Leaders In Payments

Flint Lane, CEO and Founder of Billtrust is our special guest this week on episode 119 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Flint grew up on Long Island, New York and from the beginning thought he was going to be a software developer for life. After a few software jobs, he started a company called PayTrust, sold it and started Billtrust in his basement in September of 2001. Billtrust exists to help medium and large companies digitize their financial supply chain – think b2b payments. They went public in January and expect to do $125 million in revenue this year.  Billtrust has always been in the cloud and is sold via a subscription model. They are the market leader for AR solutions and have been in business for 20 years. He’s the Leaders in Payments first star table tennis or ping pong player. He plays competitively several times a week.  

Today we’re taking a special look at the Unattended Retail space with industry leader Cantaloupe. Cantaloupe, Inc. is a software and payments company that provides end-to-end technology solutions for the unattended retail market. Cantaloupe is transforming the unattended retail community by offering one integrated solution for payments processing, logistics, and back-office management. The Company’s enterprise-wide platform is designed to increase consumer engagement and sales revenue through digital payments, digital advertising and customer loyalty programs, while providing retailers with control and visibility over their operations and inventory.On this episode Elyssa Steiner from Cantaloupe is joining me to discuss the results of their recent survey. They targeted more than 2,000 census-based US adults. We’re going to talk about some of the surprises compared to last year, some of the latest trends, micro-markets and much much more.  

Oliver Werneyer, CEO of Imburse is our special guest on episode 117 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Oliver was born and grew up in South Africa and found his way to London after getting married and now resides in Switzerland.  Imburse provides insurers and large enterprises a single connection point to initiate any payment, collection or payout saving them time and money. Imburse currently has 46 employees and recently closed a roughly $12 million funding round and are growing rapidly. Imburse has a unique start up story involving an app that tracked flights, a customer and a major pivot. Oliver is really passionate about the people side of the business and loves to play golf with his 6-year-old daughter. 

Trent Sorbe, President and Founder of Central Payments is our special guest this week on episode 116 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Trent is a small-town Midwesterner. He grew up in Iowa, went to college in Iowa and have been in South Dakota for the last 20 or so years.  Central Payments is the payments subsidiary of Central Bank of Kansas City. In 2013, the bank started to think about future growth and approached Trent to start Central Payments in 2014. Central Payments has two customers – traditional fintechs, and embedded finance – which are bigger companies that want to embed a financial product but don’t want to become financial services companies. Trent talks about the Open CP which is their API marketplace – where their customers can come in and get access to financial products. He also discusses Falls Fintech which is their early stage accelerator program.

Andrew Hoag, Founder and CEO of Teampay is our special guest this week on episode 115 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and I’m your host Greg Myers. Andrew grew up in North Dakota, went to a small liberal arts college near Minneapolis and then move to Silicon Valley.  He is currently based in New York where he started Teampay in late 2016. Finance teams today are still using 20-year-old technology in many cases, so Teampay started with the idea of how they can help companies control and manage access to their bank account across all their employees. In modern companies today, every employee makes a purchasing decisions and Teampay is a solution that helps enforced the company’s policies, helps them stay in compliance and provides visibility across the organization.  Andrew talks about blockchain and smart contracts and how they might be used in this space in the future. He also has some great advice for those just starting in our industry.  

Meg Nakamura, Co-founder and CEO of Apto Payments is our special guest this week on episode 114 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Meg grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and has been in San Francisco for the last 13 years. She’s passionate about enabling other companies to solve interested use-cases with their products. Apto was started in 2014 and currently has approximately 50 employees. In 2015, Apto launched the first U.S. bitcoin-backed debit card. Today, Apto is focused on eliminating barriers for entry and making it easy for non-experts to enter the payments space with a focus on helping their clients launch innovative card programs.  Meg believes that crypto is in the early days and that there are opportunities around real-time payments and international payments with crypto. 

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.