Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

Link to the full transcript: https://tearsheet.co/payments/power-of-payments-ep-22-frankly-the-most-important-asset-for-smb-owners-is-time-chases-brad-brodigan/ Welcome back to the Power of Payments podcast. I’m your host Ismail Umar, and today, I’m joined by Brad Brodigan, managing director and global head of SMB payments at Chase. Brad says he has a passion for working at the intersection of payments, technology, and small business. He’s spent the last 15 years using innovations in payments technology to provide SMB owners with more efficient ways of running their business. Over the last decade, Brad has held a variety of roles at firms including PayPal, Dosh, and BlueVine. In our conversation today, Brad discusses the most important trends he’s seeing in SMB payments right now, the kinds of attributes that SMBs look for in a payment processor, and how their needs differ from those of enterprises and retail customers. He also talks about how current macroeconomic challenges are affecting the demands and expectations that small business owners have from their financial providers.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Zack Miller, Tearsheet's editor in chief. I don’t know what they serve at the snack bar at Intuit, maker of QuckBooks and the financial ecosystem around it, but when you speak to senior leadership, they seem almost maniacal about serving SMBs. And what the firm has done over the past few years is make its bookkeeping software the center of a financial services ecosystem that includes payments, lending, and banking.  Now, Intuit is looking to take its ecosystem and tools to midmarket and B2B firms with the launch of the QuickBooks Business Network which creates one of the largest B2B networks and automates B2B payments, improving overall cash flow for this particular user set I’m joined by Juliana Berger, the director of payments for QuickBooks. You’ll hear the passion she has for serving SMBs. We talk about the breadth and depth of Intuit’s SMB offering. Juliana shares the pain points SMBs are feeling in this economy and what the software firm is doing to address them. There’s a lot of talk about invoicing and payments flows with an increasing amount of automation mixed in. Her excitement about the space is infectious. Intuit’s Juliana Berger is my guest today on the podcast.

We’re in a transitional period when it comes to how banks and fintechs partner. If 2022 was the year of launching partnerships between FIs and tech firms, this year is more about fine-tuning them. Partner banks are seeing more scrutiny as more banks have chosen the route of serving fintechs.  At Money 2020 this year, Tearsheet Editor-in-Chief Zack Miller sat with Chafic Haddad, Citi’s global head of fintech within the firm’s transaction bank. When he said that one of the largest international banks was really trying to align and position itself as a global partner bank to top fintechs, Miller told Chafic he had to join us on the podcast to talk about what all that means. Chafic shares the mandate of his new role within the firm and why non-bank partnerships have been the fastest growing segment over the past few years. We discuss what Citi offers fintechs and the challenges and opportunities in providing these firms with global transaction and trade capabilities.

In the fifth and final episode of the Steez podcast, we talk about how Gen Z views sustainable investing. They are not just investing to align with their values. They are actively driving change with every purchasing preference and transaction. Our host, Rebecca Cohen, is joined by Jessica Matthews, Managing Director and Global Head of Sustainable Investing at J.P. Morgan, Jean-Louis Warnholz (CEO and Co-founder), and Eunice Jung (Head of Partnerships) from Future.

Welcome to the first Power of Payments podcast episode of 2023. For our first episode of the year, we’re doing something a little different. Instead of doing a round-up of recent news in the world of payments, this week we’re going to talk about what the near future looks like for the payments industry. To kick off my payments coverage for 2023, I wanted to hear from people in the industry about what they believed would be the most important trends in payments this year. I asked a number of experts from across the payments spectrum to share their thoughts with me and predict what trends we can expect from the industry in the next 12 months. Based on those predictions, I’ve compiled 10 trends that are likely to shape the payments landscape this year. Important themes for 2023 – in no particular order – involve B2B payments, M&A activity, real-time payments, digital wallets, fraud, sustainability, and more.

Today on the Tearsheet Podcast we have Trish Mosconi, chief strategy officer at Synchrony. In addition to strategy for the bank, she also heads up the firm’s venture investing and M&A activities.  We discuss her mandate and how Synchrony looks at investing and partnering with fintech as it continues to invest in its consumer finance platform. I appreciate how Trish and the bank have paired strategy to both investing for the long term and partnering for the present. The deterioration of the investment environment around fintechs can definitely play into Synchrony’s plans.  Trish Mosconi is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

In episode 4, we talk about how Gen Z is changing the financial space in e-commerce. They prefer shopping experiences that are more convenient and spontaneous, seamlessly interwoven with social media. Our host, Rebecca Cohen is joined by Mallory Russell, head of global content at Square, Michael Saadat, head of public policy at Block, and Maran Nalluswami, SVP of diversified and value at Synchrony.

In our journey of reducing our carbon footprint, it turns out that it’s not only what we buy that can make the difference — how we pay for things can play a part, too. According to a GoCardless study, using alternative payment methods like ACH can help consumers lower their carbon footprint by generating zero carbon emissions. This comes in comparison to credit cards, which in 2021 generated an amount of CO2 so high it was the equivalent of driving a diesel car around the Earth approximately 43,000 times. Considering that consumers are actively looking for more ways to reduce their environmental impact, how should we think about payments? How can this sector decarbonize, and what impact can that have? To help us answer these questions, I’ve invited Ben Knight, Head of Environmental Sustainability at GoCardless, a direct bank payment solutions company. Ben’s diverse experience paired with his passion for sustainability and the fact that he’s just a great person to talk to, resulted in a really fun conversation.

If you’ve been to Money 20/20 the past couple of years, you’re likely to have encountered Zeta. Maybe you were one of the 10,000 people who attended the Journey and Foreigner concerts the company sponsored. Or maybe you stopped by the firm’s big booth at the center of the floor. That type of marketing – what founder Bhavin Turakhia likes to call ‘nuclear strikes’ – is helping the credit card as a service firm mature in the US. Bhavin shares with us the playbook he’s using to grow Zeta, honed from his experience building and growing three other SaaS firms in his career. We discuss why Zeta targets the largest banks and fintechs and how the firm is landing and expanding via enterprise sales. Talking to Bhavin is like talking to a professor of real life business – he readily shares his experiences and frameworks for how he’s thinking about scaling his fintech firm. Bhavin Turakhia is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

In episode #3 of the Steez podcast, we talk about FinTok, and why Gen Zers are getting their financial education from social media. Our host, Rebecca Cohen is joined by Michael Wang, founder, and CEO of Prometheus, Jeff Frommer, Chief Content Officer at MoneyLion, and Michael Borough founder of Altro.