Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. One of the most exciting stories of this generation of fintech firms is Galileo. Recently acquired by SoFi for $1.2 billion, Galileo now provides the payments and banking backbone via APIs to many of the top names in the game — Chime, TransferWise, Robinhood and Bluevine. Firms like these use Galileo to open accounts and issue cards. Clay Wilkes founded Galileo 20 years ago and continues to lead the company today. He joins us on the podcast today to talk about why his firm is seeing so much interest from companies across industries that want to launch financial products. Clay describes the genesis story behind Galileo and what the early opportunities were for the problems he was attempting to solve. He describes the evolution of the platform, as financial services have matured. Clay dives into the use cases for his customers and lastly, he talks about the product and corporate strategy pipeline he’s got lined up for the near future. Clay Wilkes is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Banking systems were put to the test, surviving the impact of the current pandemic. In many cases, this crisis accelerated digital transformation programs. There is increased demand for digital solutions that require banks to seriously think about their legacy tech stacks and models. Joining us on the podcast is Rajashekara Visweswara Maiya, Finacle’s VP, Head-Business Consulting, Cloud & Blockchain Business. We discuss banking’s role in helping the economy recover and how the shutdown of physical branches and manual processes being unavailable have led to increased access to digital services. We talk about how banking modernization has suddenly become an urgent goal, leaving banking management to question which programs truly make a difference to the end-user. Maiya Visweswara is my guest today on the podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Zack Miller. Small business demand fo government relief is at record levels. Bigger banks, for the most part, have forsaken SMBs. Smaller banks and fintechs have emerged to service small and medium businesses with streamlined loan processes, technology, and new onboarding tools. Tearsheet's Sara Toth Stub wrote a story on he challenges SMBs are facing in this market and what type of financial services firms have emerged to help them. Sara Toth Stub is my guest today for a deep dive podcast to discuss how small businesses are increasingly turning to smaller banks and fintechs during the pandemic.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Today’s guest is Ronald Oliveira, the U.S. CEO of challenger bank Revolut. Ron has a lot of experience in the traditional side of banking as he takes over the reins for the European fintech’s efforts stateside. We discuss the challenges and opportunities of the US market. Ron describes the firm’s product rollout cycle for Revolut, which wants to be a global bank. We would be remiss if we didn’t chat about the fintech vs. incumbent bank scenario and Ron’s perspective is important given the two worlds he’s straddled. Ron Oliveira is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. We’ve got an interesting episode teed up for you today. It’s a case study with Finlocker and Fiserv. Finlocker is a super app that integrates with banks and other financial institutions to enable loans and financial transactions. Consumers consent to feed it with their bank account data and the personal finance assistant makes loan product recommendations. President Brain Vieaux joins us on the podcast today to talk about how Finlocker enhances consumer data, lowers lending costs and increases throughput for mortgage originators as part of an overall financial welness scheme. Joining us is Paul Diegelman, Fiserv’s vp of electronic payments and aggregation. Paul’s team worked closely with Finlocker to integrate Fiserv’s AllData aggregation product. AllData provides up-to-the-minute aggregated account data from roughly 18,000 connections from sources like banks, credit unions, billers, card platforms and wealth management firms, providing the data consumers have permissioned into their lockers. Paul is presenting at next week’s DataDay Conference presented by Tearsheet. He’ll be discussing PFM 2.0: Top use cases for improving financial outcomes for banking customers. Fiserv is a sponsor of the DataDay Conference. I’m Zack Miller, Editor in chief at Tearsheet. Based on this real-world use case, data is helping driving innovations and companies that realize this are on the fast track to growing their business and deepening customer engagement. Fiserv’s AllData aggregation product is being used by companies of all size to help consumers see their full financial pictures, enabling them to make smarter and more-informed financial decsisions. Fiserv is a sponsor of the DataDay Conference presented by Tearsheet on June 2 through June 4th. DataDay is the premiere conference in the financial services industry that deals entirely with data, data ecosystems, data aggregation, and alternative data. Fiserv’s Paul Deigelman will be presenting along with senior leaders at MX, Plaid, Wells Fargo, Envestnet Yodlee, Nova Credit, Stash, and more. Go to Tearsheet’s website at tearsheet.co and click on the DataDay Conference button at the top to register.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Data aggregation and connectivity firm Plaid recently announced Exchange, its open finance platform that allows banks and other financial institutions to share their customers’ data via a single API integration. As the public requires more forms of integration with the fintech apps they use, banks are looking for secure solutions. And for banks that may not have the in-house chops to stand up an API, Exchange enables them to get to market cheaper and quicker. Plaid’s Niko Karvounis joins me on the podcast today. The product lead for Plaid’s institutional products, Niko was also co-founder of Quovo, which Plaid acquired. He shares his vision for Exchange and how financial institutions are moving to service their customers’ needs for connectivity. DataDay is the first-of-its-kind conference on financial data. Consumer data, data ecosystems, and data aggregation is changing the face of modern financial services. Join top speakers from Plaid, Wells Fargo, Fiserv, MX, Stash, and more. Secure your spot at tearsheet.co/dataday-conference-2020

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Commercial payments are a huge opportunity. They’re antiquated — checks are still very popular in the U.S. -- they’re complicated, and they’re huge, worth hundreds of trillions of dollars. Mastercard’s James Anderson, evp of global commercial products, joins us on the podcast to talk about his team’s major launch of Track Business Payment Service. Mastercard’s Track BPS addresses the different ways buyers and suppliers want to transact with a B2B digital payments solution in the U.S.. It uses card payment rails combined with distribution partners across the B2B ecosystem. James walks us through the challenges of B2B payments and how his team began building Track BPS 20 months ago. He describes the architecture and how it relies on partners that have direct inroads into buyers and sellers. It’s a big launch for James and Mastercard, designed to go global from the start. James Anderson is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. N26 was the first foreign challenger bank to launch in the U.S. When you speak with CEO Nic Kopp, you know it was no simple feat. Now, five months in the market, Kopp joins us on the podcast to discuss the launch process and what it takes to bring a challenger online. We discuss who’s using N26 in the US and what they’re using it for. We talk about user acquisition and how the company was able to get its first 250,000 users. Nic Kopp is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast. DataDay is the first-of-its-kind conference on financial data. Consumer data, data ecosystems, and data aggregation is changing the face of modern financial services. Join top speakers from Plaid, Wells Fargo, Fiserv, MX, Stash, and more. Secure your spot at https://tearsheet.co/dataday-conference-2020

On this episode of The Challengers Podcast, Zack Miller and Josh Liggett talk about the extension financing round some of the larger challenger banks are announcing. N26, Revolut and Judo all added to their war chests as they, and their investors, prepare to be going into what Zack called "a nuclear winter". Josh said some of the challenger banks looking to raise mid-2020 are suffering. So, those firms who can raise, should raise. Josh said that Microsoft has had 2 to 3 years of sales happen in the past few months as firms move further into digital. Green Dot is a company in transition. In some sense, it was one of the first challengers and has seen the rest of the market kind of pass it by. New leadership wants to focus more on its banking as a service platform and spend less on marketing its own products. Josh relates the firm's evolution to a lot of what's going on in technology about focusing on the base and jettisoning the side projects. Josh related that New Jersey has a shortage of ventilators, surgical masks, and COBOL developers. He's frustrated on how long it's taking for banks to fully embrace digital. Zack believes that the pandemic is accelerating a process that was already underway. There's still a long way to go. Josh talked about the rise of niche challengers, exemplified by two new European digital private banks looking for their footing, Alpian and 220.

Flybits' Hossein Rahnama is one of our speakers at DataDay, the first-of-its-kind conference on financial data. Consumer data, data ecosystems, and data aggregation is changing the face of modern financial services. Join Adam and speakers from Plaid, Wells Fargo, Fiserv, MX, Stash, and more. Secure your spot at https://ti.to/tearsheet/tearsheets-dataday-conference-2020 The foundation for Flybits came from a research lab and Hossein's PhD research, which was about understanding context in large data sets. "I spun that off about six years ago and now, Flybits is a venture backed company headquartered in Toronto with offices in New York, San Francisco, London and Dubai," he said. AI requires domain knowledge and the understanding of the context in which the technology finds itself. For example, it’s very hard for an AI engine to understand the needs of a parent when she’s at home versus that parent’s needs traveling across borders. "You can train AI algorithms to understand and predict patterns but understanding that context and domain knowledge has always been an impediment," he said. Hossein's research brought context and the world of ontologies into the AI world and then applies them to digital channels. "Your context basically determines the behavior of the experience that you’ll see on a digital channel." Consumers have access to concierge services like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. But Rahnama believes the real question for banks is how to create concierge capabilities on their own channels. "Most of them want to keep their data but come up with predictive services on their own digital channels, personalizing services while keeping their customers’ data secure," he said. "They want to be a lifestyle concierge engine for their customers."