Fintech Layer Cake

Fintech Layer Cake uncovers the secret recipes and practical insights from fintech leaders and experts. Host Reggie Young, chief of staff at Lithic, talks to the people building financial infrastructure from the inside.

Shirley Zhang joined the startup Order as employee number seven, at 19, and built its people ops and recruiting functions from scratch. She later trained as an executive search recruiter, placing VP-level and above hires across a portfolio of venture firms, before joining Lithic, where she now leads recruiting and describes herself as a matchmaker as much as a screener.

In this episode, Reggie and Shirley get into what to look for in your first handful of hires, why "ghosting" candidates is recruiting's most common unforced error, and why chasing the "purple squirrel," a candidate who checks every box, usually costs more than it's worth. They also cover how she balances hard data against gut feel, and how she went from actively avoiding a career in recruiting to building her whole identity around it.

Chapters

• 00:00 Building people ops from scratch at 19
• 04:21 The three traits to anchor a first hire on
• 08:32 The "purple squirrel" problem
• 14:19 The biggest mistake in recruiting: bad candidate experience
• 18:07 "Recruiting is a team sport"
• 21:04 Assessing culture fit without just vibing
• 26:24 Her "sixth sense," and when to trust it
• 29:10 What makes someone a fit for a leadership hire
• 32:26 "People buy people first"
• 34:11 How she fell into recruiting after actively avoiding it
• 39:43 Why she loves it now

Fintech Layer Cake is powered by the Cartesian platform, Lithic. We provide financial infrastructure that enables teams to build better payments products for consumers and businesses. Nothing in this podcast should be construed as legal or financial advice. Subscribe for new episodes. If you enjoy the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help more people in fintech find it.

For most of the history of lending, approval and access were two separate events. A borrower gets approved, then waits days or weeks for an ACH to clear before the money is usable. For small businesses managing tight cash flow, that gap can be the difference between catching an opportunity and missing it.
 Cards are changing that. When a lender issues a virtual card at the moment of approval, credit becomes spendable right away, with no ACH delay and no separate account.

In this webinar, Lithic product marketer Claire Jacobs sits down with Sarvesh Baveja, Chief Risk Officer at Fundbox, and Declan Callisto, Product Manager at Lithic, to break down how Fundbox built a loan-to-card program on Lithic and took it live in seven weeks. They cover the borrower experience from application to spend, the spend controls that let a lender manage risk at both the business and card level, the four partners required to stand up a program like this, and where SMB underwriting goes as static credit limits give way to dynamic ones.
 Fintech Layer Cake and Lithic webinars are powered by Lithic, financial infrastructure that helps teams build better card and payments products for consumers and businesses.

Chapters

• 00:00 Why approval and access became two separate events
• 01:32 Sarvesh and Declan introduce themselves
• 02:00 Why loan-to-card is a new innovation
• 02:19 The SMB cash flow timing problem
• 03:21 Why the choice of issuer processor matters
• 04:13 The Fundbox borrower experience, from application to spend
• 06:00 What Lithic built behind the scenes: the credit ledger
• 06:56 Why spend controls work at both the business and card level
• 08:30 Where else card rails apply beyond SMB lending
• 09:36 The rent payment use case
• 10:29 The four partners required to launch a program like this
• 12:42 Why embedded payments matter for reaching borrowers
• 14:08 What Lithic offers that legacy processors don't
• 16:05 The biggest misconception about program timelines
• 18:15 Where SMB underwriting is headed: from static limits to dynamic ones
• 20:03 Closing thoughts

Subscribe for more on card infrastructure and modern lending.

Phil Goldfeder runs the American Fintech Council, the trade group representing nearly 170 fintech and banking companies. Before that he advised Chuck Schumer and Michael Bloomberg, served in elected office, and helped steer Cross River through the Paycheck Protection Program, where a bank with six or seven billion dollars in assets made as many loans as Chase and Bank of America.

In this episode, Reggie Young talks with Phil about how policy actually gets made and changed. They cover the lessons he took from Bloomberg and Schumer, what it was like inside Cross River during PPP, how a trade group turns 170 members with different interests into workable positions, why relationships with regulators get built in rooms rather than in filings, and the window he sees for durable policy work over the months ahead.

Fintech Layer Cake is powered by Lithic, financial infrastructure that helps teams build better card and payments products for consumers and businesses.

Chapters:
 00:00 – Cold open: know what you know
 00:12 – Meet Phil Goldfeder: Schumer, Bloomberg, Cross River, AFC
 01:16 – What Bloomberg taught him about getting things done
 03:16 – What Schumer taught him about time and showing up
 04:33 – Inside Cross River when PPP hit
 05:46 – "We have a responsibility to serve": the CEO's call
 08:30 – Out-loaning the giants: a $7B bank matching Chase
 09:39 – How a fintech actually advocates for policy change
 11:52 – AFC as the nucleus: connecting companies, states, and regulators
 14:13 – Who counts as a policymaker
 15:21 – The high schoolers who changed his vote
 19:01 – Managing 170 members who don't agree
 19:48 – Flipping the compromise: everyone walks away a winner
 21:04 – The compliance officer and the FDIC in the same room
 23:13 – Banks want integrity, fintechs want speed, both can win
 25:03 – Why friendly administrations don't guarantee progress
 26:41 – The six-to-eight-month window to build things that last
 29:36 – Consent orders as a step toward stronger companies
 30:40 – Where to find AFC

Nothing in this podcast should be construed as legal or financial advice.

Subscribe for new episodes every other Wednesday. If you enjoy the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help more people in fintech find it.

Davi Strazza spent a decade at Adyen as the company scaled from around $30 billion to over $1.3 trillion in annual payment volume, running Latin America and then North America as president. Today he is Chief Business Officer at Lightspark, the company powering over 15% of Coinbase's Bitcoin transfers.

In this episode, Reggie Young talks with Davi about what actually moves enterprise payments decisions. They cover why inertia keeps trillions on legacy rails, how challengers find their wedge against incumbents, what Pix's adoption in Brazil reveals about changing payment behavior, and how Lightspark uses Bitcoin and stablecoins as invisible infrastructure for global money movement. Davi closes with the risk he thinks fintech still underweights: the compliance work underneath every product that scales.

Fintech Layer Cake is powered by Lithic, financial infrastructure that helps teams build better card and payments products for consumers and businesses.

Chapters:
 00:00 – Cold open: most money still moves in fiat
 00:21 – Meet Davi Strazza: Adyen, Lightspark, and $1.3T in volume
 01:56 – Latam vs. North America: relationships vs. pragmatism
 04:33 – Why enterprises don't rip out legacy processors
 06:19 – Redundancy, and finding your wedge as a challenger
 07:56 – Changing the org before the org wants to change
 11:31 – What Pix taught him about shifting payment behavior
 13:12 – Why it takes an Uber to teach consumers new payment habits
 15:43 – What Lightspark powers, from Coinbase to cross-border payouts
 18:42 – Global Accounts: offering the endpoint, not just the transfer
 20:18 – Making Bitcoin invisible: the rail-agnostic thesis
 24:10 – Selling infrastructure while the rules are still being written
 27:53 – Why you no longer need to be Stripe to build in fintech
 30:02 – The next decade: fiat and crypto converging
 33:09 – Stablecoins are earlier than the headlines suggest
 34:34 – The underrated work: compliance that scales
 37:23 – Where to find Lightspark

Nothing in this podcast should be construed as legal or financial advice.

Subscribe for new episodes every other Wednesday. If you enjoy the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help more people in fintech find it.

Laurel Loomis Rimon has spent her career on the enforcement side of fintech. As a federal prosecutor she brought the first case against a digital currency company in the US, years before Bitcoin existed. She later served as an assistant deputy enforcement director at the CFPB, and today she co-chairs the fintech and crypto assets practice at Jenner & Block and founded the firm's payments practice.

In this episode, Reggie Young talks with Laurel about how enforcement and prosecution of fintech actually work in practice. They cover what puts a company on an investigator's radar, what genuinely exposes fintechs and banks to enforcement, how regulators and prosecutors assess good faith, and how she is advising clients to navigate debanking, KYC, and a fast-moving regulatory environment.

Fintech Layer Cake is powered by Lithic, financial infrastructure that helps teams build better card and payments products for consumers and businesses.

Chapters:
 00:00 – Cold open: the risk everyone underrates
 00:22 – Meet Laurel Loomis Rimon: DOJ, CFPB, and Jenner & Block
 02:15 – Prosecuting E-gold, the first digital currency case
 04:24 – The legal hooks before crypto law existed
 05:48 – Money transmitting becomes a baseline concern
 06:10 – What actually makes a company a target
 07:13 – Why the company is rarely the target at the start
 08:02 – Don't become the platform of choice for illicit actors
 08:25 – Regulators are consumers too
 09:39 – When the complainant is the regulator's own family
 09:57 – What fintechs worry about too much
 10:16 – The most boring risk: documentation
 12:06 – Product thinking as a compliance skill
 12:26 – How regulators assess good faith
 12:58 – Why staffing is always key, even in the age of AI
 14:18 – When growth outpaces compliance investment
 15:40 – Where debanking comes from: Operation Choke Point
 17:45 – Reputation risk and the regulatory whiplash
 21:02 – How KYC changes amid the debanking pushback
 22:25 – The executive order tension banks are caught in
 23:34 – Advising fintechs to build for the next administration
 25:41 – Where to reach Laurel

Nothing in this podcast should be construed as legal or financial advice.

Subscribe for new episodes every other Wednesday. If you enjoy the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help more people in fintech find it.

Drew Edmond has spent 15 years inside payment operations, first at Square from its scrappy hardware days through IPO, then at Etsy running payments across a marketplace with sellers in 230+ countries. Today he advises merchants at Glenbrook Partners and hosts the Payments on Fire podcast.

In this episode, Reggie Young sits down with Drew to trace how payments actually work from the operator's seat. They cover what changes when a payment goes card not present, the data and testing work most merchants skip, why global expansion demands a plan for every country rather than every region, and whether agentic commerce is real yet. Drew's answer on that last one is more measured than the hype, and more useful.

Fintech Layer Cake is powered by Lithic, financial infrastructure that helps teams build better card and payments products for consumers and businesses.

Chapters:

00:00 – Cold open: why card not present changes everything

00:35 – Meet Drew Edmond: Square, Etsy, and Glenbrook

02:53 – Inside early Square: free readers and a new class of merchant

04:40 – The chain of trust that holds payments together

07:13 – Living in constant negotiation with banks and networks

10:43 – Trusting "the Twitter guy" with your money

11:46 – Square vs. Etsy: the three jobs every platform shares

12:38 – What e-commerce and going global really change

14:51 – Why there's no such thing as a "Europe strategy"

18:53 – The optimization lever most merchants underinvest in

21:44 – How fraud quietly tanks your approval rates

25:32 – Why the optimal amount of fraud isn't zero

26:44 – The hidden complexity of subscription payments

33:13 – The "miasma of payments" and 900-page network rulebooks

35:38 – The CVV era of agentic payments

41:03 – Why discovery is harder than the payment itself

44:57 – Who controls the agent layer wins payment selection

Nothing in this podcast should be construed as legal or financial advice.

Subscribe for new episodes every other Wednesday. If you enjoy the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help more people in fintech find it.

What if millions of Americans had already proven they could handle a mortgage payment — and the system simply refused to count it?

Reggie sits down with Suhas Reddy, Head of Product at Pathward Bank, to unpack what it really means to build product inside the most regulated corners of financial services. Suhas was among the early product leaders at Fannie Mae, driving the Lighthouse Project that later transformed one of the world's largest secondary mortgage institutions into a customer-centric, digital-first product organisation. He now leads product at Pathward as SVP of Product Management across the Nasdaq-listed sponsor bank's B2B products — payments, issuing, lending, acquiring, and commercial finance — developing the products that enable fintechs and brands to reach customers at scale.

The conversation covers the 10-year product build that became an overnight pandemic success story, why Suhas treats risk and compliance as design constraints rather than roadblocks, and the title insurance battle he fought — and lost — years before it became national policy. They get into the philosophy of “Legos, not unicorns” as a framework for building scalable fintech infrastructure, and the human-centric conviction that turned rental payment history into a mortgage underwriting signal — unlocking homeownership for borrowers the system had previously ignored. 

Suhas continues to build infrastructure that expands financial access for underserved communities through Pathward's product platform.

What if every dormant account in your fintech is a ticking compliance clock — and you didn't know the timer started three years ago?

Host Reggie Young sits down with Allen Osgood, CEO and co-founder of Eisen, the company modernising escheatment — the process by which dormant accounts and abandoned funds get transferred to state governments. It's an obscure corner of financial compliance that touches every bank, fintech, brokerage, and increasingly every crypto platform. More than one in seven Americans has money sitting in state hands because of it, with over $80 billion held by state governments at any given time.

Allen and Reggie cover what escheatment actually is and why it matters, the wild story of a retiree who planned his retirement around an Amazon investment — only to find the state of Delaware had liquidated it. They dig into why crypto is about to smash headfirst into dormancy periods nobody planned for, why the 'deal with it later' mindset is a trap that hits three years faster than founders expect, and how proactive compliance can flip a cost centre into a retention engine.

What if the decision that kills your lending business is one you made six months ago — and you just don’t know it yet?

Host Reggie Young sits down with Scott Bass, Managing Director at Ensemblex, the fintech lending and credit consultancy. Scott brings a rare combination of perspectives: he helped build Capital One’s data-driven credit operation before it was a household name and was one of the first two Americans hired to launch Monzo’s US business.

Scott and Reggie cover what Capital One actually got right that most people miss, the lessons Monzo taught about building products that feel nothing like a bank, and the most predictable mistakes fintech founders make when building credit products. They dig into the six-month lag problem in lending, why being “light on the fin in fintech” is a slow-burning liability, and why Scott believes credit cards remain the most complex — and therefore most defensible — financial product a fintech can build. 

The payments industry spent years turning tokenization into a business tool for lock-in. So what does it mean that the same technology might now hold the key to making agentic payments actually work?

Reggie Young sits down with Basis Theory’s Co-founder and CEO, Colin Luce, and CTO, James Armstead — the team behind the programmable token vault platform that has quietly become central to the agentic payments conversation. Colin and James break down what tokenization really is, how it was co-opted as a competitive moat, and why they believe it's the foundational layer that agentic commerce needs to get right.

They get into the reality of agentic payments today — what's hype, what's actually transacting, and why human-in-the-loop is a feature, not a bug. The conversation covers the technical choke points legacy infrastructure wasn't designed to handle, the intent and fraud problem nobody has solved yet, why the industry is over-complicating protocol selection, and what a smarter approach to tokenization could unlock. 

Plus: Colin's bold prediction on the fate of PANs, James on why the early winners will just accept the volume, and the pair on why a misspelled email might be the highest compliment you can give someone in 2026.