Larry Hipp, CEO at Brightwell | Episode 162

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.