As we move away from diversity and inclusion month and back to life as we know it, my guest this week gets us back on track as a true leader in the payment industry with a successful business targeting one of the more compelling industry buzzwords these days: open banking. But Link Money Cofounder and CEO Eric Shoykhet will be the first to tell you that open banking, as a concept in the U.S. anyways, doesn’t really exist…

For those of you who may not know, Link Money is a company that provides a pay by bank solution in the United States that enables merchants to allow their customers to pay from their bank account as part of the standard check out flow. This includes everything from ecommerce and insurance to parking, storage, and remittances, with a target prerequisite of high frequency and larger volume transactions. Why? Because this is where the real benefit is realized for merchants and customers alike.

Just like most everything else in the world these days, interchange rates are rising at an astronomical rate. One of the biggest benefits of using a pay by bank solution like Link Money is the ability to take your transactions off the credit rails, onto the ACH rails, and offer a more cost effective and more secure way to pay. For merchants, the benefit of using Link Money is the ability to reduce transaction costs by up to 70-80%, and even higher for some use cases. Additional benefits include less fraud and an overall reduction in payment churn.

Tune in this week to hear Eric talk about his journey to CEO, including why the US tends to be so far behind in the open banking concept, and where he sees the industry going in the next few years as it relates to fewer payment methods, a narrower focus on payments strategy, and the inevitable transition in customer psychology that is already happening today.