaders in Payments podcast, we had the privilege of diving deep into these developments with PayPal's Mudita Tawari, who heads the company's developer experiences.
The episode provides a glimpse into how PayPal continues to shape the future of transactions. With over 400 million consumer accounts and 35 million merchants worldwide, PayPal's influence on the market is undeniable. Tawari’s discussion about PayPal's commitment to enhancing checkout experiences and supporting a global developer community underscores the company's focus on continuous innovation.
Mudita’s experience working on early IoT applications for hospital beds, to engaging in transformative app development, and eventually making strategic partnerships at eBay and PayPal, illustrates a journey characterized by growth, versatility, and a deep-seated desire to make a meaningful impact.
On our 300th episode, we have the privilege of hosting Carey O’Connor Kolaja, the CEO of Versapay, who illuminated the path toward a digital-first B2B payment landscape. The episode offers a comprehensive examination of how technology, specifically AI and ERP integration, is reinventing how businesses manage transactions and achieve financial efficiency.
Carey's journey from PayPal and Citi to AU10TIX has bestowed her with invaluable insights into the evolution of financial inclusion and the indelible impact of technology on back-office operations.
Carey and I muse over the generational shift that's reshaping expectations—a world where our children's innate digital fluency is only a microcosm of the hunger for seamless transactions. Together, we scrutinize how AI and ML are not only combating fraud but also empowering companies to leapfrog into the future with smarter, faster, and safer financial practices.
As the episode unfolds, Carey shares her vision for Versapay, focusing on solving genuine problems with a passion for building a more inclusive financial world and a future where financial decisions are autonomous, technology-driven, and secure.
Join me as I sit down with Tal Clark, the CEO of Instant and trace his remarkable path from Marine Corps helicopter pilot to fintech innovator. In this episode, Tal shares the ethos behind Instant's mission to revamp the way American workers receive their wages. As we peel back the layers of the earned wage access (EWA) market, you'll discover how Instant stands at the vanguard, offering employees fee-free access to wages that could very well redefine financial stability for many.
Dive into the heart of innovation with our discussion on the transformative nature of EWA and how Instant is leading the charge by integrating payment cards, tipping services, and wage access into one seamless employer solution. Tal gives us an insider's look at how their platform is not just a tool but a movement, setting itself apart from traditional payday loans and altering the financial landscape for employees nationwide. With an eye on the future, we predict the rise of EWA as an employee benefit standard and consider the evolving regulatory environment that's shaping this dynamic industry.
Wrapping up, Tal offers a personal glimpse into his life post-military service, his corporate experiences, and his fervent commitment to service and opportunity. He illuminates the leadership lessons he's garnered from commanding large teams and how building a culture of success yields the greatest rewards.
Unlock the potential of SoftPOS technology with Jason Stanchfield from Ingenico, and ride the wave of the future in merchant payment solutions. Imagine the convenience of turning any NFC-enabled device into a secure, flexible payment terminal—this is the reality we discuss with Jason, whose unique background from the streets of Los Angeles to life in the Navy, and finally to the innovative realm of merchant services, brings us an unparalleled perspective on the evolution of payment systems. Learn how SoftPOS is revolutionizing transactions, offering businesses an adaptable and sleek way to handle sales with ease, while also delving into the seamless integration with existing POS systems.
This episode peels back the layers of SoftPOS's applications, demonstrating its utility in a diverse range of business environments, from the corner store to the most dynamic pop-up events. Jason walks us through the minimal training required for staff, the customization options available for branding, and the heightened security measures that set this platform apart. We scrutinize every angle, from the merchant's initial selection process to the comprehensive sales tracking capabilities. Discover the transformative power of SoftPOS as we explore its role in meeting the ever-evolving demands of modern commerce with Jason's expertise guiding us every step of the way.
Join me as I sit down with Rob Straathof, the visionary CEO of Liberis. Rob Straathof's journey from an aspiring astronaut to a fintech trailblazer is a narrative of determination and ingenuity. Tune in to discover how Liberis is transforming the financial landscape for small businesses by seamlessly embedding pre-approved funding within payment ecosystems. Delving into Liberis's partnerships with behemoths like Worldpay, Klarna, and Barclays, we'll unwrap how their platform is not only accelerating growth for startups but also reinventing the approach to merchant financing.
The discussion delves into the core of embedded finance, tracing Liberis's evolution from its nascent stages to the powerhouse digital platform it is today. The episode doesn't shy away from discussing the hurdles faced, particularly during the pandemic. As the conversation unfolds, we gain an understanding of the strategies driving merchant adoption and the essential role of omnichannel platforms in the finance sector.
CEO of Stax, Paulette Rowe’s journey through the dynamic world of payments is an inspiring story of opportunities and passion. From her role at Facebook to leading PaySafe through a public offering and embracing the culture and vision of Stax, Paulette’s dedication to the payments industry is clear.
Stax is distinguished by its software-first ethos and comprehensive white-labeling capabilities, highlighting its intent to expand internationally. The conversation illuminates how Stax is redefining industry standards with its agile and precise strategies, challenging larger, less flexible entities. The company's unique position in the payments industry stems from disrupting traditional payment models with subscription-based services. Paulette shares insights into Stax's disruption, its focus on key verticals, and the company's evolution into integrated payments, compliance, surcharging, recurring billing, and becoming a fully-fledged acquirer-processor.
Moreover, the podcast delves into the transformative trends impacting the payments and financial services industry, including embedded finance and the impact of artificial intelligence on customer engagement.
Discover the cutting-edge intersection of technology and security as we welcome Sunil Madhu, the visionary founder and CEO of Instnt, to unveil the transformative power of fraud insurance technology in the payments industry. By providing real-time insurance coverage during the pivotal moment of customer onboarding, Sunil's company is reshaping how businesses defend against fraud-related financial losses. In this episode, you'll hear how Instnt's sophisticated tech—laden with biometrics and behavioral analytics—melds with existing systems to insure transactions in the blink of an eye. Sunil's insights extend beyond the tech, as he recounts his global journey from Scotland to New York, and the leaps from Fortune 500 boardrooms to the thrilling unpredictability of startup life.
To further understand the implications of Instnt's innovation, the podcast discusses how the company's fraud insurance technology integrates with various financial institutions, including fintech companies, credit unions, and banks. By mitigating fraud losses and ensuring compliance, Instnt not only fosters trust in digital transactions but also enables these institutions to focus on their core operations without the overhanging concern of fraud.
Monica Eaton, CEO of Chargebacks911 joins us to share her remarkable transition from interior design to leading a company that stands at the vanguard of dispute resolution. Her tale is not just about success; it's about the innovation and dedication that underpin it, and this episode promises a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone looking to disrupt their field.
Monica’s narrative is punctuated by reflections on her experience with chargebacks—a persistent problem that once threatened the sustainability of her online marketplace. Her personal campaign to understand the causes of chargebacks led to the founding of Chargebacks911.
Monica’s view on the joy of business building, her affinity for numbers, and the power of turning challenges into opportunities are the key elements propelling the flow of this episode's narrative. From her $76,000 project triumph to scaling businesses with savvy tech implementations, her journey underscores that the true rewards of entrepreneurship are not just in the victories, but in the exhilarating process of reaching them.
This episode is a rare look behind the curtains of Chargebacks911's expansion into new territories and the pursuit of innovative solutions in a changing regulatory landscape.
Explore the cutting-edge universe of financial transactions with Max Neukirchen, JP Morgan's visionary Head of Payments and Commerce Solutions. Venture behind the scenes of a business unit that has a massive global footprint, with a workforce spanning 120 countries dedicated to servicing a diverse clientele, from neighborhood shops to large corporate entities.
In our discussion, Max demystifies the competitive advantages of JP Morgan Payments over both traditional banks and nimble fintech competitors, and he provides a panoramic view of services that encompass everything from treasury management to merchant services to trade finance.
His personal narrative, stretching from his roots in Germany to steering a major division of a financial titan, provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of JP Morgan and the diverse interests that propel a leader in the payments space. Further enriching the dialogue, Max shares personal anecdotes highlighting how his travels and extracurricular passions have enhanced his professional perspective.
Join me and Andrew Brown, CEO of Check as we discuss the innovative world of embedded payroll. The conversation goes beyond the basics and provides a glimpse into Andrew's path from a tech-enthused Duke student to a pioneer in payroll technology. Discover the unique connection between payroll intricacies and payment technologies, and how this synergy is crafting a new era for financial services and especially software platform. Plus, don't miss out on Andrew's passion for Duke basketball—an energy that exemplifies his leadership.
As we discuss the competitive landscapes of the payroll industry, we uncover the unique challenges and advantages faced by early market entrants against the backdrop of legacy providers struggling to adapt to the embedded payroll niche. Andrew's narrative from coder to industry leader also offers invaluable career insights for those eager to make their mark in fintech.
Ready to revolutionize your financial savvy with a former NFL player turned fintech guru? Parker Graham, the founder of Finotta, joins us to unveil how his company is reinventing the digital banking game. With Finotta's innovative technology seamlessly integrated into banking apps, Parker is leading the charge in delivering not just personalized financial management, but also actionable, real-time advice that empowers users to make smarter financial decisions. He shares his journey from the gridiron to pioneering the future of digital banking, and why understanding customer needs is the game-changer in driving both engagement and revenue for financial institutions.
Finotta's fresh, proactive platform developed in the last couple of years is challenging the status quo of financial technology. Hear how automation and artificial intelligence are poised to further refine user experiences and why the capacity to take immediate in-app actions, like adjusting credit card payments or opening new accounts, is just the tip of the iceberg. For those eager to know what sets Finotta apart from the competition, Parker's insights into their modern solutions are enlightening and indicative of where fintech is headed.
Our latest podcast episode features Jane Podbelskaya, Principal at Information Venture Partners and Nick Beique, Founder and CEO of Helcim. They provide an insightful look into the rapid evolution of financial technology and payment solutions.
The episode also casts a spotlight on Helcim's transformation, particularly its strategic pivot from an ISO MSP partner of Elavon to an independent provider of transparent and honest payment solutions – with a mission to create the world’s most loved payments company.
Venture capital's role in fueling fintech innovation cannot be overstated, and the episode also provides valuable insights into the thought process behind Information Venture Partners's investment in Helcim’s Series A round. It explores the due diligence and the strategic alignment between investor and startup, highlighting the importance of shared visions for long-term growth and navigating the challenges that come with scaling up a business in a volatile market.
In an era where digital identity and security are paramount, our latest podcast episode features a figure who has carved a niche in the identity intelligence domain. Ron Atzmon, the Founder and Chairman of AU10TIX, provides an in-depth look into the company's strategies for combating fraud and ensuring compliance. His personal narrative, spanning from military service to tech entrepreneurship, paints a picture of a man whose career is as diverse as it is accomplished.
As AU10TIX evolved from its 2012 product launch to a Software as a Service (SaaS) frontrunner, it leveraged strategic meetings, swift decision-making, and a transition to cloud computing to drive growth. The importance of customer service and word-of-mouth recommendations has played a significant role in expanding the company's reach. AU10TIX now enjoys the trust of tech titans like Google and PayPal, a testament to the company's strategic vision and commitment to innovation.
Get ready to tackle the complexities of financial negotiations with the keen insights of Vinodh Swaminathan, the President and CEO of Cybersettle. In this episode, we discuss the revolutionary shift from managed services to a SaaS model, promising to redefine the resolution of financial disputes. Vinodh's philosophy of simplicity is a testament to Cybersettle's approach in embedding a digital negotiation button into claims management systems, which is reshaping sectors by fostering efficiency and cutting down costs.
Vinod also discusses the market opportunity in transactions that require financial negotiation and settlement. The sheer volume of these transactions highlights the potential for CyberSettle to revolutionize various sectors. The company's focus on the financial negotiation and settlement space sets it apart, specializing exclusively in providing a win-win solution for all parties involved.
Picture a world where borders dissolve within the payment sphere, where each transaction caters to the local customs and preferences of its users. Motie Bring, the CEO of PPRO, takes us on a journey through Europe's diverse payment ecosystem and beyond. From the popularity of Bancontact in Belgium to the widespread use of Sofort in Germany, Motie underscores the necessity to embrace regional variations to truly connect with different consumer bases.
Motie Bring's passion for diversity and inclusion, particularly within the LGBTQ+ community, adds another layer to the discussion. He shares PPRO's dedication to creating an environment where every individual's contribution is valued and where diversity is not just recognized but celebrated. This stance is crucial, not only for fostering a progressive corporate culture but also for inspiring the next generation of fintech leaders.
Join me, your guide Greg Myers, as I sit down with the visionary Joe McLean, the CEO and Co-Founder of Quavo. Discover how Joe's journey from a computer science enthusiast to a fintech innovator is transforming the landscape of fraud and disputes management in the banking industry. In our extensive dialogue, we traverse the inception and growth of Quavo, illuminating the innovative products like QFD, ARIA, and DRE, which are redefining efficiency and automation in handling post-fraud processes for financial institutions.
Joe emphasizes that while fraud is an inevitable part of the banking sector, the implementation of refined systems is vital in aiding institutions to effectively manage it. The discussion on the future of payments and fraud paints a picture of an industry in the midst of significant transformation, driven by automation and technological advancement.
Joe's journey is a testament to the power of passion and innovation in shaping a career that not only challenges the status quo but also nurtures personal growth. So tune in and be part of the conversation that's charting the future of banking, fraud management, and payment technologies.
Discover how your everyday purchases can be a catalyst for climate action as we chat with Ben Gleisner, the driving force behind Cogo. Ben's journey from the UK to the picturesque landscapes of New Zealand has led him to pioneer a movement where financial transactions become a measure of our environmental impact.
Our conversation uncovers the intricate workings of Cogo, which transforms banking data into a personal carbon footprint calculator, effortlessly integrating with your favorite banking apps. We also uncover the unique attributes that elevate Cogo above its peers in the carbon footprint estimation arena.
With Ben's expertise, we peel back the layers on how Cogo's approach to data accuracy and local partnerships is changing the game in consumer behavior. Tune in to this week's episode to grasp the full scope of how informed spending is not just a powerful statement but a step towards a sustainable planet.
Join us for an exclusive conversation with Alex Kostecki, the brains behind Clair, a service that ties your bank account to your employment. As the co-founder and chief revenue officer, Alex reveals how his background in financial services consulting inspired the creation of Clair - a service that not only gives users free access to their wages but also enables them to earn interest on them. He enlightens us on Clair's business model which is built on interchange fees and its innovative way of generating revenue from voluntary products on their app. Alex also shares his love for marketing and backcountry skiing.
Despite the potential challenges of state-specific regulations, Clair is committed to navigating the complexities of the financial industry. The company is in the process of obtaining the required licensing and working with qualified lenders to comply with the evolving regulatory landscape. This proactive approach is attracting large companies, like networks of hospitals across the US and large hotel groups, who choose Clair for its ability to deploy services across the entire country.
In this episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast, Aubrey Amatelli, the founder and CEO of PayRio, provides fascinating insights into the complex world of payment solutions in high-risk industries such as cannabis and CBD.
Amatelli discusses her company's focus on providing compliant payment solutions for the cannabis and alternative medicine industries. She elaborates on the challenges of operating in high-risk categories like cannabis and CBD, and the unique nuances of processing payments in the cannabis industry. These insights are invaluable for businesses and entrepreneurs navigating this complex landscape.
A significant part of the discussion revolves around Aubrey's career journey from her early days at college to becoming an entrepreneur. Her experiences at Chrysler Corporation, in the nonprofit world, and in the tech industry provide a comprehensive understanding of her professional growth. Her determination to create a more inclusive and diverse workplace is truly inspiring and sets a new standard in the our industry.
Join us as we sit down with Dan Pinto, the brain behind Fingerprint, a company that is making waves with its unique approach to identifying devices in web and mobile apps to prevent fraud. With a focus on adding value and not just preventing losses, Fingerprint has attracted businesses willing to build on top of their API, with payment fraud being the most common use case.
This episode isn't just about Fingerprint's innovative approach to fraud prevention, we also dive deep into the story behind the formation of Fingerprint and how an open-source library played an instrumental role in its inception. Pinto shares his insights on the potential of AI in fraud prevention and how his passion for entrepreneurship is driving his company forward. He's got some hard-earned wisdom to share with anyone looking to break into the payments industry. This episode is chock-full of expert knowledge, inspiring entrepreneurship, and the future of fraud prevention. Tune in for a discussion you don't want to miss.
What if you could revolutionize a centuries-old practice with the click of a button? This week on the Leaders in Payments Podcast, we take you on a thrilling journey through the digital transformation of the agricultural industry. Our esteemed guest, Jake Joraanstad, the CEO and co-founder of Bushel, shares his inspiring journey from a North Dakota farm boy to a software entrepreneur. Learn how Bushel is rewriting the rules of agriculture by digitizing farming transactions and eliminating outdated paper-based processes.
We also navigate through the maze of challenges in the farming world. From crop tracking to payment issues, technology seems poised to solve them all. Jake offers a glimpse into the future, where digital solutions are the norm, not the exception. We delve into the prospects of younger generations taking the farming reins, steering it towards further digitalization, and making the lives of farmers more efficient and convenient.
No conversation with Jake would be complete without touching upon his passion for technology and...touring cars. Discover Jake's side gig as a car racer, his experiences as a project manager, and his fervor for technology adoption. So, plug in, listen up, and get ready to explore the digital frontiers of farming with us on the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
Ever wonder how an entrepreneurial spirit combined with a computer science background can make an impact on the payments industry? Join us as we sit down with James Shepherd, CEO of CCSalesPro, who lives and breathes this synergy every day. James has an unwavering passion for sales and technology and shares his fascinating journey into the payments industry, highlighting the importance of collaboration, innovation, and the power of bringing different worlds together. Be prepared to be inspired by his personal life too, as he opens up about his faith, family, and love for podcasting.
This episode is not just about a personal journey, but it unravels the current trends shaping the payments and fintech industry. Verticalization, regulation's potential impact on interchange revenue, and alternate forms of value exchange-- we cover it all, discussing the challenges and opportunities these trends offer for ISOs and ISVs. We emphasize the importance of building personal connections and selecting the best merchant solutions amid these industry shifts. Also, James leaves us with his visionary thoughts on the future of the payments industry that promise exciting opportunities and transformative changes. So, let's tune in and explore the world of payments with James Shepherd!
What if you knew the secrets of the rapidly evolving payments and fintech landscape in Latin America? Cue Francisco León, the CEO of Bamboo Payment Systems. With a wealth of experience in finance and risk management, he shares his journey of leading a company that bridges the gap between international businesses and Latin American consumers. Bamboo Payment Systems is making strides in the payment processing industry by focusing on various sectors like gaming, ride-hailing, and streaming services. Their USP? Real-time payments and leveraging local payment methods.
We dig into the rise of local payment methods, their challenges, and the potential tremors crypto and blockchain could cause in the region. But it's not all business - Francisco gives us a glimpse into his world outside work, from kickboxing to balancing family life. His advice for those looking to carve a career in payments? Flexibility and adaptability are key. So strap in and get ready for a whirlwind tour of Latin America's dynamic payments industry.
This episode promises an insightful journey with special guest, Danny Shader, CEO of PayNearMe. Danny shares the intriguing story of PayNearMe's rapid ascent in the payments industry, including the launch of their new product, MoneyLine, and strategic partnerships with industry giants like Venmo, PayPal, and CashApp. We delve into the impressive expansion of their cash business currently operating in 60,000 retail locations.
We explored the fascinating evolution of payment methods, with a particular focus on the emergence of "Payments 3.0" companies. These businesses are redefining how payments are made, leveraging technology to create seamless payment experiences for consumers. Danny underscored the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in this transformation, noting how it is reshaping the consumer payment experience.
One of the key insights from Danny was the continued relevance of cash payments in today's digital age. Despite the rapid digitization, there is a segment of consumers who prefer to use cash, which underscores the importance of offering a variety of payment methods to cater to different consumer preferences.
Picture a world where all transactions are so seamless, they feel non-existent. Well, that's the future of payments we're exploring today with the insightful NMI CEO, Vijay Sondhi. Promising an enlightening discussion, we dive into the realm of Anytime, Anywhere Payments. An idea that's all about eliminating the friction from payments and creating experiences that are so smooth, they feel like they never happened. We delve into the evolution of smartphone payments, looking at how these handy devices are becoming the ultimate tools for transactions. Tune in as Vijay shares how different sectors such as ISOs, ISVs, Payfacs, and banks should approach this concept for a frictionless future.
Interestingly, the influence of Gen Z on the future of payments was also discussed. Gen Z, the digital natives armed with smartphones and short attention spans, are leading the charge towards a future of frictionless payments. They demand speed, convenience, and security, which are becoming the benchmarks for payment experiences. Vijay also pointed out that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend, leading to a paradigm shift with card-not-present transactions becoming the new norm.
For those involved in the payments industry, this episode offers an insightful exploration into the future. It serves as a reminder to always strive to deliver the best payment experience - the one that never happened.
Ready for a deep dive into the future of payments? Our thoughtful conversation with Joshua Silver, the CEO of Rainforest, is one you won't want to miss. Rainforest helps software companies seamlessly integrate payments into their platforms, carving a niche across diverse sectors, from healthcare and field services to logistics and construction. Joshua shares the competitive edge that Rainforest provides by absorbing all the risk and liability, allowing software companies to focus on what they do best - writing software and serving their customers. This model is a significant departure from traditional payment facilitator models, and it's proving increasingly attractive to software companies.
Small businesses are no longer procuring payments from their bank, but payments are embedded in the software they use to run their business. This evolution of payment distribution has significant implications for ISOs and the industry at large. We also delve into the burgeoning arena of faster payments and alternative payment methods. Joshua underscores the cruciality of customer-centricity in the payments industry, the impact of cost-cutting measures, and the indispensability of aligning with companies that reflect your values.
Ever wondered how those black and white square codes we see everywhere are revolutionizing the world of payments? We're about to decode this mystery with our guest, Sarah Hoisington, the VP of Strategy and Marketing for Matera. Join us as Sarah provides a comprehensive exploration of the evolution of QR codes and their role in transforming traditional payment methods, especially in countries like Brazil, China, and India. She'll also discuss their emerging role in the U.S. and how they're becoming a critical component in the shift towards more pay-by-bank transactions.
Don't miss out as we dive into the future of instant payments with QR codes and how they're shaping the payments industry. Sarah helps us understand how the combination of QR codes and API-based technology is enhancing the user experience and the potential they hold for facilitating instant payments. You'll also get a sneak peek into how Matera is assisting financial institutions in the U.S. to offer instant payments. The fusion of QR codes and instant payments promises a revolution in the world of transactions, propelling us into the future of anytime anywhere payments.
Get set for an enlightening conversation with Vinodh Poyyapakkam, the CEO of Coris, as he takes us on a fascinating journey through his professional life and the world of payments, fintech and risk management.
Coris is at the forefront of revolutionizing the way small businesses manage risk, providing them with a modern risk infrastructure to tackle fraud more effectively. Vinodh offers an inside look at how Coris is making it easier for small businesses to access financial products, their go-to-market strategy, and typical use cases. As the CEO of a smaller company, Vinodh's perspective on the challenges and rewards of leadership is unique and enlightening. This episode is a wealth of knowledge on the future of payments and risk management, with Vinod underscoring the importance of problem-solving in the risk space to smoothen the path for payments.
Vinod's passion for payments and geopolitics is infectious, and his insights into the payments industry, particularly the role of AI in fraud and risk prevention, are invaluable for anyone looking to navigate this complex space. Tune in, learn, and be inspired!
In this episode we’ll navigate the evolving landscape of Omnichannel Commerce. Join me and Debbie Guerra, Chief Product Officer of ACI Worldwide, as we decode the journey from traditional in-store experiences to the dynamic world of accepting diverse payment types across numerous channels (in-store, online and mobile.) We'll dig into the crucial role that ACI Worldwide is playing in driving this change, and what the future might hold for Omnichannel Commerce. You'll also gain insights into the concept of Anytime Anywhere Payments, as highlighted in the Be Solid campaign in partnership with NMI, and how it's shaping consumer demands and retail trends.
As we dive deeper, we'll explore the rising trend of digital fraud and the shift to real-time payments including how these trends are reshaping the face of Omnichannel Commerce? From the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in fraud detection to the impact of FedNow on real-time account-to-account payments, we'll cover it all. You'll walk away with a comprehensive understanding of how intelligent payments orchestration is empowering merchants with greater control over their payments infrastructure, making it easier to accept alternative payment methods, and facilitating smoother international expansion.
Ready to uncover the secrets behind a successful fintech venture? Join us as we explore the world of e-commerce and emerging markets with Mitch Davis, the CRO & Co-Founder of PayAmigo. Mitch captivates us with his professional journey, emphasizing the unique position of PayAmigo in the fintech sector and the strategies that set them apart from the competition. We'll pull back the curtain on PayAmigo's approach to enabling e-commerce growth in emerging markets and discuss the verticals they focus on.
In our enlightening conversation with Mitch, we'll journey through his transition from the video game industry to the launch of PayAmigo. His deep passion for emerging markets and insights into their high growth potential will definitely keep you on the edge of your seat. We'll also delve into the complexities merchants face in these challenging markets and discuss how technology and industry trends can be leveraged for success. Tune in for an episode full of captivating insights and powerful tips.
What if your digital wallet could do more than just hold cards? What if it could become a one-stop solution for your identification, boarding passes, concert tickets and more? That's exactly what we're exploring in our intriguing chat with Jenny Cheng, VP and GM of Google Wallets. We venture into the fascinating world of mobile wallets and digital payments, shedding light on how the pandemic has shifted our perspectives. Hear from Jenny about Google Wallet's core mission of accessibility and the broader applications of mobile wallets, such as digital driver's licenses, barcodes, QR codes and more.
We learn more about Google Wallet's security, its commitment to user's data and payment credentials protection, and how it stands out from the crowd. Jenny Cheng shares her thoughts on the potential of the digital payments space over the next 5 to 7 years. We also delve into the collaborative aspect of this evolution, discussing the necessity to involve consumers, merchants, and the broader ecosystem in this transition. In summary the episodes highlighted the potential of mobile wallets beyond just payments and underscored the importance of security in this digital transition.
Prepare to revolutionize your understanding of account-to-account (A2A) payments with our special guest, Dave Glaser, CEO of Dwolla. Dave presents a fascinating insight into the company's innovative approach towards A2A payments, including their strategic shift towards servicing mid-market and enterprise clients. We delve into Dwolla’s new product, Dwolla Connect, and how companies can leverage this technology while maintaining existing treasury relationships. Dave, with his wealth of experience in the payments and fintech industry, also shares his journey and his exciting career highlights involving Cybersource, WorldPay, and now, Dwolla.
We cast a broad net over the rapidly evolving fintech landscape, discussing how traditional payment methods are getting a major makeover. From the omnipresent ACH transactions and real-time payments to the rise and triumph of companies like Square and Stripe, we uncover the seismic shifts in the industry. We probe into the potential transition from credit cards to A2A transactions at retail and explore how these changes are enabling merchants to accept payments anytime, anywhere, via any device. Lastly, Dave shares valuable career advice and discusses the role of artificial intelligence in Dwolla's innovation strategy, bringing a holistic perspective to the conversation about the future of payments and the fintech industry as a whole.
The retail industry is undergoing a significant transformation. As we step into a post-pandemic era, the advent of self-service retail and anytime anywhere payments is revolutionizing how consumers shop and pay for their purchases. In the latest episode of our podcast, we had the pleasure of hosting Elyssa Steiner, the CMO of Cantaloupe, to discuss these dynamic shifts in retail.
We also discussed the expansion of self-service retail solutions across various verticals. Airports, gas stations, gym memberships, and residential buildings are just a few areas where these solutions are becoming increasingly common. The rise of cashless food and beverage vending machines across these sectors is reshaping how businesses deliver services and products.
The future of retail is set to be even more digitized and personalized. Elyssa predicts that AI technology, smart coolers, and other advancements will continue to drive the growth of self-service retail.
Have you ever wondered about the intriguing world of AI in combating fraud? Join us as we explore this fascinating domain with our esteemed guest, Yinglian Xie, the CEO and Co-Founder of DataVisor. As an innovative leader in the tech industry, DataVisor provides a comprehensive fraud and risk platform that safeguards financial institutions and large organizations from a wide array of fraud threats. We'll delve into the unique aspects of DataVisor, including its patented unsupervised machine learning and cloud technology capabilities.
We'll also discuss the remarkable role of AI in staying ahead of emerging fraud trends and delve into the recent game-changing innovations in the payments industry. From real-time payments to Buy Now Pay Later, digital currencies, and digital wallets, there's a lot to unpack. We'll also discuss how AI regulation can help protect businesses from fraud. But we're not just talking tech. Yinglian shares her personal journey, her passion for technology, and her unwavering commitment to making a tangible impact in the world.
Step into the fascinating world of text-to-pay and conversational commerce with the trailblazing CEO of Authvia, Chris Brunner. Together, we travel through time, dissecting the evolution of text-to-pay, its plethora of applications, and the exciting prospects it holds for the future.
We discuss how Authvia has revolutionized payments with their innovative suite of solutions that enables merchants to accept payments over text messaging. This means reshaping the payment experience for consumers, ensuring it's not just about convenience, but also security. From pharmacies to vets, and even companies aiming to recover payments from late payers, the versatility of Authvia's solution is truly remarkable. Additionally, we venture into the importance of encryption, the role of cloud-based wallets, and the impact of COVID-19 on the rapid rise of text-to-pay solutions.
We also discuss how Authvia seeks to give consumers control over their personal data, and their right to choose which data to share with merchants. In the near future, text-to-pay will no longer be a novelty but an integral part of commerce. Join us as we explore the ever-evolving landscape of payments and conversational commerce.
Unlock the secrets behind Payroc's success as we dive into a riveting conversation with their president, Adam Oberman. Discover how this leader has cemented the company’s position in the payment industry with a unique blend of strategic moves, acquisitions and an unwavering focus on the customer experience. Adam shares his journey at Payroc and the importance of fostering a collaborative working environment.
Join us as Adam talks about the payment industry's transformation, the role of trust in securing customer loyalty and his leadership approach. Get a glimpse into the future of Payroc and the trends that are shaping the payments industry. From strategic acquisitions to embedded finance, it's all about staying ahead of the curve in an ever-evolving industry.
Ever wondered how account-to-account payments are shaping the future of the European market? Brace yourself for an insightful conversation with Lena Hackeloer, the dynamic founder and CEO of Brite Payments. Lena unveils her extraordinary journey from the early days at Klarna to steering the helm at Brite Payments. She navigates us through the intricate workings of their system, demonstrating how it simplifies transactions by connecting consumers and banks across Europe, promising you an intriguing glimpse into the world of innovative payments.
As we steer into the second half of our discussion with Lena, we venture into the promising future of the payments industry. Lena predicts a revolution on the horizon with open banking payments replacing traditional card payments with their seamless operation. She shares valuable insights on the growth of embedded finance and how regulatory harmonization is fueling the adoption of open banking. Whether you're an enthusiast curious about the future of payments or pondering a career move into this industry, this episode is your treasure trove of knowledge!
Ever wondered how to wrangle your bills, boost your credit score, and navigate the Buy Now Pay Later landscape? Paul Kesserwani, CEO of Cushion.ai, joins us to provide cutting-edge insights on all these topics and more. Discover how Cushion.ai's comprehensive platform is revolutionizing the way consumers manage, pay, and even build credit with their bills. We also delve into Cushion,ai's journey, transitioning from negotiating bank fees to providing better bill payment solutions in this Buy Now Pay Later era.
As we traverse the evolving terrain of Buy Now Pay Later finance companies, we uncover the strategic shifts these organizations are making in response to market dynamics - from underwriting the consumer to introducing fees and long-term loans. Traditional banks are not left out, as they step up their game with their own finance solutions. Kesserwani also unveils Cushion.ai's roadmap, with a focus on how they are aiding consumers in organizing their monthly bills and improving their credit scores. The conversation takes a critical turn, as we discuss the pressing need for regulation in the Buy Now Pay Later sector, including standardizing disclosures, mandating loan data to the Bureaus, and setting caps on fees. Tune in for an enlightening discourse on the future of payments and financial inclusion.
Ever wondered what it's like to run a company that simplifies group payments and information collection? Join me as I take a deep dive into a fascinating conversation with Nichole Montoya, the co-founder, and CEO of Cheddar Up. Nichole takes us on a journey from her simple beginnings on an Iowa farm to the hustle and bustle of running a fintech company in Denver. We explore the genesis of Cheddar Up, how it caters to diverse organizations like PTAs, Girl Scouts, teams, and churches, and the unique offerings it brings to the table, including their signature Sign Ups feature.
In our chat, Nichole unpacks the story behind the catchy name 'Cheddar Up', and how they connect and resonate with their user base. We explore Cheddar Up's innovative solutions to group payments and information collection, bringing to light the software's flexibility in serving different users and its user-friendly design. Nicole and I also delve into the world of female entrepreneurship in the fintech industry, discussing the triumphs and challenges she's faced. Whether you're a payments pro or an aspiring entrepreneur, this episode offers a wealth of wisdom and a peek into Nicole's inspiring journey.
Are you tired of wrestling with the complexities of banking systems? Imagine if there was a software that could simplify your payment operations and streamline your business' finances. Enter Modern Treasury, the game-changing platform that's transforming the payment operations landscape. Our guest on this episode is Sam Aarons, the CTO and co-founder of Modern Treasury. Sam unravels the intricacies of this unique software, its value proposition and its wide-ranging customer base. Spoiler alert: Modern Treasury does not hold money for their customers but provides a pure software service!
Sam Aarons delineates the pain points businesses encounter when scaling up, and how Modern Treasury comes in handy. He articulates how his company's software mitigates the challenges of interacting with a bank's systems, while simplifying banking regulations. He also reveals how businesses can retain their existing banking relationships and fee structures without making any significant modifications.
Lastly, we turn our sights to the future of payments, encompassing the impacts of faster payments on various aspects like payroll, consumer experiences, and inter-business transactions. We delve into the future of payment systems in the U.S., touching on the benefits of Fed Now and real-time payments in propelling U.S. payments growth.
Imagine a world in which biometric technology empowers the financially excluded. That's the compelling vision Catharina Eklof, Chief Commercial Officer of IDEX Biometrics, shared with us in our latest conversation. As we explored the convenience, security, and peace of mind offered by IDEX's code-based solution, she illuminated the transformative potential of using fingerprints to create a library of data points. Especially poignant was the potential impact on people challenged by dementia, literacy or vision impairments.
Biometric payment cards can provide secure, accessible financial services for everyone, especially vulnerable groups. With India pioneering this technology and Mastercard undertaking promising regional trials in Mexico, the future of payments is here. As Catharina explained, it's not just about technology - IDEX's commitment to sustainability and diversity means they're striving to make a meaningful difference in people's lives. Join us for these insights and more, as we step into the future of financial inclusion with biometrics.
Are you navigating the complex realm of security and compliance in payments? Brace yourself for an insightful journey with our guest, Kathryn McCall, Chief Legal and Compliance Officer for Trustly Inc. We promise an engaging discussion on how Trustly, a leading global player in open banking payments, is reshaping the field with a cost-effective alternative to traditional payment methods. Learn about Trustly’s unique approach to fighting friendly fraud, the significance of know your customer checks, and the necessity of adherence to the Bank Secrecy Act and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network guidelines.
What are the intricacies of anti-money laundering and compliance? Kathryn shares her expertise on the challenges in this area, underlining the importance of continuous monitoring for suspicious activity. We delve into the delicate yet essential balance between prompt payments and stringent security measures. Kathryn also shares her thoughts on creating a compliance culture, the inevitable increase in regulations, and how Trustly's expert team artfully manage their compliance programs. So, buckle up for this riveting conversation and get ready to leave with a enriching understanding of compliance and security in the payments industry!
Ever wonder how your routine bill payments could influence your credit score? Find out in our latest conversation with Lamine Zarrad, the innovative founder and CEO of StellarFi, a company revolutionizing credit-building. Lamine takes us through his unique journey from his immigrant roots to his experiences in the Marine Corps and the U.S. Treasury, all of which contributed to the inception of StellarFi. Discover how every bill you pay, from your cell phone to your Netflix subscription, can potentially enhance your credit score.
Lamine sheds light on why StellarFi's unconventional methods hold an edge over traditional approaches such as secured loans and credit cards. He offers invaluable insights into how various models used by credit bureaus impact your credit score. Wrapping up the conversation, Lamine paints a picture of his career in the FinTech and financial services sector, discussing his work with Tokken and Joust, and how it paved the way for StellarFi's creation. If you're making your first steps in the FinTech or the financial services space, you wouldn't want to miss his invaluable advice!
Join us on a journey into the enigmatic world of remittance and financial inclusion with an industry trailblazer, Paul Dwyer, the co-founder and CEO of Viamericas. Ever wondered about the inner workings of remittance services and their value to consumers and retail locations? In this intriguing discussion, we unravel these intricacies and the significance of providing a dependable, efficient service. We also delve into a myth about remittance and shed light on Viamericas unique services - from check processing, remittances, bill payment to mobile top-ups - all serving the underserved, unbanked, and underbanked.
As we navigate the complexities of international bill payment and money transfer services, we uncover the need for real-time connectivity between the service's front and back end, and the indispensable technology for transaction modifications or cancellations. The digital era has revolutionized the remittance industry, and Paul Dwyer enlightens us on Viamericas digital solutions, including their innovative mobile app. Discover the future of digital remittances, the importance of trust between parties, how agents can play a crucial advocacy role, and the exciting opportunities awaiting Viamericas in Canada, Europe, and the world beyond. This eye-opening conversation promises to leave you more informed and inspired.
Get ready for an exclusive ride into the intriguing world of online fraud prevention with Scott Przybyla, the Vice President of Global Channel Sales for Kount – an Equifax Company. This episode unravels the fascinating origins of Kount, its go-to-market strategy, and its evolution under the banner of Equifax. Understand Kount’s go-to market strategy consisting of direct and indirect sales, and the innovative white label channel strategy. Scott also walks through the history of fraud prevention and its evolution over the years.
Ever wondered about the intricacies of the fraud ecosystem and the critical roles of each player within it? Prepare for an exploration of the shifting fraud landscape, as we demystify the importance of personal security for consumers and the variety of threats that extend beyond mere payment fraud. We’ll also take a look into the future of fraud prevention. Discover how Kount, now under the wing of Equifax, is developing an end-to-end fraud and identity protection platform, combining physical and digital identity traits to create a more complete consumer identity profile. This is an exciting episode on fraud prevention you won't want to miss!
Imagine being a part of an event that has the power to revolutionize the way we view the payments industry - welcome to Fintech Meetup. Our guest, Jon Lear, the president and co-founder of Fintech Meetup, shares his captivating journey in the payments industry and his intriguing insights into the impact of his experiences at Procter & Gamble and EarthPort. We also discuss the highly anticipated Fintech Meetup event scheduled to happen at the Venetian in Las Vegas from March 3rd to 6th, 2024.
Fintech Meetup is not your typical event, it's a game-changer. Leveraging innovative technology, the platform is designed to maximize connections across all use cases, ensuring attendees get the best possible return on their investment. No stone is left unturned at the Fintech Meetup. Sponsors and exhibitors are given the opportunity to deliver value while providing an immersive experience that is competitively priced. The agenda is loaded with hot topic discussions delivered by over 175 industry experts, making Fintech Meetup an event you won't want to miss.
In an exciting twist, John draws parallels from the success of the Mercedes Benz Formula One team and shares invaluable lessons from his journey in the Fintech and payment space. Highlighting the significance of precision, strategy, and strong leadership in achieving business success, John offers insightful advice for anyone interested in the industry.
Discover the power of on-demand pay solutions as we chat with Gino Palozzi, the CMO of DailyPay. Learn how this ground-breaking platform is reshaping the way we view payday, giving you the flexibility to save and invest your hard-earned money before it hits your bank account. Say goodbye to predatory lenders and embrace the freedom that real-time visibility of your salary affords you. For employers, this means increased retention and improved engagement - a win-win situation for everyone involved.
Unpack the future of on-demand pay with us, as we explore the vast potential of reloadable cash cards for the underbanked or unbanked population. Break the chains of misconception with Gino as he explains how this is not a credit product, but a tool for financial access. Hear about the additional perks of the DailyPay platform, like data-driven strategies, personal coaching, and an auto-save feature, all aimed at making on-demand pay the new norm. Tune in and step into the future of financial inclusion with us. Your salary, your rules, your financial freedom.
Get ready to unlock the future of B2B payments with our guest, Chad Wallace, Global Head of Commercial Solutions at Mastercard. With his expertise in consumer and corporate banking, Chad sheds light on the shift from traditional cash and checks to digital payments - a transition fueled by the pandemic, evolving consumer expectations, and the influx of new talent in finance roles. He also introduces us to the vast spectrum of products and services his team brings to the table, including commercial cards, virtual cards, and accounts payable products.
From Mastercard's partnership with emerging global Fintechs to building scalable, human-centered solutions, our conversation takes you through the dynamics of payments industry. Mastercard's collaboration with Fintechs not only builds solutions but also ideates and provides data necessary to reconcile books. Chad further underlines the importance of digital solutions and how data can be harnessed to maximize working capital, improve payment status and maintain an ISO-based framework.
As we look into the crystal ball, Chad paints a picture of the future of B2B payments marked by human-focused design, digitization, interconnectivity, and the growing use of AI. He elaborates on how Mastercard is leveraging these trends with their innovative “beyond card” strategy and embedded finance use cases. As we wrap up, Chad leaves us with his insights on security, value-added services, and the criticality of providing a consumer-grade experience for buyers and suppliers. Don't miss out on this enlightening discussion that redefines the future of B2B payments.
I was privileged to host Tede Foreman, the President of Payment Solutions at Jack Henry as my guest this week.
The conversation with Tede offered a rich resource for anyone interested in the world of fintech and payment solutions. It provided a glimpse into the inner workings of a leading company like Jack Henry and highlighted the importance of innovation, resilience, and teamwork in this fast-paced industry. As we move into the future, it's clear that the role of AI and faster payments will continue to shape the landscape of payment solutions, making it an exciting space to watch and be a part of.
When it comes to his personal life, Tede shared his love for the great outdoors and the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. He believes that disconnecting from work and spending time in nature can help recharge one's batteries and boost productivity.
In this episode Yaacov Martin, Co-Founder and CEO of Jifiti, provides an in-depth look into the explosive growth of the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) industry. A game-changer in the field, Yaacov's insights will forever change the way you perceive financing significant purchases, from furniture to medical procedures, and even distance learning. More than just a business model, the BNPL industry represents a key bridge between merchants, consumers, and banks - a bridge that Jifiti is leading the way in building.
Dive into the heart of the revolution with us as Yaacov details Jifiti's journey through the trials of integrating BNPL into retail ecosystems. But this is not just about financial transactions and business models - it's about people. Yaacov illuminates the importance of fostering a family-like atmosphere within a company, sharing his own personal and business passions along the way. So, whether you're intrigued by the BNPL industry trends or looking for advice to make your mark in the space, this episode is packed with expert insights you won't want to miss.
Our special guest in this episode is Anil Goyal, the CEO of Corserv. Anil provides fascinating insights into the highly concentrated world of card issuing and explores how innovative technologies like APIs, B2B payments and virtual cards are reshaping the industry. Tune in as we journey with Anil, from his early days in New Delhi, India, to his pinnacle role at Corserv, and dissect what sets Corserv apart in the marketplace along the way.
The future of card issuing is here, and it's more exciting than ever. Anil offers a forward-thinking view on the arrival of new entrants and explores how technology levels the playing field and makes launching card programs cost-effective.
Then, we continue with a deep dive into the cutting-edge innovations fueling the digitization of payments, reducing payment friction and mitigating fraud. Join us as Anil reveals a thrilling future for the industry and offers predictions on the increasing role of virtual cards, mobile enablement and artificial intelligence in card issuing. Don't miss this episode if you're eager to update your knowledge on the rapidly evolving card-issuing landscape.
In this episode I had the opportunity to sit down with payments industry legend: O.B. Rawls. O.B. shared his fascinating journey from growing up on a farm in North Carolina to holding leading roles at big corporations such as Bank of America, Hypercom, and FiServ. Today, O.B is a partner at Wellesley Hill Financial, a boutique investment bank serving the $30-80 million deal size segment.
We discuss the verticalization of the industry and the value of offering services outside of just payments. According to O.B. the future of the payments and fintech industries is undoubtedly exciting and it requires constant learning, adaptation, and a focus on delivering value to succeed.
OB emphasizes the importance of being kind, helpful, and a good person – qualities that have guided him throughout his career. His perspective on the industry was enriched by his experiences, making his advice particularly invaluable for those starting out in the payments industry.
And finally, we talked about O.B.'s hobbies, which include gardening, wine, and a bourbon collection. I couldn’t think of a better guest to have on this milestone episode and am grateful to continue to learn from O.B. and call him a friend.
Have you ever wondered how the future of underwriting and onboarding looks in the payments industry? Prepare to be enlightened as we sit down with Darryl Cumming, the Director of Product Management for Agreement Express (an NMI company). Our conversation unfolds the significance of automated underwriting and the value of Agreement Express, touching upon its functionality, typical customers and the exciting prospects for the product.
During our discussion, we delve into Scan X, a revolutionary product that enriches the onboarding process. We learn how this tool automates merchant decisions, customizes risk recommendations and provides vital risk model performance analytics. Whether you're a greenhorn or a seasoned underwriter, the detailed reporting and performance analytics of Scan X are a treasure trove of guidance and efficiency.
We then discuss compliance and fraud protection - an issue every payments business must contend with. Uncover the potential costs your business may face without adequate protective measures. As we spotlight partner tools like KYC Site Scan and IRIS CRM (an NMI company), you'll see how Scan X helps businesses save and bridges the gap between sales and risk management. To finish our conversation, we explore Monitor X, a post-merchant approval solution that safeguards merchants in your portfolio.
Tune in for valuable insights into the world of underwriting and onboarding.
Ever wondered how a small idea could turn into a revolution? Get ready to be inspired by Ruben Galindo, CEO of Airtm. This is not just another success story – it's a tale of passion for justice and financial decentralization, from the heart of Mexico City to the tech-hub of San Francisco. Ruben shares an intriguing insight into the birth of Airtm, its transition to blockchain technology, and the audacious goal to become the Web3 PayPal of the future.
Embrace the concept of an 'open money mentality'. Listen as Ruben narrates the impact of this groundbreaking approach on the cross-border payment industry and the significance of trust and brand building in fostering prosperity with large-scale enterprises. You will learn how Airtm is leading the way for digital entrepreneurs in the global south to access their earnings effortlessly. So, get set, because this episode is sure to broaden your horizons on the world of payments and digital entrepreneurship.
The world of merchant services management is evolving at an impressive pace, thanks to innovations like IRIS CRM. In this episode of our podcast, we were joined by Jaron Ruckman, Product Manager for IRIS CRM, for an insightful conversation about how this revolutionary product is reshaping the industry.
IRIS, a product owned by NMI, is a comprehensive merchant services management solution that integrates with top processors and cultivates close-knit client relationships. For ISOs, banks, and ISVs, IRIS offers the benefit of enhanced visibility and accountability. It also provides an infinite data retention policy, which is a crucial feature for maintaining a complete and accessible record of all customer interactions and transactions.
We also decipher the complexities of residual reporting and demonstrate the tools you need to streamline split calculations. For businesses that are not utilizing a comprehensive tool like IRIS, the process of managing merchant services can be tedious and error prone. The use of disparate systems and manual processes can result in inefficiencies and inaccuracies. IRIS solves these issues by offering a single, integrated solution that manages the entire life cycle of merchant services.
In summary, IRIS a game-changing tool in the realm of merchant services management. Its comprehensive features and functionalities, coupled with its ability to integrate with top processors, make it a must-have tool for any business in the industry. Tune into our podcast for a more detailed exploration of IRIS and its myriad benefits.
Prepare to meet David Lambert, the charismatic CEO of Paycross. Exuding a passion for payments, he's at the helm of this groundbreaking payment orchestration technology platform. We delve into his journey to the top; a journey fueled by personal and professional ambitions. Discover the unique features of Paycross as Lambert unravels the intricacies of payment orchestration and how it's revolutionizing card processing and cross-border transactions.
In the second half, get ready for an unexpected twist as we discuss Lambert's love for Japanese whiskey. Lambert's approach to payments is as nuanced and comprehensive as his taste in whiskey. Listen as he shares Paycross's strategy to serve underserved niche markets and their commitment to becoming indispensable to merchants by offering multifaceted payment solutions. The competitive payments industry is a game of agility and innovation. Tune in to learn from an industry expert about the future of payments and how to stay ahead of the curve.
In this episode we take a deep dive into the world of high-value, complex B2B payments with our guest, Andrew Hawkins, CEO UK & Europe for ShieldPay. He's here to show us how ShieldPay is revolutionizing the payments industry with solutions aimed at reducing manual processes and risk. Hear about his exciting journey, from dabbling in technology in his early years to becoming the CEO of a leading fintech company. As you listen, you'll learn about the innovative services they offer, including enabling mergers and acquisitions and capital markets, and how they aim to continue growing and progressing.
But that's not all! We also venture into the thrilling future of payments and financial services. Imagine a world where payments are less visible and seamlessly integrated into our daily lives - from a simple Apple tap to pay to EV car charging. We explore the impending decentralization and disaggregation of financial services, and the potential of technologies enabling tokenization, digital identity, and smart contracts. Get your gears grinding as we discuss the implications of the PSD3 regulations in Europe and the evolving role of data in the next generation of financial services. This episode is a goldmine for anyone interested in understanding and staying ahead in the ever-evolving world of payments and fintech.
My next guest for our Women Leaders in Payments series has both an entrepreneur and facilitator spirit, being born into a family of self-starters and go-getters that depended on their entrepreneurial ventures for their foundation. KeyBank Senior Leader, Commercial Payments Carol Wang started her career in marketing but her intrigue with payments quickly changed her trajectory.
One of Carol’s roles at KeyBank is to lead the Solutions Engineering Team – a dedicated department that provides end-to-end technical payment services. Why did Carol choose KeyBank? In a nutshell, she perceived the capacity to build her career the way she wanted to within the infrastructure of a large organization.
As for her guiding principles, there’s one tried and true principle that has been with her throughout her entire career, and one that has adapted as her career has matured. Regarding the tried and true one, Carol emphasizes the importance of looking at who you’re going to work with and for versus just focusing on the job itself. And the other? Having an opportunity that will allow you to make a scalable difference.
We also discuss her most eye-opening career moments – including a corporate case study she participated in that had some pretty interesting results regarding the typical male and female response. Don’t miss it!
My guest this week has his roots in India but has lived in just about every country you can possibly imagine, including Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, United Kingdom, United States, Australia and even Egypt. He’s an avid reader, trivia enthusiast, and spends his spare time evangelizing the gospel of cloud native code. Pismo CEO NA, EMEA & APAC Vishal Dalal is this week’s leader in payments.
For those of you who may not know, Pismo is a cloud-native platform. Vishal explains it like this: when anyone gets in touch with a bank via a card swipe, ATM, our Internet portal, there is a giant piece of software that does a plethora of work on the backend to check balances, process payment messages to other banks and verify accounting. Pismo makes that software and ensures that it works seamlessly, effectively, and nonstop without any interruptions – anywhere.
As for their competitive advantage, Vishal touts their ability to offer a multitude of products versus many of their competitors that play in only one space. They also target both the green and brown field market sectors (with most competitors targeting only green) and they operate solely in the public cloud. Another way to look at them? Think the Autobahn for financial infrastructure!
Tune in to hear Vishal talk about his journey to the role of CEO, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years including the limitless possibilities of AI. We also talk about the innumerable opportunities that come from cloud native code, enabling anyone with a bright idea and a credit card to do amazing things.
My third guest in our Women Leaders in Payments series is a true example of what it takes to be a female leader in our industry. She started at Burger King, as a ham and cheese guru, working her way up to cashier – and all to pay for her ESL classes at university in Boston (including Harvard). And now? CEO and Head of Financial Institutions LATAM at Standard Chartered Bank! Germana Cruz has learned how to always be ready for the unexpected. In fact, she embraces it!
Learn what attracted her to the financial industry and what kept her with the same bank for the majority of her career. Hint: Work-life balance. It’s absolutely fascinating to hear her talk about the importance of performing her role as a mother, as it relates to her corporate success.
As for guiding principles, she has three: invest in your education is first and foremost, followed by managing expectations and identifying your values in a manner that prevents you from crossing your own lines.
Tune in to hear Germana talk about her journey as a female leader in this industry, including the necessity for choosing your battles, the importance of listening, and the feedback that completely changed her understanding of her projected career path.
My guest on this episode is nothing short of interesting. Not only does she have a very successful finance company, she also has a blog and a gaming group that caters specifically to poker players! In fact, poker is a personal passion of hers that (she feels) has helped her become a better founder due to the many metaphors the game offers for life and business. Bluejay Finance Co-founder and CEO Sherry Jiang is this week’s leader in payments.
For those of you who may not know, Bluejay Finance is a Blockchain technology company that strives to make it easier for private investors to tap into private market investments typically less accessible in the professional world. Sherry likens it to a crypto-based Angel List, only for private market investments outside venture capital.
The two main players in their ecosystem include individual investors and borrowers (or asset originators). As for as their competitive advantage, BlueJay focuses on private credit as the asset class and offers the potential for granular investments that have the capacity to target the under $50 million investment sector (which is currently underserved) with a more passive income strategy.
Tune in this week to hear Sherry talk about her journey to CEO, including the lessons she has learned when it comes to product versus people, testing, learning, and iterating – and the truth about the non-linear journey. We also talk about where she sees the industry going in the next 2 to 10 years as it relates to mobile payments, cryptocurrency and Blockchain.
Here to help me kick off the second episode of our Women Leaders in Payments series is Chase Merchant Services Canada President Marilu Gaudio. Marilu grew up with first generation Italian immigrants, in a traditional Italian household focused on family and food. In fact, she credits her father for her amazing work ethic that has gotten her so far in her career. So, how did she wind up going into payments when one of her original career paths had her slated as a teacher? You’ll have to tune in to find out!
As I’m sure most of you know, Chase Merchant Services is a full acquirer, offering payment services and solutions for both small and large enterprise clients. Marilu’s department works closely with the Canadian payment network, corporate and franchise organizations, as well as financial institutions, associations, and technology partners to both integrate and optimize the payments ecosystem.
When it comes to her guiding principles, she cites integrity, honesty, and resiliency as her top three. We also talk about the importance of treating others the way you, yourself, would like to be treated and the need for active listening in management roles. She also strives to always show up as a student, not an expert, in both life and business.
Tune in to hear Marilu talk about her journey to President, including why she grades the current state of our industry on a C+ to B- scale when it comes to female leadership and where we can do better. We also discuss some of her most eye-opening career moments that taught her the value that comes from not attempting to be the expert on absolutely everything.
Here to help me close out our six-part series on embedded finance is Inktavo CEO James Armijo. After a brief stint in finance, James was quick to ascertain the truth that spending 16 hours a day working a spreadsheet would not lead to a tremendous amount of career satisfaction for him personally. So, he made the jump from finance to SaaS companies and payments and never looked back! As for what keeps him up at night these days, it has a little to do with payroll and a lot to do with the future of the embedded finance ecosystem.
For those of you who may not know, Inktavo is a SaaS platform that supports apparel decorators (or screen printers) in their mission to provide decorative apparel to their local community. Their software is unique in that they provide an all-in-one platform for their customers to thrive and flourish, including customizable designs, web checkout, order tracking and (of course) embedded finance options.
In talking with James about the embedded finance journey, it’s interesting to hear his take on the steppingstones and stumbling blocks present in such a prolific ecosystem. For Inktavo’s customer base specifically, lending is one of the most significant value adds they can provide in a much more streamlined fashion due to the data they have access to.
Tune in this week to hear James discuss all things embedded finance, including the three-phase embedded roadmap and the benefit that comes from focusing on customer pain points versus just monetization when it comes to your embedded strategy. We also talk about where he sees the embedded ecosystem in the next 2-5 years as it relates to payroll and AP/AR initiatives.
My guest on episode 238 has a passion for football, tennis, F1 and (of course) payments! Only, not in that order. A self-proclaimed payments geek, Paramount Commerce COO Dave Roe is a product guy at heart with a self-driven mission to make the complex look simple – especially when it comes to payments!
For those of you who may not know, Paramount Commerce is the leading bank-account-based payment solutions provider. The company itself just celebrated 20 years in business and has roughly 150 satisfied employees. They specialize in the online gaming and sports betting sector, as well as international e-commerce, and their two biggest offerings revolve around Interac-based payments products and instant bank transfer via the EFT rails.
As for their competitive advantage that has enabled them to process more than $1 billion in payments, Dave circles back to their mission: to simplify payments for all sides of the transaction. We talk in detail about how the payment experience can make or break your conversion rate, as well as your customer relationship. Dave focuses heavily on their best-in-class payments experience and their strategic partnership strategy, as well as their genuine intention to make good friends with each and every customer.
Tune in to hear Dave talk about his journey to COO and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years, including the numerous changes expected in bank-to-bank payments, the advancement in open banking, and the expectation of real-time rails.
My guests this week earned her very first dollar selling avocados with her neighborhood friend, took her first job as a retail warehouse employee and was actually one of the original baristas before Starbucks made it such a mainstream profession. So how did she wind up in payments? You’ll have to tune in to find out! Spoiler alert: it was a tough choice between deodorant and financial technology.
Clover Network CMO Andrea Gellert is here to help me kick off our annual Women Leaders in Payments month!
For those of you who may not know, Clover is the leading cloud-based POS solution for small and medium sized businesses in the U.S. They offer a front office solution for payment acceptance, as well as a technology platform for business management. As for their competitive advantage, Andrea touts not only their capacity to offer enterprise-grade solutions for small businesses but also their genuine emphasis on the human connection – creating a business model that focuses much more on the relationship than the transaction.
We spend some time talking about her most eye-opening moments throughout the span of her career, including how to facilitate and sustain the startup pace-of-change, high-energy environment regardless of the company size, as well as how your efforts tend to get diffused when you explore absolutely every business opportunity for your brand.
Tune in to hear Andrea talk about her journey to CMO, including the guiding principles that have helped her navigate her career and why it’s always so important to start any journey with the end in mind. We also discuss the most powerful lesson she learned from a round of constructive criticism that continues to influence her management style even to this day.
Here to kick off the next episode in our embedded finance series is Maast Chief Revenue Officer Ernie Moran. Ernie has been in the industry for more than 25 years and is currently an integral part of the team that is defining embedded finance at his company. What’s his recipe for success? According to Ernie, a disciplined focus on delivering real value to the market always wins out. And there are few things that offer more value in our industry than embedded finance.
For those of you who may not know, Maast helps software providers like ERP and vertical SaaS become a one stop shop for their customers by offering as suite of integrated services in their software platform. Their goal is to simplify money management for businesses while enabling software providers to unlock the hidden revenue offered through the embedded ecosystem in a manner that truly optimizes the customer experience.
Ernie himself defines embedded finance as “everything to do with the flow of money” and gives a comprehensive overview of the three-step process required for the most efficient embedded model for any business. Also on tap for our discussion is the necessity of having the right products, at the right time, and in a manner that is easy to consume. We also talk about the ISO community and their role in the future of embedded finance.
Tune in to hear Ernie talk about the embedded ecosystem including the embedded finance trend as it relates to the overall industry, the necessity for innovation to stay real-time and relevant, and the projected demise of organizations focused on selling traditional payment services. Ernie wraps up with some great concepts both software companies and ISOs should consider when exploring embedded finance.
My guest this week has a genuine passion for people and was focused on financial services before the term ‘digital transformation’ even existed. EngageSmart President of Enterprise Solutions Kevin O’Brien is a true leader in payments.
For those of you who may not know, EngageSmart is a SaaS platform focused on simplifying the customer and client experience. Their main verticals include health and wellness, utilities, insurance, customer finance and tax, while their goal is to create a more streamlined experience for their clients that look to engage their customers largely through payments.
SimplePractice is a proprietary solution that caters to the behavioral health space with a virtual software solution capable of managing scheduling, payments and all the tasks in between. DonorDrive supports the non-profit space, while HealthPay24 helps health systems, physician groups and dental practices. And finally, InvoiceCloud is their largest digital solution targeting online bill pay in the utility, insurance, and customer finance space.
Tune in to hear him talk about his journey to the role of President of Enterprise Solutions, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to online bill pay adoption and the Amazon-like experience every customer is looking for. We also talk about what we can do as an industry to capture the non-digitally native population, as well as the variance in adoption rates from vertical to vertical.
As we continue our deep dive into embedded finance, my guest this week is here to talk to us about some of the most important components when we begin to look at the embedded world beyond just payments. Nium Chief Product Officer Robin Gandhi is willing to guarantee one thing when it comes to the ever-evolving embedded finance trend: “you can’t stop this train!”
And with a company like Nium, non-financial organizations looking to monetize financial services can embed Nium’s API into their tech stack to help them have access to a variety of financial products.
When it comes to the future of the embedded journey, Robin will be the first to say that the momentum is not slowing down and, in fact, is only speeding up. We also spend time talking about who gets disintermediated in the embedded journey? And what does it mean to the industry as a whole? Spoiler alert: according to Robin, “you don’t get disintermediated unless you’re just not paying attention.”
Tune in this week to hear Robin talk about all things embedded finance, including the main ingredient that is absolutely essential and integral to everything in the embedded journey, as well as the one thing that has the potential to slow down its momentum.
My guest this week has a passion for building products that help customers solve their pain points and considers himself a product founder at his core. Torpago CEO and Founder Brent Jackson has made it his mission to simplify spending for small businesses.
For those of you who may not know, Topago is a corporate credit card and spend management platform with slightly north of 1400 small business customers and a very vertical agnostic platform. According to Brent, they have very intentionally and successfully rebuilt the credit card experience from the ground up for small businesses. Their core product revolves around a Visa commercial charge card and spend management software that allows businesses to “spend smarter,” while their most recent product offering enables businesses to launch their own proprietary card programs.
Their software is easily configurable and customizable for anything from a two-person bakery to a 5,000-person brand. And while this makes them predominantly vertically agnostic, their core customer tends to be from non-venture-backed industries. As for their competitive offering, Brent touts the capacity for them to provide an all-encompassing solution – not just a card and not just an expense software, but the best of both worlds combined! Also worthy of mention is the functionality within the software that enables users to swipe, approve and sync in a matter of minutes!
Tune in to hear Brent talk about his journey to CEO, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2- 3 years as it relates to consolidation, innovation, the embedded journey, and the trend of non-financial companies offering core financial products.
As we continue our deep dive into embedded finance, I have on the show with me this week the woman who quite literally wrote the book on it! Fiat Republic Co-Founder and CC&GO Sophie Guibaud has a passion for embedded finance and has been advocating for it since before the term even existed.
She defines embedded finance as the capacity to provide financial, insurance and lending services to the end user exactly at the point they need it, with the least amount of friction possible. As for the key players that make the embedded ecosystem so prolific (and possible), the regulators are number one on Sophie’s list. They are, after all, the ones that make it conceivable for a non-regulated company to use the license of another already-regulated company to provide value and service for their end users. And this is exactly what Fiat Republic does for the cryptocurrency space.
We also talk about the importance of the tech companies who own the data that makes the embedded value chain possible, as well as the multitude of benefits that result from both a consumer and a brand perspective.
As for the next 5-7 years, Sophie paints the picture of a world where we will be banking everywhere except banks, while our smartphones proactively pay our bills, and our cloud wallet intuitively performs transactions designed to optimize our finances. Tune in this week to hear Sophie talk about the then, now, and when of embedded finance, including the future promise of worry-free finance, frictionless payments, and intuitive optimization.
My guest this week is either all in or all out. When he’s all in, he’s all about fintech. And when he’s all out, he retreats to his own private island where he is consumed by nothing but nature! Zimpler CEO Johan Strand has a passion for learning and riding the line between cutting-edge tech and cutting out technology – completely.
For those of you who may not know, Zimpler is a fintech scaleup doing payments in the account-to-account space. They ride the wave of open banking and open finance and cater to various different industry segments including online gaming, financial services, lending, and investments. According to Johan, the question to always ask first when it comes to anything payments related is “where can we simplify the transaction?” Zimpler strives to provide value to their merchants by offering payments, payouts, data, ID solutions and KYC in a manner that integrates a very comprehensive and seamless experience.
This combination of offerings enables Zimpler customers to both pay and get paid, while at the same time verifying who they’re getting the money from or who they’re paying money to. There are only 492 companies in Europe that have the license to do what they do, and their competitive advantage includes a proprietary product offering that improved cashflow by 30% for their participating merchants.
Tune in this week to hear Johan talk about his journey to CEO, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years as it relates to consolidations, partnerships, and the anticipation of a 2035 goal for a completely cashless Nordic ecosystem.
Growth gurus Sarah Hinkfuss (Partner) and Tina Dimitrova (Associate) from Bain Capital Ventures are our special guests as we continue our new series offering listeners a deep dive into embedded finance! How do you define it, benefit from it, leverage it, and determine whether or not it’s a viable option for your business? Not to mention, just how big can this industry get and why is it continuing to see such rapid growth? These are some of the questions Sarah and Tina help us answer.
First and foremost, how does one of the world’s leading private investment firm actually define embedded finance? According to Tina, embedded finance is defined as any financial exchange whereby a non-financial institution offers financial services made possible by a financial services company. Some examples she gives of industry leaders that fit this definition include Toast, Shopify, and bill.com. Also worthy of mention is, according to Sarah, each one of these recognizable brands started as pure play software but now have more revenue coming from the financial services they’ve embedded.
So, why has embedded finance taken off and scaled so rapidly? And, more importantly, why have payments led the charge when it comes to all the offerings under the embedded umbrella? Sarah chimes in with the top 4 reasons why payments have come first, as well as a list of contenders we have in line for the embedded space beyond just payments. Spoiler alert: Lending is the next runner up!
Tune in to hear about all things embedded finance, including just how big this already $7 trillion industry is projected to grow. We also discuss the Holy Grail of embedded insurance, the various reasons why banks will be forced to participate in the embedded ecosystem, and why the strength of fintech is also its shadow.
If you ask my guests this week about his journey to CEO and President he will be the first to tell you that it’s been a winding trail with a lot of learning on the fly. He started out with a law degree but eventually found himself in payments with a genuine passion (and opportunity) to meet as many of our industry innovators as possible. Innovative Payments Association (IPA) CEO and President Brian Tate leads on behalf of our industry and strives to see it flourish.
For those of you who may not know, IPA is a trade group of a little over 60 companies and their job is to focus solely on payments! They help members digest what is going on in the ecosystem around them, including the most recent regulatory framework and anything of interest on Capitol Hill.
One of the main benefits they provide for our industry is advocacy. They make it their business to develop positions on a consensus basis within their membership team and then use those positions to advocate for the industry as a whole. They ensure key decision makers are educated on the opinions of their membership group and they help their members understand the products in the industry and how they can be used to benefit it most significantly.
Tune in this week to hear Brian talk about his journey to the role of CEO and President, including how an innocent Google search landed him at the desk of his future employer. We also talk about where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years as it relates to innovation spikes, super aps, and behind the scenes support systems.
KeyBank EVP and Head of Commercial Product & Innovation Jon Briggs officially commences our embedded finance series sponsored by NMI. For the next six episodes, we’ll be taking a deep dive into this extremely prolific segment of our global ecosystem. How do banks create a successful strategy for embedded finance? What role can and should competitor fintechs play in this strategy and, most importantly, how can you best benefit the end user? Jon is here to answer all this and more.
First and foremost, KeyBank defines embedded finance as the secret sauce to answering the following question: How do we take every product and service we offer as a bank today and get it placed in platforms to enable the end client to benefit as much as possible? And this is the ultimate goal for Jon and his team.
When it comes to all the factors at play in creating a successful strategy for embedded banking, there are many, many moving parts. To start off, the value chain will be different for every end customer. And every customer is coming to the table with a different level of maturity and potential. Some have a robust tech stack already and others don’t. Some have a healthy appetite for risk and others feel differently. This being the case, success in this space requires a flexible model that can meet any client where they are in a manner that fulfills their needs and allows them to build the best possible customer experience.
Tune in to hear Jon talk about his strategy for success in embedded finance, including the need to maximize your data, the necessity of modern underwriting, and the important role fintechs play in maximizing KeyBank’s embedded ecosystem.
My guest this week has a genuine passion for building products, teams, and businesses. He has worked for some of the largest payment brands in our ecosystem and his focus is always on reinvention, which would explain why he, himself, holds 27 patents in the payment space. Convera our CEO Patrick Gauthier moved to the U.S. 30 years ago for what was supposed to be a three-year stint and, fortunately for us, and never looked back.
You may not know, Convera (also previously called Western Union Business Solutions) is a cross-border payments company with a mission to make cross-border transactions easy so a variety of businesses with global aspirations can grow with confidence. And according to Patrick, confidence is the main ingredient for the success of their platform.
Convera operates in 22 countries and supports more than 140 different currencies. They serve a variety of different industry segments, including higher education, nonprofit, import/export, travel, and financial institutions. And their two main offerings revolve around something called Spot Payments, which provides payments across currencies and across borders immediately, as well as various different options that help companies successfully analyze and manage their risk over time.
Tune in this week to hear Patrick talk about his journey to CEO, including the one question he always asks himself when it comes to any new venture or project: “How can we meet the customer need differently for a better outcome?” I also talk about where he sees the industry growing in the next 10 years as it relates to several “megatrends” he specifies throughout the industry: Electronification, democratization, and the evolution of the increasingly complex regulatory framework.
My guest this week started her career path in electrical engineering and wound up, thankfully, in the payments space. With a career that has spanned successfully over multiple years and countries, one might begin to ask the question “how did you get from electrical engineer to CFO?” For Episode Six CFO and Cofounder Chermaine Hu, the answer is “someone had to be CFO” and she figured it might as well be her.
For those of you who may not know, Episode Six is a technology company that offers infrastructure technology primarily to banks, who then provide payments and financial products to their customers. Their two main areas of expertise are payment processing services and a digital ledger offering. And as for their target audience, their tech stack is light enough for the smaller regional banks, but sophisticated enough for the larger enterprise banks looking to provide genuine value to their customers.
When asked about their competitive advantage, Chermaine touts the capacity to provide exactly what their clients are looking for in a customizable format that allows them to offer their customers exactly what they want. Their technology is flexible, adaptable, and resilient and they are not burdened by limitations with their potential or scalability. In fact, according to Chermaine, Episode Six can give you what you need better, faster, and relatively cheaper than their other competitors.
Tune this week to hear Chermaine talk about her journey to CEO, including her passion for building a career built on problem-solving. We also talk about where she sees the industry going in the next 2 -3 years as it relates to a hard push towards more digitized and modernized tech sacks in the financial services space, newer, better, and future proof technology, and what factors in the current market climate have helped companies that should succeed be successful.
How does one go from a degree in math and physics to a profession in payments? Highline CEO Geoff Brown has the answer for you on this week’s episode! A self-proclaimed numbers geek, Geoff has a genuine passion for data-driven insights and patterns – all of which support his very successful and beneficial contribution to our U.S. payments ecosystem.
For those of you who may not know, Highline is a brand-new payments network that originates payments directly from payroll platforms. Unlike card and ACH payments that pull directly from the consumers bank account, Highline has the funds pulled directly from the customers paycheck. According to Geoff, this translates to a vastly improve customer experience and a significant decrease in payments liability.
From a consumer perspective, the customer benefits from no longer needing to worry about drafting from their bank account and the payment failures that often can result. Highline pushes out payments to lenders and recurring platforms directly on payday, so the liability is decreased dramatically. The optimum use case for this product revolves around lenders who will be looking to help reduce losses or prepare for an upcoming increase in loss exposure, and Geoff touts a customer experience that is “far better than ACH,” in addition to a one-click authorization process that far surpasses their competition.
Tune in this week to hear Geoff talk about his journey to CEO, including how he came up with the idea for this entirely unique offering in the payment space. We also talk about where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to the evolution of P2P, the rapid growth of the payroll space, and the anticipated consolidation throughout the banking industry.
My guest this week has a degree in engineering but no passion for being an engineer. Instead, he has a passion for vision, strategy, and execution. And all revolving around the world of payments! ForwardAI CO-Founder and CEO Nick Chandi is a self-proclaimed subject matter expert on “how things need to be done.” And, as is evident by his career, he knows how to do them very well.
For those of you who may not know, ForwardAI is a technology company with a truly distinct offering. They offer a core product and a vertical-specific solution with a proprietary build out that enables seamless integration between the two. Their industry niche is in accounting and their target audience is both fintechs and lenders.
Their core product, Precise API, connects to multiple accounting systems that function as the main control panel at any given business. With this integration, customers are able to push data and provide their accounting information to any one of their clients. They also offer a product called Forwardly that specifically targets the small business market with optimized cash flow management solutions integrated with their precise API platform. With the Forwardly app, small businesses receive instant payment from their clients using the RTP and (as of July) the FedNow payment rails.
As for their competitive advantage, Nick touts the capacity for his customers to request payment from their clients via a one-click interface for funds received directly into their preferred bank account in a matter of seconds!
Tune in this week to hear Nick talk about his journey to CEO, including being the first company to go to market on behalf of the small business B2B sector with instant payment options. We also talk about where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to cryptocurrency, Blockchain, SB RTP, and Central Bank Issued Digital Currency.
My guest this week grew up snowboarding and mountain biking in the mountains of Sweden, only to find himself much later in life in a place with more ocean than mountains and absolutely no snow! MAJORITY CEO Magnus Larsson has always had a genuine passion for people. And it was this passion that fueled the business plan for a company dedicated to promoting the thriving potential of the U.S. immigrant population.
Being an immigrant himself, Magnus has a firsthand understanding of what this population faces when they migrate to the United States. The hurdles can be vast, and the support can often times be minimal. And this, of course, is one of the foundational pillars for the success of his company.
For those of you who may not know, MAJORITY is a digital banking platform for immigrants that offers so much more than just financial access. In fact, they have a vast array of services to help people thrive and succeed as they transition into the U.S. While banking is their core product, their customers also benefit from other cross-border services such as sending money, calling internationally and, most importantly, establishing a community connection outside of their native country.
According to Magnus, one of the best ways to think about MAJORITY is to take the check cashing stores and the payday loan stores and convert them all into a digital product offering. As for their competitive advantage, not only do users see savings that average anywhere from $10-$50 per month, MAJORITY also works community to community to ensure that there will be someone from their native country onboarding them throughout every step of the process.
Tune in this week to hear Magnus talk about his journey to CEO, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years as it relates to the future of neo versus niche banks and the most recent waves of our ecosystem’s evolution. We also talk about the 23% of our small business population that started the same way he did.
My guest this week has a very intense musical background, with proficiency in four different instruments: piano, saxophone, oboe, and double base. He currently performs to this day and makes a concerted effort to have a very strong presence in what he calls the four F’s of life: family, fitness, fintech, and flavor! Phos CEO Brad Hyett has a passion for trying new things, going new places, meeting new people, saying yes to things outside of his comfort zone and doing it all with a fintech spin in company socks!
For those of you who may not know, Phos is a softPOS technology platform enabling contactless payments onto mobile devices with no requirement for exclusive payments specific hardware. They offer a softPOS payments orchestration platform to complement the pain points typically associated with going to market through softPOS solutions and they target their main verticals (mobility, charity, and retail) with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) devices that are not specifically certified for EMV usage. How do they make it work? They replicate an EMV level certification in the cloud to enable these products to offer integrated an optimized contactless options.
As for their competitive advantage, Brad will be the first to say that they offer a customizable solution that enables them to meet their customers where they are and take them where they want to go, in a way that offers much more flexibility and potential than their current competition.
Tune in this week to hear Brad talk about his journey to CEO, including a “predestined alignment of the stars” that enabled his wife to replace him at his previous company, prior to his tenure with Phos. We also talk about the evolution of contactless within our global ecosystem, as well as the upcoming M&A spree Brad expects within the industry over the next several years.
My guest this week has a passion for configurability, customization and customer satisfaction. He originally started his journey in marketing, but it didn’t take long for him to pivot to finance and, more specifically, what would eventually be called fintech. He was the second employee to join his current company, next in line only to the original founder himself, and has been adding value to the prepaid technologies sector of our industry ever since. Dash Solutions CEO Stephen Faust is a true leader in his piece of the payments pie.
For those of you who may not know, Dash Solutions has been in the payments industry for a very long time, branded originally as Prepaid Technologies. The re-brand itself was a recent one and also a bit of a no-brainer. According to Stephen, Dash is the name of the product brand they went to market with for many years and what they really do from a value adding perspective is provide solutions to their customers’ payments needs.
They currently have four payments pillars where they provide cutting edge digital solutions: Pay, rewards, corporate disbursement, and expense management. And as for their competitive advantage, Stephen touts the fact that they are not a single solution provider. They have built their technology to be multi solutional with more than 80 approved bank issued card programs and endless customizable configurations for each one of these product offerings. In a nutshell, they don’t go in looking to sell a product. Rather, they go in looking for the solutions that the business needs and then they customize a product specifically for them.
Tune in to hear Stephen talk about his journey to the role of CEO, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to digital advancement and real-time offerings. We also talk about the trillions of dollars in commercial payments that have yet to transition to digital in multiple “niche” industries where payments have detrimentally lagged.
My guest this week grew up on a small-town island in Canada but had to go all the way to Hong Kong before he finally realized that being a lawyer wasn’t his calling. When he returned, he had exchanged his passion for a “reputable career” for an obsession with technology. ZayZoon Co-founder and President Tate Hackert went from Meetups to mainstream via the tech startup path – and all on behalf of the employee/employer dynamic when it comes to payments.
For those of you who may not know, ZayZoon is a way for employees to get paid prior to their individually scheduled paycheck date. And for those of you wondering why this is so important, Tate will be the first to tell you that 80 million Americans live paycheck to paycheck. For this demographic, the capacity to access earned wages as needed significantly minimizes cash flow distress and the resulting predatory product scams and credit hits that can often come with it.
How does it work? In a nutshell, any employee at a participating location can go in and request their pay prior to their pay date and then once their paycheck clears, the funds are re-deposited back to ZayZoon. This includes the ability to send money directly to the employee bank account, as well as prepaid debit card options with automatic check deposit and the capacity to stream wages, and gift card options that offer a “coupon clipping on steroids” kind of benefit. With this product, employees benefit from the ability to save money, while employers can more than double their candidate pipeline and employee retention.
Tune in to hear Tate talk about his journey to the role of Co-founder and President, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to real-time payments, interoperability, and the democratization of our payments ecosystem. We also talk about his “big hairy audacious goal” to save 10 million employees 10 billion dollars!
My guest this week started working on the digital evolution before it was even recognized as evolutionary. He has a resume that is exemplary of a true leader in payments and his greatest passion (besides voraciously consuming books) is applying technology to solve business problems. Dragonfly Financial Technologies CEO Johan Roets is the self-proclaimed “other famous tech billionaire from South Africa” and this is his story!
For those of you who may not know, Dragonfly Financial Technologies provides digital banking solutions to banks in the United States. They offer a technology platform for banks where their corporate and business customers can sign on and do all their corporate payments, cash management, and reconciliation in a manner that backs directly into their accounting platform. Their target market is larger regional banks looking to compete with the big players in the U.S. ecosystem.
Johan sees Dragonfly as “a white knight to the banks” in that Dragonfly helps them accelerate their innovations to be able to compete with those fintechs that are dominating the market. The core benefits they offer include fintech integration, open baking, AI-based solutions for corporations, and high-value payments in real time.
Tune in this week to hear Johan talk about his journey to CEO, including why he feels people still struggle to trust non-banks with their financial assets. We also talk about where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to Blockchain and payments fraud, the bank versus the non-bank competition when it comes to owning the customer journey, open banking as a necessity in our ecosystem and just how quickly money can move in the wake of financial turmoil.
My guest this week has a passion for people, payments, and Orange Theory? Yep, you heard me right! Orange Theory enthusiast and Elavon CEO Jamie Walker is a phenomenally empathetic leader with a fascinating journey in payments and almost 1,200 Orange Theory classes under his belt since 2013! And if you ask him where he gets his business advice from, he will be the first to tell you that one of his top advisors is his wife.
For those of you who may not know, Elavon is a payment processor and wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Bank. They offer payment processing to a wide array of customers including the smallest business to the largest airline, and all on a global scale. Their primary verticals are airlines, hospitality, healthcare, retail, and (most recently) mass transit. And they support all money movement needs for their customers via their embedded finance solution, Talech.
As for their competitive advantage, Jamie touts their breath of distribution, their industry specific solutions that uniquely service their customers, and the digital assets provided by their U.S. Bank relationship. And when asked what Jamie’s secret sauce is for running such a high performing team, he lives by the following: Be accountable, offer thought leadership, and do both with a sense of urgency.
Tune in this week to hear Jamie talk about his journey to the role CEO, including his 22-year tenure with U.S. Bank, the catalyst that fueled his empathetic leadership style, and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to contactless, embedded payments, digital wallets, and a secure checkout experience.
As we move away from diversity and inclusion month and back to life as we know it, my guest this week gets us back on track as a true leader in the payment industry with a successful business targeting one of the more compelling industry buzzwords these days: open banking. But Link Money Cofounder and CEO Eric Shoykhet will be the first to tell you that open banking, as a concept in the U.S. anyways, doesn’t really exist…
For those of you who may not know, Link Money is a company that provides a pay by bank solution in the United States that enables merchants to allow their customers to pay from their bank account as part of the standard check out flow. This includes everything from ecommerce and insurance to parking, storage, and remittances, with a target prerequisite of high frequency and larger volume transactions. Why? Because this is where the real benefit is realized for merchants and customers alike.
Just like most everything else in the world these days, interchange rates are rising at an astronomical rate. One of the biggest benefits of using a pay by bank solution like Link Money is the ability to take your transactions off the credit rails, onto the ACH rails, and offer a more cost effective and more secure way to pay. For merchants, the benefit of using Link Money is the ability to reduce transaction costs by up to 70-80%, and even higher for some use cases. Additional benefits include less fraud and an overall reduction in payment churn.
Tune in this week to hear Eric talk about his journey to CEO, including why the US tends to be so far behind in the open banking concept, and where he sees the industry going in the next few years as it relates to fewer payment methods, a narrower focus on payments strategy, and the inevitable transition in customer psychology that is already happening today.
For our last episode of diversity and inclusion month, we take DEI to a place that could offer one of the most crucial necessities for a diverse and inclusive mindset: the VC space. And to discuss this segment with us, we have Novel Capital Co-Founder and CEO Carlos Antequera.
For those of you who may not know, Novel Capital leverages technology and data to provide non-diluted capital to tech entrepreneurs that don’t fit traditional bank requirements or are not an ideal match for the traditional equity process. They employee a little more than 20 people and services a few hundred customers currently, with the majority of their customers being tech founders or software entrepreneurs. The company’s goal is to collect key data points from their clients and then use their algorithms and expert data teams to provide a conducive capital match within a 10-day window.
When it comes to the venture capital space, Carlos will be the first to tell you that unconscious bias has the potential to run rampant with traditional VCs when it comes to funding companies. He explains that many will try to find a pattern around what has been successful in the past and stick to that same recipe for their future investments. Ingredients include things like the college the potential founder attended (was it Ivy League or not?), their degree, and even the type of business they’re looking to start. And this can obviously be a challenge for minority applicants who may not have grown up in a life of privilege and expectation.
Tune in this week to hear Carlos talk about his journey to CEO, how his own challenges with DEI drove his passion to start Novel Capital and what he views as the most necessary requirement for a successful DEI initiative. We also talk about the need for DEI to start at the educational level and the outlook for diverse founders looking to secure funding during the current economic climate.
My guest this week is the perfect person to keep our traction going for diversity and inclusion month! She is a self-proclaimed proud and positive disruptor that lives by the motto if you know better, do better. And she has had more than 20 years of experience in the fintech space, paving the way for the much-needed disruption of gender bias along the way. Zum Rails COO and Chief Diversity Officer Tara Wilson talks to us today about how to bake DEI into your DNA.
For those of you who may not know, Zum Rails offers a seamless, off-the-shelf product to combine open banking with payments, creating an easier way for businesses to manage the full maturation of the transaction. Their objective is to simplify the payment space and they see each payment as a full lifecycle that includes onboarding, settlement and even management beyond the payment reconciliation. Their target markets include mortgage companies, crypto, lending an investment, and their company currently has just under 50 people – all of which are working fully remote.
As for the diversity and inclusion aspect, I talked to Tara about how to build it into the company DNA. She speaks passionately about having each company know what their NorthStar is when it comes to DEI and to strive to make that journey happen while living within the values and principles of each individual company contributor. Some of the main strategies she talks about include defining core values, establishing a mission and vision, leadership training, the importance of same-place mentality, and executing all of this from the top down through open, honest, and consistent communication.
Tune in this week to hear Tara talk about her journey to COO, including what it felt like to be one of the only women in fintech and the “lucky to be here” versus “deserve to be here” mentality that has motivated her passion for DEI. We also talk about how to make DEI a true company standard versus a tick box exercise, and why leaders need to understand ROI when it comes to employee well-being.
As we move into the second week of diversity and inclusion, this month’s theme for the Leaders in Payments podcast series, I’m excited to take the time to speak with Worldline HR specialist Basil Onyia. What makes him such a good speaker for this series? His number one passion in life is helping people become the best version of themselves – together.
For those of you who may not know, Worldline is the payments provider and software of choice for ISV providers across 60 global industries. They are currently ranked #4 in our global ecosystem, with a competitive advantage rooted in sustainability. As for their key offerings, Basil says the best way to think of it is 1 platform + 1 integration + 1 billing service. And this is their equation for success.
From a diversity and inclusion perspective, Worldline does an exceptional job of creating a culture that follows the IDEA philosophy on a global scale. IDEA, according to Basil, stands for Inclusion, Diversity, Equitability and Accessibility. And these are the four crucial components to ensuring a thriving culture grounded in equality.
When asked about the specific initiatives they take to ensure this equitable foundation in their corporate culture, Basil speaks of three different pillars: internal, external, and global. Their internal focus includes subcultural celebration, psychological safety, and education, while their external focus relies heavily on building community relationships and a diverse talent pool with the partners they choose to do business with. From a global perspective, their third pillar, Basil speaks about Trust 2025 – an initiative to make Worldline the frontrunner for closing the gender and accessibility gap in the tech industry.
Tune in this week to hear Basil talk about his journey to diversity and inclusion, what drives his passion for it, as well as the details our industry needs to be focusing on when it comes to the neurodivergent population and how to create an equitable foundation for them. Also, learn about the one thing Basil says can shift an entire society!
It’s that time of year again! March is upon us and, as my loyal listeners know, this is Diversity and Inclusion month for the LIP podcast series. And I can’t think of a better guest to kick us off than Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient and UK Fintech Diversity and Inclusion nominee Lissele Pratt. Oh, she also holds the title of Capitalixe Cofounder and COO (in her spare time).
For those of you who may not know, Capitalixe is a fintech consultancy company that specializes in helping medium-to-high-risk industries obtain payments and banking solutions. They have a global network of more than 50 banks and financial institutions that they match their high-risk clients with, based on their needs and business goals. As a general rule, this includes the underserved industries such as gaming, quick tow, CBD, and various investment platforms.
A female minority in the fintech space, Lissele herself has dealt with the challenges of gender bias in such a heavily male-dominated industry. In fact, she will be the first to say that her initial experience in finance found her in a company where she was the only ethnic woman out of a group of 50 – the rest being compromised of white men. This experience in and of itself motivated her to create a company with diversity and inclusion already thriving in their foundational DNA. And this is exactly what she has achieved with Capitalixe.
Some of the stats she touts are very motivating – including a 25% potential increase in financial returns for executive-level gender diversity and a 35% potential increase for executive-level racial and ethnic diversity. All this (and more) validates that diversity and inclusion are two necessary ingredients for success and scalability.
Tune in this week to hear Lissele talk about the necessities around diversity and inclusion as it relates to the success of the overall company, how she wove it into the foundation of her company culture and why she believes “you only achieve true success when you’re able to help others achieve theirs too.”
My guest this week has a passion for building, a love for farming, and history with solving problems in the music industry that really fueled the foundation of his professional payments career. Zum Rails Cofounder and CEO Marc Milewski wanted nothing more than to build hydrogen cars in Iceland but found himself building payments technology in Canada.
For those of you who may not know, Zum Rails is a fintech company with a mission to change payments as a whole into something they call financial interactions. According to Marc, the best way to think about them is “open banking meets instant payments.” They offer a different way of thinking about payments regarding how to forecast them into financial information, and their goal is to eliminate the hassles of all the nuances that come with payment acceptance.
As for their competitive advantage, Marc himself said it best: “Our competitors think about payments as just payments. We see it as something completely different.” Their business model goes beyond shaving basis points to drive a strategy that makes their customer’s lives genuinely easier. And with one sales guy in a company of 42 employees, it’s fascinating to hear Marc talk about how the product really sells itself.
Tune in this week to hear Mark talk about his journey to CEO, including how he got from almost building hydrogen cars to building payment platforms, as well as where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to payment companies owning more of their software, the high disruption of digital currency, the thinning of the herd, and the unrelenting Asterix that always goes with moving money instantly.
My guest this week leads from a place of ownership, action, honesty, and trust – the core values upon which his company was founded. Nayax CEO and Co-Founder Yair Nechmad has a passion for creating an efficient enterprise system that affords his customers and employees the work/life balance we all deserve.
For those of you who may not know, Nayax is a payments company offering integrated POS solutions and software for the unattended market sector. They are currently growing at more than 35% year over year, with more than 700 employees contributing to their success.
As for their competitive advantage, according to Yair, they are the only company globally operating an end-to-end loyalty and payments solution, with a foot on the ground in 65 different countries. Their use cases include tier 1 retailers looking for a business-in-a-box solution and they offer both software and hardware for a one-stop-shop ecosystem.
Tune in this week to hear Yair talk about the evolution of the unattended industry and his journey to CEO. We also talk about where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years as it relates to loyalty programs, embedded options and payments being the center of gravity for the entire customer journey.
My guest this week has quite a fascinating résumé in the sense that none of it really has anything to do with payments. To his own admission, he’s not going to win on pedigree, and on paper he may not even make sense, but Extra CEO Max Hellerstein has proven himself to be quite the “silent winner” when it comes to finding a problem and solving the hell out of it.
For those of you who may not know, Extra is the first ever debit card that allows consumers to build their credit history with every single swipe. And not only do customers get the opportunity to have credit level history on a debit rail, they also benefit from AMEX-level perks and rewards to incentivize their sensible spend. As for the user experience, Extra requires no existing credit for application. The only thing Extra need to verify approval is a cash balance that is sufficient for subscription. They then underwrite their customers for a spend power equivalent to the amount of cash in their account plus an additional predetermined cap. And then every transaction counts towards sufficient spend data to be reported to the existing credit bureaus.
The company generates revenue based on a subscription fee, and the interchange on every transaction is then given back to the customers to incentivize them with rewards and select offerings. Regarding their competitive advantage, Max touts their capacity to say “yes” more often, take smarter risks, and offer less painful onboarding.
Tune in this week to hear Max talk about his journey to CEO, his strategy for getting obsessed, and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to consolidation, bundling, and the potential for one universal rail.
My guest this week has a genuine passion for teamwork and a competitive edge that she credits her family for. Being the youngest of seven children, CompoSecure Chief Revenue Officer Amanda Gourbault always had to be able to run faster than everyone else in order to get them to pay attention to her. And this tenacity has served her well throughout her payments career.
For those of you who may not know, CompoSecure is the world leader in metal cards. They have a portfolio that spans throughout financial institutions and fintechs alike, with some of the most recognizable brands in our industry. In fact, the fintech sector is actually the leader of metal card issuance. Why? According to Amanda, the metal card offers an enhanced user experience that you really can’t get anywhere else. She describes it as the physical embodiment of the customer relationship with such an innovative flair that it provides a natural uplift for any brand that issues it.
As for the benefits of a metal card, Amanda talks about several use cases with impressive results – including an Amex issuance that resulted in a 52% uplift in customer retention and a 17% uplift in spend. Another interesting stat? 47% of all new metal cardholders are millennials!
Tune in this week to hear Amanda talk about her journey from magstripe to metal and some of CompoSecure’s most innovative projects – including an Amex/Delta partnership that issued a limited-edition card made from the wings of a 747!
We also discuss where she sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years as it relates to frictionless authentication, password-free login, and biometrics.
What does an avid cook with a graduate degree in law and epidemiology have to do with payments? A lot more than you may think! Banyan CEO and Founder Jehan Luth has a passion for item-level data and credits his background in both computer and food science as the foundational building blocks for his success.
For those of you who may not know, Banyan set out three years ago to build the infrastructure to both manage and utilize item-level data. And with this data, they work with merchants, banks and fintechs to power new experiences and use cases leveraging this type of granular information.
So, what are we talking about when we say item-level data? It’s a very distinct specificity around what you choose to buy versus where you choose to spend your money. And the most prolific use cases are, of course, card-linked rewards and loyalty offers. It’s the difference of being able to take the standard loyalty offer of, let’s say, $25 off your next purchase at a certain location and optimizing it to a more personal offer that gives you $25 off pet food the next time you shop that store. Why pet food? Because that accounted for 75% of your total bill the last time you shopped there.
As for their competitive advantage, Jehan talks about powering the rails to leverage experience-based value in a way that has never been done before. In this way, Banyan is not just taking an existing product and trying to make it better but, rather, creating the infrastructure for a product that has yet to even be mainstream enough to optimize.
Tune in this week to hear Jehan talk about his journey to CEO, including why the Indian banyan tree provided the inspiration for his thriving ecosystem. We also talk about the power of atomic nodes, V2 fintech and the future forward trend of merchants and banks coming together on behalf of the customer journey.
My guest this week has a fascinating history indeed. He speaks 5 languages, has lived in 6 countries and has a genuine passion for solving customer problems. In fact, he’s only interested in tech that can manifest solutions. Trustly CEO Alexandre Gonthier is a true trailblazer when it comes to payments.
For those of you who may not know, Trustly is an alternative payment method for consumers that enables them to pay with their bank account by signing into their online banking. It’s a formless user experience with absolutely zero reliance on card networks or card rails, and their target audience includes billers, online gaming, financial services, and ecommerce merchants with low transaction volume and high frequency.
The original pain point they set out to solve was how to the bring paper check methodology alive in a mobile first world. From there side, billers were having a challenging time getting ACH adoption from their mobile customers. They needed an experience where people didn’t have to remember their routing and account credentials just to satisfy their payment. And why was this such a good niche? Because, according to Alex, 30 to 50% of Americans still prefer to pay their bills using their bank account.
As for their competitive advantage, Alex touts a user experience paradigm that is formless, more secure, more economical and more revenue efficient. The capacity to process payments outside of the card networks offers less fraud and higher transaction approval rates.
Tune in this week to hear Alex talk about his journey to CEO, including why we have him to think for the first content charging platform and the first proximity payments platform, as well as where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to real-time transactions, crypto, blockchain, and stablecoin.
My guest this week is an engineer by training who found his love for tech and finance while in the middle of his MD-PhD program. And we can now credit him as one of the primary influencers who put esports on the map and helped establish it as a real industry. Payment Labs CEO Han Park has a passion for building businesses and mentoring people – both of which have paved the way for his professional success.
For those of you who may not know, Payment Labs is an online gaming and esports payout company that set out specifically to address a large gap in payments. Efficient, global payments for businesses to pay out in a cross-border and compliant fashion was a necessity, at one point, that was not being addressed by any of the broader platforms. Seeing this demand, Han built an entire business based on the need to efficiently and compliantly clear out prize pools for gaming and esports events – a use case that would have originally taken up to 9 months to complete before his innovative platform.
As for their competitive advantage, Han touts compliance regulation and optimized payment routes as two of their most competitive offerings. Not only do their clients get the benefit of mitigating risk through AML, cross-border, and tax credit compliance, they also benefit from the most efficient means available for payors and payees to pay or receive using their preferred exchange medium.
Tune in this week to hear Han talk about his journey to CEO, including how biotech eventually led to fintech, as well as where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years as it relates to the global digital economy, online virtual markets and the gaming/esports sector.
What do ISVs have to do with banking in the near future of fintech? According to Maast CEO Tom Bell, just about everything!
For those of you who may not know, Maast (which actually stands for Money as A Service +) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Synovus bank with a mission to create a true embedded finance platform for ISV and SaaS providers. When asked to expand on what their platform is capable of, Tom says “imagine everything you know about embedded payments and extend that into other banking products. Our goal is to take the bank itself and embed it into the software providers platform.”
As far as the Synovus relationship impacting their competitive advantage in the marketplace, it actually serves to create one of their biggest value ads. Not only do they take a lot of friction out of the embedded model by enabling Synovus to take their product and distribute it nationwide in a much more efficient manner, they also provide a tremendous benefit to their ISVs and SaaS customers in that they already have all the regulatory, risk, and compliance mandates covered comprehensively on their end due to their relationship with the bank. It really offers much more of a plug-and-play model, allowing the ISV/SaaS to be 100% confident that the Maast platform is in line with regulatory compliance and requiring them to do nothing more than code to their API.
Tune in to hear Tom talking about the true definition of embedded finance as it relates to the comprehensive offering, not just embedded payments, as well as where the embedded finance industry is headed in the next 2 to 3 years. Spoiler alert: in this new world, small businesses may not even know who their bank is because they have no need to.
Attention all music fans! This podcast is for you. If you could think of one area in the music industry that has remained totally stagnant amidst all the technology and evolution, what would it be? For those of you that said ticketing, you’re exactly right! Now, for those of you wondering what revolutionizing the ticketing industry has to do with payments, I have YellowHeart CEO and Founder Josh Katz here to tell you.
YellowHeart is a Web3 based digital ticketing platform with a mission to evolve live event ticketing for the first time in history! And where does it all start? With the payment, of course! In Josh’s model, the payment is actually the point of engagement that allows for a ticketing experience that far exceeds the traditional industry standard. Before YellowHeart, the ticketing experience consisted of a barcode or proof of entry stub that told you your seat, location, and basic event information. Now, with YellowHeart, ticketing is a full-on engagement tool for fandom.
In fact, the payment process unlocks a plethora of perks available for purchasers. This includes everything from the capacity to receive messages from fans, digital content, high-end art, coveted vinyls and a slew of other interactive engagement tools. Before YellowHeart, the ticket would die immediately after the point of entry. Now, just the point of purchase brings (and keeps) it alive!
Tune in this week to hear Josh talk about his journey to CEO, including why you have him to think for good music in public places like restaurants, offices, and coffee shops (just to name a few). We also talk about where the industry is going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to bitcoin, Blockchain, and Web3 technology.
Happy New Year! We’re starting out with a bang this year with a guest who was not only a former Southwest Conference Rice University football player, but one who also has bragging rights with both George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. Oh, and he’s also a big player in payments (of course). AccessOne CEO Mark Spinner has a passion for coaching, loving what you do, and being willing to invest enough to keep showing up.
For those of you who may not know, AccessOne is a financial technology company that exists to empower patients to live healthier lives. They focus on human-centric payment affordability tools with a passion to help patients manage their financial responsibilities with payment options they can afford. The company itself was founded by a third-generation physician and the DNA of the brand is steeped in empathy for the patient experience.
As for what problems they solve in the industry, Mark speaks openly about the complications that still plague the financial healthcare landscape. Disengagement in healthcare payments due to friction is a big problem area they strive to find the easy button for, as well as affordability from the patient perspective. Regarding their competitive advantage, Mark touts patient centricity and flexibility as their driving distinguishers within the payments healthcare space.
Tune in this week to hear Mark talk about his journey to CEO, including what drew him to AccessOne, why he has never been so excited about multifactor authentication, and where he sees in the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to a frictionless obsession.
This episode is sponsored by Citizens Pay. With Citizens Pay, merchants have the security of a leading national bank and an omnichannel platform designed to streamline the buying process. If you want to learn more about Citizens Pay, visit https://citizensbank.mvk.co/2hycr where you can find additional information about Citizens Pay and the buy now pay later payment model.
My guest this week has a passion for a conscious decision making and a love for the growth potential that comes with working for smaller companies. Span this across a 25-year career in fintech and you have the makings of a podcast worth listening to. PayQuicker President Charles Rosenblatt has a lot to say about payments and the original gig economy!
For those of you who may not know, PayQuicker is a global payments platform that does payments for gig economy workers around the globe – in 200 countries and 50+ currencies. They are a complete white-label solution that offers companies the capacity to pay in multiple currencies and with multiple payment methods, including virtual card, direct deposit, e-wallet and even crypto. They have upwards of 80 employees and the company has been around for 15 years. For those of you wondering what market sector they serviced 15 years ago, when the gig economy wasn’t a thing yet, you’re a good company. I asked the same question. And the answer was unexpected! According to Charles, there was, in fact, a thriving gig economy back then. According to him, multilevel marketing reps were the original gig workers!
As for their competitive advantage, Charles touts the company motto (happy payees) as a main driver for their success. While it’s true their main customer is the corporate client, their intentional focus on the payee results in a company culture and brand that excels in customer experience. The other advantage? In addition to their global platform, PayQuicker also developed the first ever payments orchestration platform for payouts that offers only 1 API and only 1 integration!
Tune in this week to hear Charles talk about his journey to president, how they manage to secure a 99% retention rate, and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years including more simplicity, ease at the corporate level, and one single point of contact.
This episode is sponsored by Citizens Pay. With Citizens Pay, merchants have the security of a leading national bank and an omnichannel platform designed to streamline the buying process. If you want to learn more about Citizens Pay, visit https://citizensbank.mvk.co/2hycr where you can find additional information about Citizens Pay and the buy now pay later payment model.
In trying to find a word to describe my guest this week, I can honestly say that fascinating wouldn’t even be enough to do him justice. Not only has he been in the industry for 32 years, he’s also had the opportunity to work for some of our most reputable brands. And it doesn’t hurt that he has a driving passion for (and a qualified certification in) both digital anthropology and AI ethics. Infosys Finacle CEO Sanat Rao call himself an “accidental technologist,” but I’d be hard pressed to find someone with more purpose driven passion around tech.
For those of you who may not know, Infosys Finacle is an industry leader in digital banking solutions and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Infosys brand. Their evolution spans through decades of experience in everything from core banking to front-and-back-end digital solutions. And they operate in 100 different countries with a portfolio that accounts for global, regional, and local bank customers. Another fun fact? According to Sanat, more than 1 billion adult individuals have an account with a bank that uses Finacle. And this translates to upwards of 16-17% in global market saturation for their proprietary brand.
According to Sanat, they exist to inspire “better banking” (not best) for billions of people and millions of businesses so they can save, pay, borrow, and invest better. Why not best? You’ll have to tune in to find out!
As for their competitive advantage, Sanat touts four main ingredients to their secret sauce:
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The capacity for banks to cherry pick from a suite of industry-leading banking solutions
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Composability
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Global adaptability
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And the capability for banks to deploy cloud native and architecture-driven solutions built on proven constructs of layered design and scalability
Tune in this week to hear Sanat talk about his journey to CEO, his passion for academic tech and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years including core banking transformation, emerging markets, seamless integration, and the modernization of legacy technology.
Season’s greetings everyone! And welcome to the next episode. This one is a special one. Not only because it’s our 200th episode, but we have a real mover and shaker in the payment space to help us celebrate it! He’s a 30-year payments veteran with a passion for flying and a self-proclaimed “fintech geek.” Fortis CEO Greg Cohen is a true leader in payments.
This episode is sponsored by Citizens Pay. With Citizens Pay, merchants have the security of a leading national bank and an omnichannel platform designed to streamline the buying process. If you want to learn more about Citizens Pay, visit https://citizensbank.mvk.co/2hycr where you can find additional information about Citizens Pay and the buy now pay later payment model.
For those of you who may not know, Fortis is a fintech company with a mission to make software companies better through embedded payments. They offer a processor neutral gateway that caters specifically to the hospitality, healthcare, specialty retail, B2B and VAR industry sectors. And their employee headcount sits at about 250 dedicated team members, with an annual processing volume upwards of $20 billion in the North American continent. And that’s just their cereal box stats. Their real drive is in their competitive advantage!
The company’s edge in the marketplace revolves around a guided journey for their customers through vertical specialization. This means customers can use their gateway, proprietary technology, GTM guidance and feature functionality to walk/jog/run towards their goal of being a:
· Payment facilitator/Payfac
· ISO/Agent
· Or a successful referral partner
Whatever the destination, Fortis can guide the journey. And, according to Greg, it’s this ability to talk the talk and walk the walk in a very vertical specific manner that gives Fortis the right to win in just about every industry sector.
Tune in to hear Greg talk about his fascinating journey to CEO, including what motivated him to get his private pilot’s license and why flying is truly his great escape. We also talk about upcoming trends to expect in the industry over the next few years, including an uptick in mergers and acquisitions, the globalization of Omnichannel payments and a faster path towards the embedded experience.
This episode is sponsored by Citizens Pay. With Citizens Pay, merchants have the security of a leading national bank and an omnichannel platform designed to streamline the buying process. If you want to learn more about Citizens Pay, visit https://citizensbank.mvk.co/2hycr where you can find additional information about Citizens Pay and the buy now pay later payment model.
My two guests this week come to you from the city most known for rain (Seattle, WA) and the city most known for chocolate (Hershey, PA). And, somehow, they both ended up with a drive towards tech! AppTech CTO Ben Jenkins and Product SVP Bryan Guy have a passion for disruptive innovation and technology advancement.
For those of you who may not know, AppTech is a payments technology company that offers two core technology products: payments as a service and banking as a service. They are vertical agnostic, and they target disparate systems lacking integration. Their clients are most often found in verticals missing core solutions and core opportunities for their omnichannel banking and they offer these clients a “layer of thin integration often missed by a number of other industries.”
When asked about their competitive advantage, both gentlemen will agree that their UX offering is one of the most significant distinguishers in their space. They come in with a modern platform and are not beholden to any legacy systems. Not to mention, their adaptable, modular platform allows them to offer a proprietary experience unmatched in the industry today. Think commerce overlay meets payments orchestration.
A fun fact about the business? AppTech has been around since 2013 and throughout this time has secured several technology patens within the industry, including tech specific to:
· Mobile-to-mobile payments
· In-app geolocations services
· And text-based payment options
Another fun fact about our guests? Ben started a software innovation lab in Tijuana Mexico, and we have Bryan to thank for the tech that enables you to pick up your mobile Starbucks order (already paid for) and go.
Tune in to hear these guys talk about their journey to AppTech and where they see the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years, including cashier-less technology, low code/no code solutions, business in a box, and embedded banking.
My guest on episode 198 has a passion for going after the big problem and doing what people think can’t be done, as well as a genuine intrigue with the power that disrupted companies can have on just about any individual. In fact, Flywire CEO Mike Massaro likens the time spent in fintech companies to dog years: It may be five years on paper but in terms of experience, it really is so much more.
This episode is sponsored by Citizens Pay. With Citizens Pay, merchants have the security of a leading national bank and an omnichannel platform designed to streamline the buying process. If you want to learn more about Citizens Pay, visit https://citizensbank.mvk.co/2hycr where you can find additional information about Citizens Pay and the buy now pay later payment model.
For those of you who may not know, Flywire is a fintech company that sits at the intersection of software and payments. They offer best-in-class, enterprise-grade software for specific industries, as well as cutting-edge payments technology. Their target market consists of clients in industries that have been left behind and their ultimate goal is to digitize these industries and bring them up to speed with more modern offerings when it comes to their back-office capabilities.
Originally going to market as a payments company specifically for the education sector called Peer Transfer, Flywire went from a startup model with roughly 30 employees and hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential revenue to a publicly traded company with thousands of “flymates” and hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue. As for their competitive advantage, they cater to the market need with market-leading experts and cutting-edge technology versus generic solutions backed by generic teams.
Tune in to hear Mike talk about his journey to CEO, why he refused the offer at least twice before saying yes, and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years including more payment methods and a back-office protocol that functions seamlessly without requiring multiple system integrations to support it.
This episode is sponsored by Citizens Pay. With Citizens Pay, merchants have the security of a leading national bank and an omnichannel platform designed to streamline the buying process. If you want to learn more about Citizens Pay, visit https://citizensbank.mvk.co/2hycr where you can find additional information about Citizens Pay and the buy now pay later payment model.
My guest this week has a truly fascinating story! Not only has she founded 3 successful companies and created a retail platform unparalleled in its omnichannel offerings, she also came to the United States at the ripe age of 16 years old with nothing but $200 in her pocket and a vision to create something impactful.
XY Retail CEO and Cofounder Susan Jeffers knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur by the time she was 12 years old. And not because her parents blazed a trail for her or anyone in her family gave her the idea that this should be her path, because she just knew she had the potential to create something amazing. For those of you who may not know, XY Retail is a fully hosted retail platform that connects all aspects of the retail business – from supply to demand – and allows brands the convenience and capacity to run their entire operations directly from their phone.
According to Susan, the customer journey is no longer a straight line. And customers expect a seamless, connected experience from start to finish and throughout the entire customer journey. So, she set out to solve this need and provide brands with the tools they need to give the experience they want. XY Retail is a unified platform built entirely in the cloud that offers everything from point-of-sale, e-commerce, and auto management solutions to data analytics, plug-and-play payments, and even custom applications. They target the high end, luxury fashion/retail sector and their loyal brands actually helped them build the platform. As for their competitive advantage, Susan touts their ability to allow brands to manage absolutely every aspect of their business from their mobile device, as well as the inherent functionality of a full service, one-stop-shop offering.
Tune in this week to hear Susan talk about her journey to CEO, where she sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to a completely touch free and seamless user experience, and the thing she’s most passionate about for herself and those she mentors: financial independence enough to free you from social constraints.
My guest this week is a self-proclaimed “recovering consultant” with a love for technology and an eye for connectivity. Cantaloupe CEO Ravi Venkatesan joined Cantaloupe in December 2020 with a path for progress that’s already dominating their industry sector.
For those of you who may not know, Cantaloupe is the technology ally for any business that “doesn’t have roots in the ground,” according to Ravi. This includes unattended cafeterias, vending machines, parking lots, EV charging stations, laundromats, and self-service massage chairs, just to name a few. And one of the things that makes them such a main player in the industry is there IoT capacity. Not only do they provide the telemeter and card reader necessary to enable a self-service storefront, but they also have all devices connected to a proprietary cloud network, with a proprietary payments gateway and an enterprise SaaS solution that lets any customer successfully manage their inventory input and output. And, as if that wasn’t enough already, they just recently got into the self-service kiosk-based market with their recent acquisition of Yoke Payments.
Ravi and I have an interesting discussion about the self-service economy. Not only is it much more prevalent than we think it is, but it’s also expected to grow to be a $46 billion industry by 2027. According to Ravi, the three dominant drivers for this massive growth spurt include:
· Labor shortage
· Consumer preference
· And availability of technology
Tune in to hear Ravi talk about the projected growth spurt of an already prolific industry sector, the convergence of the physical and the digital worlds (coined phigital), and what it looks like to guide a company at the intersection of IoT, digital payments, enterprise SaaS, and self-service kiosk innovation.
What does fintech have to do with cooking? In this podcast, a lot! This week I talk to Solid Founder and CEO Arjun Thyagarajan about living the American dream, the right recipe for a successful fintech business and how fun is always the most important ingredient.
For those of you who may not know, Solid is a modern fintech company providing infrastructure as a service for any aspiring fintechs looking to go to market quickly and successfully. Coined by Arjun as “the AWS of fintech,” Solid offers the following core products to any and all of their users:
· Banking
· Payments
· Card issuance
· And cryptocurrency
They are use case agnostic and have an ideal offering for just about any company challenged with the art of payments and getting paid. According to Arjun, Solid offers “the best-in-class ingredients for each company’s individual recipe” and they tout themselves as being in the business of simplifying fintech. As for their competitive advantage, it revolves predominantly around their one-stop shop offering that includes a simplistic strategy, agnostic platform, and consultative approach.
Also worthy of mention? Solid just closed a $63 million funding round, reached $10 million in annual revenue, and officially became profitable (all this year), after founding in 2019 and going to market in 2020.
Tune in this week to hear Arjun talk about his journey to CEO and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years, including fintech then and now, the upcoming embedded experiences to rival even the seamless Uber approach, and how fintech as a whole is not even one percent done. We also talk about his tried-and-true business and life philosophy: If you’re having fun, results will follow.
My guest on this episode has been with Citizens for more than 10 years, previously serving as the Head of Student Lending. She is a 30-year veteran of the financial services industry and has held several roles at the company, including sales, branch planning and operations, and product management. Her favorite role so far? She loves being a mentor. Head of Citizens Pay Christine Roberts has a genuine passion for finding and growing talent.
For those of you who don’t know, Citizens Pay is the market leader in combining point of sale financing with buy now pay later. Citizens is one of the nation’s oldest and largest financial institutions, with $226.7 billion in assets as of June 30, 2022.
As for what put Citizens Pay on the map, we have Apple to thank for that. According to Christine, Citizens Pay spearheaded the buy now pay later (BNPL) industry in an effort to help iPhone users have the financial bandwidth to consistently upgrade their technology.
As for what makes Citizens Pay different than many of the other BNPL companies out there, a lot of it has to do with their direct affiliation with Citizens Bank. Simply stated, they are prolific lender with advanced technology capabilities that enable them to successfully operate in a regulated atmosphere while other fintechs sometimes struggle in the regulated lending space.
Their dominant verticals are technology, medical/dental, furniture, travel, and home improvement, and they offer an open line of credit to their qualified consumers that allows for repeat purchasing within the same credit line. And this is a huge benefit for merchants in that it allows their consumers to make larger purchases and even upgrade their repeat purchases at a faster rate.
Tune in to hear Christine talk about the crucial elements that impact the sustainability of the lending space, and how Citizens Pay is navigating being the leader in combining point of sale financing with BNPL.
On this episode we recap the entire month of October that was dedicated to Financial Inclusion. We had a great lineup including:
· Elena Whisler from The Clearing House
· David Rocha from Prosperas
· Ken Weber from Ripple
· Reed Luhtanen and Gail Hildebrand from the Faster Payments Council
· Jeanniey Walden from DailyPay
In our recap we cover topics including faster payments, earned wage access, a streamlined process to get credit and other programs that are helping to solve the global challenge around financial inclusion.
David Rocha from Prosperas summed up the entire series this way, “Someone gave us a chance and that's really what we're trying to do for this broader community is give them a chance. And we know that if we do, they'll take it. They'll maximize it and we'll all be better for it.”
We hope to bring awareness and visibility into at least some of the programs, companies and initiative that are helping to serve the global population of unbanked, underbanked and underserved.
And a special thanks to The Clearing House for sponsoring Financial Inclusion month.
For those of you who’ve ever been curious enough to question why one would ever have to wait two weeks to receive money they’ve already earned, this podcast is for you. DailyPay Chief Innovative Marketing Officer Jeanniey Walden talks with us this week about financial inclusion, breaking the invisible barriers around our financial system and what it looks like to have immediate access to your earned wages.
DailyPay is a company focused on changing pay for good. Their objective is to look at ways they can create new solutions that have a positive impact on the entire financial system. Jeanniey talks a lot in this episode about the invisible rules created around money that have been alive in our ecosystem for centuries and have ultimately become barriers that result in subsets of our communities such as the unbanked and underserved.
Their target audience is the employer, the employee and everyone in between, and their mission is to bring more transparency to the employee around the money they make, when they make it, and do it in a timely enough manner that they have the opportunity to generate more financial confidence as a result of it. So, we’re basically talking about real-time access and on-demand pay. Not to mention, DailyPay has enabled hourly workers to see their earned wages in real time for the first time – ever.
Tune in this week to hear Jeanniey talk about the invisible barriers preventing us from financial inclusion, what the average household looks like in the post-Covid, high inflation economy and what more our global financial system could commit to in an effort to strengthen financial inclusion.
It’s financial inclusion month! And in this 4th episode of the month we have two top-notch experts discussing one of the main drivers for financial inclusion: faster payments. With me today are Faster Payments Council Executive Director Reed Luhtanen and National Consumers League Representative Gail Hillebrand have much to say about financial inclusion and so much more!
Coming to us with more than 40 years of combined experience in the payments industry, Reed himself was a part of the Federal Reserve task force payments initiative to create an overall governance framework for the transition to faster payments in the United States. From this, the Faster Payments Council was founded in 2018. Their goal? To bring about inclusive governance framework to help advance ubiquitous, safe, and easy-to-use faster payments. Gail, on the other hand, has spent the majority of her time in consumer advocacy and helped push the initiative for the National Consumers League – a working group that has made it their mission to protect U.S. consumers since 1899 with a focus on safety in the marketplace.
The two of them agree that financial inclusion and faster payments overlap in that faster payments can be a pathway to greater financial inclusion by removing risk and adding certainty to the transaction. As part of this podcast, we talk in depth about a recent white paper launched to the marketplace that gives recommendations on the topic of financial inclusion as it relates to faster payments. The paper identifies eight specific barriers to financial inclusion, three of which we discuss in detail on this podcast: trust, design and fraud.
Tune in to hear Reed and Gail discuss the 7.1 million Americans who currently don’t have bank accounts, the 50%+ of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and the most prominent recommendations to address three of the main barriers to financial accessibility.
The Faster Payments Council has created multiple resources pertaining to financial inclusion including the following:
· Infographic: https://fasterpaymentscouncil.org/blog/10015/Faster-Payments-for-Financial-Inclusion-Infographic
· White Paper: https://fasterpaymentscouncil.org/blog/9874/Faster-Payments-and-Financial-Inclusion-White-Paper
· Podcast on Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/off-the-rails-from-the-u-s-faster-payments-council-fpc/id1553535872
This is our third episode in Financial Inclusion month. Every year we dedicate one month to financial inclusion – my goal is to highlight and bring awareness to what the payments and/or fintech industry does today to help with the global challenge of financial inclusion and to discuss what more we can do.
Ripple is fundamentally a fintech that uses new innovative technologies such as blockchain and crypto to improve financial services. They are focused on real-world use cases that create value for businesses like for example cross-border payments.
Ripple Impact has four pillars
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Engaging their employees to get involved in social and environmental impact areas
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The application of financial technology to accelerate and expand financial inclusion
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A focus on sustainability and climate
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Ripple impact is responsible for their research and innovation programs
Ken provides an in-depth explanation about why Ripple believes there are pathways into formal financial services for the unbanked globally that are enabled by blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Ken and I go on to discuss the University Blockchain Research Initiative, Ripple’s work around sustainability and carbon markets, and finally how exciting it is to think about how new or newer technologies like blockchain and crypto can help solve big global challenges like Financial Inclusion.
I want to give a special thanks to The Clearing House for sponsoring Financial Inclusion month. To learn more about the Clearing House just visit www.theclearninghouse.org
This is our second episode in Financial Inclusion month. Every year we dedicate one month to financial inclusion – my goal is to highlight and bring awareness to what the payments and/or fintech industry does today to help with the global challenge of financial inclusion and to discuss what more we can do.
Our special guest is David Rocha, CEO & Co-Founder of Prosperas. Properas, known as the Financial Inclusion company, enables lenders to instantly qualify anyone on earth for credit using only the anonymized, non-biased and consumer consented data from their smartphones.
There are 4 billion underbanked or unbanked people in the world, including 90 million in the United States and 70% of them have a mobile phone. Prosperas isn’t changing the way people get credit, they are changing the fundamentals behind it. They have built a 2-sided marketplace. One side includes the people or micro businesses looking for credit and the other side are the lenders. Anyone with a smartphone can be evaluated for credit.
David and I go on to talk about their involvement in the Mastercard Start Path program and the Santander X Global Accelerator program and their involvement with a Super App launching in Latin America.
I think the conversation can best be summed up by this quote directly from David.
“Someone gave us a chance and that's really what we're trying to do for this broader Community is give them a chance. And we know that if we do, they'll take it. They'll maximize it and we'll all be better for it.”
To learn more about Prosperas please visit www.prosperas.com or visit them on LinkedIn.
A special thanks to The Clearing House for sponsoring Financial Inclusion month. You can learn more about the Clearing House by visiting www.theclearninghouse.org
This is our first episode in Financial Inclusion month. Every year we dedicate one month to financial inclusion – my goal is to highlight and bring awareness to what the payments and/or fintech industry does today to help with the global challenge of financial inclusion and to discuss what more we can do.
The Clearing House is a banking association and a payments company that is governed by about 23 of the largest financial institutions in the United States. They move money through wires, ACH and check images and maybe are most known for their RTP network which is the nation's newest payment system that provides instant clearing and settlement of payments here in the United States.
Elena and I go on to talk about some of the challenges that the under-banked and unbanked face, how important it is to bring these segments of the population into the financial system and how companies and other organizations are leveraging the Real Time Payments network.
We go deep on the importance of Earned Wage Access for both the employee and the employer. This is a vital program that can help the underserved community and is becoming more and more popular.
Before we dive into the episode, I want to give a special thanks to The Clearing House for sponsoring Financial Inclusion month. To learn more about The Clearing House just visit www.theclearninghouse.org
My guest this week is a Canadian native with a degree in computer science and a lifelong passion for music. In fact, before he decided to go corporate, he was the lead guitarist in a breakthrough band with a passion for clean-cut stardom. Versapay CEO Craig O’Neill started his corporate journey in wealth management before coming to the more pivotal side of payments, but never left his guitar behind.
For those of you who may not know, Versapay is a fintech company with a focus on both software and payments to simplify and automate A/R. They facilitate upwards of $60 billion in payments between participating companies and their mission is to change the way businesses do business together by simplifying the transaction process. How do they do this? By modernizing how companies transact in a wildly untapped market space.
One of the things we talk about in this podcast are the factors that actually drive a company to modernize. According to Craig, this includes:
· Getting paid faster
· Reducing cost of manual labor
· And optimizing the customer experience
As for their competitive advantage, Craig touts Versapay’s ability to solve the disconnect in payments through collaborative A/R. According to him, 50% of the time, customers say they never even received their invoice. And if you then combine this with a lack of visibility and lack of integration, you then land on process friction as the main catalyst to what slows payments collection down. Versapay aims to solve this disconnect through solutions that do more than just automate the A/R process and integrations that allow for time to market in just days.
Tune in this week to hear Craig talk about his journey to CEO and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years, including the rapid growth of electronic payments, the pain points that arise, and the need for smarter payments that carry not only dollars but data as well.
My guest this week is an avid basketball enthusiast, Michael Jordan memorabilia collector and actually gets a lot of his business inspiration and insight when he’s courtside. Rapyd CEO Arik Shtilman has a professional passion to build the biggest company he can – and at a rapid pace.
For those of you who may not know, Rapyd is a fintech company that provides API for other SMBs and enterprise-level organizations to build financial services applications on top of their white label platform. Arik will be the first to specify though that they are not a payments company but, rather, a fintech-as-a-service company.
So, what is fintech-as-a-service? According to Arik, it breaks down into four basic categories:
· Payments
· Money disbursement
· Card issuing
· Digital wallets
And all of these comprise their white label offering that they provide for their clients to be payments prolific with a fully functioning platform. Not to mention, they take care of all the global compliance regulations behind the scenes. So, this means clients coming from almost any space on the globe can transact with confidence and without burden.
Also worthy of mention, the company has raised a total of $800 million in funding, with a $400 million revenue stream and a valuation of $15 billion.
Tune in this week to hear Arik talk about his journey to CEO and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years, including a push for even more fintechs, a checkout experience that happens without you even knowing it, and a growth strategy focused solely on gross margin.
My guest this week has a passion for payments and a genuine desire to create a product that others can benefit from. He will also be the first to say that he started a business based on the worst reason to ever start a business, but it worked out for him rather tremendously. Tremendous Cofounder and CEO Nick Baum spent three years punching the corporate time clock before he realized he was meant for something way more fun.
For those of you who may not know, Tremendous is a payout platform that enables businesses to send money via prepaid cards and gift cards around the world. They make it tremendously simple for companies to pay people without jumping through the hoops of dealing with payroll or registering for undesired payment methods just to get their payout. They work with some of the largest brands out there including Google, Pinterest and Spotify and their most typical use cases revolve around employee recognition, user research incentives and marketing incentives.
As for their competitive advantage, it revolves around their marketplace niche. They specifically target lower volume, non-recurring payouts and this makes them a standalone in the marketplace because they give so many payment options for these one-off use cases. Money is money and recipients will always want their incentives regardless of the dollar amount. However, it can become cumbersome to have to deal with payroll or alternative payment downloads just to collect a $20 incentive. Not anymore!
Tune in this week to hear Nick talk about his journey to CEO, how his company actually started, and what he did as a startup that startup companies are absolutely never supposed to do.
My guest this week is a very talented musician with a resume that touts 5 different instruments and his very first job in corporate America was a toy designer. So, how did he end up in the payments space? Dataseers Chief Seer Adwait Joshi will be the first to tell you that he has a true passion for complex data. And what industry utilizes data more than payments?
For those of you who may not know, Dataseers is a back-office solution that helps financial services companies take control of their data assets and then utilize them optimally within their vertical of choice. They are an end-to-end solution with a plethora of use cases that focus predominantly on fraud detection and prevention.
When it comes to what separates them from their competitors, Adwait boils it down to experience and knowledge. They position themselves in the marketplace as the solution for “taming the data demon” and they analyze all aspects of their customers data to provide them with prescriptive analytics and a consultative approach to reducing risk. According to Adwait, if you guard your gates, you don’t have to waste time chasing bad actors. And something else to keep in mind? Fraudsters only have to be right once to get through your firewall and security protocols. You (the company) have to be right every single time to prevent them.
Tune in this week to hear Adwait talk about his journey to CEO, including a small consulting engagement that turned into an 11-year career. We also talk about the future of the industry as it relates to the disappearance of fintechs, the consolidation of banks and what the real reason was for the Covid fraud spike. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t really a “spike” after all.
My guest this week is a self-proclaimed technology nerd that built his first hand-held radio at 15 years old. His love for technology eventually turned into an obsession with payments and he hasn’t stopped building since he started. CellPoint Digital Cofounder and CEO Kristian Gjerding has coined the term “payments orchestration” as the foundational offering that his company provides, far surpassing the needs of merchant customers worldwide.
For those of you who may not know, CellPoint is a payments orchestration company that helps merchant clients manage their entire financial supply chain with the intent to:
1. Increase conversion rates on digital channels
2. Operate more efficiently in the back office
3. And reduce the cost of payment acceptance
So, what exactly does Kristian mean when he refers to payments “orchestration?” He is referring to the capacity to enable merchant clients to provide appropriate payment methods based on the entire range of rules and regulations, and an overarching intent to offer the best payment option for their consumers. How? By providing a centralized view of each individual ecosystem, with the ability to manage it in the most optimum and profitable manner.
When it comes to the defining characteristics that enable merchants to know whether or not they need payments orchestration, according to Kristian, it all comes down to a basic frustration with the need for a payments department and payments (in general) becoming such a pain.
Tune in this week to hear Kristian talk about his journey to CEO, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years as it relates to the rise of efficiencies in the SMB payments market, the continued expansion of alternative payments, a barter-based payment system and the need for a different approach to data as the government continues to get more involved.
My guest this week is a Boston University graduate with a law degree from Yale and a passion for “building really great software products in complex spaces that make them seem easy.” So, what does that have to do with payments? Well, besides the fact that fintech is most definitely a wildly complex space, it also doesn’t hurt that Coast CEO and Founder Daniel Simon can’t seem to talk about anything but the future of fleet and fuel payments.
For those of you who may not know, Coast is proactively working to build the financial platform for the future of the transportation industry, beginning specifically with fleet and fuel payments. According to Daniel, fleet is a massive space dominated by a handful of players with huge margins and, for whatever reason, the industry never really thinks about it, even though he himself can’t stop. And it’s because of his passion for this under supported industry vertical that he proactively created a modern fleet card entirely from the ground up, “reimagined for how it should be if it were born online and spoke a modern digital language.”
Coast’s core benefit is that it offers a sophisticated solution that allows fleet managers to set policies and rules to proactively control spend. Daniel refers to it as a “vertical-specific expense management solution.” Their target audience is the $4 million local commercial fleet company, but they have customers transacting billions of dollars in revenue over a sales cycle managed in a handful of days. And as for the future vision of the company, Daniel sees Coast eventually offering other financial services to cater to the complex financial lives of their customers, including fleet management software, dispatch software and the like.
Tune in this week to hear Daniel talk about his journey to CEO, including the real reason he went to Yale, the start of his first company, and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to verticalization, specialization, the need to embed financial services in order to add value in vertical SaaS, and why he’s not betting against the inevitable disappearance of Visa and MasterCard anytime soon.
My guest this week is an avid history buff, Yale graduate and prominent change agent in the healthcare vertical that got his start at the intersection of healthcare and financial services. PatientFi CEO and Cofounder Todd Watts has a fascinating story that revolves around choice: a choice to build a business directly in the epicenter of the two most regulated industries available today.
For those of you who may not know, PatientFi is a technology platform that provides an affordable and user-friendly modality for patients to finance their healthcare procedures. This includes everything from fertility and dentistry to ophthalmology, aesthetics, and plastic surgery. They are the industry leader in training medical sales to market financial options to customers and their target market includes any aspect of the healthcare vertical that is not covered by traditional medical insurance.
As for what makes them stand out in such a heavily saturated marketplace, their go-to-market solution offers a one stop shop to enable approved financing options that are faster, easier, and more amenable to the overall customer base than their competitors. And they partner with banks and credit unions directly to offer first-look and second-look underwriting to ensure patient approval on almost every application.
Tune in this episode to hear Todd talk about his journey to CEO and what makes his solution such a leader in the industry. We also have a very insightful conversation about traditional underwriting procedures versus alternative underwriting modalities. And it all ultimately comes down to data. How do you get innovative with your data and analytics in a manner that enables more resourceful methods for underwriting verification as we enter into a potential economic recession?
My guest this week was born in Barcelona, moved to New York for love and started his entrepreneurial journey out of pure necessity. Nate Founder and CEO Albert Saniger will be the first to say that the only way he knows to create value is to create it from scratch. And that’s just what he did – on a journey that took him from T-shirts to payments in a niche market that targets 60% of the ecommerce population.
For those of you who may not know, Nate is a unified shopping wallet that allows you to share and shop your world without compromising your data. It exclusively targets the non-Amazon purchasing market by offering them the opportunity to aggregate all their purchases into one single app. They are retailer agnostic, and their philosophy is consumer first and consumer only. This means they don’t sell to retailers, nor do they make any money from them. And their target market equates to 60% of the US e-commerce population, or $1 trillion in annual purchasing potential.
As for their business model, it’s completely customer centric. Nate functions as a direct extension of the consumer in that all you have to do find the image of the product you desire on your phone, tap share, tap Nate and then tap buy. Nate will then purchase the order for you using a virtual card. Another bonus? Nate offers a social presence on their app that enables you to share your top picks with your friends and followers. And should someone purchase from your list, you’ll receive a 5% kickback into your Nate wallet just for having good taste.
Tune in this week and hear Albert talk about his journey to CEO, including what fuels his passions both personally and professionally, where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years and what it is specifically that makes Nate a “way” to shop versus just a “place” to shop.
My guest this week is a Wyoming native with a passion for solving problems. Known by many in the tech scene as “the disruptive guy,” Nautical Commerce CEO Ryan Lee spent more than a decade operating at the intersection of commerce, fintech and logistics, only to bring us a platform capable of democratizing access to marketplace technology.
For those of you who may not know, Nautical Commerce is a multivendor platform with the elegance of Shopify and a scalability parallel to none. According to Ryan, they are a start-to-finish, soup-to-nuts platform with a toolset that enables turnkey efficiency for B2B or B2C multi-vendor commerce. If they had an ultimate (measurable) goal, it would be “to see the next Jeff Bezos launched from a Nautical company.” They specialize in high-transaction product and digital marketplaces and their competitive advantage lies in the fact that they are a commerce system – versus an app that sits on top of another commerce platform. Payments is the cornerstone capability of their platform and, according to Ryan, the foundation of any successful marketplace.
Tune in this week to hear about Ryan’s journey to CEO, including a self-taught coding proficiency in high school that landed him a certifiable “in” to the technology sector once he got to college. We talk about all things payments, commerce and what the industry looks like in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to contactless, the proliferation of more payments orchestrators, and crypto as a solution desperately looking for a problem.
My guest this week has a passion for creating something new that will change the industry and leave a legacy he can be proud of. In a fast-paced world and a time of life where everything seems to have already been done and you always hear people say there are no new ideas under the sun, Engage People CEO Jonathan Silver has managed to come up with something quite innovative.
For those of you who may not know, Engage is a technology-focused loyalty company that aims to democratize loyalty currency. How do they do it? They integrate into the payments ecosystem in a manner that enables prompt technology to offer your loyalty credit card points, for example, as a form of payment for your Starbucks coffee. According to Jonathan, their proprietary platform provides the conduit between loyalty programs and the retail checkout process, with a vast network of clients and partners integrated into one truly unique ecosystem.
As for their competitive advantage, they have developed the first true payments network for the loyalty industry, as well as a data driven platform that enables promotional engagement in real time. Not only does that bring the value of points to the forefront, it provides meaningful incentive for all touchpoints in the payments cycle, including the customer, the retailer and the partner.
Tune in this week to hear Jonathan talk about his journey to CEO, including the two proprietary brands under the Engage umbrella, what the future of loyalty payments looks like in the next 2 to 3 years and how his passion for creating something impactful will eventually lead to a de facto payments offering for the loyalty currency market.
My guest this week is a self-proclaimed “accidental entrepreneur” with a passion for facilitating the extraordinary. Justifi CEO and Cofounder Joe Keeley has had a fascinating journey through the world of entrepreneurship that all began with an employment ad that “wouldn’t be found anywhere but Minnesota.”
It was during his undergraduate career, and he was just looking for a way to make some extra money. When thumbing through the paper one day, Joe came across an employment ad for a nanny position with one major requirement: the applicant had to be a hockey player. Not only did this catch his attention due to the sheer uniqueness of the request but he was also highly qualified as he was playing hockey for his college team. His willingness to respond not only got him the job but also led him down a prolific entrepreneurial journey that lasted 15 years and resulted in 200 national locations and a lucrative sale to a public company.
And this was just his first business. For those of you who may not know, Justifi is a company that specializes in providing the technology for platforms to be world-class at payment monetization and going beyond payments. They accelerate the potential of vertical SaaS platforms and help them increase their value in the areas of payments technology, virtual fintech and the beyond payments space.
According to Joe, if you structure payments correctly, you can anticipate all the things customers want to do in the future and be set up for success. Tune in this week to hear him talk about his journey to CEO, including where he sees the industry in the next 2-3 years, the orchestration within his company that allows for the monetization of payments and beyond, as well as the various reasons why platforms shouldn’t always aim to become a payfac and how that can actually be a better business decision.
What does a math challenged sales guy that migrated into the merchant industry by accident have to do with going Beyond in payments? Quite a bit, actually…
Beyond CEO and President Mike Peters is a north Jersey native with a passion for helping people reach their goals and facilitating a genuine team player environment that has everyone working towards a common goal.
For those of you who may not know, Beyond is a merchant acquiring company that drives new merchant sales and facilitates daily necessities such as payroll and business services to midmarket and small business verticals. They have a large focus on the SMB middle America, feet on the street environment and their business model is largely influenced by the one-stop-shop philosophy that so many merchants desire.
As for their competitive advantage, this is established largely through their published promises to their merchants. They include:
· Price protection
· Flexible contracts
· Top security
· Adaptable product solutions
· And trusted business advocacy services
So, what attracted Mike to this role at Beyond personally? He has a tremendous amount to say about the philanthropy and thriving culture that the company builds its foundation on being a driving force for his decision. Not only do they have a proactive outreach program that sends money to underprivileged kids who would normally not be able to afford a college education, they also have a company culture that, according to Mike, “focuses on doing the right thing even when nobody is looking."
Tune in this week to hear Mike talk about his journey to CEO, his personal and professional passions and what the industry looks like in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to technology advancements, AI integration and the remaining runway for the agent model.
As we continue our spotlight on women leaders in payments this month, this week’s episode features Monneo Managing Director Lili Metodieva. A talented artist with a childhood dream to become a pilot, you may wonder how Lili ended up in fintech? The answer is simple: she thrives in dynamic, fast-paced environments and it most comfortable when she’s out of her comfort zone.
Lili was born in the sixth oldest city in Europe on the southside of Bulgaria. She received her undergrad degree in IT and a graduate degree in commerce. And her first job after college was selling telecommunication equipment to large companies looking to facilitate cross-border video communication. Following a short time in the telecom space, she decided she wanted to dive into something completely different and challenging so she took a job in ecommerce.
After 10 years in the payment space Lili then decided to take a break from the industry and start a personal venture related to Facebook marketing and online advertising. But it didn’t take long for her to realize that the payment space was ultimately her “dynamic love for life.”
For those of you who may not know Monneo is a company that specializes in connecting the dots between traditional banking and online commerce. Her job as managing director is to recognize opportunities, prevent mistakes and get things organized. She will be the first to say that business comes down to connection with people and her guiding principle is to treat others the way you would like to be treated. She also feels the most important quality every leader should possess is respect.
Tune in this week to hear Lili talk about her journey through payments, what leadership means to her and how getting out of your comfort zone is the only way to progress and grow.
As we continue our journey through honoring our women in payments leaders this month, my next guest is another exceptional individual that does nothing short of inspire. Her name is Lixia Zhu and she is the global head of product for Vynamic Payments at Diebold Nixdorf.
For those of you who may not know Diebold Nixdorf is an innovation bank with more than 150 years processing, 22,000 employees and a portfolio that spans 130 countries. They are dominant in both the hardware and software niches, spanning everything from ATMs, POS systems and protective safes to software services for global, retail, and private sector clients. Vynamic Payments, specifically, caters to top tier 1 & 2 global financial institutions.
Lixia’s role in this company is to define strategy for business and product, oversee daily execution, leverage strategic partnerships, and optimize the go-to-market strategy. As for her background, Lixia grew up in China as the youngest of four daughters during a time when boys were favored, and her country promoted a one child only preference in the home. She will understandably credit her parents as active sources of inspiration for her noteworthy career journey and untappable potential.
Not only is she leading a dynamic department in a full-time role, she’s also currently in the process of completing her global executive MBA program. Tune in this week to hear Lixia talk about the importance of getting out of your comfort zone as it relates to growth and momentum, her guiding principles of being authentic, open minded, and eager to learn, as well as the one quality she thinks every woman leader should possess in order to be successful in this industry, where women executives are the minority at only 4%.
Her story is truly inspiring and her drive is contagious!
My guest this week marks our first impressive female leader in payments to kick off our Women Leaders in Payments monthly special. Her name is Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore, and she is the head of payments at Silicon Valley Bank.
For those of you who may not know, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is often referred to as “the bank of innovation” and is very popular throughout the fintech space. SVB caters specifically to private equity firms, venture capitalist firms, accelerators, and incubators. They serve as a commercial bank for standard BAU protocol and also provide infrastructure and licensing for their partners in need of embedded payments. In addition to all this, they also facilitate all things startup as far as fundraising, IPO, acquisition and the like, as well as a $7 billion capital platform used to invest in companies they gain exposure to through their innovation roots.
And if you think that’s impressive, wait until you hear about the woman behind their payments legacy.
Kathleen grew up in what she would describe as very unstable circumstances. Her family suffered from severe financial insecurity and she will be the first one to say that poverty is more than just an economic state. However, it was this experience that drove her to become the woman she is today. This instability throughout childhood eventually brought her into one of the most stable industries available. And her journey getting there has been absolutely fascinating!
With a résumé that includes some of our industries heaviest hitters such as American Express, Capital One and PayPal, Kathleen has truly been a trailblazer for women everywhere – not just in payments. Tune in this week to hear her talk about her guiding principles of integrity, excellence, compassion, and happiness, as well as what it takes to be a change agent and what every woman leader should possess.
My guest today is a self-proclaimed “black sheep recovering banker” who is still trying to figure out how to make the world a better place and save customers money on the cost of doing business. C2FO CEO Sandy Kemper is at the pinnacle of a fascinating career spanning decades in the payments space.
For those of you who may not know, C2FO is it a decentralized financing platform that services approximately 1.3 million customers globally and across all verticals. Their mission is to provide low cost, convenient capital to everyone that needs it, and they are driven by a passion to help companies find ways to grow their business. In a nutshell, their platform matches accounts payable and accounts receivable transactors to allow those that have accounts payable to pay early or over an extended amount of time to ensure that nothing limits the flow of capital between suppliers and customers.
One of the things I found this fascinating about this interview is the mind-blowing stats that Sandy provides. According to him, the total economic output of the world is around $240 trillion. And if you then assume that the average payment term on any given transaction is approximately 60 days, that’s $40 trillion of accounts payable or accounts receivable on the books of businesses around the world at any given time. And this gives you a Birdseye view of their global target market.
Tune in to hear Sandy talk about his journey to CEO, including what the next 2-3 years offer as it relates to more transparency and reduced friction in payments and financing, the applicability of crypto and Blockchain in his particular industry, as well as the advantage C2FO offers to diverse business owners with their no-risk-assessment-needed business model.
This episode is sponsored by Citizens Pay. Designed to streamline the buying process, Citizens Pay is a leader in “Buy Now Pay Later” that provides merchants the security of a premier national bank on an omnichannel platform which drives sales and builds loyalty.
If you want to learn more about Citizens Pay, visit https://citizensbank.mvk.co/2hycr where you can find additional information about Citizens Pay’s buy now pay later financing solution.
What does a video game designer and avid Vietnamese art collector have to do with payments? A lot! Evvio Co-Founder Adrian Jones started his entrepreneurial career at 15 years old in the videogame design industry, only to find that his passion for technology and the impact it can have on the world around him would eventually propel his career into the ecommerce payments space.
For those of you who may not know, Evvio is an ecommerce technology company that provides opportunities for anyone, anywhere to participate in ecommerce. They specialize in person-to-person emerging ecommerce transactions and their technology adds tremendous value to exchange networks such as:
● Social commerce
● Super apps
● Online gaming
● And the metaverse!
Fluid commerce is probably one of the biggest buzzwords you’ll hear in this podcast, with Evvio driving this intention for their target audience. And one of their main objectives is to make ecommerce inclusive in that it doesn’t require a bank account or credit card to transact. As for their competitive advantage, the ability to earn and spend without value passing out of the e-commerce network is the first thing that Adrian points out, followed closely by fraud prevention capabilities that allow the seller and buyer to maintain a cryptographic agreement of services being used.
Tune in this week to hear Adrian talk about the future of our industry as it relates to the projected growth of person-to-person ecommerce, the demise of credit and debit card payments, and the social commerce exchange that will spike from $560 billion in 2020 to $2.9 trillion in 2026. As for what he projects beyond the next 10 years, he has this to say based on his own experience: “Much as we try to forecast what the world will be like in years ahead, there are just so many things we don’t see coming.” Don’t miss this one!
My guest this week has a genuine passion for building things that create a significant impact and then using it as a mechanism for change. But according to Inscribe CEO and Co-Founder Ronan Burke, the true fulfillment in this comes with creating the opportunity on your own and not waiting for someone else to give it to you.
For those of you who may not know, Inscribe is a fraud detection automation company that helps fintechs approve more customers by automating their account opening and underwriting workflows. This includes automatically overseeing some of the most fundamental checkpoints when it comes to ensuring safe, secure transactions, such as:
· Identity verification and KYC
· Corporate control
· Platform integrity
From a long-term perspective, Inscribe’s mission is to create a fair and efficient payments ecosystem by protecting platform integrity through automation and fraud detection. And their product adds value to any company that transacts large payments and facilitates high-trust interactions. And as for what makes them stand out against their competitors, one of their main advantages is they offer a fully automated solution with absolutely zero human engagement in the detection approval loop.
Tune in this week to hear Ronan talk about his journey to CEO and what the next 2-3 years look like as it relates to fraud. One thing he knows for certain is that fraud will increase substantially as the payments industry moves towards faster, cheaper, and more real-time transactions. As for what he foresees in the next decade, it looks like we can expect an ecosystem that offers less risky and even safer options when it comes to facilitating large transactions in an online environment versus a traditional retail scenario.
This episode is sponsored by Citizens Pay. With Citizens Pay, merchants have the security of a leading national bank and an omnichannel platform designed to streamline the buying process. If you want to learn more about Citizens Pay, visit https://citizensbank.mvk.co/2hycr where you can find additional information about Citizens Pay and the buy now pay later payment model.
My guests today are President, Lynne Baldwin and CEO Jack Baldwin from BHMI. BHMI develops and licenses the Concourse Financial software suite which is an integrated cohesive collection of back-office products that operate in near real-time.
The product is architected around the Common Core with four separate applications that bolt on to it including extended settlement, reconciliation, fees and commissions and disputes. BHMI sells primarily to large scale financial services companies including financial institutions, banks and co-ops, processors, networks, issuers, and acquirers.
Their primary differentiators are that they focus exclusively on the back-office and their near real-time processing. BHMI employees less than 100 people by design and pride themselves in providing excellent customer support.
Jack and Lynne are passionate about helping injured wildlife and have help create the Baldwin Wildlife Center where they care for between five and seven thousand injured animals per year.
My guest this week has a passion for learning and evolving as a leader, as well as keeping in touch with his employees and understanding what their day-to-day looks like. In fact, it’s his favorite way to spend his coffee break. SEON COO and Co-Founder Bence Jendruszak is a leader in the fraud prevention space with a proprietary platform that offers a plug-and-play API and a data enrichment advantage.
For those of you who may not know, SEON started as a cryptocurrency exchange platform. However, a string of fraud experienced personally through this business venture eventually led Bence and his team to rethink their strategy. In his own words, “we faced fraud in our own skin because we started accepting credit card payments and our business was pretty much going to burn to the ground.” Upon looking for a solution in the marketplace to address their specific needs, Bence and his team found nothing. Thus, SEON was born. Originally a fraud prevention tool to address their own business needs, they later pivoted it into a sales tool that became their dominant go-to-market asset. “Our mission outgrew itself when we realized we could sell it on a global scale to make a global difference.”
As for their target audience, SEON offers value to any online business dealing with fraud issues or authenticating online users. They offer an out-of-the-box solution with one single API that can be individually adapted to the needs of the user, in addition to a meaningful data enrichment advantage with the intention to focus on live information versus stale data.
Tune in this week to hear Bence talk about his journey to COO, as well as where he sees the industry in the next 2-3 years when it comes to decentralization, cryptocurrency and blockchain. Spoiler alert: fraud is here to stay!
My guest this week has a vision for payments and a passion for ice cream! Orum CEO Stephany Kirkpatrick comes by her entrepreneurial spirit naturally as the daughter of an immigrant who came to the U.S. with nothing and “built from zero to something.” This in and of itself gave her passion for what our financial system can do to power the American household.
Fast-forward several years later and Stephany found herself with a burning desire to “power a financial system where everyone has the freedom to build to their potential.” And that is just what she did with Orum. For those of you who may not know, Orum is a B2B embedded payments program that gives customers access to their money faster, along with a better capacity to maneuver through the financial system. Through their unified API, you can move money in all directions and across all major domestic payment rails.
According to Stephany, they are “at the intersection of infrastructure in the financial ecosystem,” with speed being the number one problem they’re solving for. Or, more specifically, the speed at which customers can get money into their crypto wallet and onto the blockchain.
“We sit in the middle of the complex two-part transaction with an interoperable layer that allows customers to start their transaction on RTP and finish it on card rails,” for example. Stephany goes on to say that Orum is consistently optimizing for speed, risk, and cost so that consumer lives can be transactional 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Tune in this week to hear Stephanie talk about the future of crypto, the necessity of RTP, and the $72 trillion market that Orum strives to support and optimize.
My guest this week has a burning desire to take the road less traveled and a passion for interacting authentically with others who have different lived experiences. He comes from a family of entrepreneurs and always knew he wanted to start a business that would make a positive impact on the world. So, of all the different businesses he could choose to start, why did he choose technology? According to Remitly Co-Founder/ CEO Matt Oppenheimer, “inherent in technology is the ability to scale and make a massive impact.” And this is just what he set out to do!
A global citizen who has traveled close to 100 countries, Matt saw firsthand the challenges that come with cross-border payment remittance. And thus, Remitly was born with a vision to “transform the lives of immigrants and their families by providing the most trusted financial remittance services on the planet.” They sent more than $20 million to 5 million customers across 2,000 corridors (think U.S. to Mexico) last year alone and their core value proposition includes three main pillars: trust, peace of mind and reliability.
According to Matt, Remitly is “doing for remittance what Amazon did for e-commerce.” They have 22 different send countries, with 130 receive countries in their portfolio. And just to give you an idea of their target audience, there’s roughly $1.6 trillion worth of funds that get sent globally every year.
Tune in this week to hear Matt talk about is journey from Nairobi, Kenya to Remitly’s CEO. We also talk about what to expect from our industry in the next 2-3 years as it relates to remittance specifically. Did you know, for example, that 75 to 80% of customers still go to a physical cash location to send money back home? Matt foresees a shift coming in this sector as consumers begin to trust digital more. As for what keeps him up at night and what he spends a tremendous amount of his time and intention trying to create? You’ll have to tune in to find out!
My guest this week has laid a truly impressive foundation for his company fueled by skill, passion, ingenuity, and a tremendous amount of grit! Blackthorn.io is a Salesforce application company that started back in 2015. And according to CEO Chris Federspiel, the road to success has not necessarily been an easy one. Chris talks about the go-to-market phase of his company in a manner that is truly admirable. Not only did the company face potential bankruptcy in 2018, but Chris himself petitioned multiple investors for funding support, none of which complied, only to charge the company forward and eventually turn profit as one of the fastest and most prolific apps in the Salesforce ecosystem.
For those of you who may not know, Salesforce has a 20% market share of the global CRM deployment network, with 100,000-150,000 independent organizations using the application, as well as 10 million installs in AppExchange alone. As for what Blackthorn.io does, Chris says the best way to think of them is a middleware that connects their customers from Salesforce to multiple other gateways. Their market share is concentrated in the higher education, nonprofit and healthcare verticals, with their target audience being any organization within the Salesforce ecosystem needs to move money.
As for their competitive edge, they have apps within the Salesforce ecosystem that cater to payments, events, messaging, and commerce. According to Chris, none of their competitors do even three out of four of these offerings, with most doing only one. They are also the fastest to install by a ratio of 30-45 minutes to 20-40 hours!
Tune in this week and hear Chris talk about his journey to CEO, as well as where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years, including a massive consolidation and a saturation of API-based payment clones.
My guest this week has a passion for figuring out “how to do things different and better,” and his first experience of moving money was helping Fannie Mae move their federal funds across telephone lines. Verituity CEO Ben Turner keeps his philosophy pretty simple when it comes to business: “All you should ever have to say is how much to who and when, and the rest should just happen.”
And for those customers transacting through the Verituity platform, it does! For those of you who may not know, Verituity is a payout platform that connects banks, payers, and payees to first-time and on-time verified payouts and pay-by-anything experiences. In Ben’s words, they introduce choice. Choice for the payer to support the method they can afford and choice for the payee to choose how to receive their funds. How do they do it? Verituity’s platform has the intelligence to know which payment method can support the size of each transaction, while still giving the payer the option to decide which payment types to offer based on cost. So, like Ben said… “who and when,” and the rest just happens.
Some of the most common use cases for this platform include the insurance company that wants to send payment for their insured’s accident via PayPal, the mortgage company that wants to payout escrow via a wire transfer, or even the online gaming company that held a tournament and wants to pay their winners digitally.
Tune in this week to hear Ben talk about the three core principles he aligns his company to and why it gives them no choice but to hire people they can trust to make good decisions. He also talks about where he sees the industry in the next 2- 3 years, including the rise of alternative payment methods, Verituity’s plans for offering pay-by-crypto later this year and the concept of a world without payment rails.
My guest this week is an avid tennis player with a passion for alternative payments. She started her career as a programmer in the brokerage business, with a degree in computer science, and ended up the CEO of alternative payments platform Payverse. So, how did she get from one end of the spectrum to the other? You’ll have to tune in to find out!
According to CEO Sandra Blair, Payverse is a company that “enables payment processing traditional payment processor don’t typically do.” What does she mean by that specifically? Think cryptocurrency, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) and their most foundational payment method: UnionPay.
For those of you who may not know, UnionPay is the largest card issuer in the world, with more than 9 billion cards issued. And they came to Payverse exclusively with a request to develop the first complaint U.S. bank sponsorship model for UnionPay acceptance. The company launched in March but has already paved the way for progress with this UnionPay initiative. As for their competitive advantage, they have a fully augmented platform that is built entirely in the cloud, with API-enabled technology, that allows for a truly optimized plug-and-play solution.
Tune in this week and hear Sandra talk about her journey through payments and the future of our industry over the next 2-3 years. We discuss consumer expectations around faster payments, new technologies that will be developed to mitigate the risk associated with these faster payments, and other emerging alternative payment methods that will come on the scene and continue to disrupt the ecosystem.
Also a point of interest, we discuss her company’s current cryptocurrency roadmap to get them to their inevitable goal of shielding the merchant/processor from having to deal with all the complexities of crypto, as well as emerging BNPL options that strive to protect the merchant and pay them in full. Don’t miss it!
My guest this week started as a software engineer but soon discovered he had a love for payments. Brightwell CEO Larry Hipp has had a fascinating journey throughout the fintech space. He has a genuine passion for seeing people succeed and places a tremendous amount of intention and importance on the resiliency that a strong company culture can provide.
For those of you who may not know, Brightwell is a fintech company that grew up in the prepaid industry. They cater predominately to the cruise ship market by providing prepaid cards for employee payroll. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that they single-handedly transformed the cruise ship industry from cash to digital.
So, how did the global pandemic impact their business model? It’s inspiring to hear how the company continued to survive and thrive when cruise ships around the world completely shut down.
Post-pandemic, they are going strong and have expanded their product suite into cross-border payments just as much as cruise ship payroll. One of their most coveted offerings, and a competitive advantage that truly sets them apart in the industry, is their capacity to have so many of the country’s top money movers under one roof. Their proprietary app interface features Western Union, MasterCard, MoneyGram, and several other key players to facilitate cross-border payments for their customers.
Tune in this week and hear Larry talk about his journey through fintech and where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years, including a predicted consolidation throughout the fintech space to create new versions of the legacy players and how blockchain will change our industry significantly.
What does an avid Squash player with an underdog mentality and a passion for sales have to do with payments? A lot! My guest this week is Engagesmart CEO Bob Bennett. He has run four different companies over the last 30 years and been in the payments ecosystem long enough to acquire a passion for the electronic payments industry and a desire to create differentiation within that space.
For those of you who may not know, Engagesmart is a bill presentment company that simplifies customer and client engagement through electronic payments. They own 4 different brands serving health and wellness, utilities, healthcare, and fundraising, all of which drive a digital self-service and payments experience. Their goal is 100% paperless and autopay solutions for invoice management and their proprietary brand Invoice Cloud drives their customer base at a rapid pace.
If you were to ask Bob what got him from an applied math and computer science degree to a prolific CEO in the payments space, he will be the first to tell you that sales became his calling at a young age and he “got really good at selling hard things.”
Tune in this week to hear Bob talk about his journey to becoming CEO, including his highly prescriptive method for hiring, recruiting, and retaining employees, his desire to create a unique SaaS business and his personal/professional “grow or die” philosophy. We also discuss the overall impact of the global pandemic and the tailwinds Engagesmart is still riding as a result of it.
My guest this week has been in the payments industry for 20 years and credits the lifespan of his prolific career to a small decision that was motivated by an empty gas tank. It all started in the basement of a dental office, at a startup ISO space with no windows, and an inclination that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. But he needed enough gas to get to where he was going next, so he decided to give it a chance and the rest is history.
TRNXN Company CEO Paul Hadfield has made it his charge to modernize payments for his clients and provide them with a “project design” that optimizes their potential and maximizes their revenue. According to him, “the point-of-sale is really the central nervous system of any business. It can manage and connect every single moving part of your company.”
For those of you who may not know, TRNXN is a modern transaction company that designs, implements, and supports custom payment solutions for the retail and restaurant verticals. It is Paul’s belief that in order to build successful ISOs and profitable payments companies today, you have to leverage technology and service. With this intention in mind, TRNXN Company “helps ISOs modernize their business by helping them modernize their client’s business.”
What’s their business model? According to Paul, they’re not just payment providers but rather small business consultants. “Anything that has to do with a financial transaction, we are involving ourselves with and trying to make that process easier or less expensive for the business – or more expensive but with a strategy that drives more sales.”
Tune in this week to hear Paul talk about TRNXN Company – A business with “no exit plan” that he intends to run for the rest of his life and represents “a combination of everything he has learned in the industry coming to a head.” We also talk about what payments looks like for the retail and hospitality industry over the next 2 to 3 years, including everything from a spike in QR code implementation, to the astronomical margins on the current delivery model, and how long it will take crypto to make it into the restaurant space. Don’t miss it!
My guest this week has an absolutely fascinating background in the payments industry. He’s still as competitive now as he was when he was in his 20s and has a driving passion for sales, competition and, of course, winning. Trust Payments Group Chief Commercial Officer and CEO of Trust Payments U.S. Jonathan O’Connor gives a dynamic interview you don’t want to miss!
For those of you who may not know, Trust Payments is a technology-based fintech with a presence all over Europe and a satellite office in the U.S. They combine payments and SaaS-based solutions to offer dynamic opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as a sustainable entry point for the EU and U.S. markets. Some of the most interesting things about their business model are the platforms they specialize in and their very active involvement in some of our most disrupting alternative payment methods.
Beyond serving small business and mid-market corporations, they also specialize in emerging markets such as cryptocurrency, online gaming/gambling and CBD. And all of this is in addition to their already prolific involvement in the retail, hospitality, and financial services sectors of our industry. How do they do it all? Well, the ability to offer point-of-sale, mobile and e-commerce through one platform integration most definitely helps!
Tune in and hear Jonathan talk about the future of our industry as it relates to cryptocurrency, biometrics, artificial intelligence and so much more. We talk taxation, regulation, crypto exchange and how crypto will become the next “shiny ball” to replace the current market fixation on the Buy-Now-Pay-Later payments model. He also offers details on how his company personalizes the customer journey and keeps their competitive edge. In his own words, “payment is the foundation of our DNA, and we strive to consistently build value around it.”
My guest this week has had a truly fascinating journey to the top! SpotOn Co-Founder and CPO Doron Friedman comes from a family of Holocaust survivors that were forced to take the entrepreneurial journey after losing everything they had. He’ll be the first to say that his father discouraged any of the children from becoming an entrepreneur, so Doron’s first ambitions were towards investment banking. But it didn’t take him long to figure out that, despite his father’s wishes, he had the entrepreneurial bug and instead of investment banking, he started his self-proclaimed nontraditional entrepreneurial path by opening a bagel shop.
And now, as Co-Founder of SpotOn, Doron is grateful that his journey has proven the risks to be well worth it. For those of you who may not know, SpotOn is one of the fastest-growing software payments companies in the marketplace today, with a comprehensive cloud-based technology service model that targets everything from SBMs to large enterprise operations.
Their target audience revolves around the restaurant and entertainment sectors and their product is among the top POS systems on the market today. As far as a philosophy that motivates their business model, Doron explains that “every entrepreneur dreams of having that one location and growing it into thousands.” And according to him, SpotOn is equipped with software solutions that can “work with them on every step of that journey.”
Tune in today to hear about their company culture of thinking big and acting small, their unique approach to enhancing the customer experience, and how they chose to invest in their staff during the Global pandemic when their largest competitor cut more than half of theirs. Also on the docket? What to expect in the next 2 to 3 years in terms of cryptocurrency, international payments, tokenization, and data analytics.
So, how does a professional basketball player become president/CEO of a fintech payments company? Well, he’s 6’8" with a passion for solving problems and a love for transformative technology. PayZen President and CEO Itzik Cohen is on a very bold mission to revolutionize the healthcare payments industry.
How? The mission-driven goal of PayZen is to underwrite each individual customer into a payments plan they can afford in order to maintain standard healthcare and make good health more accessible to everyone. According to Itzik, the U.S. sustains a revolving balance of approximately $330 billion in annual unpaid medical bills. The only thing more shocking than this is a $1.2 trillion in out-of-pocket healthcare expense.
PayZen utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to underwrite each patient for the most affordable plan to enable maximum payment success. This includes understanding predictive loss rates per customer, so the provider is always guaranteed their fair share. Their focus is on elective procedures and the business model is the industry leader in “care now, pay later” healthcare.
According Itzik, PayZen’s NorthStar is the capacity to approve 100% of patients with no interest charge and no fees. Not to mention, they hold the financial responsibility for any losses they may incur. How do they do this? Their technology forward approach gives them that much confidence in their ability to underwrite each case successfully, ensuring minimum financial loss and maximum payment remittance.
Tune in this week to hear how transformative technology has revolutionized the debt elimination industry, how industry leader PayZen is currently managing a 5000% projected growth rate, and where Itzik sees the industry in the next 2-3 years – including what it looks like to take the providers out of the business of providing finance.
An Australian native and previous casino dealer, Identitii CEO John Rayment is passionate about people, payments, and a bucketed approach to life. He is a global citizen with a global platform and his company, of course, drives a global initiative. In his own words, Identitii “helps the global financial services industry reduce their regulatory risks without having to replace legacy technology.”
The Identitii business model is uniquely focused on enhancing technology already in use to reduce manual processes. In a nutshell, they automate the preparation and submission of financial transaction reports. The platform ingests payment data and standardizes it in a manner that offers an individual snapshot for each customer portfolio. This includes any missing or incorrect information that the platform will automatically reconcile, and then provide each financial institution customer with a clean set of data for analytics and accurate, timely reporting to government regulators.
In John’s own words, there is a growing gap between the need for more data and whether or not the technology available can accurately deliver it. Not to mention, there are substantial fines for financial institutions who are not currently submitting accurate and timely regulatory reports. This niche that he is targeting with Identitii’s innovative software is sizable and growing exponentially, with more than 15,000 potential players in Australia alone.
And when it comes to their competition, John says his largest competitor is the customer who believes they can do it themselves with their own internal processes and procedures. Tune in this week to hear John talk about his journey to becoming CEO, where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years and the four buckets in life that keep him at his best, both professionally and personally.
For my guest this week, I have a one-time Disneyworld employee who was once recruited by Visa and MasterCard simultaneously. Finexio CEO and Founder Ernest Rolfson has a self-proclaimed passion for creating transparency around what he perceives to be a very opaque industry by teaching people about payments, software and all things that move money.
For those of you who may not know, Finexio is an accounts payable payments-as-a-service company that targets the middle market sector and provides partner solutions that enable a very prolific ecosystem. Their long-term goal is to empower large accounts payable, procurement and ERP software platforms with a white-label solution that provides a broader toolset and revenue stream when it comes to their payments offerings.
Being a solo founder before the tailwinds of the global pandemic escalated the drive towards digital, Ernest’s story is a fascinating one. He knew he had a winning concept when he did his research and found that there was still $12 trillion dollars in paper checks being processed through the US payments ecosystem. This broke down to $4 trillion for the small business market, $4 trillion for middle market, and $4 trillion for large enterprise. Given his background and expertise, Ernest decided to target the middle market sector and the rest, as they say, is history.
Finexio is very narrowly focused on payments optimization, execution and support on the backend and can deliver 10 different payment methods with a truly white-label approach. And they offer a very specific partner methodology that enables a turnkey go-to-market solution without a costly technology investment. Tune in this week to hear Ernest talk about his journey to fintech, including where he sees the industry 2-3 years from now as it relates to cryptocurrency, cross-border payments, and the fast-emerging trend towards being multi-rail.
As we wrap up diversity and inclusion month, I speak with Cantaloupe Director of Human Resources, Alyssa Braniecki, on what it looks like to employ D&I as part of the total employee experience.
Alyssa credits her ability to find her voice as a female in the workplace to growing up in a blended Hispanic/Italian family with two volumes: loud and louder. She originally got her degree in psychology with an emphasis in developmental psych but has always had a passion for facilitating groups and creating balance within them. Her desire to be part of the total employee experience eventually led her to Cantaloupe, a digital payments solution in the unattended retail sector that also provides logistical software servicing to the locations of those unattended retail spaces.
To her, diversity and inclusion are two very separate things that cannot work independently of one another. Diversity is the different characteristics and attributes that define the employees within the company — their race, ethnicity, gender, etc., while inclusion is embracing all those differences and welcoming them fully, as well as appreciating and nourishing them. Diversity is a fact while inclusion is a choice. You can gather data about adversity but if you’re not intentional about inclusion, you’re not truly going to see a diverse and inclusive workforce.
Alyssa and I discuss how the industry is doing as a whole when it comes to D&I, as well as what advice she has for companies getting started on their own diversity and inclusion program. One of the important points she has to offer is diversity and inclusion are not something that starts with the hiring process. Well-established hiring protocols are only part of a successful D&I program. They are not the point of origin.
According to her, it all starts from the top down and Cantaloupe’s CEO, in my opinion, does an exceptional job of driving this point home. Tune in to get the details on this and more!
Moving right along with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) month, my guest this week refers to herself as a global citizen with a broad range of diverse experience and an entrepreneurial career that all started with one question: “Software outsourcing is huge. Do you want to start a business?”
As I’m sure you can imagine, the answer was yes, and this led Chargeback Gurus Founder and CEO Srii Srinivasan down a wildly successful entrepreneurial path that all started with a diamond merchant.
In this episode, we discussed not only her business model, go-to-market strategy and niche offering, we also talk a lot about what she does proactively to ensure DEI in her organization. When asked what her definition of diversity is, Srii explains that “it’s truly about radical acceptance in all our life experiences, no matter who it is or what they experienced. Diversity by itself will not work. You also have to have equity and inclusion, which means voices are heard and met with acceptance.”
Among the many things we discuss around DEI in this episode, one of the most interesting to me is this concept around diversity including not only the employees, but the customers stakeholders and investors as well. It’s a concept that starts from the top down and must include every touchpoint the company has. In order to make it truly successful, DEI has to be in the corporate DNA.
Tune in to hear us discuss important best practices like writing a diverse job description, asking questions and actively listening to the answers, hiring and training leaders on the importance of DEI and creating successful DEI best practices in a virtual company culture.
As we continue our deep dive into diversity and inclusion, we meet this week with Covenant Pay CEO Quincy McKnight. A fully registered ISO looking to “really change the payments industry,” one of the questions I have for Quincy is how he prioritizes something like diversity and inclusion in a small company that already has so many priorities when it comes to establishing growth and momentum within the industry?
His answer? “Leadership reflects attitude. Whatever they’re putting out at the top will be what’s executed at the bottom.” According to Quincy, Covenant has a strong company culture that encourages diversity and rewards employees who aren’t afraid to bring ideas to the table. He will be the first to say that people are very different, in many different ways, and it’s these differences that make any company stronger if they allow them to.
And from an industry perspective, he will be the first to admit that it’s very obvious diversity and inclusion are not being practiced as a priority within our ecosystem given the lack of female and minority leadership.
“Sometimes it feels like a bunch of used car salesman running around. We need to get a handle on not only how to use the technology but how to nurture the relationships.”
Another point he brings into consideration from the consumer perspective is the impression your leadership team is giving to the public. If there aren’t any representatives that look and talk like the diverse community members, they will be less likely to transact in your playing field, according to Quincy.
Tune in this week as we continue our deep dive into D&I and get some good perspective from the only fully registered ISO that is completely minority owned. Hear how they do it and what makes it successful!
I can’t think of a better guest to kick off diversity and inclusion month than Remitly Chief Customer and People Officer Rene Yoakum. With more than 40 years in Big Tech, including 19 years at Microsoft alone, Rene is more than qualified to speak to our listeners about this crucial topic.
According to Rene, diversity, equity and inclusion (or DEI) means making sure your workplace offers a broad set of thinking, lived experiences and people with different identities and cultural backgrounds. And it’s not just about recruiting ethnic minorities. You have to make sure you have practices that allow diversity and inclusion to genuinely thrive in the workplace, in a manner that engages everyone from the employee to the customer.
For those of you that may not know, Remitly is a money remittance service that helps immigrants send money back to their families and home community. They serve more than 5 million customers, with 17 send and 25 receive countries in their global portfolio. And, as if that wasn’t impressive enough, the company can service up to 1 billion of the 7 billion people on the planet — either immigrants or the families from the developing countries they’ve come from.
Tune in this week and hear us discuss everything from best practices for managing large-scale diversity programs to creating a corporate culture that thrives on inclusion and equality. And as far as where to start on DEI, we tackle that too. Here’s a hint: “diverse recruiting is false advertising without also nurturing and growing a diverse employee experience.”
Don’t miss this one!
This week marks the last episode for our Pulse series featuring Open Banking platform Trustly. And to close it out with a bang, I have Trustly President of North America Pete Ohser. Pete is a true industry veteran with more than 20 years in the payments space and a byline that includes an integral part in developing the first risk system for online money transfer platforms.
In his own words, Trustly is “a payments company that does data really, really well.” They have been in the marketplace since 2008, originating in Europe where the Open Banking platforms are much more widely used. But according to Pete, the U.S. is primed for adoption and the need is growing at a rapid pace. What are some of the main motivators for early adopters? A lot of it has to do with speed and low-cost payment options. And when it comes to the benefits, they are strong on both sides of the equation. From a merchant perspective, they have less risk, an amazing user experience and all at a lower cost. From a customer perspective, Pete focuses on the value that comes with enabling them to build a relationship with their bank data that goes beyond what certain banks have the capacity to offer.
According to him, “the world is ready for alternatives to cards” and Trustly has a strong commitment to blazing that trail in the Open Banking space. Tune in and hear him talk about the journey of open banking from the EU perspective, the rise of adoption in the U.S. and what the future looks like for Open Banking as it relates to the simplification of cross-border payments, geographic expansion, greater bank regulation and the possibility of one single API to hit the entire world.
For someone who never thought he would end up in payments, Fleetcor Group President of North American Fuel Cards Alexey Gavrilenya sure has proven himself wrong. Having been with the company for more than 13 years, Alexey has overseen operations in Russia, London and now stateside in Atlanta. And he credits a lot of his success to his two passions: bringing the future forward and continually learning new things through a burning curiosity.
Fleetcor is an established player in the payments space, with more than 20 years in the ecosystem, and a market cap of $20 billion. As for their core offering, they “help businesses be more effective by providing them best-in-class payment tools,” according to Alexey. Their model caters to a two-sided marketplace in that they not only work with customers, but they also acquire merchants and drive revenue to their bottom line. Their global headcount is around 10,000 employees, with a US presence of 2-3,000.
When it comes to their competitive offering, one of the most important things they provide is competitive data analytics that enable significant value adds to their customers. Some examples of this include blending connected legal data with payment transactions to offer electrical payment solutions that allow customers to consciously impact their carbon footprint with carbon-neutral fleets. They can also authorize or decline in real-time based on location, use machine learning to provide credit lending options to SMBs and implement real-time fraud detection.
In fact, felt cards generate less than half of their revenue annually. Tune in to hear more about this dynamic company from one of their seasoned leaders, including a glimpse into the future of fintech as it relates to big tech, embedded finance and going beyond payments for legacy players.
In this episode, I continue my deep dive into the unattended retail sector of the payments space with industry leader Cantaloupe. Their Vice President, GM Micro Markets Michael Johnson is my guest, and he has been in the autonomous retail space for quite some time now so the perspective he offers on this rapidly growing niche within our industry truly gives some food for thought about the future of where consumer engagement is headed.
For those of you who may not know what the unattended retail space refers to, think the free-standing snack and drink kiosk’s you see at the airport, or the unmanned shops in corporate breakrooms and hotel lobbies. Cantaloupe is a digital payments and software company that acts as a full-service technology partner for businesses looking to expand their reach into the self-service micro market. In a nutshell, they help companies collect money through payments, run a tight ship with business efficiency and build life-long customer relationships through meaningful engagement practices.
As a result of the global pandemic, self-checkout and unattended retail went quickly from a nice-to-have classification to an absolute must. And Cantaloupe has been the industry leader driving all the buzz.
Tune in this week to hear Michael talk about the growing consumer demand for a frictionless experience when it comes to payments, how AI has helped us take the enormous data dump that came with the digital age and make that data both meaningful and profitable, and what to expect moving forward in terms of cryptocurrency and relevant trends or unique applications predicted to dominate the unattended retail space.
Our Open Banking pulse this week is on Trustly VP of North American Bank Partnerships Eric Foust – and for good reason! Not only is Eric a 20-year veteran in the banking space, he’s also the first VP I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with that has almost a super-hero theme to his roles and responsibilities within the Trustly empire. His chosen staff? A Trident. And the responsibilities represented by the three prongs?
1. Facilitating all of Trustly’s banking relationships concerned with originating depository financial institutions (ODFI).
2. Overseeing all of Trustly’s Open Banking support for financial institutions in the U.S.
3. Collaborating with corporate bank partners to become resellers of the Trustly product suite.
So, to say this podcast is full of invaluable takeaways would be an understatement.
For those of you that may not have a baseline on the Trustly brand, they processed more than $10 billion in 2021, with more than 10 million users here in North America and just closed out a YOY growth revenue increase of 537% in the North American territory alone.
Impressed? I was too! And listening to Eric discuss the Open Banking ecosystem is fascinating. He relates it to a stage of actors that feature the consumer as the main character (of course) and the merchant as the supporting role with other notable performances given by the banks (or keyholders) and the fintechs (technology wizards).
Tune in to hear him share his invaluable perspective on the Open Banking concept from the frontline – including the three pillars of regulation, lessons from across the pond and what the future looks like as it relates to standardization and 24/7/365 banking.
What does an avid snowboarder with three degrees (legal, accounting and business) and a lifelong passion for solving problems have to offer to the payments space? You mean besides a genuine desire to accelerate the industry and a resume that includes 5 successful companies to establish his foundation before he even went fintech? A lot!
Anchor Co-Founder and CEO Rom Lakritz has taken his passion for problem solving to the next level with his automated invoicing and accounting software that targets the service provider sector. According to Rom, when they started developing the idea for Anchor, they looked at the payments space and saw they could divide it into two segments. Half of all payments in the world are completely automatic, with the other half initiated via more of a manual process in the B2B space. And with this manual process comes elevated risk. There’s the risk of chargebacks, fraud, duplicate payments and the like. And with $200 trillion B2B payments being transacted worldwide, Rom set out to solve this very real challenge and mitigate that risk.
And, thus, Anchor was conceived (on the way up a ski lift during a snowboarding trip, no less). To put it simply, Anchor is an autonomous billing and collections platform that strives to take the manual process out of accounts receivable by automating it.
And one of the biggest issues Rom targets with his software? Revenue leakage. In the U.S. alone, this impacts 4.6% of top-line revenue for service providers which, according to Rom, actually effects between 30-40% of their overall profit margin. Tune in to hear about his problem-solving solution, his journey up the corporate ladder and where he sees the B2B payments space in the next 2-3 years.
A self-driven man with a passion for innovation that changes the marketplace and “doing payments right,” One Inc. CEO Ian Drysdale is a true leader in the payments space, with a resume that includes some of the biggest names in payments. So, how did he get his first job at PNC? He simply cold called the CEO and asked him for it.
For those of you that may not know, One Inc. is a leading digital payments platform for the insurance industry. They facilitate upwards of $20 billion in payments annually for the property and casualty space, with two dominant types of transactions: inbound and outbound. The former refers to premium payments such as car insurance and the like, while the latter refers to claim payments similar to what you would see in an accident or damage claim. They are currently growing exponentially at a rate of 50% per year and their ultimate goal is to digitize the more than $1 trillion of paper checks floating around the insurance industry in the U.S. alone.
As far as what differentiates them from their competitors, not only do they have exceptionally deep knowledge of the complexities of the insurance industry, they provide a full digital experience to their clients that accounts for so much more than just payment processing. According to Ian, One Inc. is “solving for all the use cases of insurance companies – not simply moving money in and moving money out.”
Tune in to hear about Ian’s climb to the top and his expectations for the future of our industry – including the evolution of cryptocurrency and the dramatic shift towards real-time payments and authentication.
In his own words, Ian believes that payments “can be done wrong or right and if done well, they become a massive differentiator in the marketplace.” Don’t miss this one!
As we continue this month with our focus on Open Banking, our pulse is on Trustly – a well-established open banking platform that enables merchant commerce, via ACH, in a manner that reduces fraud and promotes a more seamless payments flow.
Today, I talk with Chief Legal Officer Kathryn McCall about Trustly as both a rapidly growing company and a true leader in our industry. For those of you that may not know, the Trustly brand was launched in the U.S through a merger with local platform PayWithMyBank. To say that this partnership was well-matched is an understatement as the already-established Trustly brand facilitated a significant growth spurt for the company’s overall market share. And since 2018, Trustly has grown exponentially from just 20 employees to 300!
Hearing Kathryn talk about the nuances of this merger is a fascinating glimpse into the difference between the U.S. and EU ecosystems. Both are well-established, but the EU is much more effortlessly driven towards the open banking concept largely because they were early adopters of the bank transfer model. Their ecosystem has been thriving on it for decades. The U.S. ecosystem, on the other hand, still gravitates largely towards card and (though less prevalent now) check payments. Not to mention, the challenges the EU presents with cross-border rules and regulations offer an interesting spin on cross-border commerce.
Tune in to hear how Trustly has had to adapt in order to establish and grow their global footprint, as well as how the benefits of open banking differ from the merchant versus the consumer side, and what the future looks like as we charge forward towards automation and digitization.
For those of you looking to quantify and understand all the benefits of open banking, you’ve come to the right place! In this Pulse of Payments episode, I speak with Trustly VP of Enterprise Growth Ross McFerrin – a self-proclaimed payments geek admittedly obsessed with the innovation and disruption within our dynamic ecosystem.
Open banking, by definition, is the use of open APIs that enable developers to build applications and services around the financial institution. So, what do companies like Trustly provide in the way of innovation and disruption? Simply stated, they make ACH a viable method of payment within the digital commerce space. And this is a big win for merchants because it offers them a payment alternative to card that is less risky and more cost effective.
In the ecommerce space, Trustly thrives as an alternative to card because they can guarantee payments with no chargebacks and at a cost that is much lower. When it comes to travel, merchants appreciate the level of security and confidence experienced on both sides of the payments loop and the fintech space also benefits from open banking options to help facilitate various offerings including NACHA compliance, loan underwriting, RTP disbursement and the funding of crypto wallets.
But, truly, Trustly offers benefits on both side of the payments equation. Merchants realize material savings from a payments standpoint, have the capacity to deliver a payments experience that resonates well with the younger generations and can even benefit from future-proofing their business as real-time rails become more ubiquitous. Consumers, on the other hand, unlock value in the form of more benefit-driven incentives offered by the merchants they choose to transact with.
In this episode we'll answer - how is open banking shaping our industry and what do we have to look forward to in the very near future.
Have you ever wondered how boat racing relates to being a CEO in one of the most dynamic industries our global ecosystem has to offer? Well, my guest this week has the answer!
A boat racing enthusiast from Bavaria, Fraugster Co-CEO Chris Mangold will be the first to tell you that running a successful company has many parallels to leading a successful sports team. In fact, he gives three core principles that he has carried from the water to the office as a means of ensuring his employees have the tools necessary to cross the corporate finish line:
· You will always have a lot of maneuvering.
· You never know what’s coming.
· And you have to face the challenges you encounter together, as a team!
So, whether you put him on choppy waters or corporate soil, Chris has what it takes to lead his team towards success.
Fraugster is a regionally agnostic, global platform that manages fraud in real time through AI and machine learning. With this technology, they are able to enable merchants in the ecommerce space to make the best possible business decision when it comes to fraud prevention and chargeback management.
Hear Chris talk about the nature of fraud management now and in the future, including what impact blockchain and cryptocurrency may have on the state of fraud in our ecosystem. A self-proclaimed “growth manager,” his expertise in our industry makes his story a fascinating one!
When it comes to the most payment-driven markets in the global landscape today, India is always top of mind – and for good reason. As a country, they lead the marketplace in digital payments (with more than 100 different digital payment options) and proactively foster a dynamic ecosystem ripe with opportunity for innovation.
My guest this week is CashFree Payments Co-founder Reeju Datta and his knowledge about this diverse payments landscape is vast. For those of you that may not know, CashFree Payments is an online platform that helps companies accept payments via more than 100 different payment methods, with one single integration. And 100 different digital options is pretty significant – especially in comparison to our local ecosystem that remains dominated by credit, debit and ACH.
According to Reeju, CashFree Payments was created to solve one major problem: how to facilitate cash payments at the time of delivery for e-commerce merchants. And in just a short amount of time, the company has managed to facilitate 3-4% of all bank transfers in the country and 10% of all bankcards.
As for their competitive advantage, they offer a more diverse approach to payments that looks beyond payment collection to more complex forms of commerce, including bi-directional and multi-directional payments capabilities, with a disbursement step that’s easy to integrate and automate.
What does the EVP and Head of Enterprise Payments at the 12th largest bank in the country have to say about the past, present and future of fintech? A lot!
Ken Gavrity has had a fascinating career and is a wealth of information when it comes to the current challenges the industry has faced on its way towards digital dominance and the benefits that comes with the kind of autonomy that only automation can bring – especially in the payments sector. In fact, when asked how he defines the competitive edge his company brings to the marketplace, he defaults to his core strategy for success: solving problems before, during and after the payment cycle.
KeyBank markets to both the commercial and retail consumer with a national presence that saturates the retail market and a vertical marketing strategy for the commercial side that includes healthcare, real estate, industrial and technology as some of their main sectors. They have an operation that sustains approximately 17,000 employees and a portfolio of assets totaling $180 billion dollars.
Regarding where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years, automation, embedded banking and cryptocurrency are the top drivers he holds a focus on. In fact, according to Ken, 8% of “cardable” spend was going through software platforms in 2019. But this number is expected to jump to an impressive 40% by 2025 – making the embedded banking sector a big trend to watch for on the horizon.
And as far as they key component to making any business successful, he coins culture as “the competitive advantage that can sustain any company over time.”
This is definitely a data-driven podcast with pearls of wisdom you don’t want to miss.
Ever wonder what the journey may look like from small-town farm to big-time fintech? Well, I have the answer in this week’s podcast! IDology CEO Chris Luttrell is my guest, and her story is a fascinating one.
For starters, when she’s not spending time overseeing one of the most credible fraud-prevention solutions in the industry, she’s raising livestock and food on her small farm in northwest Georgia – not far from where she grew up. She began paving her climb up the corporate ladder straight out of high school and went to night school for her undergraduate degree. And this semester, she will graduate with her second Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration – and not because she had to – because she wanted to.
For those of you thinking “overachiever,” you would be right! And this innate drive has served her well throughout her journey in the fintech industry.
For those of you who may not know, IDology is a well-established identity verification provider within the industry that offers a robust solution for identity verification and fraud prevention, which allows customers to meet KYC compliance while mitigating fraud and risk simultaneously.
Originally hired on as their 10th employee and the sole product manager for the company, Chris has quite literally worked her way through every department, including product, fraud, marketing, security, technology and client relations until completing her climb in her well-deserved position as CEO beginning in 2020.
According to her, it’s been a “fun roller coaster ride” and she looks forward to ensuring the success of our industry in the future with solutions that help prevent some of the more popular types of fraud that come with the digital age, including mobile fraud, synthetic verification fraud and the like.
A sports enthusiast from northern England with a passion for music and a resume that includes both Sony and Virgin records, Tappit CEO Jason Thomas has taken his love for entertainment to the fintech space and created a name for himself within the industry.
With a client portfolio that includes some of the biggest organizations in event management, including the NFL, MLB and MBA (just to name a few), Tappit is a global payments solutions company that offers cashless payment options driven by data analytics. So, what differentiates them from all the other cashless solutions out there (besides their client list)? Tappit provides all their clients with micro-level data analytics to identify valuable and influential purchase patterns that enable a marketing strategy driven by personalized metrics and not just generic offers.
So, whether it be a live music venue, a professional sporting event, or even a college campus, the ability to not only offer cashless but also have data to drive your commerce is invaluable. In fact, according to Jason, “the only way to break the barrier down between the company and the consumer is to analyze the data.”
Tappit also offers a range of solutions that include mobile, RFID and even app-les web options. Another bonus? The company is completely agnostic so they can work with any third-party their clients may have in a manner that provides a truly white-label interface.
A Poughkeepsie NY native with a self-proclaimed passion for “understanding how all the pieces work functionally, operationally, strategically and globally,” Tassat CEO Ron Totaro will be the first to tell you that he has learned more from his failures than his successes. However, the successes have been abundant.
Beginning his career working for several big industry players such as American Express and AOL, Ron is no stranger to driving innovation at a more rapid pace. In fact, he drove Tassat at a pace so rapid that three years ago, they went to market as the first official B2B blockchain payments business in the world.
So, what do they do? In a nutshell, Tassat enables the tokenization of U.S. dollars and deposits so that once a dollar is converted into a token on the blockchain, it can be sent instantaneously to another wallet that exists within the same system. According to Ron, it’s similar to a “Venmo-like transaction – only industrial-strength grade for the B2B space.”
Tassat utilizes permission-based blockchain to equip each individual bank customer with the capability to tokenize U.S. dollars into a digital wallet. And in mid-December, the company launched the first and only member-owned blockchain network that will facilitate real-time bank-to-bank transfers from within the network.
But, according to Ron, “it’s not just about selling blockchain but, rather, about creating the ecosystem that is going to be most effective for each individual bank.” And his professional pillars for success? Transparency, accountability, collaboration and teamwork.
How can a Master’s degree in computer science with a concentration in machine-learning algorithms secure you a CEO spot in Fintech? Well, the story is an interesting one.
In this week’s podcast, I talk with Justt CEO Ofir Tahor about his journey through the payments industry. What does it look like to be driven by a professional passion to take complex problems and simplify them through technology and innovation? You’ll have to tune in to find out.
An Israeli native who officially caught the startup bug back in 2005, Ofir enjoys the challenges that come with building something from the ground up and watching it manifest. He founded his first company in 2011 – an ecommerce solution for businesses to sell their products and services across the social networks, which at that time were green and growing rapidly.
He later parlayed all his experience into a new business model that targets online business specifically and uses smart technology to create tailor-made solutions to successfully manage their chargebacks. And now, this startup venture has turned into a rapidly-growing company with the highest success rate in the industry and a portfolio that reads like the who’s who of payments.
The company name is Justt and this comes from their drive to bring justice to the chargeback process and balance the scales for merchants when it comes to recovering their funds. And given the fact that Justt is able to tout a 60-80% success rate (from a 20-30% industry average), you can see how they can afford to promote a business model that only collects revenue when success is achieved and money is recovered.
What does an Israeli native with three degrees in Fine Arts and a professional career as a New York sculptor have to do with payments? Believe it or not, quite a bit!
Payem CEO Itamar Jobani is my guest on this week’s podcast and his story of a professional career that spans from sculptural artistry to the medical field and eventually to payments is truly fascinating.
For those of you who may not know, Payem is a spend-management platform that helps mid-market organizations with their finance operations via a streamlined integration into their ERP software. They serve as a one-stop shop for finance teams to internally manage employee T&E, expense reimbursement, credit purchasing and more.
Itamar talks about his well-rounded journey into the payments space and where he sees our industry going in the next 2-3 years – including all the dots that need to be connected before some of the usual suspects like blockchain and cryptocurrency have the opportunity to dominate the ecosystem.
A self-proclaimed “technology entrepreneur and intrapreneur,” CoreChain CEO Chris Aguas is our special guest on this episode, episode 134 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Chris has had a fascinating career in the payments industry. Originally from southern California, Chris graduated from Stanford Business School with a passion for driving change.
CoreChain is an embedded B2B payments network that facilitates B2B payments and supply-chain financing using enterprise-distributed ledger technology – which, as many of you may know, is the foundational component for blockchain.
The only caveat? While blockchain technology facilitates the transaction capabilities necessary for Bitcoin, what CoreChain uses is a bit different. Bitcoin runs on permissionless blockchain – meaning no identifiers or validators are required. CoreChain, on the other hand, utilizes a permission-based network that requires both identification and validation of all players involved.
And according to Chris, this is the wave of the future in fintech.
Robin Gregg, the CEO of RoadSync is our special guest on this episode, episode 133 of the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
A West Virginia native and Harvard graduate with a 15-year payments career, Robin Gregg is the CEO of Atlanta-based RoadSync.
Now, when it comes to blazing trails, Robin is no stranger to lighting that fire. Not only did she climb to the top of the corporate ladder in such a male-dominated industry, she also helped create and currently leads a payments platform designed specifically for the trucking industry (another male-dominated space). These two facts alone make her story a fascinating one.
RoadSync caters specifically to the transportation industry to enable payment acceptance for various vendors, outside of fuel, that support the trucking industry. It’s a really interesting perspective to hear Robin talk about how payment acceptance is woven into an industry that is not often synonymous with fintech. But after hearing the important role that real-time payments play in the trucking space, it’s a wonder why it isn’t.
According to Robin, the trucking industry is extremely fragmented. And as a result, it has been slow to digitize. The demand for real-time payments is a huge necessity to the business model though and thanks to platforms like RoadSync, this is finally becoming a reality.
Sam Graziano, CEO of Linear is our special guest on this episode, episode 132 of the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
A New York native with a self-proclaimed passion for filling white space and challenging the status quo, Sam Graziano scratched his entrepreneurial itch all the way from the investment banking world to the fintech space, where he eventually became CEO of Linear – a digital account originating and lending infrastructure for small-to-medium-sized businesses. And his experience has left him full of insight and expertise.
Spoken in his own words, Linear provides “the technological plumbing that allows banks and other financial institutions to modernize the way they deliver conventional credit to the small business market.” And this includes real-time data, fraud decision making and credit analysis.
So, what differentiates them from the thousands of other lending companies out there? According to Sam, they go beyond just software to offer consultative insights that assist businesses in making better, faster and smarter decisions.
When asked about his professional passion, Sam finds the most fulfillment in offering advancement for his loyal employees. He enjoys facilitating a space where people feel as though their efforts are genuinely appreciated. And as far as what he sees for the future of the lending sector, Sam predicts the competitive environment will only get stronger between banks and SaaS companies. Though, he feels that the ability for banks to digitize will give them the competitive edge they need to retain their small-business portfolios.
Casey Leloux, the CEO of IntelliPay is our special guest this week on episode 131 of the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
A California native with an affinity for softball and a passion for selling solutions, Casey may have grown up shelling almonds and playing sports but his passion for sales took him down a very fascinating journey that led him straight to the top… eventually.
Now the CEO of IntelliPay, Casey came on with the company when it was just a government software platform that specialized in payments for taxes and municipalities. It was through Casey’s influence that the company branched out into other verticals and really formed their niche in fee-based processing.
Coined by Casey as a “white-glove, fee-management third-party processor,” IntelliPay specializes in fee-based offerings for businesses trying to receive bill payments. They offer multiple front-end solutions that enable customers to pay their bills and have a multitude of back-end configurations that ensure the payments move through the proper channels.
And they make it a point to “swim upstream on behalf of the merchant to offer an integrated solution.” So, how did he get to all this from selling Cutco knives? You’ll have to tune in to find out!
And, as part of this episode, you’ll also hear about Casey’s predictions for the future of our industry – including how software companies will eventually become the new merchant and how fee-based offerings will leverage success.
Jason Mugford, President and CEO of Ascendant is our special guest this week on episode 130 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Jason is a Toronto native and loyal fintech supporter. He talks with me about his journey in the industry and how he went from an aspiring Lacrosse player to a seasoned payments professional.
Ascendant is an international accounts payable and receivable business that facilitates foreign payments for companies on a global scale.
One of their most notable services is reducing the vertical fraud and risk investigation potential for their international customers and tracking payments from release to remittance. According to Jason, this not only adds more transparency to the industry but also reduces investigations from an average of 20% to less than 1%.
As for the future of our industry, Jason predicts that both sides of the transaction will eventually come together as a network, enabling us to expedite the movement of money in a more seamless fashion.
And can you believe all this started with a childhood affinity for Thomas Cook travelers checks?
Bob Dowd, CEO North America for Moneycorp is our special guest this week on episode 129 of the Leaders in Payment Podcast.
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Bob – a man who started his 38-year payments career at Kennedy airport in New York carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars across terminals in a canvas bag. So, how did he go from this to CEO of the only non-US bank in the world to have a direct relationship with the US Federal Reserve?
Well, “the harder you work, the luckier you get” is one of his favorite adages, if that tells you anything.
Moneycorp is an international payments and foreign exchange company that leads the industry in providing global payments and currency risk management to corporations and partners around the world. They have $50 billion in foreign-exchange flows and $200 million in top-line revenue and facilitate 6 million individual payments on an annual basis.
Bob talks about where the industry is headed as it relates to real-time, low-value payment rails and blockchain – and how his company kept global economies afloat by delivering cash throughout the world during the COVID pandemic.
As we come to the close of financial inclusion month, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge my guests in terms of what they’re doing to promote financial inclusion and ensure the betterment of our flourishing ecosystem. It’s because of proactive efforts like this that we are getting closer to closing the gap between all the advantages that digital innovations provide and all the challenges that the underserved communities face in trying to take advantage of them.
In this podcast, each of my sponsors for Financial Inclusion Month take the opportunity to highlight what they’re doing within their companies to service the underserved. We touch on everything from the current payment dilemma, to how we can effectively change the employee’s relationship with their paycheck, to how the strain of cash-only transactions impacts the rental, lending and government verticals specifically.
Each guest brings a unique perspective as they highlight fintech’s relationship with financial inclusion, including what needs to be done to future proof our journey towards banking the unbanked.
Today’s roundtable discussion includes The Clearing House SVP of Sales and Relationship Management Elena Whisler, Paysafe VP of eCash USA Jan Marc Kuelper and Instant Financial Founder and COO Steve Barha. Tune in to see what these three innovative leaders have to say about all things financial inclusion!
A native Canadian with a degree in molecular biology and computer science… and also the only guy I’ve ever met that can create a successful analogy using payments and farming, Instant Financial Founder and CEO Steve Barha speaks to us about the necessity to support financial health in some of the world’s most vulnerable populations.
The pioneers of no-fee-no-interest earn-wage access, Instant Financial is taking a proactive stance when it comes to ensuring financial inclusion. And Steve’s personal vision when it comes to the financial status of the every-day employee? To live in a world where living paycheck-to-paycheck is completely extinct.
So, how close are we? Sadly, not close enough.
With 80% of working Americans still living paycheck-to-paycheck, we are actually worse off now than we were 10 years ago, when the number was 60%. But Steve and his team have a strategy…
It all comes down to proactively lifting the underserved communities from the status of “financially vulnerable” to at least be “financially coping.” Once that has been achieved, they can then graduate to “financially healthy.”
Tune in and hear us talk about all things financial inclusion and see if you share Steve’s vision for the future.
We’re halfway through financial inclusion month and we’ve had some really amazing guests share some of the industry’s top challenges regarding financial inclusion – as well as what their respective companies are doing to proactively close that gap. Today, I speak with FSS CashTech CEO V. Bala about the overwhelming strain of financial inclusion in India and what FSS is doing to alleviate it.
An engineer by trade, Bala has had 30+ years of experience in the technology sector, with the last decade dedicated to payments specifically. His self-proclaimed strength is working with startups to make them successful and he has done nothing short of that with FSS and their CashTech product.
In this episode, Bala shares the staggering numbers of the underserved villages in India. How are there still an estimated 1 billion people still devoid of financial services in one of the hottest pulse points of digital disruption? And what is being done to service these individuals?
Bala goes into great detail about the FSS branch-in-a-box solution that is proactively alleviating the two main barriers to financial inclusion: available access and digital literacy. The initiative, itself, is admirable and the results are quite impressive. The ultimate goal? To uplift 1 billion lives through their own payments ecosystem.
A proud Chicago native with decades of experience driving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the payments space, and a heartfelt desire to “pour back into others some of the lessons his mentors taught him,” Will Lewis is a dynamic individual. He’s a Drake University graduate, the Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Officer at Experian and he is grateful for the opportunity to speak to you about one of his truest professional passions: financial inclusion.
When it comes to the percentage of the American population who are still un-and-under-banked, it truly is a wonder that we haven’t managed to cross this hurdle in today’s digitally dominated landscape. And this is why people like Will are so valuable to our industry.
With programs like Inclusion Forward: Experian Empowering Opportunities and Experian Boost, Will and his team are driving opportunities for individuals that are currently challenged with the limitations that come from being “credit invisible,” as he puts it. Through advocating on behalf of the consumer, these programs aim to give the cash-only consumers financial opportunities with a more comprehensive view of what could be considered “credit visibility.”
Wil speaks about all things financial inclusion, including the goals of these programs, what Experian is doing to promote financial inclusion and why it’s so important in today’s every-changing ecosystem.
When it comes to payments, it’s no secret that digital is dominating the ecosystem. This, we know. But what about Americans that are either unbanked or underbanked… those that don’t have access to the technology or have the resources required to take advantage of the perks digital disruption provides?
In today’s podcast, Paysafecash VP of Strategic Business Development Jan Marc Kuelper and RentMoola’s Chief Product Officer Jean-Francois Brissot come together to speak about the current landscape of the underbanked demographic and the strides they are proactively making to support this population.
The ultimate goal? To make the life of the cash consumer as easy as possible.
A creative thinker with 25 years of thinking about all things Fintech, Jean-Francois Brissot is the Chief Product Officer for RentMoola. RentMoola simplifies property payments into one efficient, secure platform. Jean-Francois oversees product innovation, engineering and customer success.
Also, a big player in the Fintech space and my other guest on this podcast, Jan Marc Kuelper oversees the eCash business (both Paysafecard and Paysafecash) in the United States, with the responsibility of pursuing strategic partnerships to accelerate international expansion.
Together, they provide some much-needed insight into our lingering dependency on cash, the financial challenges caused by the global pandemic and the impact this has on some of their target verticals (specifically, the rental market).
In this week’s Leaders in Payments Podcast, I speak with The Clearing House SVP of Sales and Relationship Management Elena Whisler about financial inclusion and why there are still so many unbanked and underbanked Americans.
A mother of two, marathon runner of many and proud Canadian native, Elena is passionate about payments inclusion as she talks about the various initiatives The Clearing House is involved in to proactively service our underserved communities.
For those of you that may not know, The Clearing House is a banking association and payments company owned by 23 of the largest financial institutions in the United States. They are the nation’s most experienced payments company, with a payment network that clears and settles more than $2 trillion dollars each day.
Rob Lincolne, a self-proclaimed left-handed, homeschooled Tasmanian who currently moonlights as Founder and CEO of Paydock is our special guest this week on episode 122 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Growing up on an island off the coast of Australia in a family that traveled extensively, Rob has a widespread cultural background with global exposure. This coupled with his extensive industry experience has afforded him a rather unique perspective on people, progress and (most importantly) payments.
Rob’s vision of a company that not only solved problems but provided value has gone through many iterations that have been (in his words) “rewarding, terrifying and exhilarating.” The most recent manifestation of this is Paydock. Founded in 2015, Paydock is a payments orchestration platform that helps medium and enterprise merchants simplify their increasingly complex payments stacks.
According to Rob, there are four emerging trends in the payments ecosystem that are already impacting the marketplace and will require us to “future proof” our payments strategy for successful forward momentum.
Lara Hodgson, Co-Founder, President and CEO of Now is our special guest this week on episode 121 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Lara grew up Atlanta, Georgia. She got her undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech and went to business school at Harvard. She has started several businesses in her career including Insomnia and Nourish – which was the inspiration for starting Now.
Now helps small and medium size businesses get paid immediately after sending an invoice. Their customers sign up for a NowAccount, upload their invoices into their NowAccount and their receivables are basically converted into cash.
It isn’t factoring and it isn’t a line of credit. Lara shares an interesting startup story about how the company was formed and why.
Lara has a passion for her family including being room mom and team mom. She loves education and children. She has a professional passion for leveling the playing field for small businesses.
Sathish N., Chief Product Officer of FSS is our special guest this week on episode 120 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Sathish grew up in a small town in India. He has worked for some of the leading companies in India with assignments in Tokyo, London, Copenhagen and the U.S. and has travelled to over 55 countries.
FSS has been in business for 30 years and provides payments services and technology to banks, central regulators, governments, merchants and more.
FSS helps their customers with everything from issuer card programs to omnichannel acquiring, digital banking, payment processing, ATM monitoring, payment security and analytics and financial inclusion programs.
Sathish is a nature enthusiast and enjoys bird watching and wildlife photography.
Flint Lane, CEO and Founder of Billtrust is our special guest this week on episode 119 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Flint grew up on Long Island, New York and from the beginning thought he was going to be a software developer for life. After a few software jobs, he started a company called PayTrust, sold it and started Billtrust in his basement in September of 2001.
Billtrust exists to help medium and large companies digitize their financial supply chain – think b2b payments. They went public in January and expect to do $125 million in revenue this year.
Billtrust has always been in the cloud and is sold via a subscription model. They are the market leader for AR solutions and have been in business for 20 years.
He’s the Leaders in Payments first star table tennis or ping pong player. He plays competitively several times a week.
Today we’re taking a special look at the Unattended Retail space with industry leader Cantaloupe.
Cantaloupe, Inc. is a software and payments company that provides end-to-end technology solutions for the unattended retail market. Cantaloupe is transforming the unattended retail community by offering one integrated solution for payments processing, logistics, and back-office management. The Company’s enterprise-wide platform is designed to increase consumer engagement and sales revenue through digital payments, digital advertising and customer loyalty programs, while providing retailers with control and visibility over their operations and inventory.
On this episode Elyssa Steiner from Cantaloupe is joining me to discuss the results of their recent survey. They targeted more than 2,000 census-based US adults. We’re going to talk about some of the surprises compared to last year, some of the latest trends, micro-markets and much much more.
Oliver Werneyer, CEO of Imburse is our special guest on episode 117 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Oliver was born and grew up in South Africa and found his way to London after getting married and now resides in Switzerland.
Imburse provides insurers and large enterprises a single connection point to initiate any payment, collection or payout saving them time and money. Imburse currently has 46 employees and recently closed a roughly $12 million funding round and are growing rapidly.
Imburse has a unique start up story involving an app that tracked flights, a customer and a major pivot.
Oliver is really passionate about the people side of the business and loves to play golf with his 6-year-old daughter.
Trent Sorbe, President and Founder of Central Payments is our special guest this week on episode 116 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Trent is a small-town Midwesterner. He grew up in Iowa, went to college in Iowa and have been in South Dakota for the last 20 or so years.
Central Payments is the payments subsidiary of Central Bank of Kansas City. In 2013, the bank started to think about future growth and approached Trent to start Central Payments in 2014.
Central Payments has two customers – traditional fintechs, and embedded finance – which are bigger companies that want to embed a financial product but don’t want to become financial services companies.
Trent talks about the Open CP which is their API marketplace – where their customers can come in and get access to financial products.
He also discusses Falls Fintech which is their early stage accelerator program.
Andrew Hoag, Founder and CEO of Teampay is our special guest this week on episode 115 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and I’m your host Greg Myers.
Andrew grew up in North Dakota, went to a small liberal arts college near Minneapolis and then move to Silicon Valley. He is currently based in New York where he started Teampay in late 2016.
Finance teams today are still using 20-year-old technology in many cases, so Teampay started with the idea of how they can help companies control and manage access to their bank account across all their employees.
In modern companies today, every employee makes a purchasing decisions and Teampay is a solution that helps enforced the company’s policies, helps them stay in compliance and provides visibility across the organization.
Andrew talks about blockchain and smart contracts and how they might be used in this space in the future. He also has some great advice for those just starting in our industry.
Meg Nakamura, Co-founder and CEO of Apto Payments is our special guest this week on episode 114 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Meg grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and has been in San Francisco for the last 13 years. She’s passionate about enabling other companies to solve interested use-cases with their products. Apto was started in 2014 and currently has approximately 50 employees. In 2015, Apto launched the first U.S. bitcoin-backed debit card.
Today, Apto is focused on eliminating barriers for entry and making it easy for non-experts to enter the payments space with a focus on helping their clients launch innovative card programs.
Meg believes that crypto is in the early days and that there are opportunities around real-time payments and international payments with crypto.
Michael Young, Founder and CEO Photon Commerce is our special guest this week on episode 113 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Michael grew up in Philadelphia, moved to the West Coast to attend grad school at Stanford. He dropped out of Stanford and started a few companies before realizing the need for a Cash App or Venmo like solution to make b2b payments fast and easy.
Photon Commerce has created an AI solution that focuses on enriching payments data with line-item data. Today they have 25 employees and enable their customers to move at the speed of light – therefore the name Photon Commerce.
Michael’s advice for those just starting in payments is to truly understand the big picture or the mission of the company as well as the societal impact the solution could make.
This is the second episode of this quarter's Pulse of Payments series and I’m talking with Petr Kozyakov, the Co-founder and CEO of Mercuryo. The topic for today’s episode is crypto payments – or better said accepting cryptocurrency as a method of payment.
Everyday there are articles being written about Bitcoin, Stablecoin and other cryptocurrencies but typically that is related to buying and holding these cryptocurrencies with the hope that the price goes up but what I am most interested in is understand more about cryptocurrency as a method of payment.
Mercuryo was built to bridge the gap between fiat and crypto. Petr and I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of accepting crypto currencies. We talk about the consumer demand to pay with crypto currencies as well as the global regulatory environment and much much more.
John Lunn, the CEO of Gr4vy and he is our special guest this week on episode 111 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
John was born in the UK, raised in Switzerland and about 5 years ago moved to the Bay Area. John was employee number 4 at PayPal outside of the U.S. He also ran PayPal Ventures for 5 years prior to starting Gr4vy.
Gr4vy is a tool in the cloud that allows companies to add, manage, change and orchestrate their payments types without large engineering teams. They recently closed an $11.1 million dollar series A round and currently have 21 employees.
John is passionate about making fintech and payments available to everyone not just those with credit cards and the latest gadgets. He’s a cold-water swimmer and cycles hundreds of miles – for fun.
Eric Frazier, the CEO of Payrix is our special guest this week on episode 110 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Eric is a Columbus Ohio native, a hard-core Buckeye fan, a golf fanatic and has been in the payments industry for 20 years. He’s worked for large companies as well as founded or co-founder 5 companies. He’s passionate about building a company cultures that innovates and ideates.
Payrix is a 110-person payment facilitation company that is focused on helping vertically focused software platforms drive more revenue and reduce friction for their end customers. They will be delivering over $100 million in payouts to their SaaS partners over the next 12 months.
Over the next several years, Eric sees payment facilitation companies growing internationally as well as starting to embed other financial services products.
Steve Barha, the Founder and COO of Instant Financial is our special guest this week on episode 109 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Steve is from British Columbia, Canada and got a double major in Molecular Biology and Computer Science. He’s a technology entrepreneur and has founded multiple companies.
Instant Financial is a pioneer in the no fee, no interest, earned wages access space. Instant allows employees to access their wages on-demand. They are headquartered in Atlanta and serve about 350 corporate clients and move about a $1B in Instant pay funds annually.
This is a fascinating and growing space and Instant has a unique value prop – where they don’t charge the employees for access to their wages, and they don’t charge the employer.
Steve is passionate about financial wellness and literacy as well as helping fellow entrepreneurs with their journeys.
Brian Shniderman, the CEO of Opy and the Chief Strategy Officer for OpenPay is our special guest on this quarter's Pulse of Payment edition. The topic for this episode is one of the hottest trends in payments - Buy Now Pay Later.
Not a day goes buy without an article being written or announcement being made in this space. From Square’s acquisition of AfterPay to Apple’s announcement that they are partnering with Goldman Sachs to offer a buy now pay later solution.
OpenPay offers a unique buy now pay later solution in Australia and the UK and will be launching in the US in Q4.
Brian starts by providing a definition of buy now pay later (one that I think you will find interesting) and then we discuss the value to merchants and consumers. We also talk about the US and global landscape, some of the trends in the space and why buy now pay later has exploded in the last 18 months.
Neil Bergquist, the Co-Founder and CEO of Coinme is our special guest on this episode -episode 107 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Neil is from Edmonds, Washington and got involved with a tech incubator after college and it was there he was introduced to bitcoin.
Coinme is the largest licensed cash to crypto exchange in the US. It was started in 2014 with a bitcoin ATM. Today they operate 17,000 locations across the US in partnership with Coinstar and recently launched a partnership with MoneyGram.
We talked about the early days of Coinme and their mission of changing the message in the market to help people better understand digital currencies and remove some of the negative perceptions that are in the market today.
Neil provided his vision of the future of crypto and what drives him to get up and work hard every day.
That was Oded Zehavi, the CEO and Co-Founder of Mesh Payments and he is our special guest this week on episode 106 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Oded grew up in a small town outside of Tel Aviv Israel. He spent time at both PayPal and Payoneer before starting Mesh Payments.
Mesh Payments helps SMBs and midmarket companies in the U.S. to manage and control their expenses. Their clients can fully automate their corporate payments without exposing themselves to the risks that exist today. Mesh Payments has been in business for 3 years and has 30 employees. They have grown 600% over the last 8 months.
Oded and I talked about what differentiates Mesh Payments as well as the future of b2b payments.
Oded has a passion for football and for helping start-up companies scale and understand their payments infrastructure.
As we come to the end of July, we’re also coming to the end of the Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express.
I’ve had 5 tremendous women leaders on the show, and they have provided some incredible advice and perspectives on women leadership in general and specifically related to payments.
In this episode I’m going to pull together the best of the best related to advice from our 5 guests. The podcasts were more than just advice though – I talked to each one of them about their unique journey and their unique perspectives about leadership and payments.
Each episode covers three themes. One, their personal and career journeys – so from childhood to high school to college to their first job as well as their payments career progression.
The second theme was a quick session where I asked 10 rapid fire questions like “what was your least favorite subject in high school or what is the most used app on your phone.”
The third theme was really about them providing career guidance and advice and we’re going to focus on that in this episode. Some of my personal favorite quotes and I might be paraphrasing a little but they were: “I’m not a man in a skirt” “Be unapologetic” “Be fearless and challenge yourself” and “Focus on action over perfection.”
Vivian Greentree, SVP and Head of Global Corporate Citizenship at Fiserv is our special guest on this the 104th episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast – This is also the 5th episode this month as we’re celebrating Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express.
Vivian grew up in Tucker, Georgia and after high school attended the University of Georgia and then joined the Navy where she was a Naval Supply Officer.
In 2009, she co-founded Blue Star Families which is the nation’s largest military family organization with 65,000 members. She joined First Data in 2014 as the Head of Military and Veteran Affairs and today is the Head of Global Corporate Citizenship at Fiserv where she manages all efforts around associate and community engagement, strategic philanthropy and diversity and inclusion.
Vivian and I talk about always being vulnerable, willing to learn and getting comfortable being uncomfortable. The underlying theme of Vivian’s advice is “resiliency” or as we like to say in the south – grit.
Talbott Roche the CEO and President of Blackhawk Network, is our special guest on this the 103rd episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast as we continue to celebrate Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express.
Talbott grew up in Richmond, Virginia and attended an all-girls school from kindergarten through high school. She majored in economics at Stanford and was the first person to go to college west of the Mississippi from her high school.
She co-founded Blackhawk Network which was at the time a subsidiary within Safeway. During a holiday season 20 years ago, they put 7 gift cards in the northern California division of Safeway stores and did about $9 million dollars in sales. Fast forward to now, and Blackhawk Network will do $26B this year in total load value across 28 countries. What a remarkable success story.
Her guiding principles are simple; commit, create and connect. Talbott has some very impactful phrases that she used during our interview such as “focus on action over perfection,” “turn a crisis into an opportunity,” and “know your own worth and ask for the opportunity.”
Sam Ettus, the Founder and CEO of Park Place Payments is our special guest on this the 102nd episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast. She is our third guest in the Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express.
Sam grew up in New York City and played competitive tennis from childhood through college. She went to Harvard College and then on to Harvard Business School.
Sam has devoted her career to advocating and supporting woman, in fact this is what led to her founding Park Place Payments. Her unique sales force is comprised of women with no payments background who are trained on how to sell payments to their doctors, dentists and other small businesses in their local area.
Sam co-hosts her own podcast, has written 5 books, is a renowned speaker and makes regular appearances on TV. Given her extensive background and experience helping women succeed she provides some powerful and insightful leadership advice for all women in payments.
Suneera Madhani, the Founder and CEO of Stax (formerly Fattmerchant) is our special guest on this the 101st episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast. She is the second guest in the Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express.
Suneera was raised by immigrant parents who were also entrepreneurs. Much of her personal and professional inspiration comes from her parents. She attended the University of Florida and after a short stint at a consumer-packaged goods company she started her career in payments.
In 2014 she founded FattMerchant with her brother. They have recently rebranded to Stax and raised over $100 million. They process payments for over 25,000 merchants and are based on Orlando, Florida.
Suneera has some great advice for women in payments including being bold, taking a risk, & being authentic and your true self.
Kathleen Fiorello, the Head of US Partner Acquisition and Global Capabilities at American Express is our special guest on this the 100th episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast. I’m honored to have her on this show as we kick off Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express.
Kathleen grew up in Wayne New Jersey, where she had a paper route as a kid, after high school she attended Florida State University and has had a long successful career at American Express spanning 25 years.
From playing golf on the boy’s team in high school (because they didn’t have a girl’s team back then) to moving the Stockholm Sweden to run the Nordics market where she learned several powerful lessons to attributing much of her success to hard work, Kathleen provides some dynamic messages about listening to your inner voice, taking risks, believing in yourself and being bold.
Brady Harris, the CEO of Dwolla is our special guest this week on episode 99 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Brady grew up in Salt Lake City Utah. After high school he went into payments in Portland and Seattle. He also spent some time in Atlanta and now is at the Dwolla headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa.
Dwolla was originally a P2P product but about 5 years ago started to focus on B2B payments. Today they provide ACH transaction processing through an API to businesses and also power functionality for many other Fintechs. They recently launched real-time payments and are looking into things like FX and crytpo.
This year they are trending towards $40B in gross payment volume with approximately 100 employees.
Brady has a passion for giving people the opportunity to grow and flourish in their careers. He also thinks people coming into payments or fintech should start with a sales job which Brady says a sometimes controversial viewpoint.
Vijay Oddiraju, the Co-founder and CEO of Volante Technologies is our special guest this week on episode 98 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Vijay was born and raised in India. After getting his bachelor’s degree he came to the U.S. where he got his master’s degree in computer science and went to work for Oracle. After about 6 years, he got the entrepreneurial bug and started his first company.
Vijay along with 3 other founders started Volante in 2001. Currently the company offers cloud payments and financial messaging solutions to financial institutions. They have over 100 customers in 35 countries. The first real-time payments transaction in U.S. history went through their platform.
In August of last year, they raised $35 million in capital from Wavecrest Growth Partners and other strategic investors – many of them are existing customers.
Vijay has a professional passion to build and maintain a company culture based on trust. On the personal side he has a passion for space and looks forward to hitching a ride with Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos into space.
Don Frieden, the President, CEO & Chairman of P97 Networks is our special guest this week on episode 97 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Don grew up in Fort Forth Texas, attended North Texas University and has been in Houston Texas for about 30 years.
P97 is making payments at the convenience retail and fuel industries simple, fast, and secure. They are a global company with 175 team members with about 100 at the headquarters in Houston.
Beyond payments they provide loyalty programs for fuel brands and digital marketing opportunities that can be delivered to the fuel dispenser, connected car in-dash screens, mobile devices and voice channels.
Don has some great insights into the future of mobile payments including the enormous buying power today and in the future of millennials – who are the first digital native generation.
Derek Webster, the Founder and CEO of CardFlight is our special guest this week on episode 96 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Derek was born and raised in California, moved to Washington D.C. and attended Georgetown University. He was an intern and then a product manager at eTrade before going to business school at Stanford. He currently lives in New York City where he founded CardFlight in 2013.
CardFlight powers a product called SwipeSimple that is used by 80,000 small businesses in the United States. Their hardware and software products are distributed by over 80 different partners including merchant acquirers and ISOs. They are tech and customer-first focused and are partnership led.
During the pandemic CardFlight launched the weekly CardFlight Small Business Report – it become the source of truth for how small businesses were faring during the pandemic for both investors and small businesses themselves.
On a personal note, he loves sailing and still races competitively and more recently has taken up kite surfing.
Will Graylin, the CEO of OV Loop and Indigo Technologies is our special guest this week on episode 95 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Will immigrated to the U.S. from China when he was a teenager. He got his undergrad degree from the University of Washington, became a nuclear submarine officer for 5 and half years and then went to Boston for grad school at MIT.
OV Loop is a connected commerce platform that has a solution for brands and businesses called a super messenger and a solution for consumers called a super wallet. We are living in a very fragmented environment when it comes to commerce and we need to get to a more connected environment – which is the problem OV Loop is addressing.
Over the last 3 years they have bought 4 companies and are launching a minimal viable product next quarter to both businesses and consumers.
Will also touched on the other company he is currently running called Indigo Technologies which is creating a lightweight electric vehicle.
Ron Hynes, the CEO of Vesta is our special guest this week on episode 94 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Ron lives in Connecticut and was born and raised in Maine. He’s married and has three kids, two in college and one that just graduated from high school and one little dog to round out the family.
Vesta uses advanced machine learning to access the validity of card-not-present transactions. They provide their customers a “thumbs up” if the transaction is good and obviously identify the fraudulent ones.
The company has been around for 25 years and has 300 employees. The company has locations across the U.S. and Dublin Ireland, Mexico City as well as an office in Singapore.
Ron and I have a great discussion about fraud in general as well as fraud in developing countries. We also talk about his passion for financial inclusion stemming from his journey in payments with Chase and Mastercard.
Matt Marcus, the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Modern Treasury is our special guest this week on episode 93 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Matt was born in south Florida, moved to New Hampshire and attended Dartmouth College and now lives in San Francisco.
Modern Treasury was formed when the three founders were responsible for the payment operations system at LendingHome realized that there was a need for a more robust scalable, solution that helps move money.
In 2018 the founders completed Y Combinator and had their first customer in the fall of 2018.
Matt and I had a great discussion around today’s real-time payments solutions and what they will look like in the future.
Larry Talley, Founder & CEO of Everyware is our special guest on episode 92 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Larry grew up in New York and has been on his own since the early age of 14. He left New York and joined the Navy where he saw 30 countries before the age of 21. He now resides in Austin, Texas with his wife and 3 sons.
Everyware was formed to solve problems around payments by leveraging communications – meaning text messaging. They allow businesses and consumers to interact and transact via text messaging on their own time.
They are integrated with all of the main acquirers and sell primarily to ISVs. They are in several verticals including travel, healthcare, non-profits, restaurants, retailers, field services and more.
Larry believes crypto will become a preferred payment method in the next few years and he has some great insights into the future of payments.
James Oberman, CEO of Payroc is our special guest this week on episode 91 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Jim grew up in the south-side of Chicago, attended the University of Arizona, married his high school sweetheart and moved back to the Chicago area after college. His first job was in public accounting where he had clients in the equipment financing industry which ultimately led him into the payments industry by financing the leases that ISOs were originating for equipment.
Payroc is the ninth largest independent merchant acquirers in the U.S. They process about $33B a year, have over 100,000 merchant relationships; over 2,000 agents and sub-ISO partners: 40 ISV partnerships and have 400 employees. In 2016 they had 16 employees.
2019 was a big year for Payroc. They were approached by Parthenon Capital with a strategy to bring together 4 companies: NXTGEN, Payscape, Payroc and BluePay Canada into the new Payroc. Since 2019 they have continued to strategically acquire more companies.
Jim walks us through his fascinating journey in payments and has some great advice for those just starting their careers in payments.
Sean Feeney, the CEO of Cantaloupe is our special guest this week on episode 90 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Sean grew up in a small town in New York called Attica – which of course is famous for its maximum-security prison. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in the Army for 6 years mostly in Europe. He currently lives in Roswell, Georgia.
Cantaloupe is the leading provider of solutions to the unattended retail space – for example vending machines, car washes, basically anything where there isn’t a retail clerk. They provide both the digital payments capability and the software that drives the logistics servicing of those locations. The company was started in the early 90s, will do approximately $160-170 million in sales this year and has 180 employees.
Cantaloupe was formerly USA Technologies. They launched the new name and a complete new brand about a month ago.
On the personal side Sean has a passion for his family and supports a lot of youth and high school activities and on the business side he is very passionate about building great leaders and helping them succeed.
Anil D. Aggarwal, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Fintech Meetup is our special guest this week on episode 89 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Anil was born in England came to the US when he was 16 and has been an entrepreneur basically his entire career. He started two businesses in payments early in his career and sold one of them to Google. At Google he started working on Money 20/20.
In 2011 he started Money 2020 and first event was in 2012. He subsequently sold Money 20/20 in in 2014 and launched Shoptalk in 2015. Anil has some great stories and insights about how he started both companies and about disruption in events.
Fast forward and Anil has started Fintech Meetup – which has it’s first event next month – June 15-17 called Fintech Spring Meetup which is a virtual event but of course he has aspirations of building the biggest Fintech event in the industry.
That was Quincy McKnight, CEO and Founder of Covenant Pay Partners and he is our special guest this week on episode 88 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Quincy grew up in Murfreesboro Tennessee, went to Middle Tennessee State and now lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
In 2018 Quincy rebranded QPay into Covenant Pay Partners and refocused the company. Their current top verticals are transportation, retail/restaurants, b2b, education and municipalities. By next year they plan to be processing $1 billion in volume.
In addition to running Covenant Pay Partners, Quincy has personal passion for politics and will actually be running for Congress in the state of Tennessee.
Lawrence Lee, a partner from Baker McKenzie is our special guest this week on the Pulse of Payments series - part of the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
Prior to joining Baker McKenzie, Lawrence was former in-house counsel for the digital currency exchange Coinbase, where he led all corporate and strategic transactions and investments.
He’s been repeatedly acknowledged in the legal industry as an authority on tech M&A –in 2020, he was selected by Law360 as a Top Attorney Under 40 in the Technology sector. For several years in a row, Lawrence was named a Rising Star in Mergers and Acquisitions by California Super Lawyers.
On this episode we discuss M&A in the payments/fintech space; the IPO market; SPACS and crypto currency.
Rodney Robinson, CEO and Co-founder of TabaPay is our special guest this week on episode 86 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Rodney grew up in Omaha Nebraska and has been in California for the last 40 years.
TabaPay was named after a Lord of the Rings book called There and Back Again or TABA and TabaPay is all about there and back again payments- they can both disburse money instantly as well as collect it back – a round trip payment.
They process 15 billion dollars in payments and have grown about 50% in the last year.
Rodney is driven by satisfying the customer. One of the main goals of the company is to make sure their customers are happy. He also has some great advice for those just starting their careers in fintech.
This is the first episode of the Q2 2021 “The Pulse of Payments” series. My special guest this week is Brent Rose, Chief Revenue Officer at Beyond (getbeyond.com)
Get Beyond started in 2017 and focuses on advocacy – business, sales and service advocacy specifically.
During this episode we discuss how small business in their portfolio are bouncing back from the Covid pandemic. We also go deeper into three segments: restaurants, services and non-profits.
According to Brent, some of the segments of small business (retail, restaurants, hospitality, etc.) have been a greatly challenged but simplifying and focusing on managing costs and strategically planning their future will help them thrive moving forward.
We also discuss healthcare, QR codes, text to pay/engagement and other hot topics.
Brandon Spear, the CEO of TreviPay is our special guest on episode 84 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Brandon grew up in South Africa and completed college in electrical engineering. He moved to the United States about 15 years ago and is currently based in Overland Park Kansas.
TreviPay has had some significant changes in the past year and Brandon and I discuss those – which include the rebranding of the company from MSTS to TreviPay and the acquisition of the company by Corsair Capital.
TreviPay is a business-to-business payments company and they focus on the seller and help them to grow their business through the extension of payment terms to their clients.
Brandon is an avid sports fan and specifically a Kansas City Chiefs football fan – which of course has come with its high and lows over the last two years. On the professional side, leadership development is one of his primary passions.
Andrew Jamison, the CEO & Co-Founder of Extend is our special guest this week on episode 83 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Andrew spent the first 10 years of his career at SAP and then moved over to American Express for 12 years where he managed all B2B payments solutions, including virtual card platforms and products. Andrew currently lives in New York City with his wife and two small children.
In 2016 he started Extend with two partners. They raised a friends and family round to build their MVP. Extend has starting the process of raising $30 million in a series B.
As traditional banks look to compete in the digital world, Extend helps them to build out digital capabilities – an extension that builds or sits over their core technology and repackages what they have in ways companies would want to use them. They started with credit cards or virtual cards as nearly every business has this need.
Andrew has some great advice for those just starting their careers and on a personal level, although living in New York City – he loves the outdoors and more specifically hiking.
Chris Chestnut, the CEO & Co-Founder of Payix is our special guest this week on episode 82 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Chris moved to North Texas from Arizona when he was 12 and has been in North Texas since including attending college at University of Texas in Arlington. Chris assumed his career would be in sales but he actually hated sales, so he went into the IT department at Americredit and learned the technology side of business. He left Americredit and started a company that bought auto receivables.
In 2015 Chris left that company with another partner to start Payix. Payix is a software platform that helps non-bank middle tier lenders communicate with their borrowers and ultimately take their payments – whether that is online, mobile, IVR or with an agent on the phone. Their integration with loan management systems helps to differentiate them in the marketplace. Today Payix has 30-40 team members and has close to 100 customers using their software today.
Chris has some great advice for entrepreneurs and for those just starting their careers – whether in payments or not.
Ari Horowitz, the CEO of Yardline Capital is our special guest this week on episode 81 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Ari grew up just outside of New York City and went to college at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s been an entrepreneur his entire life starting by tarring driveways and tutoring SATs in high school. He’s started over 10 business to date.
Yardline Capital provides non diluted capital for ecommerce sellers operating on marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, eBay and others. Many companies that compete on these marketplaces need capital to grow their business – typically using funds for marketing or buying more inventory.
Yardline has been in business for just over a year and is continuing to build their brand. Yardline differentiates themselves because they started the company from the operator’s perspective and know what it takes to be successful as a seller on the marketplaces. They also provide their customers with a seller success manager that helps each customers grow their business through consulting and thought leadership.
That was Patricia Montesi, the CEO of Qolo and she is our special guest this week on episode 80 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Patricia grew up in Charleston, West Virginia, and went to the University of Miami and has never left south Florida. She started in the car rental space and was there for 9 years before moving into the payments industry.
Qolo is an omnichannel, unified payments platform and is 100% in the cloud. They are powering fintechs and companies competing against fintech. They were founded in 2018, got seed funding in late 2019 and got their first customer in 2020. The founding team has worked together on and off over the last 20 years before coming together to build Qolo.
Qolo is an acronym for quality-of-life organization. Most of their customers demand an omnichannel solution with the most modern APIs and Qolo provides this in multiple engagement models from outsourcing everything to Qolo to bringing and managing everything in house at the customer.
Patricia has a passion to build great products, a great team and a great company. On a personal level she’s passionate about spending time with her family.
That was Dimitri Akhrin, the founder and President of IRIS CRM and he is our special guest on episode 79 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Dimitri was born in the Ukraine and his family moved to New York when he was 8 years old. He went to high school and college in New York. He started his first business when he was 12 years old and started in payments in high school and has worked in every role in a payments company from appointment setter to sales to becoming an ISO.
IRIS CRM where IRIS stands for integrated reporting is simple – is a business management system designed for payments – it is an ISO enablement platform that helps companies that sell merchant services. Customers use IRIS to track leads, it has an electronic signature process for boarding a merchant, a help desk system, residual reporting and more. IRIS CRM services more than 200 ISOs which represents over 300,000 active merchants.
Dimitri has three boys, ages 5, 3 and 1 that keeps him busy when he isn’t leading and growing IRIS CRM.
This episode is part of our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
This special series is brought to you by Wnet and Paysafe.
Wnet or Women's Network in Electronic Transactions is celebrating 15 years of helping women achieve greater personal success, influence, and professional parity in the payments and fintech industries. Wnet is a not-for-profit organization with a mission of creating a stronger and more diverse industry by empowering and investing in women. Learn how at wnetonline.org.
Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.
I’m honored to be joined on the twelfth episode of our special series on D&I by Garima Shah, the president at Biller Genie.
As Biller Genie president, Garima Shah can usually be found (and heard) reviewing company financials, finding strategic business opportunities, managing the Biller Genie team - and serving as volunteer dancer for the team’s social media videos. More competitive than Conor McGregor, as a child Garima would do anything it took to win at monopoly (and still does), which pushed her to pursue an MBA in the competitive fields of entrepreneurship and finance.
Garima learned early on that she enjoyed helping and leading others, which led her to serve in key positions in the fintech industry, such as head of national sales for eMerchantPay, and Chief Business Development Officer at Direct Connect. She has cultivated long relationships throughout her 17 years in the payments industry. Garima reunited with friend and Biller Genie CEO, Thomas Aronica, and the dream team was formed. In her spare time, Garima creates tik tok videos with her daughters and casually wins Bollywood dance competitions.
This episode is part of our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
This special series is brought to you by Wnet and Paysafe.
Wnet or Women's Network in Electronic Transactions is celebrating 15 years of helping women achieve greater personal success, influence, and professional parity in the payments and fintech industries. Wnet is a not-for-profit organization with a mission of creating a stronger and more diverse industry by empowering and investing in women. Learn how at wnetonline.org.
Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.
I’m honored to be joined on the eleventh episode of our special series on D&I by Kristy Richardson, the CEO of USPay Group.
Kristy has been with USPAY since its inception in 2005. In January of this year, she was named the CEO. Prior to being named the CEO, she was the Chief Operating Officer where her primary focus was on managing all aspects of the merchant boarding process, POS equipment programming and deployment, risk management and loss prevention, client services and merchant quality assurance and retention. Kristy previously served as Director of Corporate Services for Federated Payment Systems.
Kristy has over 15 years of concentrated experience overseeing company operations with concentrations in risk management, underwriting and client services. Her diverse experience and constant diligence to stay current on industry developments, makes her an invaluable asset to the USPAY Team.
Anand Goel the President and CEO at Optimized Payments is our special guest this week on episode 76 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Anand went to middle school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, high school in Houston Texas and went University of Texas in Austin for his undergrad degree. He worked at MCI Telecommunications in a management training program, left there and got his MBA from Babson College and stayed in Boston. And in his words “I got into the payments industry because of a girl.” Ultimately leaving Boston for Atlanta – where he went to work for Elavon.
Optimized Payments is a payments analytics and consulting firm that has been in business for 14 years. They allow organizations to measure or benchmark the performance of their payments. They built a one-of-a-kind SaaS platform that consumes transaction data from all the big acquirers to not only help their customers save money by reducing the cost of accepting payments but also to enhance or drive revenue as well as many other interesting use-cases.
Most of their clients do billions of dollars in card payments so clients like Apple, Verizon, Staples, Waste Management and more. Currently 2/3rds of their business comes from recurring SaaS fees for the analytics platform and 1/3 comes from their traditional consulting business.
On the personal side Anand has two teenage daughters and enjoys spending time with them.
We’ve got a great episode today so let’s get started.
Michael Tomko the COO at CardX is our special guest this week on episode 75 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Michael grew up Columbus Ohio, went to Harvard College studying philosophy and then went to Harvard Law School and initially worked in real estate. He actually went to high school and Harvard Law School with the CardX CEO Jonathon Razi.
CardX is a fintech company that makes it easy for businesses to accept payments – with a focus on the credit card surcharging model. The company was started in 2013 and actually doubled their headcount during the last year. Their distribution is through their channel partners – so ISOs, ISVs and others sell the CardX solution.
CardX is the only company in payments that leads with surcharging. Everything that CardX has built is focused on the surcharging model first. They are most differentiated for larger merchants typically selling online with larger ticket items. The surcharging model doesn’t work well for smaller ticket card present businesses.
There are 47 states that now allow surcharging – so only three states left that don’t allow surcharging. The latest state to allow it was Kansas and CardX was the primary driving force behind that change.
Michael has a professional passion for helping solve new use cases for surcharging and a personal passion for being in the outdoors, especially hiking.
Dov Marmor, the COO of North American at Railsbank is our special guest this week on episode 74 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Dov grew up in Miami, spent 13 or 14 years in New York and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and 3 kids and dog Batman. He got his undergraduate degree at University of Maryland and his masters at Cornell.
Railsbank is a platform that allows any company to become its own fintech. The company has been around 4 years, is headquartered in the UK, has about 200+ customers on the platform and 3 million end users and is live on 3 continents.
Railsbank has gone to market in the U.S. with a credit card as a service model. There are four verticals within fintech that they target including, lending, neo-banks, investment and personal finance, and cryptocurrency. Outside of fintech their customers are major brands like large tech companies, large retailers, airlines – basically anyone that has a co-branded credit card today.
One key differentiator for Railsbank is the fact they built their product from the ground up and all their APIs are country agnostic – so it really removes the headache of starting a credit card or a debit card in one country and then having to find another vendor to launch in another country.
Dov is passionate about building tools that help other people innovate. Personally, he’s passionate about seeing his kids excel.
Marwan Forzley, the CEO of Veem is our special guest this week on episode 73 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Marwan grew up and went to school in Canada and is now based in San Francisco where he started Veem in 2014. Prior to starting Veem, he ran e-commerce for Western Union after having sold his prior company to them.
Veem is the simplest way for businesses to pay and get paid around the world. All you need is an email address. They operate in 110 countries with 50 plus currencies and have a quarter of a million accounts on their platform.
Their goal is to make paying and getting paid as simple as possible. A simple way to think about it is that they're the Venmo for businesses, both domestically and internationally. They use six different rails to move money, including things like the MasterCard and Visa rails, Swift and blockchain technologies, as well as several others.
What makes Veem different is their simplicity, cost savings and timing of the payments. Marwan has a passion for using technology to create a great customer experience and loves to make a difference in the lives of his business customers.
Craig Sobol, the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of XUP is our special guest on episode 72 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Craig grew up in New York and went to school in upstate New York and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina when he took a job with Bank of America and currently resides there with his wife and two sons.
XUP was founded with the premise to help banks drive transactions up so in the name “x” is for transactions and then “up.”
Banks have typically outsourced merchant services to a third-party acquirer and keep merchant services at arms -length even though merchant services is a very sticky product. Banks need to deepen their relationships with their customers but 92% of business customers at a bank gets their merchant services from someone other than their bank.
So the founders at XUP saw an opportunity to build software that sits between the bank and their merchant processor. Their software includes 5 different modules from top of the funnel sales and marketing to onboarding to analytics.
Craig has a passion for creating a tremendous user experience for his customers and personally loves to watch his sons succeed in their endeavors. Craig’s also loves to play the piano.
This is the 4th episode in our Q1 2021 Pulse of Payments series sponsored by Company.com.
Today’s guest is Nick Starai, the Chief Strategy Officer at NMI. At NMI their mission is to use their expertise to enable more payments, in more ways and more places. They provide ISOs, Fintech Innovators and Technologists the freedom to focus on what they do best, liberating them from restricted payment solutions and giving them access to the latest payment technology now and in the future.
In this episode Nick and I discuss many of the latest trends in payments including contactless payments, transit payments, the disruption by fintech in the banking space and omnichannel commerce.
This episode is part of our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
I’m honored to be joined on the tenth episode of our special series on D&I by Melanie Tinto, the Chief Human Resource Officer at WEX.
Melanie joined WEX in 2018, bringing an almost 20-year track record of leading global talent acquisition, talent management, leadership development, and organizational development for large, multi-billion dollar corporations.
As Chief Human Resource Officer at WEX, Melanie is responsible for developing and executing human resources strategy in support of the company’s overall business plan and strategic direction, specifically in the areas of succession planning, talent management, change management, organizational and performance management, training and development, and compensation and benefits.
Prior to joining WEX, Melanie served as Medtronic’s vice president of talent acquisition, talent management, and its chief learning officer and as Hewlett-Packard’s vice president of executive leadership development and organizational development. She also held HR Business Partner roles at Walmart, Bank of America and Cigna.
Melanie earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Maine and an MBA with a concentration in finance from the University of Connecticut.
Kevin Smith, the CEO of Securebancard is our special guest this week and this is episode 69 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Kevin grew up in a small town in east Texas and joined the Marine Corps right out of high school. After the Marines he joined a small ISO in Irvine, California before making his way to Atlanta Georgia that he now calls home.
Securebancard has built its own in-house portfolio management platform. Their customers can customize statements, adjust billing schemas and create unique offerings in the market. They have $22-23 million in annual revenue and process payments for roughly 3,500 merchants. They focus mainly on ecommerce but they really provide solutions based on their customers needs and their customers are typically other ISOs.
According to Kevin one of the payment trends he sees in the next few years is the continued push for compliance and risk mitigation especially as real time payments becomes a standard way of doing business.
Kevin has a passion for automating processes within his business and on the personal side he has a passion for cars. He also some great advice for those just joining our industry.
Anand Goel, the CEO of Optimized Payments is our special guest this week. This is the third episode of The Pulse of Payments special series for Q1 2021 The video podcast for this episode can be found here. Or visit our YouTube Channel.
Optimized Payments has helped Fortune 100 to mid-sized companies save over $300 million in interchange and processing fees. Anand has also led efforts to revolutionize payments analytics.
Anand and I covered topics ranging from data in payments to new NACHA requirements to what the post-COVID-19 payments ecosystem looks like to other hot trends in the industry.
For more information about Optimized Payments visit their website: www.optimzedpayments.com
This episode is the final entry in our special series on The Digital Payments Tipping Point. In this three-part series I've been talking with executives from WEX’s Corporate Payments division who partnered with the research team at The Economist over the summer of 2020 to look into the state of business-to-business payments in financial services, fintechs, and technology companies. The research found that companies that have grown most robustly during the pandemic are accelerating their evolution away from slow, manual, paper-based payments into secure, data-rich, real-time digital payments.
This 3-part series digs into the issues surrounding this rapid evolution in digital payments. Our first episode featured Greg Sassone, SVP of Business & Partner Growth at WEX Corporate Payments, and focused on whether banks should build, buy or partner when it comes to adopting new technology or innovation.
The second episode featured Dylan Jones, Vice president of operations for WEX Corporate Payments and Laura Shen, Director of Strategy for WEX Corporate Payments. This discussion focused on the interchange realities that the payments industry needs to face.
My special guest on this final episode in the series is WEX Corporate Payments President Jay Dearborn. Jay and I will be discussing the Shape of Payments to Come, and what might lie beyond the digital tipping point.
WEX is a global B2B Payments Technology Company. Their Corporate Payments division focuses on innovating digital payments solutions for financial institutions and fintechs as well as large corporations that need to modernize their AP processes.
This episode is part of our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
This special series is brought to you by Wnet and Paysafe.
Wnet or Women's Network in Electronic Transactions is celebrating 15 years of helping women achieve greater personal success, influence, and professional parity in the payments industry. Wnet is a not-for-profit organization with a mission of creating a stronger and more diverse industry by empowering and investing in women. Learn how at wnetonline.org.
Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.
I’m honored to be joined on the ninth episode of our special series on D&I by Tracey McCant Trentel.
Tracey is the Vice President, Business Integration, for Paysafe. She joined their leadership team last year and is responsible for oversight of a portfolio of strategic initiatives designed to deliver an outstanding and differentiated customer experience that will ultimately drive business growth.
Before joining Paysafe, Tracey established herself as an accomplished leader in service delivery and process re-engineering, always targeting heightened customer satisfaction.
She previously worked for Worldpay where she was responsible for managing various complex business transformation projects that incorporated work process redesign and the implementation of new cost-effective technologies.
Before Worldpay, she gained wide-ranging experience working for high profile companies such as Dow Chemical, Newell Rubbermaid, and the Coca-Cola Company.
Tracey holds a BSE in Chemical Engineering from Tulane University and is both a certified Six Sigma Black belt and PMP. She currently resides in her hometown of Atlanta, GA.
Bill Wade, the CEO of Company.com is our special guest this week and this is episode 65 of The Leaders in Payments podcast.
Bill grew up in Connecticut, and was a professional drummer before “hitting it big” in the payments industry. He was recruited by Marriott Corporation out of college, and spent a decade with them in the executive program before shifting into sales and mortgage banking, eventually making his way into the payments space.
Company.com now provides resources and services to business owners. While not serving the payments industry exclusively, because of Bill’s previous decades of experience in payments, it has consistently been one of Company.com’s top priorities.
According to Bill, the single biggest differentiator for Company.com is their focus on the overall user experience. With several members of his team coming from a payments background, they have an in-depth understanding of the industry’s competitive nature, as well as the importance of differentiation.
A continuing payments trend, according to Bill, will be progressive advancements related to speed of transaction settlement, as well as increased opportunities for business with solid technology backgrounds that can effectively address the user experience.
Bill is tremendously appreciative of the team members he’s had over the years, and is excited about helping more companies find and take advantage of opportunities moving forward. His advice for newcomers: Be innovative, be scrappy and work hard.
This is the second episode in our series "The Pulse of Payments" and Shaun Abraham, the CEO of Transaction Insights is our special guest this week.
Before co-founding Transaction Insights, Shaun held leadership positions in both JP Morgan and Bank of America, and has tremendous expertise in market intelligence. Today, his company helps businesses keep track of the payments space as well as find opportunities in it.
According to Shaun, one of the trends that is coming in our space is the rebundling of financial services, with companies looking to partner with and/or acquire businesses in order to expand their service offerings.
Shaun also believes that the “Buy Now Pay Later” (BNPL) space has interesting things in store in 2021, and will continue to see growth. Managing it responsibly, however, may prove to be challenging moving forward.
Another hot trend, according to Shaun, is the shift toward payments in the cloud. With a partnership between Global Payments and Google Cloud having been recently announced, he believes that other similar partnerships are forthcoming. With the goals being speed to integrate, speed to market and flexibility to adapt and change, “future-proofing” your platform will continue to be a top-tier agenda item in the payments industry.
Cleveland Brown, the CEO of Payscout is our special guest this week and this is episode 63 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Cleveland grew up in San Jose California with Apple and IBM being in his backyard. Cleveland went to college at UCLA and majored in philosophy and business economics. While in college he started a company building ecommerce platforms and software for public school systems. He currently lives in LA.
Payscout is a payment technology company that builds proprietary solution designed to increase conversions, enhance compliance and reduce processing costs – focused on highly regulated ecommerce sectors like medical billing, health care, cross border, education and enterprise level entities.
The culture of Payscout is what differentiates the company having won multiple awards for best places to work.
According to Cleveland one of the trends that is coming in our space is payments in immersive experiences like virtual reality or augmented reality.
Cleveland has a passion for building the best culture at Payscout. He also some great advice for those just joining our industry.
Bill Lodes, Chief Revenue Officer at linked2Pay is our special guest this week. This is episode 62 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Bill was born in New York and comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Bill learned the value of hard work at his dad’s own restaurant where he also learned the details of opening and operating a small business – from the pot sink to being a bartender to a line cook.
Linked2Pay is a payment technology company that provides credit and debit card processing, ACH and payment integration tools to software partners as well as offers a white label payments platform to banks, channel partners and more.
One of the ways linked2Pay differentiators themselves is to really understand the pain points of their partners and their customers and then build the technology to help solve for these pain points.
Bill has some great insights into the future of payments based on the behavior changes of consumers.
This is the first episode of the Q1 2021 “The Pulse of Payments” series. My special guest this week is Krista Tedder, the Director Payments for Javelin Strategy and Research.
During this episode we’re discussing how the payments industry will be affected by the new Biden administration here in the U.S. and the fact that the Democrats hold majorities in both the House and Senate.
Krista talks about how interchange revenue could be regulated – both debit (again) and credit. She also covers topics like digital currencies, cannabis and online betting.
She also discusses what the payments industry will look like post Covid-19 as well her thoughts on the continuation of M&A activity and PE/VC investments.
This episode is part of our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
This special series is brought to you by Wnet and Paysafe.
Wnet or The Women's Network in Electronic Transactions is celebrating 15 years of helping women achieve greater personal success, influence, and professional parity in the payments industry. Wnet is a not-for-profit organization with a mission of creating a stronger and more diverse industry by empowering and investing in women. Learn how at wnetonline.org.
Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.
I’m honored to be joined on the eighth episode of our special series on D&I by Andrew Greening, the Managing Partner of Greenings International.
Andrew Greening has been a pioneer in the Executive Search industry for over 30 years. Andrew has disrupted and challenged the possible for cross-border executive search and talent acquisition, from turning around international offices and acquisitions to building out new methodologies for client success. Andrew’s global network is driven by his interest and passion for people, helping to further careers and being fully invested in his clients.
Adrian Sanders, the CEO of Chargehound is our special guest this week and this is episode 59 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
Adrian was born and grew up on a small farm in Corvallis Oregon before going to Bennington College in Vermont. Prior to starting Chargehound he had started and was running a crowdfunding company. He currently resides in Oakland California with his wife and 2 young kids.
Chargehound is the only fully automated chargeback representment service available and they use technology to drive better win rates, and better performance for their merchants.
Their pricing is based on pay for performance meaning they take a percentage of what they win back which helps them align with their merchants.
Adrian has some great insights about how behavioral changes of consumers will affect the future of payments and he also provides some sound advice for those just starting out in payments.
This episode is part of our special series on The Digital Payments Tipping Point. In this three-part series I'm talking with executives from WEX’s Corporate Payments division who partnered with the research team at The Economist over the summer of 2020 to look into the state of business-to-business payments in financial services, fintechs, and technology companies. The research found that companies that have grown most robustly during the pandemic are almost all accelerating their evolution away from slow, manual, paper-based payments into secure, data-rich, real-time digital payments.
This 3-part series digs into the issues surrounding this rapid evolution in digital payments. Our first episode featured Greg Sassone, SVP of Business & Partner Growth at WEX Corporate Payments, and focused on whether banks should build, buy or partner when it comes to adopting new technology or innovation.
This episode will focus on the interchange realities that the payments industry needs to face. To wrap the series, we’ll talk with WEX Corporate Payments President Jay Dearborn about the shape of payments to come.
My special guests on this episode are Dylan Jones and Laura Shen. Dylan Jones is the Vice president of operations for the Corporate Payments Solutions division at WEX and Laura Shen is the Director of Strategy for WEX Corporate Payments.
WEX is a B2B Payments Technology Company. Their Corporate Payments division focuses on innovating digital payments solutions for financial institutions and fintechs as well as large corporations that need to modernize their AP processes.
This episode is part of our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
This special series is brought to you by the Wnet and Paysafe.
The Wnet or The Women's Network in Electronic Transactions is celebrating 15 years of helping women achieve greater personal success, influence, and professional parity in the payments industry. Wnet is a not-for-profit organization with a mission of creating a stronger and more diverse industry by empowering and investing in women. Learn how at wnetonline.org.
Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.
I’m honored to be joined on the seventh episode by Nasiya Acklen the DE&I Manager at Discover.
Nasiya Acklen is a native of Nashville, TN. She received her undergraduate degree from Hampton University and began her career with General Mills in the Consumer Food Sales division. After receiving her MBA from Cornell University in 2015, she transitioned into Human Resources at ExxonMobil. Eventually she became the first to serve as the company’s Inclusion & Diversity Advisor focused on creating a more coordinated global strategy for the 3rd largest Fortune 500 company.
Since that time, she has joined Discover Financial Services as Diversity Equity & Inclusion Manager. She is hailed as a strategic and courageous leader that is passionate about helping others internalize the value of giving a seat and a voice to all those at the table. In addition to her daily responsibilities, Nasiya is a highly regarded speaker, holds training workshops, offers DEI consultation services, and has launched an Executive Coaching practice.
Nasiya is proud to have been inducted into the Hampton University 40 Under 40 Society in 2019. In addition, she serves as the MLT Alumni Council lead for the Houston area and is an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated.
As a self-professed foodie, good dancer, and lifestyle blogger, Nasiya has adopted Maya Angelou's quote as a personal mantra: My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.
Adrian Talapan, CEO of Fee Navigator is our special guest this week. This is episode 56 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and I’m your host Greg Myers
Adrian was born and grew up in Romania. He came the U.S. through an opportunity to go to West Point. He has started multiple companies in the healthcare space before launching Fee Navigator.
Fee Navigator takes a merchant statement whether scanned or a PDF and produces in about 10 second a custom proposal.
Fee Navigator doesn’t process transactions, so they are neutral and focus on ISOs, acquirers, banks, ISVs and more. They also offer a widget that can be added to a website to collect statements from prospects with minimal human interaction – thus a lead generator.
Adrian has some great insights into the future of payments and provides some sage advice about adopting change.
This episode is part of our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
This special series is brought to you by the Wnet and Paysafe.
Start the new year with new research from the McKinsey Women in the Workplace Report. This comprehensive D&I study examines how the payments industry compares to other industries, and provides information you need to advance women and improve gender diversity within your organizations. Register for this much-anticipated Jan. 26 webinar now at wnetonline.org.
Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.
I’m honored to be joined on the sixth episode by Wendy Sherrock.
Wendy's passion is founded on removing barriers and igniting new ways of thinking. She started her performance improvement / change management career as a Six Sigma Black Belt at GE and has worked in multiple industries over the past 20+ years. Today Wendy leads the Operational Effectiveness team at Finastra and works across the organization to unlock people capabilities, optimize processes, and leverage systems to enable a world class customer, and employee experience.
Finastra is a Fintech company that provides the broadest portfolio of financial services software in the world today—spanning retail banking, transaction banking, lending, and treasury and capital markets.
That was Meidad Sharon, CEO of ChargeAfter and he is our special guest this week. This is episode 54 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and I’m your host Greg Myers
Meidad was born and grew up in Israel. He spent half of his time in Isreal and half in the U.S. and recently decided to make the U.S. his permanent home. He started his career in management consulting and then to the mobile industry and then to payments 10 years ago.
ChargeAfter is the market leading point of sale financing or buy now pay later platform enabling consumer to have the choice of which solution is best for them.
They serve markets with high average order value such as furniture electronics, luxury goods, and travel. They collect four data points from the consumer, and then match the consumer profile with the most relevant buy now pay later solution and only display or offer up those where the consumer will be approved. ChargeAfter has an approval rate of 85% which is higher than most single lenders which typically have a 30-40% approval rate.
They help the merchants because the merchant can integrate to one solution not multiple lenders – which gives the merchant’s customers a simple customer experience.
This is a great episode about point-of-sale financing or buy now pay later which is a growing segment of our industry.
www.chargeafter.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
I’m honored to be joined on this fifth episode of our special series about diversity and inclusion by Joe Carella. In fact, this is actually part two of my interview with Joe. If you missed the first part just visit leadersinpayments.com or any of your favorite podcast apps and search for episode 50.
Joe Carella is a Professor of Global Strategy and the Assistant Dean for Executive Education at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. He has over 20 years of experience in helping executives and corporations in talent development, inclusive workplaces, managing change, strategy formulation and execution.
His academic and research engagements have seen him focus on strategic decision making, corporate strategy, talent development and business performance with a variety of corporate clients including Hershey's, Chevron, Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, Intel, BBVA and Microsoft. He is also responsible for designing, developing and delivering successful executive education programs for global corporations.
Joe has also been a contributor to Money 2020, a keynote speaker on the state of the industry at the annual congress of the Forum of European Technology Professionals, the Society for the Plastics Industry, the Association for Talent Development and Disrupt HR. Joe has been a contributor to the Harvard Business Review focusing on the challenges of leadership.
Joe’s specialties include organizational change, talent development, diversity, business strategy, innovation, business intelligence, facilitation, coaching, leadership development, executive education and global business.
This episode is part of our special series on The Digital Payments Tipping Point. In this three part series I will talking with executives from WEX who in the summer of 2020, partnered with the research team at The Economist to look into the state of business-to-business payments in financial services, financial technology companies or fintechs and technology companies. The study found that companies that have grown during the pandemic are almost all accelerating their evolution away from slow, manual, paper-based payments into secure, data-rich, real-time digital payments.
This 3-part series digs into the issues surrounding this rapid evolution in digital payments including building, partnering or both, interchange realities, and the shape of payments to come.
Our first episode features our special guest Greg Sassone the SVP of Business and Partner Growth at WEX. He’s been in payments and financial services for 20 years.
WEX is a B2B Payments Technology Company. Their Corporate Payments division focuses on innovating digital payments solutions for financial institutions and fintechs as well as large corporations that need to modernize their AP processes.
This is episode 51 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and our special guest this week is Tom Lineen, CEO of West Town Payments.
Tom was born in Brooklyn NY, grew up in New Jersey and attended North Carolina State University in Raleigh He has lived in multiple cities including LA, Charlotte, Tampa, New York City, and now to Park Cities Utah.
Tom is the CEO West Town Payments which is a joint venture with West Town Bank and Trust. The bank has its roots in agriculture and as there’s a shift from tobacco to hemp the bank is there to help these merchant. So naturally hemp and CBD businesses are big opportunities for the bank from a deposit and treasury services perspective.
West Town Payments now allows the bank to also offer merchant services to these hemp and CBD businesses as well as others in the bank’s portfolio.
The bank takes a compliance-first approach to board these merchants and Tom explains some of the unique compliance factors in this space.
This is a growing and interesting industry and is expected to reach $26.6B by 2025.
This is episode 50 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and this is the fourth episode in our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion.
In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
This special series is brought to you by the Wnet and Paysafe.
The Wnet or The Women's Network in Electronic Transactions is celebrating 15 years of helping women achieve greater personal success, influence, and professional parity in the payments industry. Wnet is a not-for-profit organization with a mission of creating a stronger and more diverse industry by empowering and investing in women. Learn how at www.wnetonline.org.
Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.
I’m honored to be joined on this fourth episode of our special series about diversity and inclusion by Joe Carella. In fact, my interview with Joe was so full of incredibly useful information that we decided to break it into to two episodes, so this is the first of two with Joe Carella.
Joe Carella is a Professor of Global Strategy and the Assistant Dean for Executive Education at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. He has over 20 years of experience in helping executives and corporations in talent development, inclusive workplaces, managing change, strategy formulation and execution.
His academic and research engagements have seen him focus on strategic decision making, corporate strategy, talent development and business performance with a variety of corporate clients including Hershey's, Chevron, Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, Intel, BBVA and Microsoft. He is also responsible for designing, developing and delivering successful executive education programs for global corporations.
Link to research mentioned in this podcast: www.executive.eller.arizona.edu
Joe’s email: carella@arizona.edu
www.leadersinpayments.com
This is episode 49 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Ron Israch, the Chief Marketing Officer for Tipalti, is our special guest this week.
Rob has been at Tipalti for over 6 years ad runs marketing and all alliances for the company. He grew up in south Florida and moved up and down the east coast and then finally to the west coast where he’s been for the last 20 years. His family is originally from South Africa.
Tipalti is a comprehensive, global payables automation solution that automates all manual supplier payment processes. Its customers typically wipe out 80% of their payables workload, enabling them to focus on mission-critical initiatives. Tipalti helps strengthen compliance and financial controls, avoid future AP headcount requirements, accelerate the financial close by 25%, and employ AP best practices.
Rob differentiates mass-pay workflows which you would see in gig economy, online marketplaces, internet, gaming, and more modern economies versus the more traditional accounts payable workflows like you would see from software companies, manufacturing, healthcare, etc. Tipalti excels at both solutions and serves customers across all verticals.
www.tipalti.com
This is episode 48 of the Leaders in Payment podcast and this is also our third episode in our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion.
In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
This special series is brought to you by the Wnet and Paysafe.
Give yourself a present! Receive holiday coping strategies from the Wnet. Unwrap a Holiday COVID Survival Guide from the Atlanta Chapter on Wednesday, December 2. Celebrate mindfulness and reduce your stress with the North Texas Chapter on Thursday, December 3. Everyone is welcome to these free online LinkUps. Register at wnetonline.org on their events page.
Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.
I’m honored to be joined on the third episode by Liz Pike.
Liz Pike is President of Green Rhino Recruitment, with offices in Phoenix, Atlanta, Seattle and Denver. She focuses her recruitment practice in the area of payment processing and fintech, with strong understanding of the payments ecosystem, players, and technology.
Liz grew up in southern Idaho and graduated from Arizona State University. She managed Sales Recruiting at Heartland and also worked for 2 years at TSYS in Corp Recruiting. In the middle of her recruiting career, she worked at an IPSP and an ISO to get hands-on experience and understand payments.
Liz is a Board Member of Wnet and currently lives in Phoenix with her husband.
This is episode 47 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Brian Dammeir, the president of North America for Adyen is our special guest this week.
Brian is from Wisconsin and went to University of Wisconsin at Madison – he originally studied education. Eventually he got into fraud prevention which lead him into payments.
Adyen is a payments technology company that empower some of the world largest brands. They focus on technology and online global players, in-store and unified commerce payments, and platforms and marketplaces. They have approximately 1,500 employees globally and roughly 200 employees in the North America.
Adyen’s one platform philosophy, their global aspect and their direct connections to the networks are their true differentiators and provides a unique value proposition to their customers.
Brian provides some great advice for those just starting their careers in payments.
www.adyen.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
This is episode 46 of the Leaders in Payment podcast and this is also our second episode in our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
This special series is brought to you by the Wnet and Paysafe.
Please join the Wnet for more discussions about Diversity & Inclusion with their Boston Chapter on Nov. 17, and their Tampa Chapter on Nov. 18. Everyone is welcome to these free online LinkUps. Register at wnetonline.org on their events page.
Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.
I’m honored to be joined on the second episode by Afshin Yazdian.
Afshin joined Paysafe as its CEO, U.S. Acquiring, in July, 2020, bringing over two decades’ leadership experience in payments. In his role, he is charged with bringing to life Paysafe’s vision of being the U.S.’s leading payments solutions provider.
www.wnetonline.org
www.paysafe.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
This is episode 45 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Atif Siddiqi, the CEO of Branch is our special guest this week.
Atif grew up in Southern California and got his undergrad and MBA from USC and currently is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Branch is a challenger bank that partners with employers to help Americans grow financially. They offer financial wellness tools to employees, fee free checking accounts, early access to earned wages, budgeting tools and more. They have 90 employees today.
Branch works with companies like Dominoes to digitally distribute tips to the delivery drivers onto the Branch wallet so the drivers can get paid right after they make a delivery.
One of the core themes at Branch is to eliminate or reduce as many fees as possible – the solution is free to employees and employers. They make a small fee when the debit card is used at a merchant.
Atif is very passionate about payments and learning about the technology behind payments and specifically blockchain.
www.branchapp.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
This is episode 44 of the Leaders in Payments Podcast – this is also our very first episode in our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.
Our generous sponsors for this series are the Wnet and Paysafe.
The Wnet or The Women's Network in Electronic Transactions is celebrating 15 years of helping women achieve greater personal success, influence, and professional parity in the payments industry. Wnet is a not-for-profit organization with a mission of creating a stronger and more diverse industry by empowering and investing in women. Learn how at wnetonline.org.
Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.
I’m honored to be joined on this very first episode by Gail Burgos. Gail serves as senior diversity and inclusion manager at Global Payments. In her current role, Gail leads Global Payments’ efforts to continue to build its inclusion and diversity efforts across the company. Prior to her current responsibilities, she served as the senior advisor to the chief information officer, supporting all business lines and aspects of the information technology business at legacy TSYS.
This is episode 43 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Nick Fredrick, the President of Rebar Technology is our special guest this week.
Nick grew up in north central Ohio and now lives in Nashville, Tennessee. He also had a few stints in LA and in New York.
REBAR is an acronym for Recurring Billing and Revenue. They have built a platform that manages the subscription lifecycle for recurring b2c type merchants. They are completely cloud based and target the larger enterprise merchants that often need some form of customization. Rebar is an offshoot of a consulting firm called W Capra Consulting.
Early in his career Nick was on the road in the music business specifically tour management. He then transitioned into finance and payments which led him to W Capra and then President of Rebar Technology.
The modular way they have built their solution provides true differentiation in the subscription billing market.
www.rebartechnology.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
This is episode 42 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Denelle Dixon, the CEO and Executive Director of The Stellar Development Foundation is our special guest this week.
Before joining Stellar, Denelle served as COO of Mozilla. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for Net Neutrality. A lawyer by trade, Denelle previously served as a general counsel and legal advisor in private equity and technology.
The Stellar Development Foundation is a non-profit and non-stock entity that focuses on shepherding the code base for the Stellar Network which is an open source global decentralized network very similar to the underpinning of the Internet. The network is similar to a blockchain but without the history or challenges that some people might think exits with blockchain.
Stellar is hyper focused on making money fluid so people all over the world who don’t have bank accounts, can for example use their mobile phone to make payments or send money anywhere in the world.
Denelle provides several use-cases that help bring this mission to life and has some great advice for those just starting their career in payments or fintech.
www.stellar.org
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 41 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Chad Anselmo, the President of F1 Payments is our special guest this week.
Chad grew up in southern California went to school in Utah and today lives in Austin, Texas.
F1 Payments is a leading merchant processing company that targets those verticals that are tougher to board such as nutraceuticals or the health and beauty vertical. They work closely with banks to make sure these merchants are approved. F1 Payments processes payments for roughly 2,500 accounts and has grown from 8 employees 2 years ago to 35 employees today.
Chad has some great thoughts on the future of payments as well as some great advice for those just starting their careers in payments.
www.f1payments.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
This is episode 40 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Chris Brunner, the CEO of Authvia is our special guest this week.
Chris grew up on southern California went to University of Arizona and today lives in Las Angeles. He has a professional passion for the creating a great customer experience and typically enjoys golf, sailing and travelling but being the father of two teenage daughters he spends his time today with his family and running the business.
Authvia is the leading text to pay platform on the market today. It is contactless, secure and simple and runs over all the major messaging channels. There are no links, no passwords and no apps, the platform simply runs a transaction, a payment, or a donation over of the existing messaging channels.
The company started working with recurring billings merchants 4 years ago but is now in 20 plus verticals. Beyond just payments the platform can help manage scheduling, calendaring, and more.
Authvia is connecting into 2 dozen payment processors and gateways and 4 of the top 6 largest payment processors either refer or resell the platform.
www.authvia.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 39 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Lenny Crotty, the President of Metrics Global is our special guest this week.
Lenny was born in a small town in Ireland called Ennis where the local airport has the claim to fame of having established the world’s first airport duty free store. Lenny was named President at Metrics Global at the end of August after spending the last 20 plus years in payments.
Metrics Global is a global payments and fintech company that has been around about 15 years. They are headquartered in Las Vegas and have built a unified commerce and payments platform that connects both merchants and technology and payments partners to a global marketplace.
They support international multi-currency acquiring in about 170 countries and currencies and have local acquiring capabilities in 59 markets.
Lenny has a passion for payments and fintech and a personal passion for self-development, wine, travel, reading and running.
www.metricsglobal.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 38 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and our special guest this week is Danny Shader the CEO of PayNearMe.
Danny was born and currently lives in Palo Alto, California but in between he lived in New York and LA.
PayNearMe is a payments CRM company that manages the customer financial interactions between a biller and their customer. They process all the payments, run the payments portal, the mobile experience, the IVR, the software the customer service reps use, and much much more.
They process the cash too – through their proprietary cash network where they have integrated into the point of sale systems at 27,000 retail locations including CVS, 7-11, Family Dollar and others. A bar code is issued to the customer and then scanned by the clerk behind the counter and they pay their bill just as they would for a gallon of milk. And this is all done in real-time so before they even reach their car in the parking lot the bill has been paid.
Their perfect customer is one that is managing recurring billing where they don’t want to custom code their own customer relationship management system or cobble together a solution of outside vendors. Ideal customers are those handling recurring billing through multiple channels and want to increase their payment volume, decrease their customer service calls and spend their engineering resources on things that will move their business forward.
Danny provides some sounds advise for those starting their careers in fintech or payments. He suggests to find something you are very interested in, work with people you really like and work hard – do those things and you’ll do well.
www.paynearme.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 37 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Stephen Pair, the Co-Founder and CEO of BitPay is our special guest this week.
Stephen is a Georgia native and went to Georgia Tech where he got his Computer Science degree and currently he lives just outside of Atlanta.
BitPay was founded in 2011 with the idea of enabling companies to accept BitCoin payments similar to accepting credit cards. BitPay built an API similar to a common payments gateway for merchants to tap into so they could accept BitCoin – which at the time was the only cryptocurrency.
Their customers are traditionally in the IT services or cloud hosting space, electronics retailers or in the video gaming space. They also process transactions in the B2B space.
If you look at all of the cryptocurrencies and blockchains today there are hundreds of billions of dollars or wealth stored in these blockchains and by adding cryptocurrency into your payments platform you can tap into that wealth. When a company adds cryptocurrency as an alternative payment method, they see that 40-50% of those customers who pay with BitPay are actually net new customers.
Stephen tells an interesting story about how they got the domain name bitpay.com Stephen has a passion for solving difficult problems using technology. From a personal perspective he loves flying. He is a pilot and has his own plane and uses flying as an escape from the daily grind of running a business.
If you want to learn more about BitCoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain as it relates to the payments industry this is the episode you need to listen to.
This is episdoe 36 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Jeremy Almond, the Co-Founder and CEO of Paystand is our special guest this week.
Jeremy grew up in Stockton, California. He was one of the first people in his family to attend college and grad school and currently lives on the beach in Santa Cruz.
Paystand is a b2b payment network. So, what Venmo does for consumers, Paystand does for companies engaging in large commercial transactions.
Paystand brings transformation in three areas 1. no paper – meaning digitization and automation, 2. no fees as they operate as a SaaS business model and 3. the value of an open industry.
Jeremy has a fascinating story about how and why he started the company, including a turning point in his life driven from a family tragedy.
He provides some great insights about the future of payments and also provides some great insights for those just starting their careers in fintech or payments.
This is episode 35 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and David Josephs, the CEO of DaVinci Payments is our special guest this week.
David lives just outside of Chicago, grew up in Queens and went to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He worked on Capitol Hill for 6 years and has been in payments for 20 years.
DaVinci Payments tries to do justice to their name by blending art and science and a quarter century of experience to provide corporate payments through virtual and physical means with prepaid cards and other form factors.
David has a passion for payments and a personal passion for reading. He provides some great insights about the future of payments and also provides some great insights for those just starting their careers.
www.davincipayments.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 34 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Richie Serna, the CEO and Co-Founder of Finix is our special guest this week.
I’m honored to have Richie on the show this week. Richie was born and raised in California and was the first in his family to go to college. He received his bachelors degree in political science at Harvard and started his career in management consulting.
Finix is a payments infrastructure provider that allows software companies to embed or integrate payments into their software which provides a better user experience and adds a new revenue stream – basically allowing them to transform their business models.
Richie has several interesting stories during the episode including things about the “hacker house” and the naming of the company.
Richie has a great passion for people – from his customers to his employees. This is an episode you don’t want to miss.
www.finix.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 33 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Keith Smith, the Co-Founder and CEO of Payability is our special guest this week.
Payability offers ecommerce sellers with friction-free cash flow and working capital solutions. These ecommerce sellers are typically on a large platform like Amazon or Shopify. Payability has a unique model and one I think you’ll find very interesting.
Keith has a passion for his kids and being a Dad first. Professionally he loves to see how Payability helps small businesses and entrepreneurs live the American dream of starting and running their own business.
www.payability.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 32 of the Leaders in Payments podcast featuring my special guest Craig McDonald the Chief Business Officer for Trustly. Trustly offers payments that cost less than debit and have a higher approval rate than cards and there are no chargebacks.
Trustly was founded in 2008 and is the global leader in Online Banking Payments. They facilitate payments to merchants directly from consumers online bank accounts, without going through the card networks.
Trustly has relationships with more than 6,000 banks and over 600 million consumers across Europe and North America. They serve many of the world’s most prominent merchants within e-commerce, financial services, gaming, media, telecom and travel. Trustly has over 460 employees across Europe, the US and Latin America. .
Craig has a passion for helping merchants find solutions that address real pain points. He also enjoys spending time with his teenage daughters.
www.trustly.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 31 of the Leaders in Payments podcast featuring Jonathon Arst the CEO of Pastri.
Pastri started by partnering with banks but more recently has been working with software companies to help them monetize the payments portion of their software. They compete in the unattended payments vertical such as laundry mats and the tow truck fleet management segment and more.
Jonathon has been a strong leader through the pandemic and has kept his team together and focused during these challenging times.
Jonathon has a passion for sales and helping businesses and entrepreneurs succeed. On a personal note he loves the outdoors, surfing, skiing, kiteboarding and more.
www.pastri.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 30 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and this week we have a very special episode. As you know we spent the entire month of July talking about Women Leaders in Payments and we had some incredible women leaders on the show.
In this episode we’re going to listen to a few key points that were brought out by each of our guests.
Melissa Townsley-Solis - Founder and CEO of GIACT
Paulette Rowe - EO of Integrated & Ecommerce Solutions at Paysafe
Laura Miller - President of JPMorgan Merchant Services
Joan Herbig - President of the Wnet and Board Member of ControlScan
Sue Kelsey - EVP of Global Prepaid & Financial Inclusion at Mastercard
Debbie Guerra - EVP of On-Demand Merchant Solutions at ACI Worldwide
Lou Ann Alexander - Chief Product Officer at Early Warning
Denise Tahali - SVP of Sales at Paysafe
We heard stories about overcoming tremendous odds to start and run a company to personal stories of being scared but pushing through to success, all the way to tremendous advice for those just starting their careers in payments.
This month was a great view into women leadership in this great industry we call payments.
Leaders in Payments
Producted by Podcast609, LLC
This is the final week and final episode of the Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by Paysafe. This episode, episode 29 is a roundtable discussion featuring three women leaders in the payments industry. They are:
Denise Tahali, SVP of Sales at Paysafe
Debbie Guerra, EVP of On-Demand Merchant Solutions at ACI Worldwide
And Lou Ann Alexander, Chief Product Officer at Early Warning.
They each bring their own unique perspective of women leadership in our industry as well as provide some great insights, views and advice on leadership.
www.paysafe.com
www.aciworldwide.com
www.earlywarning.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
As we continue Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by Paysafe, our next guest on Episode 28 is Sue Kelsey, the EVP of Global Prepaid and Financial Inclusion at Mastercard.
Sue grew up in a traditional family in the UK and remembers her first job standing on the sidewalk and asking strangers about detergent, beer bottle labels and more – her first discovery of market research and marketing.
She has several interesting stories about taking on leadership roles and moving from individual contributor to leader.
She also has some great advice for young women joining the payments industry and is a strong supporter of many programs and the culture that Mastercard has in support of gender and racial equality.
We’ve got a great show this week with a great leader.
www.mastercard.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
Our special guest this week is Joan Herbig, the President of Wnet and Board Member of ControlScan. This is episode 27 as we continue to celebrate Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by Paysafe.
In this episode, I talk with Joan about her journey including her degree in French, quickly learning in her first job what she didn’t want to do professionally and then become interested in computers and technology.
Saying yes, raising your hand, taking risks, helping other women be successful, networking with passion are just a few of the topics we cover. We end the episode discussing the Wnet and it’s mission to empower women.
www.wnetonline.org
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This week's special guest is Laura Miller, President of JPMorgan Merchant Services. This is episode 26 and the third episode as we celebrate Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by Paysafe.
I’m your host Greg Myers and in this episode, I talk with Laura about her journey to JP Morgan Chase, her passion and empathy for small businesses and some of her eye-opening moments including 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy.
She provides some great insights around being humble, the idea that you never really arrive, living your personal brand and being the person that people want to work for, with and around.
www.jpmorgan.com/merchant-services/home
www.leadersinpayments.com
Produced by: www.podcast609.com
Our special guest this week is Paulette Rowe the CEO of Integrated and Ecommerce Solutions for Paysafe. She is the next guest in our month-long series celebrating Women Leaders in Payments - sponsored by Paysafe.
In this episode Paulette and I talk about her unique background from studying engineering to forming a start-up, to Facebook and a few stops in between. She also shares her insights and perspectives on racial and gender equality and provides some great advice for women just starting their careers in payments. Paulette’s experience and wisdom are certainly things we can all learn from.
www.paysafe.com
www.leadesinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is our first episode celebrating Women Leaders in Payments month and our first special guest is Melissa Townsley-Solis the CEO of GIACT. We are really blessed this month to have some of the great women leaders in our industry on the show. A special thank you to Paysafe for being our sponsor.
In this episode, I talk with Melissa about her childhood and upbringing in the projects, her faith, her guiding principles and how she’s become a successful woman leader in the fintech space. This is truly an amazing and inspiring story.
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.giact.com
Our sponsor: www.paysafe.com
Produced by: www.podcast609.com
My special guest this week is Daniel Doderlein, the CEO of Auka.
The Auka payments platform is the technological foundation of Settle. It’s a secure and compliant transaction platform that offers all the necessary third-party connections for partners to join the scheme. The platform handles all types of use cases and funding sources, ranging from cards and prepaid to direct-to-account access. The creation of the Auka mobile payments platform started in 2010, which makes Auka the first company to build mobile payments infrastructure in the Nordics.
Daniel grew up right outside of Oslo, Norway. He was extremely interested in tech from an early age. His grandfather was a nuclear scientist and when Daniel was very young, his grandfather bought a Macintosh computer and Daniel immediately fell in love with tech.
Daniel has started many companies over the years and is truly a fintech and mobile payments pioneer with an amazing and interesting journey. His latest product Settle is a European mobile payments scheme that connects people and businesses.
www.auka.io
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
My special guest this week is Brad Paterson, the CEO of Splitit.
Splitit is an installment payment solution. They enable consumers to pay on their existing credit cards and split those transactions and pay over time.
Their corporate headquarters are in New York and their tech center is in Israel. They are small but growing rapidly at over 300% year over year and about 40% month over month. Splitit has a unique business and recently launched partnerships with Visa and BlueSnap.
Brad grew up in a small town just north of Sydney. Spend 12 years in Singapore and is now based in San Francisco. He has a passion for small business and helping them thrive and survive. Outside of work he’s a sports fanatic.
www.splitit.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
My special guest this week is Daniela Mielke, the North American CEO for RS2.
RS2 offers a global cloud-based API-enabled omni-channel payment platform. In the U.S. they target ISOs, ISVs and payment facilitators and are now expanding into acquiring.
RS2 has a very comprehensive and flexible platform that is replacing or rewiring the traditional spaghetti platforms that exist today and putting in one global omni-channel platform.
Daniela grew up in a very small town in Germany. The day after her high school graduation she left Germany for Switzerland where she went to college and business school. After 15 years in Switzerland she moved to the Bay Area in California where she currently resides.
Daniela is passionate about creating technology to improve people’s lives. On a personal level she trains horses for endurance horseback competitions – a fascinating passion indeed.
www.rs2.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
My special guest this week is Tom Wimsett, the Chairman of ControlScan.
ControlScan provides technologies and services that defend their customers again cyber security threats and at the same time they help their customers streamline and simplify the process of complying with PCIDSS.
ControlScan’s depth of knowledge, experience and expertise for the SMB market in both compliance and managed services solutions provides them true differentiation in the marketplace today.
Tom is a Kentucky native and has been married for 35 years to his wife that he met in high school. They moved around the country 5 times in a 10-year period and finally settled back in Kentucky specifically Bardstown – better known as the Bourbon capital of the world.
Tom has a passion for education and giving back to the community. Over the course of his career he has served on school boards, educational foundation boards and advisory councils for public and private institutions. Tom provides some great advice for those just starting their careers in payments including “love to learn”, work hard and build healthy relationships. We’ve got a great show this week!
www.controlscan.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
My special guest this week is Charles Hogan, the president of Signature Card Services.
Signature Card is a payment processing platform and gateway technology company that serves all types of verticals and can speak the language of technology innovators and respond accordingly.
Charles is a born and bred Los Angeles, California native. He’s been in payments for over 20 years and was a reconnaissance marine for a number of years.
Signature Card is well positioned and has retained all of their employees and has actually been hiring through the covid-19 pandemic.
The company has been focused on three pillars: First - continued growth of their distribution channels, second is focusing on their technology and gateway including new branding in the near future, and the third is M&A.
Charles has a passion for creating value through innovation that shows up in real metrics and he also provides some great advice for those just starting their careers in payments.
www.signaturecard.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
My special guest this week is Mark Standfield, the President of Midigator.
Midigator is a technology provider that helps merchants, ISOs and acquirers understand their disputes – including chargebacks and how and why they happen and how to avoid them – all in one place.
Mark was born and raised in North Carolina and the south and ultimately ended up at school in Idaho and currently lives with his wife and four kids in Utah.
Midigator was started by a direct marketing merchant that needed to understand and handle their disputes in order to scale their business.
Fast forward and now Midigator helps businesses of all types across most every industry. What differentiates them is their focus on technology, consistently improving their product based on industry trends and taking a complete view of their client’s business.
Mark has a passion for learning and provides some sage advice for those just starting their careers in payments.
www.midigator.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
My special guest this week is Amin Shayan, the CEO of littlepay.
Littlepay is a payment processing platform for the public transportation industry – it allows travelers to use a debit or credit card – which could be physical, virtual, on the phone, or a wearable to get on a bus or train to pay for their ticket.
Amin was born in Iran and moved to the United States at an early age. After the overthrow of the dictatorship in Iran, his family went back to Iran, but as history would have it things didn’t work out and they moved to Melbourne, Australia. It is a truly fascinating story.
Amin became an investment banker in New York which took him to London. And then back Melbourne where he became a part of the founding team at littlepay in 2016.
Littlepay manages 70% of the bus payments in the UK outside of London and more recently, they are developing the payment system for the City of Helsinki transit, and the City of Porto in Portugal and should be running some pilots in California later this year.
Amin loves history, international affairs and keeping up with politics and is also a hang-gliding pilot.
www.littlepay.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
This and all episode are produced by: www.podcast609.com
My special guest this week is Maeve Mckenna Duska, the Chief Marketing Officer of USA Technologies.
USA Technologies specializes in enterprise software and business optimization in the unattended retail space –They provide the hardware, payment processing and software to help their customizers optimize their business.
The COVID19 crises is certainly accelerating many of the trends toward unattended retail including things like contactless payments, digital payments or really the reduced use of cash in our society.
Maeve grew up in a tiny seashore town in central New Jersey and loves getting to spend time at the beach.
She has a passion for her team and all of the employees at USA Technologies and also provides some great advice to those just starting out in the industry.
To learn more about USA Technologies visit:
www.usatech.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
All of the Leaders In Payments podcasts are produced by:
www.podcast609.com
This week's special guest is Jamie Barlett, the Founder/President and CEO of PolyPay.
Jamie grew up Michigan and Missouri and went to school in Massachusetts and then took her first job in California. After taking a position with a leading management consulting firm she moved on to a client and subsequently started her own merchant services business – PolyPay.
PolyPay provides merchant services in a transparent and cost-effective way with high touch customer support and differentiates itself by truly taking care of their customers and always doing the right thing. No matter when the service issue happens or questions arise, PolyPay jumps on the opportunity to help their merchants succeed.
Jamie has a passion for researching and learning and especially has an unhealthy obsession with Scotland. Surround yourself with people smarter than you, network extensively, listen and learn is just some of the advice Jamie gives.
www.polypay.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 14 of the Leaders In Payments Podcast featuring my special guest this week, Monica Eaton-Cardone, the COO and Co-Founder of Chargebacks911.
Monica grew up mostly in Idaho in a small town of 22 people. She developed a great work ethic at a very early age and learned many life lessons through playing sports – more specifically basketball.
Chargebacks911 was truly born out of necessity. Monica owned an online business and started getting chargebacks so she decided to dig in and learn what they were and how to mitigate them. And then quickly learned there were others out there that needed help with the same thing – and thus Chargebacks911 was born.
Monica discusses in detail all of the services that Chargebacks911 provides its merchants and customers and provides some great insights into starting a career in payments.
www.chargebacks911.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
All episodes are produced by: www.podcast609.com
This is episode 13 of the Leaders in Payments Podcast. My special guest this week is OB Rawls, the CEO of Global Payment Processing at Paysafe.
OB grew up in a small rural town of under 2,000 people in North Carolina on a tobacco farm. He was in the Army and Army national guard for 21 years and had many different jobs after the military. He was a parole officer, he was a "repo guy" collecting cars, and worked at Bank of America for 18 years where he first got into the credit card business. OB was at First Data and iPayment before becoming the CEO of Global Payment Processing at Paysafe.
In April of last year the Electronic Transaction Association honored OB with the Distinguished Payments Professional star award – recognizing his 30 plus years in the payments industry.
OB provides a great overview of Paysafe and all of the different products and services that Paysafe provides its merchants and partners.
OB has a passion for collecting wine and he provides some great advice: keep an open mind, adopt change, explore, and be bold. OB is really one of the great guys in the payments space.
My special guest this week is Brad Wiskirchen, the CEO of Kount. Kount is a leading providing of fraud prevention solutions. Brad talks in detail about the Identity Trust Global Network that Kount recently launched.
He also provides great information about what Kount is doing to help his employees and customers during the global pandemic.
And Brad also talks about his love for this team and passion for his family as well as provides some very insightful advice for those just getting started in payments.
www.kount.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
This is episode 11 of the Leaders in Payments podcast hosted by Greg Myers.
In this episode I talk with Martin Sweeney, CEO of Ravelin about their fraud solution and global customer set. He uses a great Ferrari analogy too that you don't want to miss. Martin also provides some great background information and insights about PSD2 and 3D secure.
He also talks about why the U.S. is a great market for Ravelin.
www.ravelin.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
In this episode, I talk with Brandon Spear, the President of MSTS. Brandon and I talk about his journey from a South Africa to Dallas and to his current role at MSTS in Overland Park, Kansas.
Brandon explains in detail the unique products and services that MSTS provides in the b2b payments space - what they have coined as "Credit as a Service."
He also talks about how MSTS is making sure schools, hospitals and first responders have the credit they need to buy the products they need and that are required during this difficult time. MSTS is really doing what they can to help especially in these trying times. It really is both admirable and inspiring.
Brandon has a passion for creating and building teams and personally is a huge sport fan.
For more information about MSTS visit: www.msts.com
To view more episode of the Leaders In Payments podcast visit: www.leadersinpayments.com
This episode was produced by Podcast609. www.podcast609.com
This episode is a little different than what I’ve been doing. Given what is going on in the US and around the world related to the coronavirus I thought it would be advantageous to have someone on the show that could talk about the impact – both short-term and long-term of the coronavirus on the payments industry.
My special guest to help us understand how the coronavirus is impacting payments is Shaun Abraham, the Co-Founder and CEO of Transaction Insights. Shaun’s payment career includes time at both Bank of America and JP Morgan where he worked with start-ups, mid-sized companies and large enterprise companies to help them understand trends and opportunities in the payments space
Shaun has a deep expertise in market intelligence around the payment industry and has been a presenter, panelist and moderator at numerous industry events.
It’s an uncertain time but also a time where we all need to stay informed, personally and professionally.
www.transactioninsights.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
In this episode, Kevin and I talk about his journey from a Christmas tree farm in North Carolina to becoming a banker to receiving the best phone call he’s ever had from a recruiter at Paymentech – which launched his career in payments.
Kevin’s journey has taken him through several payments companies and finally to his current role as CEO at Celero Commerce.
Celero Commerce focuses on creating vertical bundles for the small business space that combine software, payments and other tools that help businesses run more efficiently.
Kevin talks a lot about culture and how important it is to surround yourself with great people and great mentors.
www.celerocommerce.com
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.podcast609.com
Episode 7 of the Leaders in Payments podcast features Cory Capoccia the Co-Founder & President of Womply.
In this episode, Cory and I talk about Womply’s mission to help small businesses grow especially through the use of data. Cory talks about his journey from starting and selling Verifi to Visa to starting Womply with a few people in an apartment.
Cory and I also talk about the time he took off to travel 30,000 miles around the country in an RV.
And finally we talk about value of mentoring and how important it is for people just starting out in payments – or any industry for that matter.
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.womply.com
This episode was produced by www.podcast609.com
In this episode of the Leaders In Payment podcast, your host Greg Myers speaks with Garima Shah, President of Biller Genie. Garima talks about her journey to becoming the President of Biller Genie and her passion for helping people and motivating people in the payments space as well as her passion for dance.
Garima also talks about Biller Genie and how they have automated the sending of invoices, reminders, provide invoices tracking and ultimately help their clients get paid faster. She also gives some great advice to those just starting their career in the payments industry
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.billergenie.com
Episode #6 produced by Podcast609 - www.podcast609.com
In this episode of the Leaders In Payment podcast, your host Greg Myers speaks with Vijay Sondhi, the CEO of NMI. Vijay talks about his journey to becoming the CEO of NMI and his passion for all things payments even to the point where payments becomes the topic of conversation at the dinner table with his family.
Vijay also talks about some of the trends in payments and provides a great way to think about the ecosystem – "before, during and after the transaction." Traditional payments companies focus on the "during" but there is a lot of room for improvement in the before and after. He also gives some great advice to those just starting their career in the payments industry.
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.nmi.com
Episode #5 produced by Podcast609 - www.podcast609.com
In this episode of the Leaders In Payments podcast, host Greg Myers talks with Ralph Dangelmaier, CEO of BlueSnap about his upbringing in Boston and his journey to the position of CEO. Ralph also talks about trends in the payments industry including cross-border payments and removing the friction in payment transcations. And Ralph provides some great advice for those just starting out their careers in payments.
www.leadersinpayments.com
www.bluesnap.com
This podcast was produced by Podcast Schmodcast - www.schmodcast.com
In episode 3, Greg Myers interviews special guest Amir Wain, Founder & CEO of i2c Inc. Amir talks about his journey from Pakistan and his entreprenurial drive to start 3 successful businesses. Amir shares his thoughts on the payments industry and how important it is to be agile and capable of adapting to the fast changing needs and wants of consumers and businesses alike. Amir has a strong passion for understanding the human potential and getting outside of your comfort zone to become successful.
For more information about i2c please visit their website: www.i2cinc.com
This episode of the Leaders In Payments podcast was produced by www.schmodcast.com
To learn more about this podcast series visit: www.leadersinpayments.com
In episode 2 on the Leaders in Payments podcast Greg Myers intervews Tom West, CEO of AffiniPay. We discuss the products and services that AffiniPay provides primarily to accountants, attorneys and associations. We also talk about Tom's love for Indiana basketball, the unique culture at AffiniPay and where Tom thinks the payments industry is headed.
For more information about AffiniPay please visit their website: www.affinipay.com
This episode of the Leaders In Payments podcast was produced by www.schmodcast.com
To learn more about this podcast series visit: www.leadersinpayments.com
Special guest Brian Goudie, CEO of Aurora Payments and I discuss his company, the future of payments and his journey to the top. He also provides some excellent advice for anyone new to the industry.
In this "Kickoff" episode I discuss what the Leaders in Payments podcast is all about. In all future podcasts I will be interviewing C-level leaders in the payments space to discuss their products and services, their view of the future of payments and their journeys to the top.