Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

Patch is an API-based solution enabling companies to embed carbon footprint estimation and removal directly into their digital products and experiences. Today I’m talking to its CEO Brennan Spellacy to tell us how Patch works, as well as his insights on the whole carbon offsetting market, which has grown tremendously over the past few years, attracting a lot of interest. While it’s not a central solution to the wider problem of climate change, carbon offsetting an important piece of the puzzle, so tune in to find out how it all works.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios in partnership with embedded finance platform Helix by Q2. In our conversation with Ahon Sarkar, GM of Helix, we talk about what it takes for companies to succeed in offering Banking as a Service today. We break down all the important questions they must ask themselves, like: How to make sure your company should even be thinking about doing banking; Five core traits common to all the companies that succeed in Banking as a Service; How to prepare for jumping into the process and be ready for the expected unknowns; What to consider when choosing the right technology and banking partners; And, we wrapped up with a sneak peak of what Helix is busy doing and will be getting into the rest of the year.

Today we’re talking about crypto lending – many crypto holders out there don’t plan on spending it or cashing out, and now they can earn pretty high yields on their crypto assets, which baffle many folks in traditional finance. My guests today are Matt Ballensweig, managing director and co-head of trading and lending at Genesis, and Shannon Allmon, General Manager of Retail at BlockFi. Genesis and BlockFi are both some of the biggest centralized lending platforms out there, so tune in to find out how the crypto market evolved into offering retail and institutional investors the possibility to lend with crypto assets as collateral.

Today’s episode is about building financial literacy, both as a solution to a financially stressed America, and as a medium for branding and marketing. A few fintechs do this well, and Stash is one of them. Stash is a personal finance app that aims to make investing accessible to the 99% (of Americans). And to get people investing, they need to first understand the basics of their financial picture. I’ve got the chance to virtually sit down with Stash’s CMO, Dale Sperling, to pick her brain about how, without needing to spend huge budgets, Stash uses creativity, data, and the right partnerships, to develop and strengthen Stash’s brand mission of financial literacy across America – in their campaign Stash101 and beyond.

Welcome back to the Power of Payments podcast. I’m your host Ismail Umar, and in today’s episode, we discuss how digital payments are making it easier for young consumers to overspend, and how the global microchip shortage is affecting the payments industry. We also talk about Revolut’s first venture into in-store payments with the Revolut Reader, as well as recent research from Marqeta that shows a growing level of consumer trust in mobile wallets.

My guest today is Mathias Wikstrom, CEO of Doconomy. Doconomy provides data services that help businesses monitor and assess their environmental footprint based on transactional and financial data. Consumers can find out the footprint of their lifestyle choices, brands can calculate their product’s footprint. And they’re also working to develop a tool that enables banks to aggregate the information provided to their consumers – this is really important because it means helping banks report on their ESG impact, by harnessing the data and insights from their total consumer credit portfolio. Me and Mathias had a really awesome conversation, so tune in for more on climate data, how it helps us understand our impact on the world and how the financial system can facilitate a net zero economy

Today we’re talking about how banks are digitizing their commercial lending operations. If consumer lines took the front seat when it comes to innovation and digitization, commercial lines have been waiting quietly in the backseat but are now next to be brought forward with the latest technologies and underwriting efficiencies. My guests today are Dan O’Malley, CEO of Numerated, a SaaS digital loan origination system, and Peter Grant, the President of OakNorth, which aims to transform commercial lending with its Credit Intelligence software product.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller, Tearsheet’s editor in chief. I find it fascinating to hear how some of the largest FIs handle emerging technologies. Fidelity, for example, has the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, where it tests and assesses new tech, like the metaverse and blockchain. It’s almost like Fidelity’s skunkworks R&D arm. Today on our program I have Adam Schouela, the head of emerging technology at the center. Our discussion spans different technologies, emerging use cases, and sheds some light on how Fidelity thinks about its priorities and customers out into the future. We talk about the experiments Adam and Co. have done around blockchain technology, around the metaverse, and where it sees opportunities and just as importantly, where it doesn’t see opportunities. Adam Schouela is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Power of Payments podcast. I’m your host Ismail Umar, and as you’ve probably noticed by now, we decided to do a rebrand! We think this new title for the podcast is shorter and snappier, and it also matches the name of our upcoming Power of Payments conference, which will be Tearsheet’s first conference on payments, as well as our first-ever in-person event. It’ll be held in New York on September 15. Today, I’m speaking with Bar Geron, co-founder and CEO at Balance. Balance is an Israeli startup that claims to be the first B2B ecommerce payments platform that offers a consumer-like checkout experience for merchants and marketplaces. In our conversation, Bar touched upon a number of topics, including the importance of bringing B2B payments online and how that’s linked with global supply chain issues, BNPL for business, as well as other B2C trends that are slowly being adopted in B2B transactions.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Zack Miller, Tearsheet's editor in chief. For this episode, I’m joined by Darren Parslow, global head of Visa Business Solutions.  Darren and I chat about the innovation in the B2B payments space over the last few years. We discuss how Visa helps SMBs enhance their money flow operations. Lastly, we look to the future and I ask Darren what advice he would give to small businesses looking to digitize operations to better manage cashflow and expand payments beyond the point of sale to grow their businesses. Here's my conversation with Darren.