Leaders In Payments

This is our first episode celebrating Women Leaders in Payments month and our first special guest is Melissa Townsley-Solis the CEO of GIACT.  We are really blessed this month to have some of the great women leaders in our industry on the show. A special thank you to Paysafe for being our sponsor. In this episode, I talk with Melissa about her childhood and upbringing in the projects, her faith, her guiding principles and how she’s become a successful woman leader in the fintech space. This is truly an amazing and inspiring story.www.leadersinpayments.com www.giact.com Our sponsor: www.paysafe.com Produced by: www.podcast609.com  

My special guest this week is Daniel Doderlein, the CEO of Auka.   The Auka payments platform is the technological foundation of Settle. It’s a secure and compliant transaction platform that offers all the necessary third-party connections for partners to join the scheme. The platform handles all types of use cases and funding sources, ranging from cards and prepaid to direct-to-account access. The creation of the Auka mobile payments platform started in 2010, which makes Auka the first company to build mobile payments infrastructure in the Nordics. Daniel grew up right outside of Oslo, Norway. He was extremely interested in tech from an early age. His grandfather was a nuclear scientist and when Daniel was very young, his grandfather bought a Macintosh computer and Daniel immediately fell in love with tech. Daniel has started many companies over the years and is truly a fintech and mobile payments pioneer with an amazing and interesting journey.  His latest product Settle is a European mobile payments scheme that connects people and businesses.  www.auka.iowww.leadersinpayments.comwww.podcast609.com

My special guest this week is Brad Paterson, the CEO of Splitit.   Splitit is an installment payment solution. They enable consumers to pay on their existing credit cards and split those transactions and pay over time. Their corporate headquarters are in New York and their tech center is in Israel. They are small but growing rapidly at over 300% year over year and about 40% month over month. Splitit has a unique business and recently launched partnerships with Visa and BlueSnap. Brad grew up in a small town just north of Sydney. Spend 12 years in Singapore and is now based in San Francisco. He has a passion for small business and helping them thrive and survive. Outside of work he’s a sports fanatic. www.splitit.comwww.leadersinpayments.comwww.podcast609.com

My special guest this week is Daniela Mielke, the North American CEO for RS2.  RS2 offers a global cloud-based API-enabled omni-channel payment platform. In the U.S. they target ISOs, ISVs and payment facilitators and are now expanding into acquiring.  RS2 has a very comprehensive and flexible platform that is replacing or rewiring the traditional spaghetti platforms that exist today and putting in one global omni-channel platform. Daniela grew up in a very small town in Germany. The day after her high school graduation she left Germany for Switzerland where she went to college and business school. After 15 years in Switzerland she moved to the Bay Area in California where she currently resides. Daniela is passionate about creating technology to improve people’s lives. On a personal level she trains horses for endurance horseback competitions – a fascinating passion indeed.  www.rs2.comwww.leadersinpayments.com www.podcast609.com

My special guest this week is Tom Wimsett, the Chairman of ControlScan. ControlScan provides technologies and services that defend their customers again cyber security threats and at the same time they help their customers streamline and simplify the process of complying with PCIDSS.  ControlScan’s depth of knowledge, experience and expertise for the SMB market in both compliance and managed services solutions provides them true differentiation in the marketplace today.  Tom is a Kentucky native and has been married for 35 years to his wife that he met in high school. They moved around the country 5 times in a 10-year period and finally settled back in Kentucky specifically Bardstown – better known as the Bourbon capital of the world.  Tom has a passion for education and giving back to the community. Over the course of his career he has served on school boards, educational foundation boards and advisory councils for public and private institutions. Tom provides some great advice for those just starting their careers in payments including “love to learn”, work hard and build healthy relationships.  We’ve got a great show this week! www.controlscan.com www.leadersinpayments.com www.podcast609.com 

My special guest this week is Charles Hogan, the president of Signature Card Services. Signature Card is a payment processing platform and gateway technology company that serves all types of verticals and can speak the language of technology innovators and respond accordingly.  Charles is a born and bred Los Angeles, California native. He’s been in payments for over 20 years and was a reconnaissance marine for a number of years. Signature Card is well positioned and has retained all of their employees and has actually been hiring through the covid-19 pandemic.  The company has been focused on three pillars: First - continued growth of their distribution channels, second is focusing on their technology and gateway including new branding in the near future, and the third is M&A. Charles has a passion for creating value through innovation that shows up in real metrics and he also provides some great advice for those just starting their careers in payments. www.signaturecard.com www.leadersinpayments.com www.podcast609.com

My special guest this week is Mark Standfield, the President of Midigator. Midigator is a technology provider that helps merchants, ISOs and acquirers understand their disputes – including chargebacks and how and why they happen and how to avoid them – all in one place.Mark was born and raised in North Carolina and the south and ultimately ended up at school in Idaho and currently lives with his wife and four kids in Utah.  Midigator was started by a direct marketing merchant that needed to understand and handle their disputes in order to scale their business.   Fast forward and now Midigator helps businesses of all types across most every industry. What differentiates them is their focus on technology, consistently improving their product based on industry trends and taking a complete view of their client’s business.   Mark has a passion for learning and provides some sage advice for those just starting their careers in payments.  www.midigator.comwww.leadersinpayments.comwww.podcast609.com

My special guest this week is Amin Shayan, the CEO of littlepay.Littlepay is a payment processing platform for the public transportation industry – it allows travelers to use a debit or credit card – which could be physical, virtual, on the phone, or a wearable to get on a bus or train to pay for their ticket.Amin was born in Iran and moved to the United States at an early age. After the overthrow of the dictatorship in Iran, his family went back to Iran, but as history would have it things didn’t work out and they moved to Melbourne, Australia. It is a truly fascinating story.Amin became an investment banker in New York which took him to London. And then back Melbourne where he became a part of the founding team at littlepay in 2016.Littlepay manages 70% of the bus payments in the UK outside of London and more recently, they are developing the payment system for the City of Helsinki transit, and the City of Porto in Portugal and should be running some pilots in California later this year. Amin loves history, international affairs and keeping up with politics and is also a hang-gliding pilot. www.littlepay.com www.leadersinpayments.comThis and all episode are produced by: www.podcast609.com

My special guest this week is Maeve Mckenna Duska, the Chief Marketing Officer of USA Technologies. USA Technologies specializes in enterprise software and business optimization in the unattended retail space –They provide the hardware, payment processing and software to help their customizers optimize their business.The COVID19 crises is certainly accelerating many of the trends toward unattended retail including things like contactless payments, digital payments or really the reduced use of cash in our society. Maeve grew up in a tiny seashore town in central New Jersey and loves getting to spend time at the beach. She has a passion for her team and all of the employees at USA Technologies and also provides some great advice to those just starting out in the industry. To learn more about USA Technologies visit:www.usatech.com www.leadersinpayments.comAll of the Leaders In Payments podcasts are produced by:www.podcast609.com 

This week's special guest is Jamie Barlett, the Founder/President and CEO of PolyPay.Jamie grew up Michigan and Missouri and went to school in Massachusetts and then took her first job in California. After taking a position with a leading management consulting firm she moved on to a client and subsequently started her own merchant services business – PolyPay. PolyPay provides merchant services in a transparent and cost-effective way with high touch customer support and differentiates itself by truly taking care of their customers and always doing the right thing. No matter when the service issue happens or questions arise, PolyPay jumps on the opportunity to help their merchants succeed.   Jamie has a passion for researching and learning and especially has an unhealthy obsession with Scotland. Surround yourself with people smarter than you, network extensively, listen and learn is just some of the advice Jamie gives.www.polypay.comwww.leadersinpayments.comwww.podcast609.com