Leaders In Payments

Bob Dowd, CEO North America for Moneycorp is our special guest this week on episode 129 of the Leaders in Payment Podcast. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Bob – a man who started his 38-year payments career at Kennedy airport in New York carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars across terminals in a canvas bag. So, how did he go from this to CEO of the only non-US bank in the world to have a direct relationship with the US Federal Reserve? Well, “the harder you work, the luckier you get” is one of his favorite adages, if that tells you anything.Moneycorp is an international payments and foreign exchange company that leads the industry in providing global payments and currency risk management to corporations and partners around the world. They have $50 billion in foreign-exchange flows and $200 million in top-line revenue and facilitate 6 million individual payments on an annual basis.Bob talks about where the industry is headed as it relates to real-time, low-value payment rails and blockchain – and how his company kept global economies afloat by delivering cash throughout the world during the COVID pandemic.

As we come to the close of financial inclusion month, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge my guests in terms of what they’re doing to promote financial inclusion and ensure the betterment of our flourishing ecosystem. It’s because of proactive efforts like this that we are getting closer to closing the gap between all the advantages that digital innovations provide and all the challenges that the underserved communities face in trying to take advantage of them.In this podcast, each of my sponsors for Financial Inclusion Month take the opportunity to highlight what they’re doing within their companies to service the underserved. We touch on everything from the current payment dilemma, to how we can effectively change the employee’s relationship with their paycheck, to how the strain of cash-only transactions impacts the rental, lending and government verticals specifically.Each guest brings a unique perspective as they highlight fintech’s relationship with financial inclusion, including what needs to be done to future proof our journey towards banking the unbanked.Today’s roundtable discussion includes The Clearing House SVP of Sales and Relationship Management Elena Whisler, Paysafe VP of eCash USA Jan Marc Kuelper and Instant Financial Founder and COO Steve Barha. Tune in to see what these three innovative leaders have to say about all things financial inclusion!

A native Canadian with a degree in molecular biology and computer science… and also the only guy I’ve ever met that can create a successful analogy using payments and farming, Instant Financial Founder and CEO Steve Barha speaks to us about the necessity to support financial health in some of the world’s most vulnerable populations.The pioneers of no-fee-no-interest earn-wage access, Instant Financial is taking a proactive stance when it comes to ensuring financial inclusion. And Steve’s personal vision when it comes to the financial status of the every-day employee? To live in a world where living paycheck-to-paycheck is completely extinct.So, how close are we? Sadly, not close enough. With 80% of working Americans still living paycheck-to-paycheck, we are actually worse off now than we were 10 years ago, when the number was 60%. But Steve and his team have a strategy…It all comes down to proactively lifting the underserved communities from the status of “financially vulnerable” to at least be “financially coping.” Once that has been achieved, they can then graduate to “financially healthy.”Tune in and hear us talk about all things financial inclusion and see if you share Steve’s vision for the future.

We’re halfway through financial inclusion month and we’ve had some really amazing guests share some of the industry’s top challenges regarding financial inclusion – as well as what their respective companies are doing to proactively close that gap. Today, I speak with FSS CashTech CEO V. Bala about the overwhelming strain of financial inclusion in India and what FSS is doing to alleviate it.An engineer by trade, Bala has had 30+ years of experience in the technology sector, with the last decade dedicated to payments specifically. His self-proclaimed strength is working with startups to make them successful and he has done nothing short of that with FSS and their CashTech product.In this episode, Bala shares the staggering numbers of the underserved villages in India. How are there still an estimated 1 billion people still devoid of financial services in one of the hottest pulse points of digital disruption? And what is being done to service these individuals?Bala goes into great detail about the FSS branch-in-a-box solution that is proactively alleviating the two main barriers to financial inclusion: available access and digital literacy. The initiative, itself, is admirable and the results are quite impressive.  The ultimate goal? To uplift 1 billion lives through their own payments ecosystem. 

A proud Chicago native with decades of experience driving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the payments space, and a heartfelt desire to “pour back into others some of the lessons his mentors taught him,” Will Lewis is a dynamic individual. He’s a Drake University graduate, the Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Officer at Experian and he is grateful for the opportunity to speak to you about one of his truest professional passions: financial inclusion.When it comes to the percentage of the American population who are still un-and-under-banked, it truly is a wonder that we haven’t managed to cross this hurdle in today’s digitally dominated landscape. And this is why people like Will are so valuable to our industry.With programs like Inclusion Forward: Experian Empowering Opportunities and Experian Boost, Will and his team are driving opportunities for individuals that are currently challenged with the limitations that come from being “credit invisible,” as he puts it. Through advocating on behalf of the consumer, these programs aim to give the cash-only consumers financial opportunities with a more comprehensive view of what could be considered “credit visibility.”Wil speaks about all things financial inclusion, including the goals of these programs, what Experian is doing to promote financial inclusion and why it’s so important in today’s every-changing ecosystem.

When it comes to payments, it’s no secret that digital is dominating the ecosystem. This, we know. But what about Americans that are either unbanked or underbanked… those that don’t have access to the technology or have the resources required to take advantage of the perks digital disruption provides?In today’s podcast, Paysafecash VP of Strategic Business Development Jan Marc Kuelper and RentMoola’s Chief Product Officer Jean-Francois Brissot come together to speak about the current landscape of the underbanked demographic and the strides they are proactively making to support this population. The ultimate goal? To make the life of the cash consumer as easy as possible.A creative thinker with 25 years of thinking about all things Fintech, Jean-Francois Brissot is the Chief Product Officer for RentMoola. RentMoola simplifies property payments into one efficient, secure platform. Jean-Francois oversees product innovation, engineering and customer success. Also, a big player in the Fintech space and my other guest on this podcast, Jan Marc Kuelper oversees the eCash business (both Paysafecard and Paysafecash) in the United States, with the responsibility of pursuing strategic partnerships to accelerate international expansion. Together, they provide some much-needed insight into our lingering dependency on cash, the financial challenges caused by the global pandemic and the impact this has on some of their target verticals (specifically, the rental market).

In this week’s Leaders in Payments Podcast, I speak with The Clearing House SVP of Sales and Relationship Management Elena Whisler about financial inclusion and why there are still so many unbanked and underbanked Americans. A mother of two, marathon runner of many and proud Canadian native, Elena is passionate about payments inclusion as she talks about the various initiatives The Clearing House is involved in to proactively service our underserved communities. For those of you that may not know, The Clearing House is a banking association and payments company owned by 23 of the largest financial institutions in the United States. They are the nation’s most experienced payments company, with a payment network that clears and settles more than $2 trillion dollars each day.

Rob Lincolne, a self-proclaimed left-handed, homeschooled Tasmanian who currently moonlights as Founder and CEO of Paydock is our special guest this week on episode 122 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Growing up on an island off the coast of Australia in a family that traveled extensively, Rob has a widespread cultural background with global exposure. This coupled with his extensive industry experience has afforded him a rather unique perspective on people, progress and (most importantly) payments.  Rob’s vision of a company that not only solved problems but provided value has gone through many iterations that have been (in his words) “rewarding, terrifying and exhilarating.” The most recent manifestation of this is Paydock. Founded in 2015, Paydock is a payments orchestration platform that helps medium and enterprise merchants simplify their increasingly complex payments stacks. According to Rob, there are four emerging trends in the payments ecosystem that are already impacting the marketplace and will require us to “future proof” our payments strategy for successful forward momentum.

Lara Hodgson, Co-Founder, President and CEO of Now is our special guest this week on episode 121 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Lara grew up Atlanta, Georgia. She got her undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech and went to business school at Harvard. She has started several businesses in her career including Insomnia and Nourish – which was the inspiration for starting Now.  Now helps small and medium size businesses get paid immediately after sending an invoice. Their customers sign up for a NowAccount, upload their invoices into their NowAccount and their receivables are basically converted into cash.  It isn’t factoring and it isn’t a line of credit. Lara shares an interesting startup story about how the company was formed and why. Lara has a passion for her family including being room mom and team mom. She loves education and children. She has a professional passion for leveling the playing field for small businesses. 

Sathish N., Chief Product Officer of FSS is our special guest this week on episode 120 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Sathish grew up in a small town in India. He has worked for some of the leading companies in India with assignments in Tokyo, London, Copenhagen and the U.S. and has travelled to over 55 countries.FSS has been in business for 30 years and provides payments services and technology to banks, central regulators, governments, merchants and more.    FSS helps their customers with everything from issuer card programs to omnichannel acquiring, digital banking, payment processing, ATM monitoring, payment security and analytics and financial inclusion programs. Sathish is a nature enthusiast and enjoys bird watching and wildlife photography.