Leaders In Payments

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.

Sam Graziano, CEO of Linear is our special guest on this episode, episode 132 of the Leaders in Payments Podcast. A New York native with a self-proclaimed passion for filling white space and challenging the status quo, Sam Graziano scratched his entrepreneurial itch all the way from the investment banking world to the fintech space, where he eventually became CEO of Linear – a digital account originating and lending infrastructure for small-to-medium-sized businesses. And his experience has left him full of insight and expertise.Spoken in his own words, Linear provides “the technological plumbing that allows banks and other financial institutions to modernize the way they deliver conventional credit to the small business market.” And this includes real-time data, fraud decision making and credit analysis.So, what differentiates them from the thousands of other lending companies out there? According to Sam, they go beyond just software to offer consultative insights that assist businesses in making better, faster and smarter decisions. When asked about his professional passion, Sam finds the most fulfillment in offering advancement for his loyal employees. He enjoys facilitating a space where people feel as though their efforts are genuinely appreciated. And as far as what he sees for the future of the lending sector, Sam predicts the competitive environment will only get stronger between banks and SaaS companies. Though, he feels that the ability for banks to digitize will give them the competitive edge they need to retain their small-business portfolios. 

Casey Leloux, the CEO of IntelliPay is our special guest this week on episode 131 of the Leaders in Payments Podcast.A California native with an affinity for softball and a passion for selling solutions, Casey may have grown up shelling almonds and playing sports but his passion for sales took him down a very fascinating journey that led him straight to the top… eventually.Now the CEO of IntelliPay, Casey came on with the company when it was just a government software platform that specialized in payments for taxes and municipalities. It was through Casey’s influence that the company branched out into other verticals and really formed their niche in fee-based processing.Coined by Casey as a “white-glove, fee-management third-party processor,” IntelliPay specializes in fee-based offerings for businesses trying to receive bill payments. They offer multiple front-end solutions that enable customers to pay their bills and have a multitude of back-end configurations that ensure the payments move through the proper channels.And they make it a point to “swim upstream on behalf of the merchant to offer an integrated solution.” So, how did he get to all this from selling Cutco knives? You’ll have to tune in to find out!And, as part of this episode, you’ll also hear about Casey’s predictions for the future of our industry – including how software companies will eventually become the new merchant and how fee-based offerings will leverage success.

Jason Mugford, President and CEO of Ascendant is our special guest this week on episode 130 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.  Jason is a Toronto native and loyal fintech supporter. He talks with me about his journey in the industry and how he went from an aspiring Lacrosse player to a seasoned payments professional. Ascendant is an international accounts payable and receivable business that facilitates foreign payments for companies on a global scale.  One of their most notable services is reducing the vertical fraud and risk investigation potential for their international customers and tracking payments from release to remittance. According to Jason, this not only adds more transparency to the industry but also reduces investigations from an average of 20% to less than 1%.  As for the future of our industry, Jason predicts that both sides of the transaction will eventually come together as a network, enabling us to expedite the movement of money in a more seamless fashion.And can you believe all this started with a childhood affinity for Thomas Cook travelers checks?