Leaders In Payments

This is episode 39 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Lenny Crotty, the President of Metrics Global is our special guest this week. Lenny was born in a small town in Ireland called Ennis where the local airport has the claim to fame of having established the world’s first airport duty free store. Lenny was named President at Metrics Global at the end of August after spending the last 20 plus years in payments. Metrics Global is a global payments and fintech company that has been around about 15 years. They are headquartered in Las Vegas and have built a unified commerce and payments platform that connects both merchants and technology and payments partners to a global marketplace. They support international multi-currency acquiring in about 170 countries and currencies and have local acquiring capabilities in 59 markets.   Lenny has a passion for payments and fintech and a personal passion for self-development, wine, travel, reading and running.  www.metricsglobal.comwww.leadersinpayments.comwww.podcast609.com

This is episode 38 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and our special guest this week is Danny Shader the CEO of PayNearMe.  Danny was born and currently lives in Palo Alto, California but in between he lived in New York and LA. PayNearMe is a payments CRM company that manages the customer financial interactions between a biller and their customer. They process all the payments, run the payments portal, the mobile experience, the IVR, the software the customer service reps use, and much much more. They process the cash too – through their proprietary cash network where they have integrated into the point of sale systems at 27,000 retail locations including CVS, 7-11, Family Dollar and others. A bar code is issued to the customer and then scanned by the clerk behind the counter and they pay their bill just as they would for a gallon of milk. And this is all done in real-time so before they even reach their car in the parking lot the bill has been paid.    Their perfect customer is one that is managing recurring billing where they don’t want to custom code their own customer relationship management system or cobble together a solution of outside vendors. Ideal customers are those handling recurring billing through multiple channels and want to increase their payment volume, decrease their customer service calls and spend their engineering resources on things that will move their business forward. Danny provides some sounds advise for those starting their careers in fintech or payments. He suggests to find something you are very interested in, work with people you really like and work hard – do those things and you’ll do well.  www.paynearme.comwww.leadersinpayments.comwww.podcast609.com 

This is episode 37 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Stephen Pair, the Co-Founder and CEO of BitPay is our special guest this week.  Stephen is a Georgia native and went to Georgia Tech where he got his Computer Science degree and currently he lives just outside of Atlanta.  BitPay was founded in 2011 with the idea of enabling companies to accept BitCoin payments similar to accepting credit cards. BitPay built an API similar to a common payments gateway for merchants to tap into so they could accept BitCoin – which at the time was the only cryptocurrency.  Their customers are traditionally in the IT services or cloud hosting space, electronics retailers or in the video gaming space. They also process transactions in the B2B space.   If you look at all of the cryptocurrencies and blockchains today there are hundreds of billions of dollars or wealth stored in these blockchains and by adding cryptocurrency into your payments platform you can tap into that wealth. When a company adds cryptocurrency as an alternative payment method, they see that 40-50% of those customers who pay with BitPay are actually net new customers.   Stephen tells an interesting story about how they got the domain name bitpay.com Stephen has a passion for solving difficult problems using technology. From a personal perspective he loves flying. He is a pilot and has his own plane and uses flying as an escape from the daily grind of running a business.  If you want to learn more about BitCoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain as it relates to the payments industry this is the episode you need to listen to. 

This is episdoe 36 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Jeremy Almond, the Co-Founder and CEO of Paystand is our special guest this week.  Jeremy grew up in Stockton, California. He was one of the first people in his family to attend college and grad school and currently lives on the beach in Santa Cruz. Paystand is a b2b payment network. So, what Venmo does for consumers, Paystand does for companies engaging in large commercial transactions.   Paystand brings transformation in three areas 1. no paper – meaning digitization and automation, 2. no fees as they operate as a SaaS business model and 3. the value of an open industry. Jeremy has a fascinating story about how and why he started the company, including a turning point in his life driven from a family tragedy.  He provides some great insights about the future of payments and also provides some great insights for those just starting their careers in fintech or payments.    

This is episode 35 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and David Josephs, the CEO of DaVinci Payments is our special guest this week.  David lives just outside of Chicago, grew up in Queens and went to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He worked on Capitol Hill for 6 years and has been in payments for 20 years. DaVinci Payments tries to do justice to their name by blending art and science and a quarter century of experience to provide corporate payments through virtual and physical means with prepaid cards and other form factors.  David has a passion for payments and a personal passion for reading. He provides some great insights about the future of payments and also provides some great insights for those just starting their careers.   www.davincipayments.comwww.leadersinpayments.comwww.podcast609.com

This is episode 34 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Richie Serna, the CEO and Co-Founder of Finix is our special guest this week.  I’m honored to have Richie on the show this week. Richie was born and raised in California and was the first in his family to go to college. He received his bachelors degree in political science at Harvard and started his career in management consulting. Finix is a payments infrastructure provider that allows software companies to embed or integrate payments into their software which provides a better user experience and adds a new revenue stream – basically allowing them to transform their business models.  Richie has several interesting stories during the episode including things about the “hacker house” and the naming of the company. Richie has a great passion for people – from his customers to his employees. This is an episode you don’t want to miss.www.finix.comwww.leadersinpayments.com www.podcast609.com

This is episode 33 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Keith Smith, the Co-Founder and CEO of Payability is our special guest this week.  Payability offers ecommerce sellers with friction-free cash flow and working capital solutions. These ecommerce sellers are typically on a large platform like Amazon or Shopify. Payability has a unique model and one I think you’ll find very interesting. Keith has a passion for his kids and being a Dad first. Professionally he loves to see how Payability helps small businesses and entrepreneurs live the American dream of starting and running their own business.  www.payability.comwww.leadersinpayments.com www.podcast609.com

This is episode 32 of the Leaders in Payments podcast featuring my special guest Craig McDonald the Chief Business Officer for Trustly.  Trustly offers payments that cost less than debit and have a higher approval rate than cards and there are no chargebacks. Trustly was founded in 2008 and is the global leader in Online Banking Payments. They facilitate payments to merchants directly from consumers online bank accounts, without going through the card networks. Trustly has relationships with more than 6,000 banks and over 600 million consumers across Europe and North America. They serve many of the world’s most prominent merchants within e-commerce, financial services, gaming, media, telecom and travel. Trustly has over 460 employees across Europe, the US and Latin America. .Craig has a passion for helping merchants find solutions that address real pain points. He also enjoys spending time with his teenage daughters. www.trustly.comwww.leadersinpayments.comwww.podcast609.com

This is episode 31 of the Leaders in Payments podcast featuring Jonathon Arst the CEO of Pastri.  Pastri started by partnering with banks but more recently has been working with software companies to help them monetize the payments portion of their software. They compete in the unattended payments vertical such as laundry mats and the tow truck fleet management segment and more. Jonathon has been a strong leader through the pandemic and has kept his team together and focused during these challenging times. Jonathon has a passion for sales and helping businesses and entrepreneurs succeed.  On a personal note he loves the outdoors, surfing, skiing, kiteboarding and more. www.pastri.comwww.leadersinpayments.com www.podcast609.com 

This is episode 30 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and this week we have a very special episode. As you know we spent the entire month of July talking about Women Leaders in Payments and we had some incredible women leaders on the show. In this episode we’re going to listen to a few key points that were brought out by each of our guests. Melissa Townsley-Solis - Founder and CEO of GIACT Paulette Rowe - EO of Integrated & Ecommerce Solutions at Paysafe Laura Miller - President of JPMorgan Merchant Services Joan Herbig - President of the Wnet and Board Member of ControlScan Sue Kelsey - EVP of Global Prepaid & Financial Inclusion at Mastercard Debbie Guerra - EVP of On-Demand Merchant Solutions at ACI Worldwide Lou Ann Alexander - Chief Product Officer at Early WarningDenise Tahali - SVP of Sales at Paysafe We heard stories about overcoming tremendous odds to start and run a company to personal stories of being scared but pushing through to success, all the way to tremendous advice for those just starting their careers in payments.  This month was a great view into women leadership in this great industry we call payments.Leaders in Payments Producted by Podcast609, LLC