Fintech Confidential

Banking as a service and embedded finance get a practical breakdown as Academy Bank's David Robinson explains how a family-owned Kansas City institution built a BaaS program from the ground up. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, and co-host Stephen Bishop sit down with David to unpack what it takes to launch, staff, and scale an embedded banking practice at a community bank.

Find out more at fintechconfidential.com

Academy Bank, a subsidiary of Dickinson Financial Corporation, operates alongside Armed Forces Bank with roughly $4.8 billion in combined assets and a stated goal of reaching $6 billion. David walks through why the bank chose Treasury Prime as its middleware provider, how it integrated Lithic for card processing, and why keeping compliance and BSA functions in-house was a non-negotiable. The conversation gets specific about due diligence red flags, deals that fell apart mid-process, fee income versus deposit economics, and what changed internally when embedded banking finally showed up in every team's annual goals.

1️⃣ Prepare for bank meetings like an earnings call; anticipate every compliance question before the first conversation.

2️⃣ Build your AML, BSA, and fraud monitoring team before approaching a sponsor bank, not after.

3️⃣ Bring your operations and compliance leads to early bank meetings, not just the founder.

4️⃣ Treat banker feedback as a data point; show how you tested it and what you changed.

5️⃣ Ask your bank partner if embedded work appears in the annual goals of their compliance, risk, and legal teams.

GUEST

David Robinson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmrembeddedbanking/

COMPANY

Academy Bank: https://www.academybank.com

Academy Bank BaaS: https://www.academybank.com/business/banking-as-a-service

FINTECH CONFIDENTIAL

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

SUPPORTERS

Skyflow: Build fast without breaking privacy. A zero-trust data privacy vault delivered as an API. Visit https://skyflowsecure.com

Under: Streamline your application and underwriting process by turning PDFs into smart, signable forms. Get started free at https://under.io/ftc

Hawk AI: Real-time payment screening, AML transaction monitoring, and dynamic customer risk rating to fight fraud and financial crime. Sign up for a demo at https://gethawkai.com

ABOUT

Guest: David Robinson is Director of Fintech and Embedded Banking at Academy Bank. He brings over 20 years of financial services experience across State Street, UMB Bank, and now Academy Bank, where he built the embedded banking practice from the ground up starting in December 2022.

Company: Academy Bank is a full-service community bank under Dickinson Financial Corporation, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. Named one of Fortune's Most Innovative Companies in 2023, it operates over 70 branches across Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri.

Host: Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential. The show is produced by DD3 Media and brings you the people, tech, and companies that change how you pay and get paid.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Episode Highlights

01:24 Skyflow Sponsor Read

02:26 Meet the Hosts

03:39 Introducing David Robinson

04:37 Defining BaaS and Embedded Finance

05:29 Academy Bank Growth Strategy

06:56 Rapid Fire: This or That

08:11 Choosing Treasury Prime

09:22 Future Programs and Segments

09:53 What Stays In-House

12:42 Managed vs. Bank-Owned Compliance

14:35 Marketplace Shift and Multi-Platform

16:53 Partnerships Are a People Business

18:26 Under Sponsor Read

18:56 How Banks Vet Fintech Fit

19:25 Diligence and Fit

20:21 Regulators and Scale

21:30 When Deals Fall Apart

23:23 Greenlights and Redlines

24:23 Advice for Fintechs

26:12 Why Academy Bank

27:49 Top Tips and Misconceptions

29:38 Fees vs. Deposits

30:46 Internal Shift and Speed

35:47 Crystal Ball and Closing

36:54 Final Advice for Founders

38:51 Wrap Up

39:23 Hawk AI Sponsor Read

40:09 Disclaimer

Open banking fees, stablecoin regulation, and AI-first payment systems are reshaping how money moves in the US. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with David Glaser, CEO of Dwolla, to unpack what's changing, what's breaking, and what smart operators are doing about it right now.

JP Morgan's decision to charge for open banking access is forcing the entire industry to rethink how apps connect to bank account data. Real-time payment rails like RTP and FedNow are live but adoption is slow because not every use case needs instant settlement. Dwolla scaled without hiring a single net-new employee in two years by mapping every process into what can be automated and what still needs a human. This episode covers the frameworks, the data signals, and the strategy shifts that matter most if you're building or running anything in payments today.

TAKEAWAYS

1️⃣ Build with AI from day one and treat new hires as a last resort, not a first instinct.

2️⃣ Rework your product fast because major AI releases absorb startup features every six months.

3️⃣ Attack your biggest operational bottleneck first, even if you can only automate half of it.

4️⃣ Track every internal handoff to find where delays, errors, and hidden costs are piling up.

5️⃣ Set team values that reward discomfort so your people adopt new tools without waiting for a mandate.

GUEST

David Glaser: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daglaser

COMPANY

Dwolla: https://www.dwolla.com

Dwolla LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dwolla

Dwolla YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/dwollaplatform

FINTECH CONFIDENTIAL

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

SUPPORTERS

Under.io: Digitize your PDFs and streamline application and underwriting processes. Get started free at under.io/FTC

Skyflow: A zero trust data privacy vault delivered as an API covering PCI, CCPA, GDPR, and SOC 2. Visit skyflowsecure.com

DFNS: Wallets as a service, API first, multi-chain, secured with MPC across 50+ blockchains. Request a demo at fintechconfidential.com/dfns

Hawk AI: Real-time payment screening and AML transaction monitoring to cut false positives. Sign up for a demo at gethawk.com

ABOUT

Guest

David Glaser is CEO of Dwolla with over 25 years of payments experience spanning global leadership roles at Mastercard, Worldpay, CyberSource, and Visa. He grew up in a small coal mining town south of Pittsburgh, originally planned to become a high school math teacher, and has since led teams through some of the industry's biggest deals including Worldpay's $10.4 billion merger with Vantiv. Outside of payments, he's completed multiple Ironman triathlons and 70.3 races.

Company

Dwolla is a leader in account-to-account payments in the US, offering a full-service platform that replaces legacy technology with a unified solution supporting ACH, Same Day ACH, RTP, and FedNow. Over 500 businesses partner with Dwolla to improve payment security, data visibility, and cash flow.

Host

Tedd Huff is CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential. With 25+ years in the industry, he brings entertaining and informative content focused on fintech insights, market trends, and stories from leaders, thinkers, and doers.

DD3 Media

Fintech Confidential is a production of DD3 Media. All rights reserved.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Highlights

02:06 Under.io: Streamlining Application Processes

02:35 Introduction to FinTech Leaders One-on-One

02:48 Meet David Glaser, CEO of Dwolla

05:29 Payment Industry Then vs. Now

08:03 Open Banking and AI in Payments

08:55 JP Morgan's Open Banking Fee Announcement

14:06 Payment Methods and Account Access

14:36 Scaling Operations at Dwolla

15:03 Modernizing Homegrown Systems

16:26 AI and Automation in Payments

17:20 Skyflow: Your Privacy API

18:31 Balancing Founder Mindset with Scale

19:22 Automating Back Office Processes

21:52 Identifying What to Systemize Next

29:52 Economic Signals in Transaction Data

31:01 Interest Rate Impact on Fintech

32:43 Predicting Trends with Payment Data

35:04 Centralizing Data for AI Readiness

37:21 Account-to-Account and Real-Time Rails

38:21 Real-Time Payment Use Cases

41:00 DFNS: Wallets as a Service

42:39 Choosing the Right Payment Method

44:09 Orchestrating Across Multiple Rails

46:58 Vertical SaaS and Embedded Payments

48:37 The Future of Stablecoins

50:23 AI and Stablecoins Together

54:21 Advice for Fintech Founders

58:07 Hawk AI: Real-Time Fraud Monitoring

58:52 Disclaimer

AI in customer experience, fraud prevention, and back-office operations is moving fast in banking and financial services, and the firms that fall behind risk losing both customers and competitive ground. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Mamta Rodrigues, Chief Client Officer of Banking, Financial Services and Insurance at TP, one of the largest employers in the world with over 500,000 people globally. Mamta brings decades of hands-on experience across American Express, MasterCard, Visa, and Synchrony, and she holds a patent, a signal that she has spent real time building products, not just advising on them. The conversation covers practical AI use cases in fraud, collections, and compliance, along with what separates clients who get results from those who stall out after a pilot.

The pressure on banks and fintechs right now comes from two directions at once. Consumer expectations keep rising because people interact with payment products every single day. At the same time, fraud is accelerating. Every time the industry catches up, fraudsters adapt faster and the cycle resets. That means fraud teams, product teams, and customer experience teams are all fighting for resources and attention at the same time. For treasury managers, CFOs, and compliance leaders, this creates a real tension: how do you invest in AI-powered fraud prevention and still deliver a smooth experience that keeps customers loyal?

The numbers from inside TP's client work tell a clear story. Fifty percent of TP's solutions are now AI-led, with the heaviest concentration in back-office operations like fraud, financial crime, and claims management. Mamta describes a recent deployment of TP's AI blueprint, tp.ai fab, layered into an existing client's operations to prevent and predict fraud. The results showed significant improvement in key metrics. On the collections side, predictive analysis now arms agents before a call even starts with propensity to pay, likely timing, expected recovery percentage, and recommended remediation paths. That kind of preparation changes the entire tone of a collections interaction from adversarial to solution-oriented, and the outcome is measurable: increased repayment, stronger loyalty, product expansion, and reduced breakage.

One of the clearest signals Mamta uses to gauge whether a client will actually get results versus abandon the effort after a test: the composition of who shows up. When the cross-functional team walks through the door, operations, product, IT, and data leaders together, that's when real progress happens. She describes a design thinking approach where the client provides a problem statement in advance, both sides bring the right people, and in a single day they can shape a solution direction. The typical pattern is that they start with one problem statement and end the session with additional problem statements and new opportunities they had not considered. Clients who send a single department to "explore AI" without bringing the other stakeholders rarely make it past the pilot stage.

Looking three to five years out, Mamta expects advanced AI and predictive analytics to fundamentally reshape how customer experience operates, powered by stronger data foundations and more mature tech stacks. She predicts continued growth in AI-led back-office solutions, deeper fraud protection capabilities, and a rising focus on elevating talent rather than replacing it. The human factor, she says, will always remain because both the customers and the agents serving them are still people. Her single piece of advice to fintech executives and founders: "Be comfortable with the uncomfortable." The firms that try, pivot, learn, and avoid the belief that they already know everything will be the ones that pull ahead.

Fraud Signals Your Phone Reveals

Every mobile transaction generates thousands of hidden data points including gyroscope movement, touch pressure patterns, key press timing, and screen angle behavior that machine learning models use to verify identity. IP address matching combined with geolocation checks can confirm whether the person making a payment is physically located where their device says they are, adding layers of fraud protection most consumers never realize exist.

Automation Is Not Replacing Agents

TP proposes automation first in every client engagement, yet the goal is augmenting agent performance through AI-powered training, quality assurance, and workforce management tools. Mundane tasks like balance inquiries have already moved to apps, while new roles in data analysis, predictive modeling, financial crime investigation, and fraud prevention are growing faster than the positions being phased out.

Consumer Behavior Now Drives Fintech

Banking and payments typically lead BFSI adoption cycles because consumers transact with payment products daily, while insurance interactions are infrequent and purpose-driven. That frequency gap means consumer expectations hit banking and fintech firms first, forcing faster response times and creating pressure that insurance companies eventually absorb as a fast follower.

Living On Cash Taught Product Thinking

One of the sharpest product leadership lessons came from spending an entire month using only cash, no cards, no checks, no electronic payments, to understand what consumers actually experience when they lack access to modern payment tools. That hands-on immersion shaped a framework for understanding customer pain points from the inside out, a method still applied today when onboarding new clients by finding internal employees who already use the client's products.

The Real Meaning Of Data

The phrase "so what of the data" reframes the entire conversation around why raw data collection means nothing without a clear connection to personalization, spend analysis, and predictive outcomes. Combining multiple data sources with analytics can reveal buying power, transaction patterns, location behavior, and propensity to pay, turning passive information into active intelligence that drives customer engagement and retention.

Storytelling Aligns Stakeholders Faster

Complex enterprise sales involving operations, product, and executive teams require more than technical specs to move forward, and framing solutions around a clear North Star with a human impact story accelerates buy-in. Using a collections call as an example, the narrative centers on saving a customer relationship rather than recovering a balance, which reframes cost of acquisition against breakage and makes the ROI case emotionally and financially persuasive.

Banks Now Seek Outside Perspective

A year ago, most banking clients told TP they would solve AI and CX challenges internally within their own teams and systems. In the last twelve months, that posture has shifted sharply toward requesting peer group insights, consortium-style knowledge sharing across 350+ global BFSI clients, and collaborative problem solving that treats the current wave of change as an industry-wide learning curve.

Culture Shapes Customer Experience Strategy

Three years of living and working in India reinforced that cultural context directly affects how customers respond to service interactions, communication styles, and engagement approaches across different regions. Global CX strategies that ignore cultural layers risk delivering a technically sound but emotionally flat experience, which is why regional adaptation matters as much as the tech stack powering the interaction.

Hidden Fraud Detection Through Biometrics

Beyond standard two-factor and three-factor authentication, financial services firms are now layering behavioral biometrics that track how a person physically handles their device during a transaction. Screen touch patterns, movement signatures, and Face ID verification create a composite identity profile that runs silently behind every interaction, catching anomalies that traditional password-based security would miss entirely.

Meeting People Where They Are

Cross-functional leadership across global teams starts with something as simple as asking a new direct report which communication channel they prefer, whether that is Viber, WhatsApp, text, or another platform. That small signal of respect sets the tone for a people-first management approach where multiple perspectives are actively solicited, because the operating principle is that one brain is never as effective as seven or eight working together.

1️⃣ Bring Cross-Functional Teams To Every Pilot

Sending one department to evaluate AI or data analytics tools is how pilots die quietly after 90 days. Get your operations lead, product owner, IT or data leader, and digital officer in the same room with one shared problem statement before you commit budget. That combination forces the real blockers to surface early, things like legacy system constraints, rule adjustments, and use case selection, so you can design around them instead of discovering them after you have already spent the money.

2️⃣ Use Your Own Products Before Selling

The fastest way to understand a customer's pain is to become one. Before pitching a solution or onboarding a new client, find people inside your own organization who already use that client's product and pull them into the conversation. You will learn more about friction points, feature gaps, and real user behavior in one week of hands-on product use than in six months of reading market research decks.

3️⃣ Arm Agents Before The Call Starts

Collections calls where the agent goes in blind are a waste of everyone's time and a fast track to customer breakage. Feed your agents predictive data before they pick up the phone: propensity to pay, likely timing, expected recovery amount, and recommended remediation options. When agents lead with a solution instead of a demand, repayment goes up, loyalty increases, and customers expand into additional product lines instead of closing accounts.

4️⃣ Build Modular Stacks With Partners

Trying to build your entire AI and data infrastructure in-house while legacy systems are still running is how you burn two years and ship nothing. Assemble a tech stack from best-of-breed partners, align it with a hyperscaler, and go to market with a combined solution that plugs into your existing cloud environment. Fintechs already using this approach are moving faster because they stay supplier-agnostic and can swap components without rebuilding the whole foundation.

5️⃣ Stop Competing At The Infrastructure Layer

Every bank and fintech fighting to build proprietary AI foundations from scratch right now is solving the same problem separately and wasting resources in the process. Share learnings at the infrastructure level through peer groups, consortium models, and partner networks, then compete fiercely on the products and experiences you build on top of that shared foundation. The firms pulling ahead are the ones treating the current wave as an industry-wide building phase, not a zero-sum land grab.

Banks and fintechs are spending heavily on AI, but most still cannot answer one critical question: what is the actual return on investment for customer experience? Mamta Rodrigues, Chief Client Officer of Banking, Financial Services and Insurance at TP, breaks down where AI in fraud prevention and back-office operations is producing real, measurable results right now. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, pushes Mamta on the practical side: how predictive analysis is changing collections calls, why behavioral biometrics catch what passwords miss, and what signals reveal whether a company is ready for meaningful change or just running another pilot that goes nowhere. Mamta shares why the firms pulling ahead are the ones willing to admit they do not have all the answers and partner to move faster. Her one-sentence advice to every fintech executive: be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Guest

Mamta Rodrigues LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mamtarodrigues/

Company Resources

TP Website: https://www.tp.com

TP LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/teleperformance

TP BFSI Services: https://www.tp.com/en-us/industries/banking-and-financial-services/

Fintech Confidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

DFNS: Wallets as a service, API first, multi-chain, secured with MPC across 50+ blockchains. Request a demo at fintechconfidential.com/dfns

Skyflow: Zero trust data privacy vault delivered as an API covering PCI, CCPA, GDPR, and SOC 2. Visit skyflowsecure.com

Hawk AI: Real-time payment screening and AML transaction monitoring to cut false positives. Sign up for a demo at gethawkai.com

00:00 Episode Highlights

01:01 Welcome to Fintech Confidential

01:10 DFNS: Wallets as a Service

02:32 Show Intro and Guest

04:40 Market Patterns and AI

05:28 Payments and Fraud Pressure

07:32 Behind the Scenes Security

11:36 Data Gold Mine: So What

13:26 Product Leadership Cash Experiment

16:33 Meeting Customers Where They Are

18:14 Automation With Human Touch

20:41 Legacy Data and Cloud Stacks

22:24 Client Readiness Signals

24:12 One Day Design Sprint

24:59 Skyflow: Data Privacy Vault

26:01 Escaping Shiny Objects

27:53 Messy Middle Patterns

30:40 Moats and Client Needs

32:07 AI Layer for Fraud

34:04 Storytelling North Star

38:37 Leadership Lessons Globally

41:08 Crystal Ball on CX

43:06 Rapid Fire

43:33 Be Comfortable With the Uncomfortable

45:30 Key Takeaways and Wrap

47:43 Hawk AI: Fighting Fraud and Financial Crime

48:27 Disclaimer

Guest: Mamta Rodrigues

Mamta Rodrigues is Global Chief Client Officer of Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) at TP, the world's largest digital business services company. Over the past 30+ years, she has held senior leadership roles at Synchrony Financial, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, providing strategic direction across payments, product development, and customer experience on a global scale. Her expertise focuses on turning AI, data analytics, and automation into measurable outcomes for banking and fintech clients. A World Bank advisory group member and published thought leader, Mamta co-chairs TP Women and was named a Top Women Leader of New York in 2024. She holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a BA from Boston University, and is known for her people-first leadership style, design thinking approach, and deep understanding of fraud prevention, collections, and financial services operations.

Company: TP

TP (formerly Teleperformance) is a French multinational and the world's largest customer experience management and digital business services company. Founded in 1978 and headquartered in Paris, TP operates in 91+ countries with over 500,000 employees supporting 300+ languages across 170+ markets. The company's BFSI practice serves 350+ banking, financial services, and insurance clients globally, including the top 20% of the world's largest banks. TP was named a Leader in Everest Group's 2024 Banking Operations PEAK Matrix and delivers AI-powered solutions across fraud detection, collections, compliance, claims management, and customer experience through its TP.ai FAB platform.

Host: Tedd Huff

Tedd Huff is CEO of Voalyre, a fintech advisory firm, and founder of Fintech Confidential. Over the past 25+ years, he has contributed to fintech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for global companies. His expertise focuses on growth while delivering process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments. As host and executive producer of Fintech Confidential, Tedd brings entertaining and informative content focused on fintech industry insights, market trends, and stories from fintech leaders, thinkers, and doers. He is a recognized thought leader and U.S. Army veteran known for making complex financial technology approachable and engaging through his conversational storytelling style and deep understanding of global payments, cross-border transactions, and payment localization.

DD3 Media

Fintech Confidential is produced by DD3 Media.

Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Nik Milanović, Founder and FinTech Enthusiast in Chief of This Week in FinTech, a global community of more than 200,000 members, and the founder of StableCon, the first conference built exclusively around stablecoins and payments. Nik also serves as a General Partner at The FinTech Fund, where he invests in the next generation of FinTech startups.

Stablecoins have spent years being called either the future of money or a passing trend. What's changed isn't just the hype cycle: it's the regulatory foundation underneath it. The passage of the GENIUS Act, the repeal of SEC guidance SAB 121 on crypto custody, and a visible shift in how banks and financial institutions are engaging with stablecoins have moved this conversation from theoretical to operational. Banks that were quietly watching are now building. Companies that had no public stablecoin strategy 12 months ago are now processing stablecoin transactions in more than 150 countries.

But here's what's worth paying attention to: the version of stablecoins that actually reaches everyday people won't look like what the original crypto community envisioned. No seed phrases. No self-custody. No libertarian utopia. What mass adoption looks like is a Stripe-powered merchant settlement that runs on blockchain rails while the customer sees something that looks exactly like a credit card transaction. As Nik puts it, "the revolution has to become a lot more boring first."

That's not a failure of the original idea. That's how every major technology shift has played out, from radio to the internet. The infrastructure gets built, the guardrails go in, the corporates arrive, and what was once radical becomes routine.

The same pattern is showing up in how banks and FinTech companies are working together. The old model of banks acquiring technology companies and absorbing them in-house has largely failed. What's replacing it is a partnership model: tech-forward institutions like FinWise, Column Bank, and Cross River Bank figuring out how to extend their capabilities without overreaching their charters. The tension between "you're either a bank or a tech company" has given way to something more practical.

That shift in thinking is exactly what Nik built StableCon around. After six years of running This Week in FinTech and hearing repeated calls to launch a conference, the case for yet another general FinTech or crypto event wasn't there. There are more than 250 conferences globally with FinTech in the title. What didn't exist was a conference sitting at the specific intersection of banking, FinTech, and crypto, focused entirely on stablecoins: not asset price speculation, not blockchain theory, but the actual infrastructure of how money moves.

The conference was announced January 17, 2025. It ran May 29 in New York City. That's five months to plan, hire, sell tickets, and pull off an inaugural event in one of the most expensive cities in the world. At the start of May, only 400 tickets had been sold. In the final two weeks, 500 more sold as word spread and people realized they needed to be in the room. Final attendance: more than 1,000.

What the event revealed was as important as the numbers. Attendees were so focused on meeting each other that many skipped the general sessions entirely. That's not a failure: that's what happens when you gather a thousand people who are actually working in the same ecosystem and give them a room for the first time. The feedback confirmed it: StableCon filled a gap that BTC Vegas, Token2049, Permissionless, Money 2020, Consensus, Finovate, and FinTech Nexus weren't filling.

The next StableCon US is expanding to three days, moving to Washington, DC at the Gaylord at National Harbor, and shifting to September to avoid scheduling conflicts. The goal is to bring in policy participants, regulators, law firms, and accounting firms alongside the operators, reflecting where the stablecoin conversation is actually heading.

The current phase of stablecoin adoption has a name: skeuomorphic. Just like early apps made digital wallets look like leather wallets to make them feel familiar, today's stablecoin products largely rebuild what already exists on traditional rails. ACH replaced by stablecoin settlement. Wires replaced by on-chain transfers. The form looks the same; the infrastructure underneath is different.

What comes after that phase is where things get genuinely interesting. Programmable payments with instructions built directly into the transaction. Conditional transfers that can't be replicated on analog rails. On-chain escrow, disputes, and chargebacks managed without customer service departments. Collateral composed from tokenized holdings across multiple asset classes, combined into a single deposit without requiring conversion into dollars first.

That future isn't fully visible yet. As Nik says, "the coolest products that are built with stablecoins are products that we can't envision yet." What is visible is the direction: stablecoin rails becoming infrastructure people use without knowing it's there.

For FinTech founders navigating all of this, Nik closes with one clear piece of advice: don't lose sight of the big picture. It's easy in FinTech to start solving a surface-level problem, discover a deeper infrastructure issue beneath it, and keep drilling down until the original purpose disappears. The work of building better financial products requires holding both: the immediate technical problem and the reason you started solving it in the first place. And, critically, doing it in a way that stays compliant.

Banks Are Finally Moving

Banks and financial institutions are actually making inroads into working with digital assets and stablecoins. After the event, we've got the passage of the GENIUS Act. I can only see a path moving forward with that, but the revolution has to become a lot more boring first. The revolution's getting co-opted, and in a way, this is a great thing.

500 Tickets in Two Weeks

At the start of May, we had only sold 400 tickets, and then in the last two weeks alone, I think we sold 500 tickets.

The Moment FinTech Became Real

The attempted Visa acquisition of Plaid in early 2020 forced the entire industry to stop and ask a question nobody had seriously considered before: can a tech company actually become a scaled financial institution? When the deal fell apart, the answer became impossible to ignore. That single moment shifted how investors, founders, and banks looked at what was actually being built.

The Deal That Changed Everything

Before 2020, the prevailing belief was that building a scaled financial services company required a bank charter, a fund structure, or a major institutional sponsor. The attempted Visa acquisition of Plaid shattered that assumption. When the deal collapsed and everyone started asking why it mattered, the answer was impossible to ignore: a tech company had quietly built something so valuable that one of the world's largest payment networks was willing to pay billions to own it. That single moment rewired how investors, founders, and banks thought about what was actually possible in fintech.

Stablecoins Must Get Boring

Stable coins, crypto, digital assets, they take off if you actually make them accessible to large institutional owners and corporates and retail investors and mom and pops. But that means that you need to add guardrails, and it's not gonna be like this libertarian Bitcoin vision where you self custody your wallet. It's gonna be a very, very boring mass market vision.

250 Conferences, One Gap

With over 250 FinTech-related conferences already competing for attention globally, launching another general event made no sense. The stablecoin space sat at a unique intersection of banking, FinTech, and crypto with no flagship conference to call its own. That gap was the only reason worth building something new.

When Disaster Became the Highlight

Two high-profile speakers dropped out within 36 hours of the conference. What could have derailed the entire event turned into one of the most talked-about sessions of the day. The unplanned replacement session delivered an hour of raw, unscripted conversation that attendees called the standout moment of StableCon.

A Decade of Groundwork Is Paying Off

JPMorgan has been running on-chain transaction experiments for close to ten years through its Onyx platform. The technology was never the problem; regulatory clarity was the missing piece. Now that the blessing has arrived, an institution at that scale turning on stablecoin settlement becomes one of the most significant signals in the market.

Stripe Flipped in 12 Months

In 2024, Stripe had no meaningful public stablecoin initiatives. By the end of 2025, after acquiring Bridge, Stripe had enabled stablecoin transactions for merchants across roughly 150 countries. That shift from zero presence to global stablecoin infrastructure in under 12 months shows exactly how fast this space can move when a major player commits.

The Advice Every Founder Needs

FinTech founders consistently start by solving one problem, only to discover deeper infrastructure issues underneath it that pull focus further and further from the original goal. The founders who build lasting companies are the ones who stay anchored to the outcome they set out to deliver, even as the technical complexity grows. Keeping the big picture in front of you at every stage of the build is what separates products that matter from ones that get lost in the stack.

1️⃣ Stop Waiting for Perfect Regulations

The GENIUS Act passed. SAB 121 is repealed. The regulatory foundation is in place right now. If you are a bank, a FinTech, or a founder still sitting on the sidelines waiting for clarity, you are already behind. Start building to the framework that exists today.

2️⃣ Check Your Conference Strategy

There are over 250 FinTech conferences globally. If you are sponsoring, speaking, or attending events that put you in a room with everyone instead of the right people, you are wasting budget. Find the events built around your exact niche and show up there instead.

3️⃣ Watch the Card Programs

Eight stablecoin-linked card programs launched or announced in a single year. Cards are the first product step before broader stablecoin adoption follows. If you want to know where the real traction is happening right now, track who is launching card programs tied to stablecoins.

4️⃣ Build Partnerships, Not Ownership

Banks that tried to buy and absorb tech companies watched those investments fail. If you are a bank or a FinTech looking to grow, find a partner who complements what you already do instead of trying to own and control the entire stack.

5️⃣ Ladder Back to Your Why

Before you ship your next feature or chase the next infrastructure problem, ask yourself if it connects back to the original value you set out to deliver. If you cannot draw a straight line from what you are building to a better outcome for your customer, stop and reorient.

Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Nik Milanović, founder of This Week in FinTech and StableCon, to break down exactly what this regulatory shift means for banks, FinTech founders, and anyone building in the stablecoin payments space right now.

They cover why stablecoin adoption depends on becoming invisible infrastructure, how the current phase of stablecoin products is rebuilding existing rails before unlocking truly new capabilities, and what the surge of stablecoin-linked card programs signals about where the market is heading. Nik also pulls back the curtain on launching a thousand-person conference in five months, what the attendee behavior revealed about the state of the industry, and the one piece of advice every FinTech founder needs to hear before their next build.

Nik Milanović

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikm/

This Week in FinTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/this-week-in-fintech/

This Week in FinTech Website: https://www.thisweekinfintech.com/

StableCon Website: https://stablecon.com/

Host

Tedd Huff

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teddhuff/

Fintech Confidential

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@fintechconfidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Newsletter: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

Dfns - Wallets as a service provider offering API-first, multi-chain digital asset infrastructure with security, compliance, key orchestration, and blockchain integration for fintech platforms and custodians - fintechconfidential.com/dfns

Skyflow - Zero trust data privacy vault delivered as an API; collect, secure, and tokenize personal information like card data and payment details with built-in PCI, CCPA, GDPR, and SOC 2 compliance - skyflowsecure.com

Hawk AI - Real-time payment screening, ML transaction monitoring, and dynamic customer risk rating tools designed to fight fraud and financial crime while reducing false positives - gethawkai.com

00:00 Episode Highlights

01:36 Welcome to Fintech Confidential

01:44 Dfns: Wallets as a Service

03:05 Meet Nik Milanović

08:44 Nobody Was Calling It FinTech

10:21 The Deal That Changed Everything

13:10 Banks and Tech Stopped Competing

16:02 Digital Assets Finally Come In From Cold

18:15 How Crypto Gets Mainstreamed

22:46 Why StableCon Had to Exist

25:20 Stablecoins Replace the Fax Machine

26:47 Five Months to Launch a Conference

28:04 The Moment We Knew It Worked

28:34 Skyflow: Data Privacy Vault

29:34 Nobody Went to the Sessions

31:39 NYC Logistics and What Comes Next

34:12 Speakers Dropped and Nobody Noticed

35:27 How Leaders Really View Stablecoins

37:51 Stripe Shopify AWS Walmart All In

39:46 Why Stablecoins Still Look Like ACH

45:11 Programmability Changes Everything About Money

46:59 Stablecoins Go Mainstream and Feel Boring

51:59 The One Thing Every Founder Needs

54:43 Wrap Up and Subscribe

56:45 Hawk AI: Fighting Fraud and Financial Crime

57:31 Disclaimer

Nik Milanović is the Founder and FinTech Enthusiast in Chief of This Week in FinTech, the largest global fintech community with more than 234,000 subscribers across six continents. He started the newsletter in 2019 as an internal team email at Petal and grew it into one of the most widely read fintech publications in the world. He is also the General Partner at The Fintech Fund, an early-stage venture fund focused on underserved fintech verticals globally, and the founder of StableCon, the first conference built exclusively around stablecoins and payments, which drew more than 1,000 industry leaders to New York City in its inaugural year. Before building This Week in FinTech, Nik was the first U.S. employee at Funding Circle, led Business Development and Strategy at Google Pay and Google Finance, and held a strategy role at Petal. He studied at Stanford University and has spent more than 15 years working at the intersection of fintech, payments, and financial inclusion.

Tedd Huff is CEO of Voalyre, a fintech advisory firm, and founder of Fintech Confidential. Over the past 25+ years, he has contributed to fintech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for global companies. His expertise focuses on growth while delivering process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments. As host and executive producer of Fintech Confidential, Tedd brings entertaining and informative content focused on fintech industry insights, market trends, and stories from fintech leaders, thinkers, and doers. He is a recognized thought leader and U.S. Army veteran known for making complex financial technology approachable and engaging through his conversational storytelling style and deep understanding of global payments, cross-border transactions, and payment localization.

DD3 Media is a media creation, management, and production company delivering engaging content globally. The company produces Fintech Confidential and other shows focused on the people, tech, and companies changing how money moves.

Banking as a service, community banks, and fintech partnerships are changing how small businesses access financial products. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, along with Stephen Bishop of amBaaSsador and Fintech Confidential, Confidential Informant, sits down with Lindsay Borgeson, President of Partner Banking at Core Bank, to unpack how a community bank in Omaha, Nebraska built a full BaaS platform from scratch without a top-five bank playbook to follow.

The BaaS space has had its share of high-profile failures. Consent orders, compliance breakdowns, and program manager implosions have made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Core Bank took a different approach. They spent time reading every consent order before writing a single line of code. They went to their regulators, both the FDIC and the state, before building anything. They presented their strategic plan, invited regulators back multiple times outside of formal exams, and built a reputation for transparency before they ever onboarded a single fintech client.

"We are not the biggest name in BaaS," Lindsay admits. "Yet, we certainly aim to be a well-known, respected name, but for the right reasons."

That mindset shaped everything about how CoreX, their BaaS brand, was built. They did not try to bolt new capabilities onto an existing tech stack with bubblegum and duct tape. When their initial technology partner did not work out, they stopped, went back to the board, and interviewed over ten vendors before selecting Core Bank as their Side core and Oscilar for transaction monitoring. They later added Cobalt Labs for AI-driven compliance workflows. Each decision was made with long-term strategic alignment in mind, not speed to market.

The compliance model at CoreX offers two paths. Fintechs can choose managed compliance, where the bank handles transaction monitoring, KYB, and KYC. Or they can run customized compliance if they have the internal muscle to own those functions themselves. Either way, the expectation is the same: compliance is not a phase, it is a constant. Lindsay puts it simply: "Compliance first. I should probably consider removing it because it's compliance always."

What makes CoreX different from other sponsor banks is the focus on who they want to serve. Their ideal customer profile centers on fintechs that support small businesses, particularly vertical SaaS platforms in industries Core Bank already understands. Construction, real estate, property management, unions, aviation, medical, and hospitality are all sectors where the bank already has deep expertise on the traditional side of the house. That knowledge transfers directly into how they evaluate fintech partnerships.

The "dinner test" came up more than once. If you would not want to sit down for a meal with a potential partner, you should not get into a contract with them. When things go wrong, and they will, the quality of the relationship determines whether both sides can work through it or walk away bitter.

For fintechs considering a community bank partnership, the advice is direct. Know what matters to you before you start talking to banks. Do not compromise on compliance or risk management just because someone promises speed or a lower price. And if a bank says they can have you live in three months and profitable in twelve, something is off. Building this correctly takes time.

For community banks thinking about entering BaaS, the message is just as clear. Do not dabble. This is not a side-of-desk project. It requires dedicated people, a separate tech stack, a documented risk appetite, and full alignment from the board down. If your executive team is not excited about it, you will not have the patience to do it right.

"It's not for the faint of heart," Lindsay says. "But it is really a great avenue for community banks to thrive."

Core Bank is now expanding into embedded lending, aiming to become a full-service partner for fintechs focused on serving the SMB market. They are hiring, growing their team, and preparing for what comes next in a regulatory environment that continues to shift.

The episode covers how to build a BaaS program that lasts, how to evaluate tech stack partners, how to structure compliance models, and what separates the banks that survive from the ones that make headlines for the wrong reasons. If you are a fintech founder looking for a sponsor bank, or a community bank executive weighing whether to enter this space, this conversation offers a grounded, practical look at what it actually takes.

Silicon Prairie Is Real

Omaha, Nebraska has earned the nickname Silicon Prairie for a reason. Community banks in the Midwest are building serious fintech infrastructure without the spotlight of coastal tech hubs. The talent is there, the regulatory relationships are strong, and the results speak for themselves.

Bank Within A Bank

Building a BaaS platform means constructing an entirely separate operation inside your existing institution. Different people, different tech stack, different risk frameworks, different regulatory considerations. Most banks underestimate this scope until they are already in it.

BaaS In A Box Fails

Anyone promising to have you up and running in three months is selling a shortcut that will cost you later. If you are profitable in twelve months, something was built wrong. Speed to market is not the same as sustainability.

Read Every Consent Order

Before writing any code or signing any contracts, study what went wrong at other banks. Build a gap analysis. Make sure there is not a single stone you have not turned over. The failures in this space are public record for a reason.

Regulators Want Transparency First

Going to the FDIC and state regulators before building anything changed the entire trajectory. Presenting the strategic plan, inviting them back outside of exams, and maintaining open communication built trust that pays off when questions arise later.

Profitable Fast Means Problems

If someone tells you profitability comes quickly in BaaS, walk away. This is a long game that requires patience, investment, and a board that understands the timeline. Rushing leads to the same mistakes that made headlines.

Your Legacy Vendor Is Lying

When existing technology partners say they can handle BaaS requirements, verify it. Many banks learned the hard way that bubblegum and duct tape on old systems does not scale. Interview ten vendors if you have to.

Skills Do Not Transfer Automatically

The people who excel in traditional community banking may not thrive on the partner bank side. The mindset is different, the pace is different, and the technical demands are different. Evaluate talent honestly before assuming they can make the shift.

Know Your Why Before Starting

Core Bank got into BaaS to grow deposits. That clarity shaped every decision about which fintechs to partner with, which verticals to serve, and which opportunities to decline. Without a clear why, every shiny opportunity looks like the right one.

Fed Skinny Charters Loom Large

The rush to new charters and Fed master accounts is noise that could reshape the entire BaaS model. No one fully understands the impact yet, but smart banks are watching closely and preparing to pivot if the landscape shifts.

1️⃣ First Call Energy Tells All

If you leave a 30-minute intro call feeling drained, that is your answer. Walk away. The right partnerships should energize both sides from the first conversation.

2️⃣ Stop Overcomplicating BaaS

It is still banking. The same principles apply: risk management, customer experience, and caring about the businesses you serve. Remove the mysticism and treat it like what it is.

3️⃣ Competitors Will Help You

Banks in this space are surprisingly collaborative. They share what works and what does not because everyone benefits when the industry does it correctly. Reach out and learn from them.

4️⃣ Assess Cultural Readiness First

Before committing resources, evaluate whether your organization has the mindset to operate a partner bank. Naysayers and internal resistance will slow you down if leadership is not fully aligned.

5️⃣ Community Banks Offer Leadership Access

Fintechs get direct access to executive decision-makers at community banks. That level of high-touch partnership is harder to find at larger institutions. Do not assume smaller means less capable.

Banking as a service does not require billions in assets or a top-five bank playbook. Tedd Huff and Stephen Bishop sit down with Lindsay Borgeson, President of Partner Banking at Core Bank, to break down how a community bank in Nebraska built a full BaaS platform from scratch. The focus is on what actually works: reading every consent order before writing code, going to regulators before building anything, and choosing tech partners based on long-term alignment instead of sales pitches. The compliance model offers two paths, managed or customized, but the expectation stays the same either way. Fintechs serving small businesses through vertical SaaS get priority. The dinner test matters more than most banks admit. Speed and price should never outweigh quality. And if someone promises profitability in twelve months, something is wrong. This is the practical breakdown for fintech founders and community bank executives who want to enter sponsor banking the right way.

Guest

Lindsay Borgeson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-lee-borgeson-162a4972/

Core Bank: https://corebank.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/core-bank

Co-Host

Stephen Bishop: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenbishop1/

amBaaSsador: https://ambaassador.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bankingambaassador

Host

Tedd Huff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teddhuff/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

Fintech Confidential

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@fintechconfidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Newsletter: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

Under io - Streamline your application and underwriting process by digitizing PDFs for digital signature - under.io/ftc

Skyflow - Zero trust data privacy vault delivered as an API; collect, secure, and tokenize personal information like card data and payment details with built-in PCI, CCPA, GDPR, and SOC 2 compliance - skyflowsecure.com

Hawk AI - Real-time payment screening, ML transaction monitoring, and dynamic customer risk rating tools designed to fight fraud and financial crime while reducing false positives - gethawkai.com

00:00 Episode Highlights

01:22 Under.io: AI-Powered Onboarding & Risk Verification (Sponsor)

01:52 Meet Lindsay Borgs: A FinTech Leader

03:17 Building Corex: The Journey Begins

06:28 Challenges and Lessons Learned

08:44 Strategic Partnerships and AI Integration

11:18 Compliance and Risk Management

13:07 Success Stories and Ideal Customer Profiles

14:29 Sky Flow: Building Fast and Secure (sponsor)

21:31 Navigating Regulatory Landscapes

28:36 Future of Core Bank and Corex

30:10 Closing Thoughts and Advice

33:32 Hawk.ai: AI-Driven Financial Crime Detection (Sponsor)

34:18 Disclaimer

GUEST

Lindsay Borgeson is President of Partner Banking at Core Bank, where she leads the CoreX banking-as-a-service platform. She has been at Core Bank for 14 years, starting as a branch manager and working her way up through Vice President of Retail Banking, Chief Deposit Officer, and now President of Partner Banking. Lindsay was recognized as a Top Contributor by Alloy Labs and has been instrumental in building CoreX from the ground up, including developing strategic partnerships with Increased Technologies, Osler, and Cobalt Labs. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Bellevue University.

Core Bank is a full-service community bank headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, with six Midwest locations across the Omaha and Kansas City metros. The bank aspires to be a truly remarkable company that just happens to be a bank, delivering personal, business, real estate, healthcare banking, and wealth services. Through CoreX, their banking-as-a-service brand, Core Bank offers white-labeled solutions for deposits, money movement, and card issuance to fintech partners serving small businesses and vertical SaaS platforms.

CO-HOST

Confidential Informant Stephen Bishop Stephen “Steve” Bishop is the President of amBaaSsador, an education and advisory platform focused on embedded finance and Banking-as-a-Service for both financial institutions and service providers. He previously led strategic growth and new initiatives at OMB Bank as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Innovation Officer, where he also helped create and build OMBX, the bank’s embedded finance brand. His background includes senior roles at Jack Henry & Associates, Citi, and AT&T, and he holds graduate degrees in operations, finance, strategy, and information management from Washington University in St. Louis.

amBaaSsador is a strategic advisory and ecosystem platform dedicated to helping banks, fintechs, and service providers succeed in embedded finance and Banking-as-a-Service. The firm focuses on clear education, practical strategy, and curated connections, giving clients a neutral place to understand market shifts and choose a path that fits their goals. Its work spans consulting, community programs, training, events, and research, all designed to turn complex BaaS questions into practical, workable plans.

HOST

Tedd Huff is a long-time fintech leader with more than 25 years of experience across payments, banking, and software. He is the Founder and CEO of Voalyre and the creator of Fintech Confidential, a network of shows and newsletters focused on how money and payments really work. Over his career he has served as a founder, board member, and executive for multiple startups and has provided strategic direction to organizations such as Global Payments, OpenEdge, Heartland Payment Systems, Nuvei, and TSYS. His work centers on growth, clear strategy, and user experience, and has included collaborations with companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Walmart, Cabela’s, and Restoration Hardware.

Voalyre is a global fintech enablement firm that helps payments and financial technology companies grow with a mix of advisory services and hands-on execution. The firm works with banks, processors, and fintechs on issues such as go-to-market strategy, product and experience design, partner programs, and operational readiness. By combining deep industry experience with practical support, Voalyre helps clients reduce friction in their payments stack and move faster from idea to measurable results.

Diamond D3 Media is a multimedia and marketing agency founded by Tedd Huff that specializes in content creation and production for the fintech and payments industry. As the production company behind Fintech Confidential, DD3 Media produces podcasts, live streams, video content, and onsite interview events that deliver engaging, educational content to global audiences. The company focuses on creating professional-grade media that simplifies complex financial technology topics through storytelling and expert interviews, helping fintech companies and financial institutions build thought leadership and connect with their audiences across YouTube, podcast platforms, and social media.

Stablecoins hit $50 trillion in transaction volume, surpassing Visa and MasterCard combined. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Keith VanderLeast, General Manager of Americas at BVNK, at FinTech Nerd Con in Miami to unpack what's really happening as blockchain-based payments reshape cross-border infrastructure.

The numbers tell a story that's hard to ignore. By the end of October 2025, stablecoin transaction volumes hit somewhere between $46 trillion and $50 trillion. BVNK alone processes about $20 billion in total volume, with the Americas business making up roughly a third of that amount. This isn't about speculative crypto trading anymore. The conversation has shifted to real payment infrastructure that moves money across borders 24/7 without the friction that's plagued traditional rails for decades.

Stablecoins offer instant settlement around the clock, transparency that traditional banking can't match, and costs that make high-ticket cross-border transactions actually viable. Banks and payment companies are moving from pilot programs to actual implementation.

Payouts have gained more traction early on because companies prefer to test the waters by pushing payments out rather than accepting them in. The gig economy has become a major beneficiary. Companies can now pay workers anywhere in the world without routing through legacy banking systems that charge hefty fees and take days to settle.

The compliance conversation gets interesting when you compare on-chain monitoring to traditional banking. With blockchain-based payments, every transaction leaves a permanent record. You can see where funds originated, every wallet they touched along the way, and where they end up.

Visa and MasterCard have been testing stablecoin settlements for their issuers and acquirers, primarily in European markets where regulatory clarity arrived sooner. For companies doing high volumes of original credit transactions on weekends, the ability to pre-fund with stablecoins eliminates the need for expensive lines of credit.

One surprise in the market comes from the reverse flow. Manufacturers in Latin America want to pay their US suppliers using stablecoins. BVNK converts those stablecoin payments to dollars and pays out through traditional rails.

1️⃣ Train compliance teams on blockchain monitoring tools before piloting stablecoin payments because BSA-AML frameworks work differently on-chain.

2️⃣ Calculate what you spend on lines of credit just to pre-fund weekend settlement accounts and compare that against stablecoin settlement costs.

3️⃣ Set up ongoing monitoring using tools that track transactions after they exit your custody to catch compliance issues before they become problems.

4️⃣ Build infrastructure to accept payments from unexpected directions like Latin America to US and convert to traditional rails on the receiving end.

5️⃣ Use smart contracts to handle escrow requirements in lending situations instead of relying on intermediaries.

Guest

Keith VanderLeast

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithvanderleest/

BVNK Profile: https://bvnk.com/about-us

Company

BVNK

Website: https://bvnk.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bvnk/

Host

Fintech Confidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

Dfns - Wallets as a service offering API-first, multi-chain infrastructure with security, compliance, and blockchain integration for fintech platforms - https://fintechconfidential.com/dfns

Sky Flow - Zero trust data privacy vault for collecting, securing, and tokenizing personal information with PCI, CCPA, GDPR, and SOC 2 compliance - https://skyflowsecure.com

Hawk AI - Real-time payment screening, AML transaction monitoring, and dynamic customer risk rating tools for fighting fraud and financial crime - https://gethawkai.com

Keith VanderLeast is General Manager of Americas at BVNK, leading strategy and customer success across the U.S. market for stablecoin-powered payment solutions. With over 20 years in payment infrastructure across Western Union, First Data, American Express, and Cross River Bank, Keith specializes in instant payments, compliance, and helping traditional institutions bridge fiat and blockchain-based payment systems.

BVNK is a London-based stablecoin infrastructure platform founded in 2021 that provides enterprise-grade payment services bridging traditional banking and blockchain networks. With over 25 regulatory licenses and processing over $30 billion in annualized payment volume, BVNK offers managed and self-managed payment solutions supporting SWIFT, ACH, SEPA, and major blockchains for fintechs, payment providers, and financial institutions.

Tedd Huff is CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and host of Fintech Confidential. Fintech Confidential delivers insights, trends, and stories from fintech leaders.

Diamond D3 Media is a multimedia agency founded by Tedd Huff specializing in content creation and production for the fintech industry, producing podcasts, live streams, and video content that simplify complex financial technology topics.

00:00 Episode Highlights

01:08 Dfns: Wallets as a Service (sponsor)

02:29 Interview with Keith: FinTech Journey

04:41 Cross-Border Payments and Stable Coins

09:23 Stable Coins in the Gig Economy

10:40 Managed vs. Self-Managed Solutions

13:41 Sky Flow: Building Fast and Secure (sponsor)

21:21 Future of Stable Coins and Tokenized Deposits

23:43 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

24:19 Hawk AI (sponsor)

Small business cash flow solutions: Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and host of Fintech Confidential, interviews Receives' Founder & CEO Ariel Blum and Lithics' Co-Founder & CEO Bo Jiang on earned revenue access for 34M American businesses. How fintech infrastructure provides instant access to sales revenue without loans, solving payment delays and working capital challenges.

Legacy banking systems force business owners to wait days or weeks for funds from completed sales, creating cash flow crises that lead 82% of small businesses to struggle with basic operations. Modern fintech companies are solving this through real-time access to earned revenue, flexible payment infrastructure, and strategic partnerships that eliminate artificial delays built into outdated financial systems.

This episode of Fintech Confidential, recorded live from the Money Pot at Money 2020 in Las Vegas, breaks down how small businesses can access working capital faster, why traditional lending models fail Main Street America, and what partnerships between fintech innovators actually look like when building compliant, scalable solutions.

1️⃣ Pick partners, not vendors.

Look for teams that treat your success as their own.

2️⃣ Build in parallel, not sequence.

Run development and compliance at the same time to cut launch timelines.

3️⃣ Get the full customer picture.

Visibility into earnings, accounts, and spending drives smarter decisions.

4️⃣ Test options before you scale.

Come to partners with presets already tested to speed approvals.

5️⃣ Prepare for what you cannot see.

Stay flexible enough to respond when something unexpected hits.

Ariel Blum | Founder and CEO of Receive

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arielblum/

Bo Jiang | Co-founder and CEO of Lithic

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boling

Receive

Website: https://www.nowreceive.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nowreceive

Lithic

Website: https://www.lithic.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lithic

Fintech Confidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

Under.io – Digitize your PDFs for applications and underwriting. Get started free: https://under.io/ftc

Defense (Dfns) - Provides wallets as a service that's API first, multi-chain by design, and secured with MPC fintechconfidential.com/dfs

Hawk AI – Real-time payment screening, ML transaction monitoring, and dynamic risk rating for fraud prevention: https://gethawkai.com

Ariel Blum is the Founder and CEO of Receive. He previously held leadership roles at American Express, Green Dot, and Melio. He built Receive as the first earned revenue access platform for small businesses, helping them unlock cash they have already earned without borrowing.

Bo Jiang is the Co-founder and CEO of Lithic. He and his co-founders started building together at age 14 and later founded Privacy.com before launching Lithic. He studied at MIT and leads the company from New York.

Receive is a fintech platform that gives small businesses instant access to their earned revenue with no interest, no credit checks, and no traditional underwriting.

Lithic is a card issuing infrastructure platform that empowers fintechs to build compliant, scalable payment products through developer-friendly APIs and direct network connections.

Tedd Huff is the CEO of Voalyre and host of Fintech Confidential, bringing you the people, tech, and companies that change how you pay and get paid.

00:00 Highlights

01:07 Welcome to Fintech Confidential

01:16 Under.io: Streamline Applications & Underwriting (sponsor)

02:06 Challenges Facing Small Businesses

02:39 Meet Ariel Blum and Bo Jiang

03:26 Breaking Down Barriers for SMBs

04:19 Why the Financial System Is Broken

05:39 Modern Infrastructure for Modern Businesses

07:03 Adapting Fintech to Business Needs

09:46 The Receive and Lithic Partnership

11:40 Modern Businesses Need Modern Infrastructure

14:19 The Democratization of Liquidity

15:26 Compliance and Moving Fast

16:37 DFNS: Wallets as a Service (sponsor)

18:02 Balancing Speed with Regulation

21:08 Lightning Round: Quick Takes

24:27 Stablecoins and Real-Time Money Movement

30:00 Advice for Fintech Founders

30:36 Conclusion: Key Takeaways

31:10 Closing Remarks and Call to Action

32:02 Hawk AI: Fighting Fraud and Financial Crime (sponsor)

32:47 Disclaimer

Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and host of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Fintech Confidential CI, Robert Musiala, Partner at Baker Hostetler and co-leader of their Web3 and Digital Assets team, to break down what made 2025 the most consequential year in crypto regulation. The SEC reversed course, the Genius Act passed at lightning speed, and stablecoins exploded from $205 billion to $308 billion in market cap. This is the month-by-month breakdown of how regulatory clarity supercharged the entire industry.

The SEC declared most crypto assets are not securities, dismantling years of legal uncertainty. Banks got the green light to offer crypto custody and exchange services. Circle's IPO validated stablecoins as core financial infrastructure. The Genius Act created the first federal stablecoin framework while banning yield payments and imposing strict reserve requirements. NFTs gained legal clarity, DeFi got legitimized, and crypto-native firms started filing for bank charters. If you're building in crypto, investing in blockchain, or trying to understand where regulation is headed in 2026, this breaks down the exact moves that matter.

1️⃣ Genius Act created federal stablecoin operating rules

2️⃣ Stables finally legal under federal framework

3️⃣ IRS solves crypto tax confusion overnight

4️⃣ Stablecoin yield payments now completely banned

5️⃣ SEC stops lawsuits, issues guidance instead

Guest: Robert Musiala

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-musiala/

Baker Hostetler: https://www.bakerlaw.com/people/robert-musiala

Blockchain Monitor: https://www.blockchainmonitor.com/

Company: Baker Hostetler

Website: https://www.bakerlaw.com/

Web3 & Digital Assets: https://www.bakerlaw.com/practices/web3-digital-assets

Fintech Confidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

DFNS: Wallets as a service, API first, multi-chain, secured with MPC across 50+ blockchains - fintechconfidential.com/dfns

Skyflow: Zero trust data privacy vault for PCI, CCPA, GDPR, SOC 2 compliance - skyflowsecure.com

Hawk: AI tools for real-time payment screening and fraud prevention - gethawkai.com

Robert Musiala is Partner and co-leader of Baker Hostetler's Web3 and Digital Assets team, providing weekly analysis on the Blockchain Monitor blog. Baker Hostetler is a leading U.S. law firm with over 900 attorneys serving blockchain clients from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Tedd Huff is the Founder of Voalyre and Diamond D3, professional services consulting firms focused on global payments and marketing. He is also video podcast host and executive producer on the Fintech Confidential network. Over the past 25+ years, he has contributed to FinTech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for global companies, focusing on growth while delivering process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments.

00:00 Episode Highlights

02:08 Dfns: Wallets as a Service (sponsor)

04:01 2025 Regulatory Changes and Market Impact

04:43 January: SEC's Tone Shift and Market Reactions

06:11 February: The Genius Act Gains Momentum

07:02 March: OCC and SEC Updates

08:27 April: Stablecoins Get the Green Light

09:18 May: OCC and SEC Further Clarifications

10:53 June: Circle's IPO and Market Growth

12:33 July: The Genius Act Becomes Law

14:39 August: SEC's Groundbreaking Statement

16:35 September: Stablecoins and Staking Products

18:55 October: NFT Rulings and Market Reactions

20:50 November: OCC Trust Bank Charters

22:47 December: CFTC and Stablecoin Developments

31:01 Sky Flow: Building Fast and Secure (sponsor)

32:28 Stablecoin Reserve Regulations

34:20 Impact of the Genius Act on DeFi

35:14 Issuer Interest Prohibition and Revenue

38:09 OCC Charters and Crypto Native Firms

39:58 Stablecoin Issuer Strategies

45:14 SEC's 180 Degree Pivot

51:23 OCC Interpretive Letters and Bank Charters

54:24 Key Takeaways for 2025

57:13 Looking Ahead to 2026

01:00:53 Closing Remarks and Fraud Prevention

01:01:25 Hawk AI (sponsor)

01:02:11 Disclaimer

Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre, sits down with Geetha Panchapakesan, Founder and CEO of Tesser, to explore how stablecoins are changing cross-border payments for enterprises tired of slow, expensive banking methods. Recorded live at Money 2020, this conversation cuts through the noise to address real pain points that treasury managers and CFOs face when moving money across borders.

Traditional payment systems force companies to pre-fund accounts in multiple countries, tying up capital that earns nothing while transactions crawl through correspondent banks over days or weeks. Stablecoins offer instant settlement without pre-funding requirements, giving businesses real-time visibility into every transaction. The conversation covers practical adoption strategies, including how to test one payment corridor before scaling, and addresses regulatory clarity emerging from frameworks like the Genius Act. Geetha shares why remittance firms and cross-border payment companies are seeing immediate efficiency gains, and delivers actionable advice on calculating idle capital costs, measuring time savings, and leveraging blockchain traceability for compliance.

TAKEAWAYS:

1️⃣ Companies handling money transfers across challenging payment corridors are seeing the biggest wins right now with instant payouts.

2️⃣ Stablecoin transactions can be checked in real time so you always know exactly where your payment stands.

3️⃣ Calculate all the money sitting in foreign accounts earning zero interest; that capital could be deployed elsewhere.

4️⃣ Track exact time savings and cost reductions from your test corridor before expanding to broader implementation.

5️⃣ Every blockchain transaction creates a permanent record showing exactly where funds moved and when.

LINKS:

Guest - Geetha Panchapakesan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geethapanchapakesan

Company - Tesser: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tesser | https://x.com/tesser_xyz

Fintech Confidential:

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@fintechconfidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Newsletter: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

SUPPORTERS:

Dfns: Wallets as a service with API-first, multi-chain design secured with MPC; powers crypto payments across 50+ networks. https://dfns.co

Skyflow: Zero-trust data privacy vaults as an API to collect, secure, and tokenize personal information while keeping compliance and usability. https://skyflow.com

Hawk AI: Real-time screening, ML monitoring, and dynamic customer risk ratings to strengthen fraud and financial-crime prevention. https://hawk.ai

ABOUT:

Geetha Panchapakesan is Founder and CEO of Tesser, a payments platform enabling banks, MSBs, and PSPs to make and receive stablecoin payments with the same ease as traditional payment rails. She brings 18+ years of experience leading product and strategy at MoneyGram, Visa Direct, and Circle.

Tesser is a New York-based fintech company building stablecoin-based payments infrastructure that enables licensed financial institutions to move money across borders instantly and compliantly. The platform integrates stablecoin payment rails into existing financial systems in under a month, reducing cross-border settlement times from weeks to hours and cutting costs by up to 95%.

Tedd Huff is Founder of Voalyre, a professional services and advisory firm focused on global payments and banking. He is also a video podcast host and executive producer on the Fintech Confidential network. Over the past 25+ years, he has contributed to fintech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for Global Payments OpenEdge, Heartland Payments, Nuvei, and TSYS, among others, focusing on growth while delivering process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments.

DD3 Media: A media creation, management, & production company delivering engaging content globally.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Intro

01:04 Dfns: Wallets as a Service

02:12 Live from Money 2020

03:27 Pain Points of Traditional Payments

03:59 Stablecoins Change Everything

05:05 Real-World Applications

05:51 Enterprise Adoption

06:35 Educating the Market

07:44 Hype vs Reality

08:19 Proof of Value

12:34 Regulatory Uncertainty

14:05 Experimenting with Stablecoins

15:12 Skyflow: Building Fast and Secure

16:37 Lightning Round

20:25 Visa and MasterCard Expansion

22:01 Choosing the Right Stablecoin

24:17 Future of Stablecoins

28:56 Final Thoughts

30:55 Hawk AI

This inaugural Inside the Vault session was recorded live on the Money Pot stage at Money20/20 USA 2025. Tedd sits down with confidential informant Stephen, AnaLiza from First Bank of the Lake, and Rodrigo from Piedmont Bank to talk bluntly about Banking as a Service, embedded finance, and what happens when programs break under real pressure. The tone is direct, practical, and focused on what operators and sponsor banks actually care about when they decide who to work with.

You hear why some BaaS programs never should have launched, how banks now review fintech partners with investor-style discipline, and what recent failures may signal about the next phase of sponsor bank risk. The group walks through real lessons from collapsed programs, missing funds, and weak unit economics, then ties those lessons to concrete steps you can take around funding, oversight, and unwind planning. If you care about BaaS, sponsor banks, or building a fintech that can survive a tougher market, this session is likely to shift how you prepare for your next partner meeting.

1️⃣ Pressure-test your BaaS idea Treat your concept like a risk team would, validate the use case, revenue model, and account growth with realistic numbers before you pitch a bank.

2️⃣ Use funding to build trust Show committed capital, sane burn, and a path beyond launch so a sponsor bank can see you are prepared to support customers for the long haul.

3️⃣ Plan for clean exits early Write reserves, unwind steps, and customer communication into your structure so a program failure does not turn into an emergency for the bank.

4️⃣ Align with bank operations Bring people, controls, and routines that fit how banks work so you feel like a responsible partner instead of another exception they must manage.

5️⃣ Budget past MVP to real scale Secure enough runway for product, compliance, and go-to-market through early scale, not just the first release, so you are less likely to stall when costs rise.

Links: Fintech Confidential

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@fintechconfidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Newsletter: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential X: https://x.com/FTconfidential Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential SUPPORTERS

ABOUT AnaLiza Grandner is Executive Vice President and Chief Payments Officer at First Bank of the Lake, an internationally recognized leader in fintech banking with more than 17 years of experience. She leads the bank’s payments strategy and private-label banking efforts and has helped brands like Google Wallet, Chime, Varo, Simple, Seed, Walgreens, and Bento design and refine their products. Rodrigo Suarez is Chief Banking Officer at Piermont Bank, where he leads the bank’s high-growth client and payments businesses. He is responsible for product strategy, technology platforms, and channel delivery that support fast-moving entrepreneurial clients and keep the bank’s offering aligned with real market needs. Stephen Bishop is President of amBaaSsador, an education and advisory platform focused on embedded finance and Banking as a Service for banks and service providers. He previously held senior roles at OMB Bank building OMBX, as well as leadership positions at Jack Henry & Associates, Citi, and AT&T. Tedd Huff is the Founder and CEO of Voalyre and the creator and host of Fintech Confidential, with more than 26 years in fintech and payments advising startups and public companies on strategy, growth, and user experience. Fintech Confidential is a media platform of shows and newsletters that shares real operator stories about how money, risk, and technology products are built and scaled.

AnaLiza Grandner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/algrandner/

First Bank of the Lake: https://www.fblake.bank

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/first-bank-of-the-lake

Rodrigo Suarez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodrigosuarezu/

Piermont Bank: https://www.piermontbank.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/piermontbank

Tedd Huff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teddhuff/

Fintech Confidential: https://fintechconfidential.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

Stephen Bishop: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenbishop1/

amBaaSsador: https://ambaassador.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bankingambaassador

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@fintechconfidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Newsletter: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

Supporters

Skyflow: Data privacy vault that helps keep payment and personal data off your core systems and reduces PCI scope for your teams https://skyflowsecure.com

Under: A Tool that turns static PDF applications into fast, sign-ready flows for underwriting, onboarding, and internal approvals https://under.io/ftc

Hawk AI: Real-time transaction monitoring and payment screening that uses machine learning to reduce false positives and strengthen financial crime defenses https://gethawkai.com

AnaLiza Grandner

AnaLiza Grandner is the Chief Payments Officer at First Bank of the Lake and a widely recognized leader in fintech-focused banking with more than 17 years of experience. She leads the bank’s payments strategy and its private-label banking business, drawing on a career that spans both banks and high-growth fintechs. Her work has helped major brands such as Google Wallet, Chime, Varo, Simple, Seed, Walgreens, and Bento design, launch, and refine payments programs. Before joining First Bank of the Lake, she led Banking-as-a-Service efforts at Cross River Bank and has been a featured keynote speaker at multiple global industry events.

First Bank of the Lake

First Bank of the Lake is a nationally active SBA lender with deep expertise in government-backed small business financing. From its roots in Osage Beach, Missouri, it has grown into one of the top SBA 7(a) and 504 lenders in the country, funding thousands of loans and more than a billion dollars in capital for businesses across the United States. The bank focuses on tailored SBA solutions, strong customer relationships, and a high-touch approach that helps business owners secure the funding they need to grow.

Rodrigo Suarez

Rodrigo Suarez is the Chief Banking Officer at Piermont Bank, where he is responsible for keeping the bank ahead in modern product delivery and client service. He oversees the innovation-focused banking and payments lines of business and leads strategies that support fast-growing, entrepreneurial clients. Rodrigo also manages product development, technology applications, and channel delivery so that the bank’s offerings stay aligned with the needs of scale-ups and high-growth companies.

Piermont Bank

Piermont Bank is a tech-forward commercial bank built for startups, scale-ups, and modern mid-market businesses. The bank focuses on fast decisions, flexible structures, and banking solutions designed around the pace of high-growth companies. It combines experienced bankers with modern technology to offer tailored lending, payments, and treasury services that help clients move from early growth to larger scale without getting stuck in rigid legacy processes.

Stephen Bishop

Stephen “Steve” Bishop is the President of amBaaSsador, an education and advisory platform focused on embedded finance and Banking-as-a-Service for both financial institutions and service providers. He previously led strategic growth and new initiatives at OMB Bank as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Innovation Officer, where he also helped create and build OMBX, the bank’s embedded finance brand. His background includes senior roles at Jack Henry & Associates, Citi, and AT&T, and he holds graduate degrees in operations, finance, strategy, and information management from Washington University in St. Louis.

amBaaSsador

amBaaSsador is a strategic advisory and ecosystem platform dedicated to helping banks, fintechs, and service providers succeed in embedded finance and Banking-as-a-Service. The firm focuses on clear education, practical strategy, and curated connections, giving clients a neutral place to understand market shifts and choose a path that fits their goals. Its work spans consulting, community programs, training, events, and research, all designed to turn complex BaaS questions into practical, workable plans.

Tedd Huff: Tedd Huff is the Co-Founder of Voalyre, and the President & Founder of Diamond D3, a professional services consulting firm focused on global payments and marketing. He is also a video podcast host and producer of Fintech Confidential.

Over the past 24 years, he has contributed to FinTech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for Global Payments OpenEdge, Heartland Payments, Nuvei, and TSYS, among others, focusing on growth while delivering innovation, process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments.

Diamond D3, Media: A media creation, management, and production company delivering engaging content globally