This Week in Fintech's Podcast

Prashant Fuloria, CEO of Fundbox, and Anchit Singh, CBO, discuss the future of small business lending. They emphasize how embedded finance is transforming funding access for SMBs, leveraging partnerships with platforms like QuickBooks. The guests dive into innovative underwriting methods, including cash flow assessments and data integration. They explore how fintech innovations are shaping lending solutions and the potential for future collaborations with banks. Technology and strong partnerships are key to empowering small businesses in today's economic landscape.

Join Reggie Young, Chief of Staff at Lithic, and Jesse Reiss, CTO and Co-founder of Hummingbird, as they dive into the intersection of compliance, AI, and fintech. They discuss the significant changes AI brings to regulatory strategies and internal tooling. The conversation addresses data privacy concerns, the growing complexities of fraud detection, and the importance of robust AI policies. With insights on innovative practices and secure AI integration, this chat is a must-listen for anyone navigating the evolving landscape of financial services.

Shannon Scott, SVP and Global Head of Product at Airwallex, dives into his transition from Palantir to leading innovations in fintech. He shares insights on building a global financial platform with features like multi-currency wallets and Airwallex Spend. The conversation touches on using AI for fraud management and improving customer onboarding. Shannon also discusses scaling elite teams in the competitive North American market and emphasizes the importance of technology in enhancing user experiences for businesses.

In March, we traveled to the inaugural HumanX conference in Las Vegas to meet founders, builders, and investors at the bleeding edge of AI. The conference was a great gathering of AI leaders, and we're excited for it to relocate to San Francisco next April. While at the conference, I had the chance to sit down with May Habib, Co-Founder and CEO of Writer. If you've been around AI x FS over the last few years, or drive the 101, you've likely come across Writer. Writer is the leading Gen-AI platform for enterprises, and has been one of the few AI companies to find repeatable, scaled success with the enterprise. They help large enterprises deploy secure + reliable AI applications and agents that transform mission-critical workflows. Writer’s platform is supported by Palmyra – Writer’s state-of-the-art family of LLMs – alongside its industry-leading graph-based RAG, customizable AI guardrails, and suite of development tools. Palmyra LLMs include one of the world’s highest-benchmarked frontier models, topping leaderboards for natural language understanding and generation, as well as top specialized models in finance and healthcare.Their customer list speaks for itself, including household names like Vanguard, Salesforce, Qualcomm, Accenture, Franklin Templeton, Intuit, Dropbox, Hubspot, Prudential, L'Oreal, and the list goes on...When you meet May, you can see why. She is a phenomenal leader, communicator, and executor who lays out why Writer's full-stack technology and deep appreciation for how large enterprises function allow them to have such success.Writer is fresh off a $200M Series C valuing the company at $1.9Bn. They are supported by investors including ICONIQ, Radical, Premji Invest, Adobe Ventures, B Capital, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, Workday Ventures, Insight, Vanguard, and others...quite a long list of strategics.Enjoy the show.--May Habib is the CEO and co-founder of Writer, the full-stack generative AI platform delivering transformative ROI for the world’s leading enterprises. May is an expert in natural language processing and AI-driven language generation. She has led Writer to become one of the world’s fastest-growing generative AI companies, securing its position as a Forbes 50 AI company and inclusion in the World Economic Forum's Unicorn Community. May graduated with high honors in Economics from Harvard University. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, a Fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and a recipient of Inc.'s Female Founder Award.Writer is the full-stack generative AI platform delivering transformative ROI for the world’s leading enterprises. Its fully integrated solution makes it easy to deploy secure and reliable AI agents that automate mission-critical work. Writer’s suite of development tools is supported by Palmyra – Writer’s state-of-the-art family of LLMs – alongside its industry-leading graph-based RAG and customizable AI guardrails. Hundreds of customers like Accenture, Intuit, L’Oreal, Salesforce, Uber, and Vanguard trust Writer to transform the way they work. Founded in 2020, Writer is backed by world-leading investors, including Premji Invest, Radical Ventures, ICONIQ Growth, Insight Partners, Balderton, B Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, WndrCo, and others. Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor at OMERS Ventures, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area.You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

In this engaging conversation, Patrick McKenzie—a fintech writer and former Stripe employee—dives into topics like the evolution of payments and the societal impacts of generative AI-enabled fraud. He sheds light on the challenges of FDIC insurance and discusses public banking's role in improving financial access. McKenzie also explores the implications of quantum computing on bank security and the significance of his newsletter, Bits About Money, in making financial knowledge accessible and engaging.

The intersection of AI and traditional finance (TradFi) is an angle we haven't explored yet in our AI series. Today, we change that by taking a deep dive into how AI is transforming large financial institutions. Jillian and I are joined by two experts shaping the future of AI in finance:Stevi Petrelli – Head of Blackstone Innovations Investments, where she leads early-stage strategic investments in cutting-edge financial technology.John Nay – Founder & CEO of Norm Ai, a company pioneering the use of AI in regulatory compliance and policy automation.Together, they discuss the real-world applications of AI in financial services, what it takes to successfully sell AI solutions to financial institutions, and why workflow integration, compliance, and data infrastructure are critical to adoption.They also tackle common misconceptions, explore overhyped vs. underhyped AI trends, and share their insights on where the fintech and AI landscape is headed in 2025.This is an episode you don’t want to miss. Let’s dive in!

On March 4th, This Week in Fintech had their debut event in Canada, bringing together hundreds of people across the tech ecosystem for an evening of networking, food and drinks, panels from local leaders, and even a magician working the crowd. We had nearly 500 people register when it was all said and done, showing the enthusiasm and depth of the Toronto tech ecosystem. We don’t know how it took us this long to get to Canada, but we’re glad we did. This will be the first of many…This episode is the recorded version of our panel featuring Rasha Katabi, Founder & CEO of Brim Financial.--Brim is a leading fintech infrastructure company transforming the credit card platform and payment automation space. Brim's modular platform and highly scalable product suite fully empowers financial institutions, fintechs, and large international brands to run / evolve their product platforms to meet their customer and market needs. Brim Financial is one of the fastest growing enterprise technology companies, according to Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 in North America. Brim's Credit-Card-as-a-Service platform has been recognized as best-in-class for product capabilities by Aite-Novarica Group in their analysis of global CCaaS providers.Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor on the Ventures team at OMERS, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area.You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

On March 4th, This Week in Fintech hosted their debut event in Canada, bringing together 150+ people across the tech ecosystem for an evening of networking, panels from local leaders, and even a magician working the crowd. We had nearly 500 people register, showing the enthusiasm and depth of the Toronto tech ecosystem. We don’t know how it took us this long to get to Canada, but we’re glad we did. This will be the first of many…Headlining the event was a live podcast with Adyen’s Head of Canada, Sander Meijers, and Notch CEO Jordan Huck.Sander, Jordan, and I discussed their rich product offerings for Canadian businesses, how Adyen’s platform has provided Notch with unique structural advantages, how each leader balances local and global perspectives when scaling teams, and more.--Adyen is a global financial technology platform helping the world’s leading businesses achieve their ambitions faster. Since its founding in 2006, Adyen has built one of the world's leading platforms to help enterprises accept payments, protect revenue, and control their finances. Adyen processed ~$1Tn in transaction volume last year across for companies like Microsoft, McDonalds, Uber, Loreal, Spotify, eBay, Gap and more.Notch is an accounts receivable automation software, designed to simplify managing invoices and payment collection. With Notch you can automate the entire AR process from invoice creation to payment processing speeding up payment collection (up to 3x faster) and improving cash flow.Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor on the Ventures team at OMERS, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area.You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

In my latest interview, I spent some time with North's SVP of Product, Preet Patel, to talk about his journey from Citi to AmEx to North, what's changed in the company since he joined (hint: they were previously known as NAB), and how he takes a consumer products mentality to his merchant payments product work at North.Preet Patel has served as the Senior Vice President of Product Management at North since September 2019, after previously holding the position of Vice President of Product Management.Prior to his tenure with North, Patel worked at Yapstone, where he led product strategy for significant marketplace partnerships, most notably with HomeAway, enhancing client relations in Austin, TX.His career also includes high-profile roles with American Express, where Preet held the position of Senior Manager of Product Development, focusing on the development of consumer co-brand card relationships while leading partner negotiations. Additional prior employers also include Elavon and Citi.Founded in 1992, North builds frictionless payment processing designed to simplify and grow business. They offer comprehensive solutions, from the front door to the back office, that include point of sale (POS) hardware, a fully integrated payment platform, and comprehensive merchant services to manage inventory, employees, and more.North is re-imagining the payment experience. As a leading payment technology innovator, North has a diversified product platform that provides a modern end-to-end infrastructure to enable globally-preferred payment types. North’s superior solutions deliver seamless payments experiences in mobile, ecommerce, and in-store environments. Serving hundreds of thousands of businesses and with over $100 billion per year in electronic transaction volume, North delivers functional, feature-rich, and frictionless solutions for the evolving merchant economy.Enjoy the conversation!

In this episode of our Fintech and AI series, Julie and Jillian dive into the evolving world of lending with two industry leaders shaping the space. Tim Li, CEO of LendAPI, and Justin Potts, CTO of Canopy Servicing, break down AI’s impact on everything from underwriting and fraud detection to loan servicing and borrower experience. They explore the regulatory shakeups affecting fintech, the rise of cash flow-based lending, and where AI is still underutilized in credit decisioning. Plus, they share insights on the future of lending, from data portability to fractionalized assets.And thanks to Method Financial and Fundbox for sponsoring this episode! Method is an account connectivity solution that powers seamless checkout and loyalty experiences. Visit methodfi.com to learn more! And with over a decade of experience, Fundbox delivers customizable credit solutions including invoice financing, lines of credit, term loans, payroll protection, and more.