
Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together
Tearsheet is news, opinion, and analysis on the business of finance.
Candid conversations with senior executives, fintech entrepreneurs, investors, industry experts -- all weigh in on the trends impacting the industry and the disruptive impact technology is having on the business.
Where social media, technology and finance intersect.
Latest episodes

Apr 15, 2020 • 16min
Deep Dive: An exploration into the changing world of push payments
Sara Toth Stub joins editor Zack Miller on a Deep Dive podcast to discuss a recent article she wrote on push payments. In It's a simple idea with Extraordinary impact: Inside the growing world of push payments, Sara describes what this form of payment is, how it works, and how entire fintech ecosystems are being built around push payment providers, like Visa and Mastercard.

Apr 12, 2020 • 23min
Nomis' Prashant Balepur on bringing data science to bank pricing strategies
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.
Before COVID-19 hit, we spent a lot of time talking about the competitive environment for bank deposits. Every week, an incumbent or new challenger bank was making high rate offers in order to attract new customers. The dynamic may be different now, but financial institutions are getting increasingly savvy about their pricing strategies. Borrowing from retail, we are moving away from one-price-fits-all into a more data-driven and competitive market.
Joining us on the podcast today is Nomis’ Prashant Balepur. We talk about the firm’s new product, a lightweight tool which provides banks and credit unions real time pricing intelligence around mortgages and deposits. Prashant describes how many FIs make pricing decisions today and what type of data science it takes to optimize products across sectors, geographies and customers.
Prashant Balepur is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Apr 7, 2020 • 27min
Behind new challenger bank HMBradley's launch with Zach Bruhnke
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.
There’s a sea of sameness out there in digital offerings. Challenger banks seem to provide, more or less, the same services and products. They’re debit cards attached to a personal finance manager.
HMBradley launched last week with an investment from PayPal and Affirm founder, Max Levchin. It bills itself as a bank for people serious about savings and it has an incentive mechanism that pays the highest interest rates to those doing the best job saving. Co-founder and CEO Zach Bruhnke joins us on the podcast to talk about why he’s dreamt of launching a bank and where he plans to take his new challenger in the future.
Zach Bruhnke is my guest on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Mar 30, 2020 • 19min
The Challengers 13: Covid 19's impact on digital banking, growth slows at OakNorth, Square as a bank
In this episode of The Challengers, Josh Liggett and Zack Miller explore the pandemic's impact on incumbent banks as well as on challengers. Zack mentioned fears are high and that's creating rumors that certain challengers are failing. Josh believes it's a good time for incumbents to really get focused around digital. They have no other choice.
Next, the hosts discuss OakNorth, which is still Europe's fastest growing startup. But growth of its loan book is slowing, whether by design or by market forces. The bank is profitable -- perhaps the only one of many challengers to reach this milestone.
Square gets a license and Zack believes that we'll see Square move strongly into lending to merchants using its technology. Like PayPal, Amazon, and Shopify, this captured lending is powerful and makes a ton of sense from a service model perspective. It can also be quite lucrative.
Credit Sesame, like Credit Karma a few months before it, is rolling out a banking product, Sesame Cash. PFMs want to own the money movement piece for their customers.
Lastly, we mention Bill Harris' new firm, One, which just launched in private beta after a $17 million funding round. Harris was CEO at PayPal and Intuit, and founded Personal Capital before this. In perhaps the worst launch timing in history, One will use dashboards with consumer credit at its core to help middle Americans with their money.
Before we jump into the podcast, I wanted to introduce you to Outlier, Tearsheet’s leading membership program. It’s designed for top fintech and financial service professionals to stay on top daily of the biggest trends, the top companies, and the leaders of this next generation of finance. Get industry briefings by experts like the ones we’re doing this January on best practices in PR and customer acquisition. Find out more at Tearsheet.co/outlier

Mar 25, 2020 • 23min
Tearsheet's Bank Fintech Partnership Award: JP Morgan and FISPAN
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.
Today we have another special episode — we’re still talking about bank - fintech partnerships by studying some of the best, most impactful ones out there. We have JP Morgan’s Jason Tiede and FISPAN’s Lisa Shields on the show to talk about their partnership that essentially embeds JP Morgan’s payments and treasury functionality into its clients ERP environment. This partnership won Tearsheet’s Bank Fintech Partnership Award for Ecosystem in 2020.
We discuss how the two parties met and why JPM chose to partner with FISPAN. We discuss best practices in standing up a good working relationship with two vastly different companies and cultures.
Lisa Shields and Jason Tiede are my guests today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Mar 23, 2020 • 25min
Tearsheet's Bank Fintech Partnership Award: Midwest BankCentre and MANTL
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.
Today we have the two winners of Tearsheet’s Bank/Fintech Partnership Award for Digital Transformation, Midwest BankCentre and Mantl. We’re joined by MBC’s President and CFO Dale Oberkfell and Nathaniel Harley, CEO and CO-founder of MANTL.
We talk about the collaboration between the two firms on Rising Bank, a new digital brand launched by MBC along with MANTL. The company hit its 1 year deposit savings goals within 5 months and both parties are continuing to pursue the benefits of partnership to go deeper.
Here’s our show.

Mar 20, 2020 • 20min
Adyen's Roelant Prins: 'Modern technology can personalize issuing services for merchants'
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.
Card issuance is enjoying a lot of fintech light shone on it as technology and use cases catch up to the modern economy. From Marqeta to Stripe and now Adyen, payment firms are moving quickly in this space.
Roelant Prins, chief commercial officer of Adyen, joins us on the podcast to talk about his firm’s new card issuing service, where the idea came from and what type of customer demand they’re seeing for it.
We discuss Adyen’s global approach and drill down into what he describes as unified commerce’.
Roelant Prins is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Mar 19, 2020 • 21min
Tearsheet's Bank Fintech Partnership Award: Sutton Bank and Marqeta
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.
We’re continuing to celebrate the winners of 2020’s Bank / Fintech Partnership Awards. Up today are our overall winners — two firms that changed significantly directly from the nature of their partnership that was struck almost 10 years ago. We have Tony Gorrell, CEO of Sutton Bank, a 130 year old bank in Ohio, and Omri Dahan, chief revenue officer of Marqeta, a leader in modern card issuance.
I’ll let them describe the nature of their partnership and how they modeled a collaboration that has become a paradigm for today’s best fintech/bank collaborations.
Let’s go.

Mar 17, 2020 • 18min
Greenlight's Tim Sheehan: 'It's been explosive growth over the past 5 years'
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.
As new challenger banks and financial products emerge, one trend we’re seeing is the targeting of teens. These soon-to-be-adults are experiencing choices in personal finance and banking apps that' they've never had before. Greenlight is a leader of this new generation of services and products. Founded about 5 years ago, the firm is rapidly growing with nearly 1 million users using its platform to help educate and manage young financial lives.
CEO and co-founder Tim Sheehan joins me on the podcast to discuss what problem Greenlight solves and how families collaborate around the financial app. We also drill down into the macro trends that are encouraging the development of new financial tools for the younger generations. Lastly, he shares his view on where Greenlight may head in the future.
Tim Sheehan is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Mar 15, 2020 • 21min
Engage People's Len Covello on Priceline's pay with points program
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.
Today’s guest on the show is Len Covello, co-founder and CTO of Engage People. which is a loyalty rewards program technology firm. Len talks about his firm’s recent work of putting Priceline’s entire inventory online to be purchased using rewards points. We discuss the program, the genesis of the relationship with Priceline, as well as the opportunity retailers have to tap into the billions of dollars stored in loyalty points and the trend to enable these types of transactions.
Len Covello is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.
Before we hop into my interview with Len, I’m happy to announce that we’ve launched the 2020 Data Awards. Tearsheet's Data Awards are the premier awards program in the financial data industry. As apps and institutions further integrate, data and data sharing have become the building blocks of modern finance. If your company has a good story to tell, we'd like to hear it. Go to Tearsheet and click on the Data Awards tab to get more information and apply.