Leaders In Payments

Anil D. Aggarwal, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Fintech Meetup is our special guest this week on episode 89 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Anil was born in England came to the US when he was 16 and has been an entrepreneur basically his entire career. He started two businesses in payments early in his career and sold one of them to Google.  At Google he started working on Money 20/20.  In 2011 he started Money 2020 and first event was in 2012. He subsequently sold Money 20/20 in in 2014 and launched Shoptalk in 2015. Anil has some great stories and insights about how he started both companies and about disruption in events. Fast forward and Anil has started Fintech Meetup – which has it’s first event next month – June 15-17 called Fintech Spring Meetup which is a virtual event but of course he has aspirations of building the biggest Fintech event in the industry. 

That was Quincy McKnight, CEO and Founder of Covenant Pay Partners and he is our special guest this week on episode 88 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.Quincy grew up in Murfreesboro Tennessee, went to Middle Tennessee State and now lives in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2018 Quincy rebranded QPay into Covenant Pay Partners and refocused the company. Their current top verticals are transportation, retail/restaurants, b2b, education and municipalities.  By next year they plan to be processing $1 billion in volume. In addition to running Covenant Pay Partners, Quincy has personal passion for politics and will actually be running for Congress in the state of Tennessee.

Lawrence Lee, a partner from Baker McKenzie is our special guest this week on the Pulse of Payments series - part of the Leaders in Payments Podcast. Prior to joining Baker McKenzie, Lawrence was former in-house counsel for the digital currency exchange Coinbase, where he led all corporate and strategic transactions and investments.He’s been repeatedly acknowledged in the legal industry as an authority on tech M&A –in 2020, he was selected by Law360 as a Top Attorney Under 40 in the Technology sector. For several years in a row, Lawrence was named a Rising Star in Mergers and Acquisitions by California Super Lawyers.On this episode we discuss M&A in the payments/fintech space; the IPO market; SPACS and crypto currency.  

Rodney Robinson, CEO and Co-founder of TabaPay is our special guest this week on episode 86 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Rodney grew up in Omaha Nebraska and has been in California for the last 40 years. TabaPay was named after a Lord of the Rings book called There and Back Again or TABA and TabaPay is all about there and back again payments- they can both disburse money instantly as well as collect it back – a round trip payment. They process 15 billion dollars in payments and have grown about 50% in the last year. Rodney is driven by satisfying the customer. One of the main goals of the company is to make sure their customers are happy. He also has some great advice for those just starting their careers in fintech. 

This is the first episode of the Q2 2021 “The Pulse of Payments” series. My special guest this week is Brent Rose, Chief Revenue Officer at Beyond (getbeyond.com)Get Beyond started in 2017 and focuses on advocacy – business, sales and service advocacy specifically.During this episode we discuss how small business in their portfolio are bouncing back from the Covid pandemic. We also go deeper into three segments: restaurants, services and non-profits. According to Brent, some of the segments of small business (retail, restaurants, hospitality, etc.) have been a greatly challenged but simplifying and focusing on managing costs and strategically planning their future will help them thrive moving forward.  We also discuss healthcare, QR codes, text to pay/engagement and other hot topics. 

Brandon Spear, the CEO of TreviPay is our special guest on episode 84 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Brandon grew up in South Africa and completed college in electrical engineering. He moved to the United States about 15 years ago and is currently based in Overland Park Kansas.TreviPay has had some significant changes in the past year and Brandon and I discuss those – which include the rebranding of the company from MSTS to TreviPay and the acquisition of the company by Corsair Capital. TreviPay is a business-to-business payments company and they focus on the seller and help them to grow their business through the extension of payment terms to their clients. Brandon is an avid sports fan and specifically a Kansas City Chiefs football fan – which of course has come with its high and lows over the last two years. On the professional side, leadership development is one of his primary passions.  

Andrew Jamison, the CEO & Co-Founder of Extend is our special guest this week on episode 83 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Andrew spent the first 10 years of his career at SAP and then moved over to American Express for 12 years where he managed all B2B payments solutions, including virtual card platforms and products. Andrew currently lives in New York City with his wife and two small children.  In 2016 he started Extend with two partners. They raised a friends and family round to build their MVP. Extend has starting the process of raising $30 million in a series B.As traditional banks look to compete in the digital world, Extend helps them to build out digital capabilities – an extension that builds or sits over their core technology and repackages what they have in ways companies would want to use them. They started with credit cards or virtual cards as nearly every business has this need.  Andrew has some great advice for those just starting their careers and on a personal level, although living in New York City – he loves the outdoors and more specifically hiking. 

Chris Chestnut, the CEO & Co-Founder of Payix is our special guest this week on episode 82 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.  Chris moved to North Texas from Arizona when he was 12 and has been in North Texas since including attending college at University of Texas in Arlington. Chris assumed his career would be in sales but he actually hated sales, so he went into the IT department at Americredit and learned the technology side of business. He left Americredit and started a company that bought auto receivables.    In 2015 Chris left that company with another partner to start Payix. Payix is a software platform that helps non-bank middle tier lenders communicate with their borrowers and ultimately take their payments – whether that is online, mobile, IVR or with an agent on the phone. Their integration with loan management systems helps to differentiate them in the marketplace. Today Payix has 30-40 team members and has close to 100 customers using their software today. Chris has some great advice for entrepreneurs and for those just starting their careers – whether in payments or not.  

Ari Horowitz, the CEO of Yardline Capital is our special guest this week on episode 81 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Ari grew up just outside of New York City and went to college at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s been an entrepreneur his entire life starting by tarring driveways and tutoring SATs in high school. He’s started over 10 business to date.   Yardline Capital provides non diluted capital for ecommerce sellers operating on marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, eBay and others. Many companies that compete on these marketplaces need capital to grow their business – typically using funds for marketing or buying more inventory. Yardline has been in business for just over a year and is continuing to build their brand. Yardline differentiates themselves because they started the company from the operator’s perspective and know what it takes to be successful as a seller on the marketplaces. They also provide their customers with a seller success manager that helps each customers grow their business through consulting and thought leadership.  

That was Patricia Montesi, the CEO of Qolo and she is our special guest this week on episode 80 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Patricia grew up in Charleston, West Virginia, and went to the University of Miami and has never left south Florida. She started in the car rental space and was there for 9 years before moving into the payments industry.   Qolo is an omnichannel, unified payments platform and is 100% in the cloud. They are powering fintechs and companies competing against fintech. They were founded in 2018, got seed funding in late 2019 and got their first customer in 2020.  The founding team has worked together on and off over the last 20 years before coming together to build Qolo.Qolo is an acronym for quality-of-life organization. Most of their customers demand an omnichannel solution with the most modern APIs and Qolo provides this in multiple engagement models from outsourcing everything to Qolo to bringing and managing everything in house at the customer.  Patricia has a passion to build great products, a great team and a great company. On a personal level she’s passionate about spending time with her family.