Leaders In Payments

Brady Harris, the CEO of Dwolla is our special guest this week on episode 99 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Brady grew up in Salt Lake City Utah.  After high school he went into payments in Portland and Seattle. He also spent some time in Atlanta and now is at the Dwolla headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa.   Dwolla was originally a P2P product but about 5 years ago started to focus on B2B payments. Today they provide ACH transaction processing through an API to businesses and also power functionality for many other Fintechs. They recently launched real-time payments and are looking into things like FX and crytpo.   This year they are trending towards $40B in gross payment volume with approximately 100 employees.    Brady has a passion for giving people the opportunity to grow and flourish in their careers. He also thinks people coming into payments or fintech should start with a sales job which Brady says a sometimes controversial viewpoint. 

Vijay Oddiraju, the Co-founder and CEO of Volante Technologies is our special guest this week on episode 98 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Vijay was born and raised in India. After getting his bachelor’s degree he came to the U.S. where he got his master’s degree in computer science and went to work for Oracle. After about 6 years, he got the entrepreneurial bug and started his first company.  Vijay along with 3 other founders started Volante in 2001. Currently the company offers cloud payments and financial messaging solutions to financial institutions. They have over 100 customers in 35 countries. The first real-time payments transaction in U.S. history went through their platform.   In August of last year, they raised $35 million in capital from Wavecrest Growth Partners and other strategic investors – many of them are existing customers. Vijay has a professional passion to build and maintain a company culture based on trust. On the personal side he has a passion for space and looks forward to hitching a ride with Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos into space. 

Don Frieden, the President, CEO & Chairman of P97 Networks is our special guest this week on episode 97 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.  Don grew up in Fort Forth Texas, attended North Texas University and has been in Houston Texas for about 30 years. P97 is making payments at the convenience retail and fuel industries simple, fast, and secure. They are a global company with 175 team members with about 100 at the headquarters in Houston. Beyond payments they provide loyalty programs for fuel brands and digital marketing opportunities that can be delivered to the fuel dispenser, connected car in-dash screens, mobile devices and voice channels.  Don has some great insights into the future of mobile payments including the enormous buying power today and in the future of millennials – who are the first digital native generation.

Derek Webster, the Founder and CEO of CardFlight is our special guest this week on episode 96 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Derek was born and raised in California, moved to Washington D.C. and attended Georgetown University. He was an intern and then a product manager at eTrade before going to business school at Stanford. He currently lives in New York City where he founded CardFlight in 2013.CardFlight powers a product called SwipeSimple that is used by 80,000 small businesses in the United States. Their hardware and software products are distributed by over 80 different partners including merchant acquirers and ISOs. They are tech and customer-first focused and are partnership led.  During the pandemic CardFlight launched the weekly CardFlight Small Business Report – it become the source of truth for how small businesses were faring during the pandemic for both investors and small businesses themselves.  On a personal note, he loves sailing and still races competitively and more recently has taken up kite surfing. 

Will Graylin, the CEO of OV Loop and Indigo Technologies is our special guest this week on episode 95 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Will immigrated to the U.S. from China when he was a teenager. He got his undergrad degree from the University of Washington, became a nuclear submarine officer for 5 and half years and then went to Boston for grad school at MIT.  OV Loop is a connected commerce platform that has a solution for brands and businesses called a super messenger and a solution for consumers called a super wallet. We are living in a very fragmented environment when it comes to commerce and we need to get to a more connected environment – which is the problem OV Loop is addressing. Over the last 3 years they have bought 4 companies and are launching a minimal viable product next quarter to both businesses and consumers.  Will also touched on the other company he is currently running called Indigo Technologies which is creating a lightweight electric vehicle. 

Ron Hynes, the CEO of Vesta is our special guest this week on episode 94 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Ron lives in Connecticut and was born and raised in Maine. He’s married and has three kids, two in college and one that just graduated from high school and one little dog to round out the family. Vesta uses advanced machine learning to access the validity of card-not-present transactions. They provide their customers a “thumbs up” if the transaction is good and obviously identify the fraudulent ones. The company has been around for 25 years and has 300 employees. The company has locations across the U.S. and Dublin Ireland, Mexico City as well as an office in Singapore. Ron and I have a great discussion about fraud in general as well as fraud in developing countries. We also talk about his passion for financial inclusion stemming from his journey in payments with Chase and Mastercard. 

Matt Marcus, the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Modern Treasury is our special guest this week on episode 93 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Matt was born in south Florida, moved to New Hampshire and attended Dartmouth College and now lives in San Francisco. Modern Treasury was formed when the three founders were responsible for the payment operations system at LendingHome realized that there was a need for a more robust scalable, solution that helps move money. In 2018 the founders completed Y Combinator and had their first customer in the fall of 2018.  Matt and I had a great discussion around today’s real-time payments solutions and what they will look like in the future. 

Larry Talley, Founder & CEO of Everyware is our special guest on episode 92 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Larry grew up in New York and has been on his own since the early age of 14. He left New York and joined the Navy where he saw 30 countries before the age of 21.  He now resides in Austin, Texas with his wife and 3 sons.  Everyware was formed to solve problems around payments by leveraging communications – meaning text messaging. They allow businesses and consumers to interact and transact via text messaging on their own time. They are integrated with all of the main acquirers and sell primarily to ISVs. They are in several verticals including travel, healthcare, non-profits, restaurants, retailers, field services and more.  Larry believes crypto will become a preferred payment method in the next few years and he has some great insights into the future of payments. 

James Oberman, CEO of Payroc is our special guest this week on episode 91 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Jim grew up in the south-side of Chicago, attended the University of Arizona, married his high school sweetheart and moved back to the Chicago area after college. His first job was in public accounting where he had clients in the equipment financing industry which ultimately led him into the payments industry by financing the leases that ISOs were originating for equipment.   Payroc is the ninth largest independent merchant acquirers in the U.S. They process about $33B a year, have over 100,000 merchant relationships; over 2,000 agents and sub-ISO partners: 40 ISV partnerships and have 400 employees. In 2016 they had 16 employees. 2019 was a big year for Payroc. They were approached by Parthenon Capital with a strategy to bring together 4 companies: NXTGEN, Payscape, Payroc and BluePay Canada into the new Payroc. Since 2019 they have continued to strategically acquire more companies. Jim walks us through his fascinating journey in payments and has some great advice for those just starting their careers in payments.  

Sean Feeney, the CEO of Cantaloupe is our special guest this week on episode 90 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Sean grew up in a small town in New York called Attica – which of course is famous for its maximum-security prison. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in the Army for 6 years mostly in Europe. He currently lives in Roswell, Georgia.  Cantaloupe is the leading provider of solutions to the unattended retail space – for example vending machines, car washes, basically anything where there isn’t a retail clerk.  They provide both the digital payments capability and the software that drives the logistics servicing of those locations. The company was started in the early 90s, will do approximately $160-170 million in sales this year and has 180 employees.  Cantaloupe was formerly USA Technologies. They launched the new name and a complete new brand about a month ago.   On the personal side Sean has a passion for his family and supports a lot of youth and high school activities and on the business side he is very passionate about building great leaders and helping them succeed.