Leaders In Payments

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.

What does an avid Squash player with an underdog mentality and a passion for sales have to do with payments? A lot! My guest this week is Engagesmart CEO Bob Bennett. He has run four different companies over the last 30 years and been in the payments ecosystem long enough to acquire a passion for the electronic payments industry and a desire to create differentiation within that space.For those of you who may not know, Engagesmart is a bill presentment company that simplifies customer and client engagement through electronic payments. They own 4 different brands serving health and wellness, utilities, healthcare, and fundraising, all of which drive a digital self-service and payments experience. Their goal is 100% paperless and autopay solutions for invoice management and their proprietary brand Invoice Cloud drives their customer base at a rapid pace.If you were to ask Bob what got him from an applied math and computer science degree to a prolific CEO in the payments space, he will be the first to tell you that sales became his calling at a young age and he “got really good at selling hard things.” Tune in this week to hear Bob talk about his journey to becoming CEO, including his highly prescriptive method for hiring, recruiting, and retaining employees, his desire to create a unique SaaS business and his personal/professional “grow or die” philosophy. We also discuss the overall impact of the global pandemic and the tailwinds Engagesmart is still riding as a result of it.

My guest this week has been in the payments industry for 20 years and credits the lifespan of his prolific career to a small decision that was motivated by an empty gas tank. It all started in the basement of a dental office, at a startup ISO space with no windows, and an inclination that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. But he needed enough gas to get to where he was going next, so he decided to give it a chance and the rest is history. TRNXN Company CEO Paul Hadfield has made it his charge to modernize payments for his clients and provide them with a “project design” that optimizes their potential and maximizes their revenue. According to him, “the point-of-sale is really the central nervous system of any business. It can manage and connect every single moving part of your company.” For those of you who may not know, TRNXN is a modern transaction company that designs, implements, and supports custom payment solutions for the retail and restaurant verticals. It is Paul’s belief that in order to build successful ISOs and profitable payments companies today, you have to leverage technology and service. With this intention in mind, TRNXN Company “helps ISOs modernize their business by helping them modernize their client’s business.”What’s their business model? According to Paul, they’re not just payment providers but rather small business consultants. “Anything that has to do with a financial transaction, we are involving ourselves with and trying to make that process easier or less expensive for the business – or more expensive but with a strategy that drives more sales.”Tune in this week to hear Paul talk about TRNXN Company – A business with “no exit plan” that he intends to run for the rest of his life and represents “a combination of everything he has learned in the industry coming to a head.” We also talk about what payments looks like for the retail and hospitality industry over the next 2 to 3 years, including everything from a spike in QR code implementation, to the astronomical margins on the current delivery model, and how long it will take crypto to make it into the restaurant space. Don’t miss it! 

My guest this week has an absolutely fascinating background in the payments industry. He’s still as competitive now as he was when he was in his 20s and has a driving passion for sales, competition and, of course, winning. Trust Payments Group Chief Commercial Officer and CEO of Trust Payments U.S. Jonathan O’Connor gives a dynamic interview you don’t want to miss! For those of you who may not know, Trust Payments is a technology-based fintech with a presence all over Europe and a satellite office in the U.S. They combine payments and SaaS-based solutions to offer dynamic opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as a sustainable entry point for the EU and U.S. markets. Some of the most interesting things about their business model are the platforms they specialize in and their very active involvement in some of our most disrupting alternative payment methods. Beyond serving small business and mid-market corporations, they also specialize in emerging markets such as cryptocurrency, online gaming/gambling and CBD. And all of this is in addition to their already prolific involvement in the retail, hospitality, and financial services sectors of our industry. How do they do it all? Well, the ability to offer point-of-sale, mobile and e-commerce through one platform integration most definitely helps! Tune in and hear Jonathan talk about the future of our industry as it relates to cryptocurrency, biometrics, artificial intelligence and so much more. We talk taxation, regulation, crypto exchange and how crypto will become the next “shiny ball” to replace the current market fixation on the Buy-Now-Pay-Later payments model. He also offers details on how his company personalizes the customer journey and keeps their competitive edge. In his own words, “payment is the foundation of our DNA, and we strive to consistently build value around it.” 

My guest this week has had a truly fascinating journey to the top! SpotOn Co-Founder and CPO Doron Friedman comes from a family of Holocaust survivors that were forced to take the entrepreneurial journey after losing everything they had. He’ll be the first to say that his father discouraged any of the children from becoming an entrepreneur, so Doron’s first ambitions were towards investment banking. But it didn’t take him long to figure out that, despite his father’s wishes, he had the entrepreneurial bug and instead of investment banking, he started his self-proclaimed nontraditional entrepreneurial path by opening a bagel shop.And now, as Co-Founder of SpotOn, Doron is grateful that his journey has proven the risks to be well worth it. For those of you who may not know, SpotOn is one of the fastest-growing software payments companies in the marketplace today, with a comprehensive cloud-based technology service model that targets everything from SBMs to large enterprise operations.Their target audience revolves around the restaurant and entertainment sectors and their product is among the top POS systems on the market today. As far as a philosophy that motivates their business model, Doron explains that “every entrepreneur dreams of having that one location and growing it into thousands.” And according to him, SpotOn is equipped with software solutions that can “work with them on every step of that journey.”Tune in today to hear about their company culture of thinking big and acting small, their unique approach to enhancing the customer experience, and how they chose to invest in their staff during the Global pandemic when their largest competitor cut more than half of theirs. Also on the docket? What to expect in the next 2 to 3 years in terms of cryptocurrency, international payments, tokenization, and data analytics.

So, how does a professional basketball player become president/CEO of a fintech payments company? Well, he’s 6’8" with a passion for solving problems and a love for transformative technology. PayZen President and CEO Itzik Cohen is on a very bold mission to revolutionize the healthcare payments industry. How? The mission-driven goal of PayZen is to underwrite each individual customer into a payments plan they can afford in order to maintain standard healthcare and make good health more accessible to everyone. According to Itzik, the U.S. sustains a revolving balance of approximately $330 billion in annual unpaid medical bills. The only thing more shocking than this is a $1.2 trillion in out-of-pocket healthcare expense.PayZen utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to underwrite each patient for the most affordable plan to enable maximum payment success. This includes understanding predictive loss rates per customer, so the provider is always guaranteed their fair share. Their focus is on elective procedures and the business model is the industry leader in “care now, pay later” healthcare. According Itzik, PayZen’s NorthStar is the capacity to approve 100% of patients with no interest charge and no fees. Not to mention, they hold the financial responsibility for any losses they may incur. How do they do this? Their technology forward approach gives them that much confidence in their ability to underwrite each case successfully, ensuring minimum financial loss and maximum payment remittance.Tune in this week to hear how transformative technology has revolutionized the debt elimination industry, how industry leader PayZen is currently managing a 5000% projected growth rate, and where Itzik sees the industry in the next 2-3 years – including what it looks like to take the providers out of the business of providing finance.

An Australian native and previous casino dealer, Identitii CEO John Rayment is passionate about people, payments, and a bucketed approach to life. He is a global citizen with a global platform and his company, of course, drives a global initiative. In his own words, Identitii “helps the global financial services industry reduce their regulatory risks without having to replace legacy technology.”The Identitii business model is uniquely focused on enhancing technology already in use to reduce manual processes. In a nutshell, they automate the preparation and submission of financial transaction reports. The platform ingests payment data and standardizes it in a manner that offers an individual snapshot for each customer portfolio. This includes any missing or incorrect information that the platform will automatically reconcile, and then provide each financial institution customer with a clean set of data for analytics and accurate, timely reporting to government regulators.In John’s own words, there is a growing gap between the need for more data and whether or not the technology available can accurately deliver it. Not to mention, there are substantial fines for financial institutions who are not currently submitting accurate and timely regulatory reports. This niche that he is targeting with Identitii’s innovative software is sizable and growing exponentially, with more than 15,000 potential players in Australia alone.And when it comes to their competition, John says his largest competitor is the customer who believes they can do it themselves with their own internal processes and procedures. Tune in this week to hear John talk about his journey to becoming CEO, where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years and the four buckets in life that keep him at his best, both professionally and personally. 

For my guest this week, I have a one-time Disneyworld employee who was once recruited by Visa and MasterCard simultaneously. Finexio CEO and Founder Ernest Rolfson has a self-proclaimed passion for creating transparency around what he perceives to be a very opaque industry by teaching people about payments, software and all things that move money.For those of you who may not know, Finexio is an accounts payable payments-as-a-service company that targets the middle market sector and provides partner solutions that enable a very prolific ecosystem. Their long-term goal is to empower large accounts payable, procurement and ERP software platforms with a white-label solution that provides a broader toolset and revenue stream when it comes to their payments offerings.Being a solo founder before the tailwinds of the global pandemic escalated the drive towards digital, Ernest’s story is a fascinating one. He knew he had a winning concept when he did his research and found that there was still $12 trillion dollars in paper checks being processed through the US payments ecosystem. This broke down to $4 trillion for the small business market, $4 trillion for middle market, and $4 trillion for large enterprise. Given his background and expertise, Ernest decided to target the middle market sector and the rest, as they say, is history.Finexio is very narrowly focused on payments optimization, execution and support on the backend and can deliver 10 different payment methods with a truly white-label approach. And they offer a very specific partner methodology that enables a turnkey go-to-market solution without a costly technology investment. Tune in this week to hear Ernest talk about his journey to fintech, including where he sees the industry 2-3 years from now as it relates to cryptocurrency, cross-border payments, and the fast-emerging trend towards being multi-rail. 

As we wrap up diversity and inclusion month, I speak with Cantaloupe Director of Human Resources, Alyssa Braniecki, on what it looks like to employ D&I as part of the total employee experience. Alyssa credits her ability to find her voice as a female in the workplace to growing up in a blended Hispanic/Italian family with two volumes: loud and louder. She originally got her degree in psychology with an emphasis in developmental psych but has always had a passion for facilitating groups and creating balance within them. Her desire to be part of the total employee experience eventually led her to Cantaloupe, a digital payments solution in the unattended retail sector that also provides logistical software servicing to the locations of those unattended retail spaces.To her, diversity and inclusion are two very separate things that cannot work independently of one another. Diversity is the different characteristics and attributes that define the employees within the company — their race, ethnicity, gender, etc., while inclusion is embracing all those differences and welcoming them fully, as well as appreciating and nourishing them. Diversity is a fact while inclusion is a choice. You can gather data about adversity but if you’re not intentional about inclusion, you’re not truly going to see a diverse and inclusive workforce.Alyssa and I discuss how the industry is doing as a whole when it comes to D&I, as well as what advice she has for companies getting started on their own diversity and inclusion program. One of the important points she has to offer is diversity and inclusion are not something that starts with the hiring process. Well-established hiring protocols are only part of a successful D&I program. They are not the point of origin. According to her, it all starts from the top down and Cantaloupe’s CEO, in my opinion, does an exceptional job of driving this point home. Tune in to get the details on this and more!

Moving right along with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) month, my guest this week refers to herself as a global citizen with a broad range of diverse experience and an entrepreneurial career that all started with one question: “Software outsourcing is huge. Do you want to start a business?”As I’m sure you can imagine, the answer was yes, and this led Chargeback Gurus Founder and CEO Srii Srinivasan down a wildly successful entrepreneurial path that all started with a diamond merchant.In this episode, we discussed not only her business model, go-to-market strategy and niche offering, we also talk a lot about what she does proactively to ensure DEI in her organization. When asked what her definition of diversity is, Srii explains that “it’s truly about radical acceptance in all our life experiences, no matter who it is or what they experienced. Diversity by itself will not work. You also have to have equity and inclusion, which means voices are heard and met with acceptance.”Among the many things we discuss around DEI in this episode, one of the most interesting to me is this concept around diversity including not only the employees, but the customers stakeholders and investors as well. It’s a concept that starts from the top down and must include every touchpoint the company has. In order to make it truly successful, DEI has to be in the corporate DNA.Tune in to hear us discuss important best practices like writing a diverse job description, asking questions and actively listening to the answers, hiring and training leaders on the importance of DEI and creating successful DEI best practices in a virtual company culture.