Leaders In Payments

My guest this week is either all in or all out. When he’s all in, he’s all about fintech. And when he’s all out, he retreats to his own private island where he is consumed by nothing but nature! Zimpler CEO Johan Strand has a passion for learning and riding the line between cutting-edge tech and cutting out technology – completely.For those of you who may not know, Zimpler is a fintech scaleup doing payments in the account-to-account space. They ride the wave of open banking and open finance and cater to various different industry segments including online gaming, financial services, lending, and investments. According to Johan, the question to always ask first when it comes to anything payments related is “where can we simplify the transaction?” Zimpler strives to provide value to their merchants by offering payments, payouts, data, ID solutions and KYC in a manner that integrates a very comprehensive and seamless experience.This combination of offerings enables Zimpler customers to both pay and get paid, while at the same time verifying who they’re getting the money from or who they’re paying money to. There are only 492 companies in Europe that have the license to do what they do, and their competitive advantage includes a proprietary product offering that improved cashflow by 30% for their participating merchants.Tune in this week to hear Johan talk about his journey to CEO, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years as it relates to consolidations, partnerships, and the anticipation of a 2035 goal for a completely cashless Nordic ecosystem. 

Growth gurus Sarah Hinkfuss (Partner) and Tina Dimitrova (Associate) from Bain Capital Ventures are our special guests as we continue our new series offering listeners a deep dive into embedded finance! How do you define it, benefit from it, leverage it, and determine whether or not it’s a viable option for your business? Not to mention, just how big can this industry get and why is it continuing to see such rapid growth? These are some of the questions Sarah and Tina help us answer. First and foremost, how does one of the world’s leading private investment firm actually define embedded finance? According to Tina, embedded finance is defined as any financial exchange whereby a non-financial institution offers financial services made possible by a financial services company. Some examples she gives of industry leaders that fit this definition include Toast, Shopify, and bill.com. Also worthy of mention is, according to Sarah, each one of these recognizable brands started as pure play software but now have more revenue coming from the financial services they’ve embedded.So, why has embedded finance taken off and scaled so rapidly? And, more importantly, why have payments led the charge when it comes to all the offerings under the embedded umbrella? Sarah chimes in with the top 4 reasons why payments have come first, as well as a list of contenders we have in line for the embedded space beyond just payments. Spoiler alert: Lending is the next runner up!Tune in to hear about all things embedded finance, including just how big this already $7 trillion industry is projected to grow. We also discuss the Holy Grail of embedded insurance, the various reasons why banks will be forced to participate in the embedded ecosystem, and why the strength of fintech is also its shadow. 

If you ask my guests this week about his journey to CEO and President he will be the first to tell you that it’s been a winding trail with a lot of learning on the fly. He started out with a law degree but eventually found himself in payments with a genuine passion (and opportunity) to meet as many of our industry innovators as possible. Innovative Payments Association (IPA) CEO and President Brian Tate leads on behalf of our industry and strives to see it flourish.For those of you who may not know, IPA is a trade group of a little over 60 companies and their job is to focus solely on payments! They help members digest what is going on in the ecosystem around them, including the most recent regulatory framework and anything of interest on Capitol Hill.One of the main benefits they provide for our industry is advocacy. They make it their business to develop positions on a consensus basis within their membership team and then use those positions to advocate for the industry as a whole. They ensure key decision makers are educated on the opinions of their membership group and they help their members understand the products in the industry and how they can be used to benefit it most significantly.Tune in this week to hear Brian talk about his journey to the role of CEO and President, including how an innocent Google search landed him at the desk of his future employer. We also talk about where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years as it relates to innovation spikes, super aps, and behind the scenes support systems.

KeyBank EVP and Head of Commercial Product & Innovation Jon Briggs officially commences our embedded finance series sponsored by NMI. For the next six episodes, we’ll be taking a deep dive into this extremely prolific segment of our global ecosystem. How do banks create a successful strategy for embedded finance? What role can and should competitor fintechs play in this strategy and, most importantly, how can you best benefit the end user? Jon is here to answer all this and more. First and foremost, KeyBank defines embedded finance as the secret sauce to answering the following question: How do we take every product and service we offer as a bank today and get it placed in platforms to enable the end client to benefit as much as possible? And this is the ultimate goal for Jon and his team. When it comes to all the factors at play in creating a successful strategy for embedded banking, there are many, many moving parts. To start off, the value chain will be different for every end customer. And every customer is coming to the table with a different level of maturity and potential. Some have a robust tech stack already and others don’t. Some have a healthy appetite for risk and others feel differently. This being the case, success in this space requires a flexible model that can meet any client where they are in a manner that fulfills their needs and allows them to build the best possible customer experience.Tune in to hear Jon talk about his strategy for success in embedded finance, including the need to maximize your data, the necessity of modern underwriting, and the important role fintechs play in maximizing KeyBank’s embedded ecosystem.

My guest this week has a genuine passion for building products, teams, and businesses. He has worked for some of the largest payment brands in our ecosystem and his focus is always on reinvention, which would explain why he, himself, holds 27 patents in the payment space. Convera our CEO Patrick Gauthier moved to the U.S. 30 years ago for what was supposed to be a three-year stint and, fortunately for us, and never looked back.You may not know, Convera (also previously called Western Union Business Solutions) is a cross-border payments company with a mission to make cross-border transactions easy so a variety of businesses with global aspirations can grow with confidence. And according to Patrick, confidence is the main ingredient for the success of their platform. Convera serves 200 countries and territories and supports more than 140 different currencies. They serve a variety of different industry segments, including higher education, nonprofit, import/export, travel, and financial institutions. And their two main offerings revolve around something called Spot Payments, which provides payments across currencies and across borders immediately, as well as various different options that help companies successfully analyze and manage their risk over time.Tune in this week to hear Patrick talk about his journey to CEO, including the one question he always asks himself when it comes to any new venture or project: “How can we meet the customer need differently for a better outcome?” I also talk about where he sees the industry growing in the next 10 years as it relates to several “megatrends” he specifies throughout the industry: Electronification, democratization, and the evolution of the increasingly complex regulatory framework.

My guest this week started her career path in electrical engineering and wound up, thankfully, in the payments space. With a career that has spanned successfully over multiple years and countries, one might begin to ask the question “how did you get from electrical engineer to CFO?” For Episode Six CFO and Cofounder Chermaine Hu, the answer is “someone had to be CFO” and she figured it might as well be her.For those of you who may not know, Episode Six is a technology company that offers infrastructure technology primarily to banks, who then provide payments and financial products to their customers. Their two main areas of expertise are payment processing services and a digital ledger offering. And as for their target audience, their tech stack is light enough for the smaller regional banks, but sophisticated enough for the larger enterprise banks looking to provide genuine value to their customers.When asked about their competitive advantage, Chermaine touts the capacity to provide exactly what their clients are looking for in a customizable format that allows them to offer their customers exactly what they want. Their technology is flexible, adaptable, and resilient and they are not burdened by limitations with their potential or scalability. In fact, according to Chermaine, Episode Six can give you what you need better, faster, and relatively cheaper than their other competitors.Tune in this week to hear Chermaine talk about her journey to CFO, including her passion for building a career built on problem-solving. We also talk about where she sees the industry going in the next 2 -3 years as it relates to a hard push towards more digitized and modernized tech sacks in the financial services space, newer, better, and future proof technology, and what factors in the current market climate have helped companies that should succeed be successful.

How does one go from a degree in math and physics to a profession in payments? Highline CEO Geoff Brown has the answer for you on this week’s episode! A self-proclaimed numbers geek, Geoff has a genuine passion for data-driven insights and patterns – all of which support his very successful and beneficial contribution to our U.S. payments ecosystem.For those of you who may not know, Highline is a brand-new payments network that originates payments directly from payroll platforms. Unlike card and ACH payments that pull directly from the consumers bank account, Highline has the funds pulled directly from the customers paycheck. According to Geoff, this translates to a vastly improve customer experience and a significant decrease in payments liability.From a consumer perspective, the customer benefits from no longer needing to worry about drafting from their bank account and the payment failures that often can result. Highline pushes out payments to lenders and recurring platforms directly on payday, so the liability is decreased dramatically. The optimum use case for this product revolves around lenders who will be looking to help reduce losses or prepare for an upcoming increase in loss exposure, and Geoff touts a customer experience that is “far better than ACH,” in addition to a one-click authorization process that far surpasses their competition. Tune in this week to hear Geoff talk about his journey to CEO, including how he came up with the idea for this entirely unique offering in the payment space. We also talk about where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to the evolution of P2P, the rapid growth of the payroll space, and the anticipated consolidation throughout the banking industry.

My guest this week has a degree in engineering but no passion for being an engineer. Instead, he has a passion for vision, strategy, and execution. And all revolving around the world of payments! ForwardAI CO-Founder and CEO Nick Chandi is a self-proclaimed subject matter expert on “how things need to be done.” And, as is evident by his career, he knows how to do them very well.For those of you who may not know, ForwardAI is a technology company with a truly distinct offering. They offer a core product and a vertical-specific solution with a proprietary build out that enables seamless integration between the two. Their industry niche is in accounting and their target audience is both fintechs and lenders. Their core product, Precise API, connects to multiple accounting systems that function as the main control panel at any given business. With this integration, customers are able to push data and provide their accounting information to any one of their clients. They also offer a product called Forwardly that specifically targets the small business market with optimized cash flow management solutions integrated with their precise API platform. With the Forwardly app, small businesses receive instant payment from their clients using the RTP and (as of July) the FedNow payment rails.As for their competitive advantage, Nick touts the capacity for his customers to request payment from their clients via a one-click interface for funds received directly into their preferred bank account in a matter of seconds!Tune in this week to hear Nick talk about his journey to CEO, including being the first company to go to market on behalf of the small business B2B sector with instant payment options. We also talk about where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to cryptocurrency, Blockchain, SB RTP, and Central Bank Issued Digital Currency.

My guest this week grew up snowboarding and mountain biking in the mountains of Sweden, only to find himself much later in life in a place with more ocean than mountains and absolutely no snow! MAJORITY CEO Magnus Larsson has always had a genuine passion for people. And it was this passion that fueled the business plan for a company dedicated to promoting the thriving potential of the U.S. immigrant population. Being an immigrant himself, Magnus has a firsthand understanding of what this population faces when they migrate to the United States. The hurdles can be vast, and the support can often times be minimal. And this, of course, is one of the foundational pillars for the success of his company. For those of you who may not know, MAJORITY is a digital banking platform for immigrants that offers so much more than just financial access. In fact, they have a vast array of services to help people thrive and succeed as they transition into the U.S. While banking is their core product, their customers also benefit from other cross-border services such as sending money, calling internationally and, most importantly, establishing a community connection outside of their native country. According to Magnus, one of the best ways to think about MAJORITY is to take the check cashing stores and the payday loan stores and convert them all into a digital product offering. As for their competitive advantage, not only do users see savings that average anywhere from $10-$50 per month, MAJORITY also works community to community to ensure that there will be someone from their native country onboarding them throughout every step of the process. Tune in this week to hear Magnus talk about his journey to CEO, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years as it relates to the future of neo versus niche banks and the most recent waves of our ecosystem’s evolution. We also talk about the 23% of our small business population that started the same way he did.

My guest this week has a very intense musical background, with proficiency in four different instruments: piano, saxophone, oboe, and double base. He currently performs to this day and makes a concerted effort to have a very strong presence in what he calls the four F’s of life: family, fitness, fintech, and flavor! Phos CEO Brad Hyett has a passion for trying new things, going new places, meeting new people, saying yes to things outside of his comfort zone and doing it all with a fintech spin in company socks!For those of you who may not know, Phos is a softPOS technology platform enabling contactless payments onto mobile devices with no requirement for exclusive payments specific hardware. They offer a softPOS payments orchestration platform to complement the pain points typically associated with going to market through softPOS solutions and they target their main verticals (mobility, charity, and retail) with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) devices that are not specifically certified for EMV usage. How do they make it work? They replicate an EMV level certification in the cloud to enable these products to offer integrated an optimized contactless options.As for their competitive advantage, Brad will be the first to say that they offer a customizable solution that enables them to meet their customers where they are and take them where they want to go, in a way that offers much more flexibility and potential than their current competition.Tune in this week to hear Brad talk about his journey to CEO, including a “predestined alignment of the stars” that enabled his wife to replace him at his previous company, prior to his tenure with Phos. We also talk about the evolution of contactless within our global ecosystem, as well as the upcoming M&A spree Brad expects within the industry over the next several years.