Leaders In Payments

Have you ever wondered how boat racing relates to being a CEO in one of the most dynamic industries our global ecosystem has to offer?  Well, my guest this week has the answer!A boat racing enthusiast from Bavaria, Fraugster Co-CEO Chris Mangold will be the first to tell you that running a successful company has many parallels to leading a successful sports team. In fact, he gives three core principles that he has carried from the water to the office as a means of ensuring his employees have the tools necessary to cross the corporate finish line:·       You will always have a lot of maneuvering.·       You never know what’s coming.·       And you have to face the challenges you encounter together, as a team!So, whether you put him on choppy waters or corporate soil, Chris has what it takes to lead his team towards success. Fraugster is a regionally agnostic, global platform that manages fraud in real time through AI and machine learning. With this technology, they are able to enable merchants in the ecommerce space to make the best possible business decision when it comes to fraud prevention and chargeback management.Hear Chris talk about the nature of fraud management now and in the future, including what impact blockchain and cryptocurrency may have on the state of fraud in our ecosystem. A self-proclaimed “growth manager,” his expertise in our industry makes his story a fascinating one! 

When it comes to the most payment-driven markets in the global landscape today, India is always top of mind – and for good reason. As a country, they lead the marketplace in digital payments (with more than 100 different digital payment options) and proactively foster a dynamic ecosystem ripe with opportunity for innovation.My guest this week is CashFree Payments Co-founder Reeju Datta and his knowledge about this diverse payments landscape is vast. For those of you that may not know, CashFree Payments is an online platform that helps companies accept payments via more than 100 different payment methods, with one single integration. And 100 different digital options is pretty significant – especially in comparison to our local ecosystem that remains dominated by credit, debit and ACH.According to Reeju, CashFree Payments was created to solve one major problem: how to facilitate cash payments at the time of delivery for e-commerce merchants. And in just a short amount of time, the company has managed to facilitate 3-4% of all bank transfers in the country and 10% of all bankcards. As for their competitive advantage, they offer a more diverse approach to payments that looks beyond payment collection to more complex forms of commerce, including bi-directional and multi-directional payments capabilities, with a disbursement step that’s easy to integrate and automate.

What does the EVP and Head of Enterprise Payments at the 12th largest bank in the country have to say about the past, present and future of fintech? A lot! Ken Gavrity has had a fascinating career and is a wealth of information when it comes to the current challenges the industry has faced on its way towards digital dominance and the benefits that comes with the kind of autonomy that only automation can bring – especially in the payments sector. In fact, when asked how he defines the competitive edge his company brings to the marketplace, he defaults to his core strategy for success: solving problems before, during and after the payment cycle. KeyBank markets to both the commercial and retail consumer with a national presence that saturates the retail market and a vertical marketing strategy for the commercial side that includes healthcare, real estate, industrial and technology as some of their main sectors. They have an operation that sustains approximately 17,000 employees and a portfolio of assets totaling $180 billion dollars. Regarding where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years, automation, embedded banking and cryptocurrency are the top drivers he holds a focus on. In fact, according to Ken, 8% of “cardable” spend was going through software platforms in 2019. But this number is expected to jump to an impressive 40% by 2025 – making the embedded banking sector a big trend to watch for on the horizon.And as far as they key component to making any business successful, he coins culture as “the competitive advantage that can sustain any company over time.”This is definitely a data-driven podcast with pearls of wisdom you don’t want to miss. 

Ever wonder what the journey may look like from small-town farm to big-time fintech? Well, I have the answer in this week’s podcast! IDology CEO Chris Luttrell is my guest, and her story is a fascinating one.For starters, when she’s not spending time overseeing one of the most credible fraud-prevention solutions in the industry, she’s raising livestock and food on her small farm in northwest Georgia – not far from where she grew up. She began paving her climb up the corporate ladder straight out of high school and went to night school for her undergraduate degree. And this semester, she will graduate with her second Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration – and not because she had to – because she wanted to.For those of you thinking “overachiever,” you would be right! And this innate drive has served her well throughout her journey in the fintech industry.For those of you who may not know, IDology is a well-established identity verification provider within the industry that offers a robust solution for identity verification and fraud prevention, which allows customers to meet KYC compliance while mitigating fraud and risk simultaneously.Originally hired on as their 10th employee and the sole product manager for the company, Chris has quite literally worked her way through every department, including product, fraud, marketing, security, technology and client relations until completing her climb in her well-deserved position as CEO beginning in 2020.According to her, it’s been a “fun roller coaster ride” and she looks forward to ensuring the success of our industry in the future with solutions that help prevent some of the more popular types of fraud that come with the digital age, including mobile fraud, synthetic verification fraud and the like. 

A sports enthusiast from northern England with a passion for music and a resume that includes both Sony and Virgin records, Tappit CEO Jason Thomas has taken his love for entertainment to the fintech space and created a name for himself within the industry.With a client portfolio that includes some of the biggest organizations in event management, including the NFL, MLB and MBA (just to name a few), Tappit is a global payments solutions company that offers cashless payment options driven by data analytics. So, what differentiates them from all the other cashless solutions out there (besides their client list)? Tappit provides all their clients with micro-level data analytics to identify valuable and influential purchase patterns that enable a marketing strategy driven by personalized metrics and not just generic offers.So, whether it be a live music venue, a professional sporting event, or even a college campus, the ability to not only offer cashless but also have data to drive your commerce is invaluable. In fact, according to Jason, “the only way to break the barrier down between the company and the consumer is to analyze the data.”Tappit also offers a range of solutions that include mobile, RFID and even app-les web options. Another bonus? The company is completely agnostic so they can work with any third-party their clients may have in a manner that provides a truly white-label interface.

A Poughkeepsie NY native with a self-proclaimed passion for “understanding how all the pieces work functionally, operationally, strategically and globally,” Tassat CEO Ron Totaro will be the first to tell you that he has learned more from his failures than his successes. However, the successes have been abundant.Beginning his career working for several big industry players such as American Express and AOL, Ron is no stranger to driving innovation at a more rapid pace. In fact, he drove Tassat at a pace so rapid that three years ago, they went to market as the first official B2B blockchain payments business in the world.So, what do they do? In a nutshell, Tassat enables the tokenization of U.S. dollars and deposits so that once a dollar is converted into a token on the blockchain, it can be sent instantaneously to another wallet that exists within the same system. According to Ron, it’s similar to a “Venmo-like transaction – only industrial-strength grade for the B2B space.”Tassat utilizes permission-based blockchain to equip each individual bank customer with the capability to tokenize U.S. dollars into a digital wallet. And in mid-December, the company launched the first  and only member-owned blockchain network that will facilitate real-time bank-to-bank transfers from within the network.But, according to Ron, “it’s not just about selling blockchain but, rather, about creating the ecosystem that is going to be most effective for each individual bank.” And his professional pillars for success? Transparency, accountability, collaboration and teamwork.

How can a Master’s degree in computer science with a concentration in machine-learning algorithms secure you a CEO spot in Fintech? Well, the story is an interesting one. In this week’s podcast, I talk with Justt CEO Ofir Tahor about his journey through the payments industry. What does it look like to be driven by a professional passion to take complex problems and simplify them through technology and innovation? You’ll have to tune in to find out. An Israeli native who officially caught the startup bug back in 2005, Ofir enjoys the challenges that come with building something from the ground up and watching it manifest. He founded his first company in 2011 – an ecommerce solution for businesses to sell their products and services across the social networks, which at that time were green and growing rapidly. He later parlayed all his experience into a new business model that targets online business specifically and uses smart technology to create tailor-made solutions to successfully manage their chargebacks. And now, this startup venture has turned into a rapidly-growing company with the highest success rate in the industry and a portfolio that reads like the who’s who of payments. The company name is Justt and this comes from their drive to bring justice to the chargeback process and balance the scales for merchants when it comes to recovering their funds. And given the fact that Justt is able to tout a 60-80% success rate (from a 20-30% industry average), you can see how they can afford to promote a business model that only collects revenue when success is achieved and money is recovered.

What does an Israeli native with three degrees in Fine Arts and a professional career as a New York sculptor have to do with payments? Believe it or not, quite a bit! Payem CEO Itamar Jobani is my guest on this week’s podcast and his story of a professional career that spans from sculptural artistry to the medical field and eventually to payments is truly fascinating.For those of you who may not know, Payem is a spend-management platform that helps mid-market organizations with their finance operations via a streamlined integration into their ERP software. They serve as a one-stop shop for finance teams to internally manage employee T&E, expense reimbursement, credit purchasing and more. Itamar talks about his well-rounded journey into the payments space and where he sees our industry going in the next 2-3 years – including all the dots that need to be connected before some of the usual suspects like blockchain and cryptocurrency have the opportunity to dominate the ecosystem. 

A self-proclaimed “technology entrepreneur and intrapreneur,” CoreChain CEO Chris Aguas is our special guest on this episode, episode 134 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.  Chris has had a fascinating career in the payments industry. Originally from southern California, Chris graduated from Stanford Business School with a passion for driving change.CoreChain is an embedded B2B payments network that facilitates B2B payments and supply-chain financing using enterprise-distributed ledger technology – which, as many of you may know, is the foundational component for blockchain.  The only caveat? While blockchain technology facilitates the transaction capabilities necessary for Bitcoin, what CoreChain uses is a bit different. Bitcoin runs on permissionless blockchain – meaning no identifiers or validators are required. CoreChain, on the other hand, utilizes a permission-based network that requires both identification and validation of all players involved.And according to Chris, this is the wave of the future in fintech. 

Robin Gregg, the CEO of RoadSync is our special guest on this episode, episode 133 of the Leaders in Payments Podcast.  A West Virginia native and Harvard graduate with a 15-year payments career, Robin Gregg is the CEO of Atlanta-based RoadSync.Now, when it comes to blazing trails, Robin is no stranger to lighting that fire. Not only did she climb to the top of the corporate ladder in such a male-dominated industry, she also helped create and currently leads a payments platform designed specifically for the trucking industry (another male-dominated space). These two facts alone make her story a fascinating one.RoadSync caters specifically to the transportation industry to enable payment acceptance for various vendors, outside of fuel, that support the trucking industry. It’s a really interesting perspective to hear Robin talk about how payment acceptance is woven into an industry that is not often synonymous with fintech. But after hearing the important role that real-time payments play in the trucking space, it’s a wonder why it isn’t.According to Robin, the trucking industry is extremely fragmented. And as a result, it has been slow to digitize. The demand for real-time payments is a huge necessity to the business model though and thanks to platforms like RoadSync, this is finally becoming a reality.