Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

Welcome to a special edition of the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Today we’re awarding a winner of our Bank/Fintech Partnership Award for 2020. Mastercard and Signzy are receiving the Customer Journey Award for the work they’ve done together tackling merchant onboarding. I’m joined by Zahir Khoja, evp for merchant solutions and partnerships at Mastercard, and Arpit Ratan, co-founder of Signzy. I’ll let them explain the nature of their partnership. Our judges chose this partnership based on four criteria: creativity, innovative thinking, customer value and results. Zahir and Arpit are my guests today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. The industry talks a lot about omnichannel payment experiences. Everyone wants to service the customer wherever he or she is. But what if that experience doesn’t look much like an experience at all. A channel that’s left pretty much unexplored is SMS. There’s one company, Iris Nova, that’s pioneered payment over text for its Dirty Lemon beverage brand. Customers pick up their phones, send an SMS to the brand, and order their products through a chat interface. Given how familiar SMS is to most people, there’s little visible architecture around the customer journey. Iris Nova’s founder and CEO Zak Normandin joins us on the podcast to talk about payment over text and why he thinks in the future, most big brands will have just a website and a phone number. We discuss the challenges of doing conversational commerce well and how he’s positioning Iris Nova to be a future leader in food and beverage using SMS as a transaction channel. Zak Normandin is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. As a major global bank, BBVA stands out in its early embrace of the banking as a service model. The BBVA Open platform provides verification, money movement, account origination, and card issuance for commercial and consumer financial products. Susan French, the head of product for BBVA Open, joins us on the podcast to give us an update on the platform and what new products and services BBVA plans to roll out this year. We talk about the work BBVA Open has done with upstart fintechs like Digit and Wise, and where we are in the evolution of platform banking. Lastly, we discuss the role Open plays in BBVA’s overall strategy. Susan French is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast. 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 just hosted on best practices in PR and customer acquisition. Find out more at Tearsheet.co/outlier

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Last week, LendingClub announced that it would be acquiring Radius Bank. It was exciting news as a large influential fintech player purchased a bank to round out its own balance sheet and provide banking functionality its own customers were asking for. I’m excited because we have Steve Allocca, president of LendingClub and Mike Butler, CEO and president of Radius Bank on the show for an exclusive talk about the reasoning behind the merger and how the combined entity is positioned to scale. We talk about the vision of becoming a marketplace bank at scale, as well as the role of Radius’ banking as a service offering. We talk about what each party brings to the table and the rebundling of financial services. 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 just hosted on best practices in PR and customer acquisition. Find out more at Tearsheet.co/outlier

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Splitit is a global payment technology that enables no-fee installments on credit card purchases. Unlike other point of sale financing platforms, Splitit isn’t consumer financing. There is 0% interest, no application or late fees. CEO Brad Paterson has recently joined the firm after a 20 year career that included Visa, placed him at PayPal in its early days, and leading Intuit’s US QuickBooks online business. Brad joins us on the podcast to talk about the genesis of the business and how his firm found product-market fit. In an increasingly competitive market for point of sale loans, we talk about how Splitit differentiates itself. Lastly, we talk about the firm’s growth trajectory. Brad Paterson is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. American Express has seen its customers really move to mobile — 81 percent of its cardmembers are now digitally active. Millennials and Gen Z are really leading this increased engagement. Amex’s vp of global mobile products Stewart Kendall joins me on the podcast today to talk about the company’s mobile strategy and how it informs the entire business. We discuss how Amex uses the mobile app in an attempt to play a more integral role in its members’ ’ lives. Lastly, we get into what younger users expect from mobile and how Amex has created products to service this generation. Stewart Kendall is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Customer acquisition costs continue to rise. And as companies converge on banking and lending, everyone is after deposits and growing their loan books, further pushing prices up. So, acquisition in general is a problem but it’s particularly acute for lenders who have to turn away many of the applicants they receive because of credit criteria. Even Financial helps financial institutions acquire new customers by connecting them to other companies and sites that have user bases interested in financial products. That’s all done through an API that provides search, comparison and recommendation engine for financial services. Founder and CEO Phil Rosen joins me to discuss acquisition trends incumbent banks, lenders, and fintech face and how today’s consumers are challenged in finding the right financial products. Phil Rosen is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Zack Miller. So much time and energy is spent acquiring new banking/payments/investing customers. But while financial apps have industry-high usage numbers in terms of how much time users spend on them, user lifecycles are short. A recent study showed that less than 5 percent of people who download a financial app are still using it 90 days later. Tearsheet's Sara Toth Stub wrote a story on what top fintech and banking firms are doing to increase engagement on their apps. From focusing on an apps feed, to increasing content production, to partnering with brands their customers love, firms are finding a way to keep their users around. Sara Toth Stub is my guest today for a deep dive podcast to discuss how top fintech and banking apps are finding success in deepening their engagement and retention of their customers.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. While retail interest in digital assets peaked in 2018, crashed and is rebounding now, institutional interest has been steadily growing. Jeanine Hightower-Sellitto is helping that happen. Previously the COO of the ISE, she’s a managing director at Gemini. She joins us on the podcast to discuss what it means to be a licensed digital asset exchange and the value it provides for institutional investors. We dive into her experience running exchanges and how Gemini is both similar and different than traditional setups. Jeanine shares her views on what it will take for digital asset exchanges to become more influential to expand crypto ownership. We talk about Gemini’s custody business as well. Jeanine Hightower-Sellitto is my guest today on the Tearheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. There are a lot of personal finance apps out there. And yet, many people still feel shut out from being able to have a conversation about their finances. Maybe the apps are too heavy, too complicated or just the language is different than how people talk in real life. Scott Grimes addresses all of this with Stackin. Stackin’s CEO and co-founder built a personal finance app which lets people save and invest and is entirely text messaging-based. So, not only is there not a complicated app people need to learn — there’s no app. He and his team built this for the average american who wants this level of simplicity and guidance around their finances — and it needs to be judgment free. Stackin is well on its way to a million users and has sent over 70 million text messages over the past year. Scott joins us on the podcast to talk about the app and how Stackin tries to establlsh a relationship based on trust and fun. More fintech apps are adopting a conversational interface and we discuss the benefits in doing that for UX. Scott shares some of his product roadmap, as well. Scott Grimes is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast. 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