Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. Joining me on this show are Stephen Randall, Global Head of Liquidity Management Services in the Treasury and Trade Solutions business at Citi, and Ricardo Josua, CEO and founder of Pismo, a banking and cards platform. The two firms are working to strengthen Citi’s corporate demand deposit accounts (DDA) to clients worldwide We’ll be talking about the partnership these two firms struck, how it fits into Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions’ tech strategy, and how it will impact Citi clients. Pismo’s Josua explains what a microservice-based ecosystem is and how it behaves. We also chat about the importance of having core expertise and knowledge in cloud-based banking and payment capabilities like Pismo has. Here’s my discussion with Citi’s Stephen Randall and Pismo’s Ricardo Josua.

Trintech CFO, Omar Choucair, talks about the recent acquisition of Fiserv's reconciliation businesses. They discuss the opportunities and challenges of M&A in SaaS and fintech, and the market outlook for the remainder of this year into 2024.

Today's companies think about going global from the start and in fintech, that means thinking about payments and money movement across borders. Partnerships can play a strategic and tactical role in going international. Join me Tearsheet's editor and Airwallex's Ravi Adusumilli, SVP of Partnerships for a LinkedIn Live session. As General Manager, Americas, Ravi oversees the company’s strategy and operations in the region, identifying opportunities to drive the company’s rapid regional growth. As SVP of Partnerships, Ravi oversees an international team across the US, APAC and EMEA, managing Airwallex’s extensive global network of strategic and financial partnerships. Prior to Airwallex, Ravi was Head of Global Partnerships at Pinterest, and also held a number of executive leadership roles across several fast-growth startups and tech businesses including with Tile, Netflix, Hitachi and Hewlett Packard.

We're kicking off a special podcast series where we explore this fascinating Gen Z deeper: their relationship with money, how they like to save, spend, and borrow money, their fears and aspirations, and their connections to social issues. This is part of the content series we've been doing on Steez, our branded work with Publicis Sapient on Gen Z and financial services. You can download our free Gap Z report on the disconnect between where banks think they are with this generation and what young customers really feel about their FIs, and what to do about it. Go to steezlife.co Our first podcast in the series is with Capital One's Shaun Rowley. Shaun is the National Capital One Café Executive, supporting all of the bank's Cafés throughout the country but calls St. Cloud, Minnesota home. He celebrated 20 years with Capital One this year. Since starting as a part time contact center associate, he has held multiple positions in front line teams, product, marketing, strategy, and analysis.

Welcome to our latest Tearsheet Live event. We're doing these weekly -- Wednesdays at 12 EST -- on Linkedin. Follow us here. I'm your host, Tearsheet editor, Zack Miller. Joining us is Hunter Somerville, creative director of Innovation Refunds. Occasionally we dig in to marketing and campaigns and how financial services and fintech companies are finding new ways to create leads, acquire new customers, and build brand. What's Innovation Refunds? Hunter Somerville, Innovation Refunds: The company has been around for a few years. And the mission is really to be a champion of small businesses. We feel like they're the backbone of the American economy and sometimes kind of overlooked and underappreciated. So, you know, the most powerful thing a small business can have, or medium sized business or any business for that matter is capital. So however we can we tried to make that happen. And currently, we're really focused on the ERC employee retention credit, which was part of the Cares Act. I think people are very familiar with PPP loans. USC was a part of that same, the Cares Act as the PPP loans. And so we're doing I think, a pretty darn good job at helping more and more small businesses, be aware of the ERC and take advantage of it if they are eligible. Listen to the whole episode: https://tearsheet.co/?p=55888

Welcome to another Tearsheet LinkedIn Live session. Joining me is Steven Faust, Dash Solutions CEO. Earlier this year, Prepaid Technologies rebranded as Dash. The company moved into a new corporate headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama. The company serves clients with 4 modalities: disbursements, rewards, spend, and pay. Stephen and I discuss the company’s rebrand and how that’s impacting the business. We discuss organic trends in the modalities where the firm competes. Stephen shares how Dash differentiates itself from a growing number of competitors and the impact the macroeconomy is having on his firm’s business.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Tearsheet's editor in chief, Zack Miller. One of the things I appreciate about Google’s approach to finding the right products and services in financial services and fintech to offer its users is that it’s playing the long game. A year ago, Jenny Cheng and her team launched Google Wallet which combines the payment capabilities of Google Pay with the convenience of storing things digitally that you would normally carry in a real world wallet, like a drivers license or a health insurance card. Jenny joins us on the podcast to discuss the market for mobile wallets and how she and Google wanted to stand out from the growing choices consumers have. She shares some demographic information about who uses digital wallets and who doesn’t, homing in on the ability to truly free a user from the constraints of a digital wallet as a potential avenue to get the over 40 year old set to finally adopt wallets. Jenny also describes the power of an ecosystem approach that Google has brought to Google Wallet, servicing merchants and consumers, yes, but also 3rd parties that are needed to create a more expansive offering. Jenny Cheng is my guest today on the show.

After years of competing in the US, core software provider Temenos now has over a thousand clients in the U.S., including Regions Bank. Nelly Rezny leads a team of business consultants across the Americas, responsible for working with financial institutions with all of their different transformation initiatives. Nelly joins me on the podcast to discuss the challenges banks are seeing in the market and how that impacts their technology and innovation plans. We talk about which technologies she sees as table stakes and what's coming down the pike. Nelly also shares her views about channels and the role core banking software can play in the future of financial services.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. What I continue to find interesting is that the fintech tech stack peels away like an onion. Even the innovators have 3rd party innovation under the hood. Joining me on the podcast today is Tim Astanov, SVP, Product Commercialization & Partnerships at TabaPay. TabaPay is one of those companies that power payments for the fintech innovators, like SoFi, Remitly, Melio, and others. It offers direct access to 15 banking partners, 14 networks, multiple geographies, products and features in a unified API. Tim has an awesome background – previous to his current position, he was head of P2P in North America for Visa Direct and had important roles at Discover and Amex. We talk about the challenges and opportunities moving money in and out of bank accounts. Tim shares his views on the impact real time payments will have on the industry and its monetization efforts. Lastly we look to some of the biggest trends in the industry as a north star pointing where things are headed. Tim Astanov is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller, Tearsheet’s editor in chief. On today’s show, we’re going to explore opportunities. These types of opportunities we’ll be talking about don’t come around everyday but when they do, they can be transformative, if you’re able to really step up. I talk to Jannick Malling, co-CEO and co-founder of investing app, Public. For younger investors, the meme stock rally offered an opportunity to participate, many for the first time, in the stock market. And for Jannick and Public, it offered an even bigger opportunity: to scale rapidly. But this required smart moves – Jannick and team distanced themselves from competitor Robinhood’s revenue model, pay for order flow, which became an important topic as it opened and closed trading windows on popular meme stocks. Jannick recognized the power in this Game Stop moment and shares his thinking that went into strategizing around it. Last week, Public also released a new generative AI investment research tool called Alpha. It helps people, both newbies and experienced investors, learn more about the investment process and specific investments. Jannick shares his experience working with these new technologies, with a keen eye on how they can be used to service customers, and where they are headed in the future. Jannick Malling is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.