Enough Putting Lipstick on the Pig: Why Moov Is Rebuilding Payment Infrastructure from the Ground Up. Featuring CEO Wade Arnold
Oct 17, 2023
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Wade Arnold, CEO of Moov, is rebuilding payment infrastructure from the ground up. They discuss the limitations of current payment systems, the need for new low-level primitives in payments, and the role of AI in payment infrastructure. They also talk about the company's plans after securing series B funding and the interconnectedness of software engineering and the business case.
Payment systems designed for brick-and-mortar transactions are insufficient for the modern business world and need to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Moov's embrace of developer communities and open source projects has become a competitive advantage in building low-level payment primitives and cultivating a brand associated with openness and giving.
Deep dives
The Complexity of Payments and Money Movement
Wade Arnold, CEO of Move, discusses the complexity of payments and money movement in today's landscape. He explains that the current payment systems were designed for brick-and-mortar transactions and are insufficient for the modern business world. The underpinning technology, built before the internet, does not effectively support new internet-based marketplaces or high transaction volumes. Arnold expresses the need for new low-level primitives and infrastructure to facilitate the new types of business cases that emerge. He emphasizes the importance of creating new plumbing and rebuilding the payment systems from the ground up.
Move's Journey from Open Source Project to Company
Move started as an open source project on Wade Arnold's GitHub. The project focused on developing low-level payment primitives, particularly for ACH transactions. To the surprise of Arnold, the open source project gained significant traction and adoption from software developers, who used it for various purposes beyond money movement, such as fraud detection and targeted marketing. Eventually, this led to the transition of Move from an open source project to a company. While the technology and low-level primitives remain open source, Move offers additional services, such as fraud prevention, sponsor bank connections, and legal agreements with card brands, providing simplicity and handling the complexity of payments on behalf of other developers.
The Competitive Advantage of Move's Community and Giving First Mentality
Move places a strong emphasis on community and has leveraged it as a competitive advantage. With over 60 open source projects, Move has cultivated an active Slack community and hosts FinTech DevCon, which attracts hundreds of software engineers. By providing educational resources, fostering collaboration, and being highly engaged in the community, Move has built a brand associated with openness and giving. This community involvement has helped accelerate the development of Move's low-level primitives, while also benefiting the software engineers by enabling them to go faster. Additionally, Move's presence on GitHub with popular open source projects positions them as a trusted resource for companies facing the build-versus-buy decision.
“Being a part of financial services for the last 15 or 20 years, it seemed like we were always putting lipstick on the pig”. Wade Arnold was tired of putting a nice UI on creaky infrastructure and he saw how insufficient payment systems are for today’s internet-based businesses. So Wade founded Moov, a fintech that's building systems for the way money moves today – and they’re starting at the very bottom of the stack and building their way up.
On this episode, Wade shares how Moov emerged from an open source project, how its embrace of developer communities has become a competitive advantage, and why he encourages everyone to “respect the craft” of software development.
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