Leaders In Payments (Greg Myers)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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!

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!

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 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!

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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 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! 

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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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!

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 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. 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 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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 nearly $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 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.

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

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 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

1.      Engaging their employees to get involved in social and environmental impact areas

2.      The application of financial technology to accelerate and expand financial inclusion

3.      A focus on sustainability and climate

4.      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

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

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.

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. 

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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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:

1.     The capacity for banks to cherry pick from a suite of industry-leading banking solutions

2.     Composability

3.     Global adaptability

4.     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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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 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.*

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.” 

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!

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 in this week to hear Chermaine talk about her journey to CFO, 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.

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 serves 200 countries and territories 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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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. In 2022, she co-authored a book titled "Embedded Finance" which is available wherever you buy your books. 

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 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, 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 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. 

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 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. 

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. 

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.

Here to help me kick off the second episode of our Women Leaders in Payments series is Chase Payment Solutions 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 Payment Solutions 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.

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.

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 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.