Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

The growth of digital banking has also welcomed the emergence of virtual cards. Virtual cards exist only in digital form, in a digital wallet. Say bye to plastic and hello to code. This is a big reason why virtual cards are increasing in popularity – they offer more robust security measures, making it harder for hackers and fraudsters to skirt the system. There's also very compelling business use cases for virtual cards. Corporate expense management might be moving from tediously having to submit all that boring info about that client lunch to just tapping a virtual corporate card with a smartphone. Some have even called this a revolution in business expense management – no more boring time consuming software, now a company can issue however many corporate cards it wants and each card can have its own restrictions. I'm talking about all of this today with my guests Kalpesh Kapadia, CEO at Deserve, a credit-card-as-a-service provider, and Brian Barnes, CEO at personal finance platform M1. Click here to read the transcript of our conversation: https://tearsheet.co/where-credits-due-podcast/where-credits-due-ep-13-the-growing-popularity-of-virtual-cards-with-deserve-and-m1

Welcome back to the Power of Payments podcast. I’m your host Ismail Umar, and in today’s episode, we will discuss why JPMorgan Chase is launching a digital rent payment solution, and how American consumers plan to use more flexible payments this holiday season. We will also talk about MoneyGram’s recent crypto expansion, and the potential role of digital currencies in the remittance industry.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. I’m just back from Money 20/20 and a big theme this year was embedded finance. There were a host of old and new players vying for position in the financial tech stack. It makes sense – a few years ago, you could have counted the embedded platforms on one hand. Now there are dozens, just in the US. Enter Lithic, a software infrastructure company that enables companies to launch new card programs. I sit with co-founder and CEO, Bo Jiang, who shares his firm’s genesis story and describes the impact being born out of a consumer app has had on Lithic. We talk about how the firm stacks up against other embedded finance players and the need to scale as a platform in the space. Bo Jiang is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Today we're talking about voluntary carbon markets and carbon credit ratings. So many companies are now making net zero commitments, and the way to get there is by cutting down their own emissions and using voluntary carbon credits to compensate for residual emissions, as it's nearly impossible to be perfectly carbon neutral without them. However, the voluntary carbon credit market is relatively new and many companies are over relying on carbon credits in the rush to call themselves carbon neutral. In order for this market to function properly, it needs accessible and quality information as well as trust and integrity. We need more funds to flow towards climate solutions, and carbon markets can facilitate this by creating investable carbon assets. But we need to ensure that on the supply side, the carbon credits are of the highest quality, and on the demand-side we need to avoid ‘greenwashing’ by ensuring those credits do not allow companies to avoid cutting their own emissions. I'm talking about all this today with Tommy Ricketts, CEO of BeZero Carbon, a company that provides carbon credit ratings and research tools to support buyers, intermediaries, investors, and carbon project developers. To read the transcript of our conversation, visit Tearsheet.co.

With a recession looming, consumer spending and overall financial health is under pressure, creating a tricky environment for B2C fintech lenders. Today, thereʼs less demand for consumer loans, and lenders are tightening their credit books. The ʻcautious approachʼ narrative prevails in many interviews and conference calls. But not every fintech lender is the same. There are many business models currently on the market – some more successful than others – and on most of them, the juryʼs still out. Most havenʼt been tested yet by a down market, which is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome for any lender. In this context, I sat down with Renaud Laplanche, CEO at Upgrade, one of the main direct-to-consumer fintech lenders in the US. We discussed the macro environment, and how he designed Upgradeʼs business model in a way that is proving resilient during these turbulent times. To read the transcript of our conversation, head over to Tearsheet.co.

Welcome back to the Power of Payments podcast. I’m your host Ismail Umar, and in today’s episode, I’m joined by Chris Tsai, co-founder and CEO at Resolve. Resolve is a B2B payments firm that offers a BNPL solution for business purchases. It allows merchants to extend net terms to their business customers by taking care of credit checks, invoice financing, and accounts receivable processes. Resolve spun out of Affirm and is backed by Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal and Affirm. In our conversation, Chris talks about how Resolve’s product is different than that of consumer BNPL providers like Affirm and Klarna, how current macroeconomic challenges are affecting firms in the space, and what we can expect from the B2B BNPL sector in the coming years.

When it comes to investing in sustainable projects, there are still many unknowns. Demand from investors is growing, but it's not consistent across the board and connecting it to the supply side remains challenging. Project financiers usually take less technical risks on more mature technologies, and when it comes to sustainability, many technologies are new. We need tools that enable project financiers to get comfortable with exploring and entering new markets. It will be interesting to see how the new Inflation Reduction Act will help on this front, and we are chatting about this today with Amanda Li, Co-Founder and COO of Banyan Infrastructure. Banyan is an investment facilitator for sustainable infrastructure headquartered in San Francisco, a business on a mission to unlock capital for the financing of green infrastructure projects of all sizes in a profitable way. Amanda has over ten years’ experience in engineering for sustainable development. Passionate about opening financial doors for green infrastructure projects. We had a real fun conversation, so let's dive right in.

Today we're having an honest conversation about Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). The ease of use of BNPL products has been associated with increased spending and could drive negative consumer consequences, prompting US regulatory agencies to look deeper at this rapidly growing space. Last December, the CFPB launched an investigation into the business practices in BNPL sector due to mounting concerns about “accumulating debt, regulatory arbitrage, and data harvesting in a consumer credit market already quickly changing with technology.” Then the bureau issued orders to five BNPL lenders, asking for detailed information on the activities and risks inherent to their lending practices. Director Rohit Chopra ordered Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal, and Zip to submit information so that the bureau can report to the public about industry practices and risks. Now the report is out, and we're exploring it in today's episode with my guest Marshall Lux. With a credit risk experience spanning over three decades, including serving as JPMorgan Chase’s Chief Risk Officer of consumer products during the global financial crisis, Marshall supports enhanced regulatory oversight in the BNPL space. He wrote a paper on the risks associated with BNPL, and on what regulation could look like in this space. You can check it out here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/mrcbg/files/182_AWP_final.pdf To read the transcript of our conversation, please go to Tearsheet.co.

Welcome back to the Power of Payments podcast. I’m your host Ismail Umar, and in today’s episode, we take a look at how digital wallets have performed in the US over the past year, and why credit cards are struggling to fight off competitors like BNPL and debit cards. We also discuss Visa’s latest move indicating its growing interest in the global creator economy.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Zack Miller, Tearsheet's editor in chief. Building on top of a bank – the way Banking as a Service enables a tech company to do – has some interesting side effects. Who controls the traffic in the network? Regulators are increasingly interested in sorting out how financial institutions partner with tech firms and that means understanding how all these constituent parts fit together. Today’s guest is Andrew Coward, general manager of IBM’s software networking business. His team works with financial institutions on SDN – or software defined networking – to bring control and policy management back into their infrastructure regardless of where their application lives. Andrew explains what SDN is and how we got here in history. We discuss how SDN plays into the future of financial services, too. I ask Andrew about the rollout of 5G and how that impacts banks and traditional FIs. Andrew Coward is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.