Leaders In Payments

Michael Young, Founder and CEO Photon Commerce is our special guest this week on episode 113 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Michael grew up in Philadelphia, moved to the West Coast to attend grad school at Stanford. He dropped out of Stanford and started a few companies before realizing the need for a Cash App or Venmo like solution to make b2b payments fast and easy.   Photon Commerce has created an AI solution that focuses on enriching payments data with line-item data. Today they have 25 employees and enable their customers to move at the speed of light – therefore the name Photon Commerce.  Michael’s advice for those just starting in payments is to truly understand the big picture or the mission of the company as well as the societal impact the solution could make.  

This is the second episode of this quarter's Pulse of Payments series and I’m talking with Petr Kozyakov, the Co-founder and CEO of Mercuryo. The topic for today’s episode is crypto payments – or better said accepting cryptocurrency as a method of payment. Everyday there are articles being written about Bitcoin, Stablecoin and other cryptocurrencies but typically that is related to buying and holding these cryptocurrencies with the hope that the price goes up but what I am most interested in is understand more about cryptocurrency as a method of payment.  Mercuryo was built to bridge the gap between fiat and crypto. Petr and I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of accepting crypto currencies. We talk about the consumer demand to pay with crypto currencies as well as the global regulatory environment and much much more. 

John Lunn, the CEO of Gr4vy and he is our special guest this week on episode 111 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. John was born in the UK, raised in Switzerland and about 5 years ago moved to the Bay Area. John was employee number 4 at PayPal outside of the U.S. He also ran PayPal Ventures for 5 years prior to starting Gr4vy.   Gr4vy is a tool in the cloud that allows companies to add, manage, change and orchestrate their payments types without large engineering teams. They recently closed an $11.1 million dollar series A round and currently have 21 employees. John is passionate about making fintech and payments available to everyone not just those with credit cards and the latest gadgets. He’s a cold-water swimmer and cycles hundreds of miles – for fun.   

Eric Frazier, the CEO of Payrix is our special guest this week on episode 110 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Eric is a Columbus Ohio native, a hard-core Buckeye fan, a golf fanatic and has been in the payments industry for 20 years. He’s worked for large companies as well as founded or co-founder 5 companies. He’s passionate about building a company cultures that innovates and ideates. Payrix is a 110-person payment facilitation company that is focused on helping vertically focused software platforms drive more revenue and reduce friction for their end customers. They will be delivering over $100 million in payouts to their SaaS partners over the next 12 months. Over the next several years, Eric sees payment facilitation companies growing internationally as well as starting to embed other financial services products. 

Steve Barha, the Founder and COO of Instant Financial is our special guest this week on episode 109 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Steve is from British Columbia, Canada and got a double major in Molecular Biology and Computer Science. He’s a technology entrepreneur and has founded multiple companies.  Instant Financial is a pioneer in the no fee, no interest, earned wages access space. Instant allows employees to access their wages on-demand. They are headquartered in Atlanta and serve about 350 corporate clients and move about a $1B in Instant pay funds annually. This is a fascinating and growing space and Instant has a unique value prop – where they don’t charge the employees for access to their wages, and they don’t charge the employer.  Steve is passionate about financial wellness and literacy as well as helping fellow entrepreneurs with their journeys. 

Brian Shniderman, the CEO of Opy and the Chief Strategy Officer for OpenPay is our special guest on this quarter's Pulse of Payment edition.  The topic for this episode is one of the hottest trends in payments  - Buy Now Pay Later.  Not a day goes buy without an article being written or announcement being made in this space. From Square’s acquisition of AfterPay to Apple’s announcement that they are partnering with Goldman Sachs to offer a buy now pay later solution. OpenPay offers a unique buy now pay later solution in Australia and the UK and will be launching in the US in Q4.  Brian starts by providing a definition of buy now pay later (one that I think you will find interesting) and then we discuss the value to merchants and consumers.  We also talk about the US and global landscape, some of the trends in the space and why buy now pay later has exploded in the last 18 months. 

Neil Bergquist, the Co-Founder and CEO of Coinme is our special guest on this episode -episode 107 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Neil is from Edmonds, Washington and got involved with a tech incubator after college and it was there he was introduced to bitcoin. Coinme is the largest licensed cash to crypto exchange in the US. It was started in 2014 with a bitcoin ATM. Today they operate 17,000 locations across the US in partnership with Coinstar and recently launched a partnership with MoneyGram.   We talked about the early days of Coinme and their mission of changing the message in the market to help people better understand digital currencies and remove some of the negative perceptions that are in the market today.  Neil provided his vision of the future of crypto and what drives him to get up and work hard every day. 

That was Oded Zehavi, the CEO and Co-Founder of Mesh Payments and he is our special guest this week on episode 106 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.Oded grew up in a small town outside of Tel Aviv Israel. He spent time at both PayPal and Payoneer before starting Mesh Payments. Mesh Payments helps SMBs and midmarket companies in the U.S. to manage and control their expenses. Their clients can fully automate their corporate payments without exposing themselves to the risks that exist today.  Mesh Payments has been in business for 3 years and has 30 employees. They have grown 600% over the last 8 months. Oded and I talked about what differentiates Mesh Payments as well as the future of b2b payments. Oded has a passion for football and for helping start-up companies scale and understand their payments infrastructure.  

As we come to the end of July, we’re also coming to the end of the Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express.  I’ve had 5 tremendous women leaders on the show, and they have provided some incredible advice and perspectives on women leadership in general and specifically related to payments. In this episode I’m going to pull together the best of the best related to advice from our 5 guests. The podcasts were more than just advice though – I talked to each one of them about their unique journey and their unique perspectives about leadership and payments.Each episode covers three themes. One, their personal and career journeys – so from childhood to high school to college to their first job as well as their payments career progression. The second theme was a quick session where I asked 10 rapid fire questions like “what was your least favorite subject in high school or what is the most used app on your phone.”  The third theme was really about them providing career guidance and advice and we’re going to focus on that in this episode. Some of my personal favorite quotes and I might be paraphrasing a little but they were: “I’m not a man in a skirt” “Be unapologetic” “Be fearless and challenge yourself” and “Focus on action over perfection.”

Vivian Greentree, SVP and Head of Global Corporate Citizenship at Fiserv is our special guest on this the 104th episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast – This is also the 5th episode this month as we’re celebrating Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express. Vivian grew up in Tucker, Georgia and after high school attended the University of Georgia and then joined the Navy where she was a Naval Supply Officer. In 2009, she co-founded Blue Star Families which is the nation’s largest military family organization with 65,000 members. She joined First Data in 2014 as the Head of Military and Veteran Affairs and today is the Head of Global Corporate Citizenship at Fiserv where she manages all efforts around associate and community engagement, strategic philanthropy and diversity and inclusion.   Vivian and I talk about always being vulnerable, willing to learn and getting comfortable being uncomfortable. The underlying theme of Vivian’s advice is “resiliency” or as we like to say in the south – grit.