Fintech Nexus

The largest payments network, by volume, is the ACH network. A dollar value of several times US GDP flows through the network each quarter. It is a 50-year-old network that is reliable, ubiquitous, and still growing. While several shiny new payment rails have been developed, the workhorse of the economy remains ACH and will remain so for some time.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Jane Larimer, the President and CEO of Nacha, the organization that governs the ACH network. While I often feature people on this show to talk about cool and emerging technology, I also think it is critical that we understand the infrastructure that is in place today. And the ACH network is how the vast majority of payments are made.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The origin story of the ACH network.
• The first use case for the network.
• How they moved from paper checks to electronic payments.
• The mission of Nacha.
• Why some banks become direct members of Nacha.
• The staggering scale of the payments flowing through the ACH network.
• How the timing works for payments on the ACH network.
• Why the ACH network is unable to process payments on weekends (but that may be changing)
• Jane's perspective on instant payments and why she believes it is complementary to ACH.
• The cost difference between Same Day ACH and standard ACH.
• The big barrier to the adoption of any alternative payment rails.
• How fraud has changed in the past decade.
• Details of the education available on their website.
• How Jane see the future of payments playing out over the next decade.

Connect with Jane on LinkedIn
Connect with Nacha on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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[Editor's note: This interview was recorded on April 16, six days before the news of the Synapse bankruptcy and several weeks before any of the major problems that came to light at fintechs that were working with Synapse.]

To say the banking-as-a-service space is having a moment is an understatement. But many banks have been doing this successfully for a number of years and have thriving partnerships with fintechs. One such bank is Pathward, formerly known as MetaBank.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Anthony Sharett. He is the President at Pathward, a position he has held since 2021. Pathward is one of the largest and most important banks in the fintech space, so I wanted to get him on the show at this critical time for the industry.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Anthony came to be at Pathward.
• The history of the company and the rebrand from Metabank to Pathward.
• Anthony's take on the state of banking-as-a-service today.
• Why the concept of middleware may not be dead yet.
• The services they offer and some of the fintechs they are working with.
• How they co-create new products with their fintech partners.
• How they have built their risk and compliance framework.
• How they manage the balance between creativity and compliance.
• Their status as far as taking on new fintech clients.
• What they are looking for in a new fintech.
• Anthony's advice to a startup fintech CEO today.
• What he thinks of the state of fintech innovation today.
• What the BaaS landscape will look like in 3-5 years.

Connect with Anthony on LinkedIn
Connect with Pathward on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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When I think about the hottest areas in fintech these days identity verification is right at the top of the list. It impacts anyone doing business online so whether you are a bank or a fintech you need to stay on top of this fast-moving space.

My next guest on the Fintech One on One podcast is Joel Sequeira, the Director of Product Management at IDology. Joel is an identity expert with a long history in the space and he talks about the new attack vectors that are in play today, particularly with Generative AI, and more importantly, what fintechs and banks can do to curtail fraud today.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What Joel does exactly at IDology.
• The challenges for fintechs and banks in automating customer onboarding.
• How to incorporate automation and AI into your strategy.
• The role of human-supervised AI and how to maintain compliance.
• What he means by onboarding with inclusive customer journeys.
• How they define advanced identity verification.
• The different data sources that IDology works with.
• Why it is important to have deep data in different sectors.
• Some of the differences between KYC and KYB (Know Your Business).
• Examples of how Generative AI is being used to commit fraud.
• The trends that Joel is paying closest attention to.
• How fintechs and banks can future-proof their identity verification.

Connect with Joel on LinkedIn
Connect with IDology on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

In the early days of the online lending space, when it came to institutional capital, one name seemed to be in more deals than any other: Victory Park Capital. And while the industry has matured a great deal since then, in no small part thanks to the capital invested by Victory Park, their thesis remains the same: lend money where banks won't.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Brendan Carroll, Co-Founder and Senior Partner of Victory Park. I am so pleased to finally get Brendan on the show after first inviting him many years ago. They have a great story to tell and they continue to fuel the growth of private credit, providing capital to a wide variety of different lenders.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The founding story of Victory Park Capital.
• Their fortunate timing of the closing of their first institutional fund.
• What they saw as the opportunity in the early days of the online lending space.
• Why they pulled out of the peer-to-peer lending platforms fairly quickly.
• How they are able to get comfortable investing with new lending platforms.
• What types of lenders they are working with today and the regions they operate.
• Why businesses are staying with Victory Park a bit longer today.
• Why their check sizes are higher today than five years ago.
• The niche of consumer finance they are most bullish on today.
• How the equity funding pullback has impacted their business.
• How lenders can set themselves for success and get a deal with Victory Park done.
• Brendan's views on the future of asset-back private credit.

Connect with Brendan on LinkedIn
Connect with Victory Park Capital on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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The payments processing space has seen a huge amount of innovation in the past decade, maybe more than any other area of fintech. This innovation has presented opportunities for non-fintech companies to earn a new revenue stream via payments processing, which in turn has created a new sub-niche for fintech companies.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Caleb Avery, the CEO and Founder of Tilled. They provide PayFac-as-a-Service to software companies looking to process payments for their customers. Basically, it is a simpler and quicker way for these software companies (called ISVs) to get set up as master merchants and generate payments revenue. Unsure how this all works? We explain in great detail in this interview.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What attracted Caleb to the payments processing space very early on.
• The founding story of Tilled.
• The difference between a card-issuing bank and a merchant-acquiring bank.
• The definition of a payments processor.
• What an ISO (Independent Sales Organization) does.
• What an ISV (Independent Software Vendor) is.
• The definition of a payments facilitator (PayFac).
• Who the major PayFacs are today.
• What PayFac-as-a-Service is and why Tilled went all in on this idea.
• The scale of ISV that is the sweet spot for Tilled.
• Why ISOs work with Tilled rather than going direct to ISVs.
• The three key components of Tilled's software.
• How they are able to compete head to head with Stripe Connect.
• The different types of support they can provide for the ISVs.
• How their pricing model works.
• How the typical credit card fees are broken up between all parties.
• Caleb's views on the recent ruling between Visa and Mastercard and the Department of Justice.
• Where embedded payments is going and his vision for Tilled.

Connect with Caleb on LinkedIn
Connect with Tilled on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

Latin America continues to be, in my opinion, the most dynamic and interesting region in the world when it comes to fintech innovation. And there are now significant billion dollar deals getting done as some of the biggest financial institutions on the planet are looking to make their mark in the region.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Daniela Binatti, she is the Co-Founder and CTO of Pismo. Pismo has created modern financial infrastructure to help banks move away from their legacy technology. Visa saw the potential of Pismo and announced last year that it was acquiring the company for $1 billion in cash. That deal was consummated in January of this year.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The family affair that was the founding story of Pismo.
• The opportunity they saw in the Brazilian market.
• How they were able to start getting traction.
• Pismo's core offerings today.
• How they were able to sign the largest bank in Brazil very early on.
• What these large banks are using Pismo for.
• Some of the other big names that are using Pismo today.
• How Daniela views what is happening in the US and other developed markets.
• The impact that Pix has had on their business.
• Her personal take on what Pix has meant for Brazil.
• How they decided to take on international markets.
• How the acquisition conversation with Visa began.
• What they can do with Visa now that they couldn't do alone.
• What this acquisition means for Latin American fintech.
• What new innovations are they thinking about for the future.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

Have you ever stopped to consider the data behind a debit or credit card transaction? I have not given it much thought, but there is a real treasure trove of information that, for the most part, is still not being used effectively.

My next guest on the Fintech One on One podcast is Mitch Jacobs, the CEO and founder of Plink. You may recognize Mitch's name as he was the founder, CEO and Chairman of OnDeck for its first seven years. Back to Plink. It may well be the most important fintech company that you have never heard of. The work they are doing around transaction personalization is truly groundbreaking.

In this podcast you will learn:

• Mitch's first entrepreneurial endeavor while in college.
• The other companies he has started.
• The idea that led to the founding of Plink.
• Why card transaction data is not used effectively today.
• How Plink has solved this problem.
• Why they focused on community banks and credit unions.
• How they enrich the raw card spending data.
• An example of how a Florida credit union is using Plink's data.
• How they are able to determine the relationships between cardholders and local businesses.
• Why the card data problem has its roots in copper wires in the 1980s.
• Why large card issuing banks have not solved this problem yet.
• The scale that Plink is already at today as far as number of merchants.
• The definition of a Plink.
• The opportunity for financial institutions to shape how cardholders are using their cards.
• What can happen you open up transaction personalization.
• The endgame for Plink.

Connect with Mitch on LinkedIn
Connect with Plink AI on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

One of the many challenges for low and middle income (LMI) consumers is building wealth. If you are living paycheck to paycheck with no savings you are more focused on financial survival and likely don't feel you have the capacity to build wealth. This is where Stash comes in.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One Podcast is Liza Landsman, the CEO of Stash, a position she has held for around a year now. They are laser-focused on the LMI consumer and have built a suite of tools to help these people save and build wealth. Their Stock-Back Card is truly innovative and is often the first time their customers have ever owned public equities.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What drew her to the CEO role at Stash.
• How Liza describes Stash and its mission.
• Who the typical Stash customer is and how they are using the app.
• Some of the changes she has made at Stash since becoming CEO.
• How their Stock-Back technology works and why it has been groundbreaking.
• The Stash 100 and their approach to financial education.
• What their customer base is focused on when it comes to learning.
• Why they created Stash Core, their back-end infrastructure platform.
• The thinking behind launching a B2B platform.
• What they learned in their Hardworking Americans Survey.
• The scale they are at today.
• How sticky their customers are and what they are doing to reduce churn.
• Liza's vision for the future of Stash.

Connect with Liza on LinkedIn
Connect with Stash on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

The anti-fraud space has really heated up this past 12 months as fraud attempts have been on the rise and bad actors have become more sophisticated. Often, it can feel like an increasingly difficult battle to win, but there is reason for optimism.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Tommy Nicholas, the CEO and Co-Founder of Alloy. Tommy lays out in exceptional detail and with great passion why there is reason for optimism today. He also provides a blueprint for how banks and fintechs should be approaching their anti-fraud efforts. This is the third and final interview in the series I conducted at Fintech Meetup.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The inspiration and motivation for the founding of Alloy.
• A description of their product offerings.
• Why it was so difficult to build their products.
• How fraud attacks have changed over the last 12-18 months.
• How new fintechs develop their fraud protocols.
• How to avoid the death spiral to zero good customers.
• The role social media has had in increasing first-party fraud.
• What is leading to an increase in fraud attempts recently.
• The types of fraud he is seeing today and how it is preventable.
• Details of the newly announced Alloy for Embedded Finance.
• How it will transform bank-fintech partnerships.
• The luck they have had in the timing of this launch.

Connect with Tommy Nicholas on LinkedIn
Connect with Alloy on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

I don't think any fintech company has done more for small business than Square. They started with payment acceptance and have since expanded into many different areas of fintech. In fact, their lending business is now the largest in all of fintech. But it was the addition of Square Banking that has allowed this fintech pioneer to bring it all together.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Christina Riechers, the General Manager of Square Banking. She has been at Square nine years and was one of the architects of Square's push into banking. This is the second podcast in the series that I recorded live at Fintech Meetup in early March.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What first attracted Christina to Square.
• Block's mission and how that resonated with her.
• The origins of Square Banking and Christina's role in it.
• How they built out their banking capabilities.
• The different starting points for small businesses in joining their ecosystem.
• Why established small business switch to Square Banking.
• The scale they are at today for Square Lending.
• How they are underwriting these loans.
• How they are able to see a holistic view of the small business's finances.
• How their customers are using the proceeds from their Square loans.
• The astounding percentage of women-owned business they are serving.
• What is top of mind for Square sellers today.
• How their payroll service works.
• What integration opportunities there are between Cash App, Afterpay and Square Banking.
• What they doing around Generative AI.
• The fintech trends that Christina is paying closest attention to right now.

Connect with Christina on LinkedIn
Connect with Square on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes