This Week in Fintech

Doug Ricket, founder and CEO of PayJoy, builds financial tools for underserved markets. He discusses turning smartphones into collateral, his path from the Peace Corps and Google to pay-as-you-go solar, and designing credit that avoids compounding interest. The conversation explores first-time borrowers, small-business financing, expanding beyond device loans, and why PayJoy is choosing focused credit over a super app.

Daragh Murphy, Imprint co-founder and CEO, discusses brand-centered credit cards, loyalty programs, enterprise fintech, and safer AI-powered shopping. Larry DiTore, a fintech news editor, explores Iridium Credit’s AI agents for invoice verification and fraud detection. Topics include virtual card numbers, transaction alerts, flexible credit products, embedded finance, and why major retailers are rethinking traditional banking partnerships.

Allan Osgood, founder and CEO of Eisen and former Coinbase infrastructure leader, explores the hidden world of dormant accounts. He explains escheatment, why outdated customer data can trigger asset liquidation, and how crypto complicates unclaimed property rules. The conversation also covers tax reporting, backup withholding, AI-created accounts, and where automation meets the need for flawless regulatory systems.

Rron Rexha, founder and CEO of AI-native wealth manager Arca, joins Amethyst Martinez, a fintech reporter covering AI and emerging technology. They explore why AI agents are becoming cute and approachable, and what that means for trust. Rexha discusses Arca’s push to modernize wealth management through automated account opening, money movement, advisor workflows, modern custody, and carefully supervised AI.

Georgina Merhom, founder and CEO of SOLO, is a data scientist building reusable identity infrastructure. She explores why people repeatedly prove who they are, how verification can move securely between banks, and SOLO’s role as a clearinghouse for trust, governance, and compliance. They also discuss consumer data rights, regulatory momentum, and why AI-driven commerce makes persistent authorization essential.

This Week in Fintech is back with a new look, a new host and a new weekly format.Hosted by Sasha Pilch, each episode will dig into one of the biggest stories moving fintech before sitting down with a founder, operator or investor helping shape where the industry goes next.For our first episode, Sasha is joined by This Week in Fintech’s Larry DiTore and Amethyst Martinez to unpack the allegations of wash trading surrounding Kalshi, what the reporting has uncovered so far, and why the story may be far from over.Then, Sasha sits down with Warp founder and CEO Ayush Sharma to talk about building an AI-native payroll and employee management platform, the frustrations that inspired the company, and the extraordinary Series B that saw Warp raise $60 million in just six days.Ayush also shares why he still writes code as CEO, what he has learned about scaling a company beyond its earliest stages, and why AI may be changing the old rules about how hands-on founders can remain as their companies grow.Welcome to the new This Week in Fintech podcast.Subscribe for more conversations on fintech, payments, stablecoins, and the future of financial infrastructure.Connect with the Hosts & GuestSasha Pilch LinkedinAyush Sharma LinkedinAbout This Week in FintechThis Week in Fintech’s Podcast is where the decision makers shaping the future of finance come to talk candidly about what’s working, what’s breaking, and what’s coming next in fintech. The show goes beyond headlines to unpack the real stories behind product decisions, regulation, and market shifts with leading founders, C-suite execs, and ecosystem veterans. This is your front-row seat to the people and ideas moving money into the future.

Sophia Goldberg, Rain’s Head of Payments and founder of Ansa, explores the future of branded finance. They discuss combining stored-value wallets with stablecoin payment rails, global loyalty programs, marketplaces, and travel rewards. The conversation also tackles AI-driven shopping, including agent identity, delegated spending, fraud, liability, and the industry’s push for shared standards through the Agentic Payments Alliance.

Rachel Mayer, Circle’s VP of Product and a former emerging-markets FX trader, explores Arc, Circle’s new blockchain for on-chain finance. They discuss broken cross-border payments, stablecoin-powered fees, privacy with auditability, institutional validators, instant versus reversible settlement, and StableFX’s vision for continuous on-chain currency trading. Rachel also shares how local stablecoins and deeper liquidity could reshape global payments.

Presented by Clair.What if the best financial product is the one users never have to go looking for?In this episode of This Week in Fintech, Clair founder Nico Simko joins us to explain how a personal frustration with the US credit system turned into a profitable earned wage access business serving hundreds of thousands of businesses.Nico talks about Clair’s evolution from digital bank to embedded financial infrastructure, and why the company ultimately decided to work through payroll and workforce management platforms rather than build another standalone consumer app. The thesis is simple: people do not want another login. They want access to financial tools inside the systems they already use at work.The conversation also goes deep on the less visible work required to make earned wage access function at scale, from bank partnerships and state-by-state licensing to underwriting, repayment infrastructure and the build-versus-buy decisions facing large payroll providers. Nico explains why some of the simplest-looking fintech products can be among the hardest to build.They also discuss the human side of short-term liquidity, Clair’s ambition to help users eventually graduate beyond earned wage access, and why profitability gives fintech companies more freedom to build around real customer problems instead of chasing every new technology trend.A conversation about embedded finance, credit, regulation, payroll, product-market fit and what it takes to build financial infrastructure that actually works.Subscribe for more conversations on fintech, payments, stablecoins, and the future of financial infrastructure.Connect with the Hosts & GuestNik Milanovic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikm/Nico Simko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nsimko/About This Week in FintechThis Week in Fintech’s Podcast is where the decision makers shaping the future of finance come to talk candidly about what’s working, what’s breaking, and what’s coming next in fintech. The show goes beyond headlines to unpack the real stories behind product decisions, regulation, and market shifts with leading founders, C-suite execs, and ecosystem veterans. This is your front-row seat to the people and ideas moving money into the future.

Blake Duncan, Lead Agent Experience Engineer at Alchemy who builds smart wallet and payments infrastructure for AI agents. He discusses what makes a wallet smart and how x402 will enable pay-per-use web. He outlines Alchemy’s AgentCard, AgentPay, and Agent Wallet. He explains sponsored gas, micropayments with stablecoins, and wallet guardrails for safe agent spending.