Fintech One•On•One Sophia Goldberg, CEO of Ansa, on building a stored value wallet as a service
Everyone in fintech knows about the Starbucks reloadable wallet. It has become wildly successful for Starbucks, to the extent that they now have over $1.6 billion in balances on these wallets. Now, Starbucks has unique scale that made this kind of tech investment feasible. But I have been wondering for many years why so few corporations have copied Starbucks' lead here. Enter Ansa.
My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One Podcast is Sophia Goldberg, the CEO and Co-Founder of Ansa. They call themselves the "modern stored value platform" and they have created the technology to allow any mid-market or enterprise chain to offer their own branded wallet to their customers. They have the capability to create a wallet that can work in app or online and they have recently rolled out the technology to use their wallets in-store.
In this podcast you will learn:
- Why Sophia decided to write a book on payments.
- The founding story of Ansa.
- What a branded stored-value wallet is exactly.
- The core value proposition for Ansa's closed-loop payments as a service.
- Why the Starbucks wallet hasn't been copied by others.
- The conditions that had to happen for Ansa's offerings to gain traction.
- How they decided what verticals they wanted to focus on.
- What is involved in bringing Ansa's tech live for merchants.
- What it looks like from the consumer side.
- How Ansa helps drive loyalty for their merchants.
- How they solved for in-person wallet adoption with Ansa Anywhere.
- What they learned by having to switch bank partners.
- How they are driving revenue.
- What they are doing to get the word out about Ansa.
- What success will look like.
- The feedback they are receiving from the end consumers.
- The ultimate goal for Ansa.
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