Fintech Nexus

The payments space continues to see innovation, probably more so than any other area of fintech today. Payments is a complex business, particularly when you are talking international payments, but technology has taken away a lot of the complexity. Now, with the movement towards embedded payments, nearly any company can offer payments services to their clients.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One Podcast is Ralph Dangelmaier, the CEO of BlueSnap. They are a leader in the payments space, offering an all-in-one Payments Orchestration platform as they call it. They are able to offer local payments in 47 countries and they have an embedded payments platform that allows their customers to offer their own global customized payment experience.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The origins of BlueSnap.
• How Ralph describes BlueSnap today.
• The biggest mistake merchants make when accepting international payments.
• The two trends that have benefited BlueSnap recently.
• The different payment types they can work with.
• How they consult with their partners as to the optimal payment methods.
• How they are different to Stripe and Adyen.
• Ralph's thoughts on the impact of Apple Pay and Google Pay.
• How they handle account-to-account payments.
• His perspective on supporting the new, alternative payments rails.
• The use cases for stablecoin payments.
• How BlueSnap operates its embedded payments platform.
• How the economics work for embedded payments.
• The definition of a PayFac (payments facilitator)
• What Ralph does for the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA).
• His vision for the future of payments.

Connect with Ralph on LinkedIn
Connect with Ralph on Twitter
Connect with BlueSnap on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

Making news this week was Silicon Valley Bank (before it's demise), Silvergate, SoFi, Credit Karma, Amazon, Coinbase, Amount, Candidly, Synctera and WhatsApp.

On today's episode, I'm joined by Susan Tanski, Co-Founder & Head of Strategy at Sunstone Credit.

Susan and I talked about Sunstone's origin story, what drove her interest in the climate, how Sunstone is helping SMBs finance solar power, the 1 trillion dollar opportunity in commercial solar, raising capital, and much more.

A couple of short PSAs:

We are still accepting applications for PitchIt at Fintech Nexus USA 2023, head to (https://www.fintechnexus.com/usa/2023/startups/) Fintech Nexus dot com for details. The link will be in the show notes.

If you want to sponsor an episode, come on as a guest, or sponsor one of our many digital or in-person offerings, please reach out anytime at [email protected].

Without further ado, Susan Tanski, Co-Founder & Head of Strategy at Sunstone Credit. Enjoy the show.

Episode highlights include:

• Sunstone Credit’s founding story
• An Inconvenient Truth
• Why Sunstone Credit focused on SMBs
• Commercial solar’s TAM
• Where we are today on the Climate
• Why everyone needs to do more on sustainability
• The broader embedded finance market
• Recommended reading
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
  • The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell
• Raising capital
• And much more…

Connect with Susan on LinkedIn
Connect with Sunstone Credit on LinkedIn

Connect with PitchIt:

• Tweet me @ToddFintech
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous PitchIt episodes
• Email me at [email protected]

Until next time.

The crypto space continues to evolve and grow, despite the challenges of the past nine months. Companies continue to build new infrastructure and products that are being adopted around the world. This work is ongoing and independent of the price of crypto.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Edward Woodford, the CEO and Co-Founder of Zero Hash. His company provides embedded crypto infrastructure to fintechs and brands, allowing these companies to buy, sell, hold, pay and earn rewards with crypto. They have taken a conservative and compliance-first approach which put them in a good position to weather the crypto storm.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Edward first became passionate about infrastructure companies.
• The founding story of Zero Hash.
• How he describes their core offerings.
• Where Zero Hash fits in the crypto ecosystem.
• The breadth of their service offerings.
• How the money flows through their system.
• How they navigated the very turbulent last year in crypto.
• Why it was easy to say no to the products that caused others' downfall.
• What the crypto industry needs to do to regain the trust it once had.
• How he views the trend towards embedded finance.
• How their partnership with Stripe came about.
• Why interest in crypto has been decoupled from crypto prices.
• How web3 is going to transform web2 companies.
• What it will take for crypto to become a mainstream payments mechanism.
• The crypto use cases Edward is most excited about.
• What is coming down the pipe at Zero Hash.

Connect with Edward on LinkedIn
Connect with Zero Hash on Twitter

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

On today's episode, I'm joined by Olga Chin, Founder & CEO of InterPrice Technologies, Inc.

Olga and I discussed InterPrice's founding story, her path to financial services, how InterPrice helps corporate treasury teams, the most significant problems treasury teams face, an unlikely byproduct of their platform, raising capital, and much more.

A couple of short PSAs:

We are still accepting applications for PitchIt at Fintech Nexus USA 2023, head to (https://www.fintechnexus.com/usa/2023/startups/) Fintech Nexus dot com for details. The link is in the show notes.

If you want to sponsor an episode, come on as a guest, or sponsor one of our many digital or in-person offerings, please reach out anytime at [email protected].

Without further ado, Olga Chin, Founder & CEO of InterPrice Technologies. Enjoy the show.

Episode highlights include:

• InterPrice's founding story
• Olga's acing of the MCATs
• Investment banking
• The funny story about their web domain
• Biggest impediments for corporate treasurers
• Relationship banking
• Dealmaking myths
• Advice from the founder of Noom
• Raising capital in good times and bad
• Recommended reading - Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up by Jerry Colonna
• And much more fun along the way

Connect with Olga on LinkedIn
Connect with InterPrice Technologies, Inc. on LinkedIn

Connect with PitchIt:

• Tweet me @ToddFintech
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous PitchIt episodes
• Email me at [email protected]

Until next time.

This week we discuss big fintech news from Silvergate Bank, Klarna, Goldman Sachs, Marqeta, Better, LendingTree, Upgrade, Visa, Mastercard, and we discuss crypto regulation and more.

Since the start of the pandemic there has been a surge of new fintech companies coming to market from a number of different niches. Most of these fintech companies need access to the banking system in some way and they need help in figuring out which banks to partner with and how to structure these partnerships.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Peter Hazlehurst, the CEO and co-founder of Synctera. They have placed themselves at the center of the fintech ecosystem, helping fintechs build, launch and scale new financial products. They work with a number of banks and have quickly become one of the leading banking-as-a-service platform in the industry.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What it was like growing up with a famous aunt in Australia.
• The groundbreaking work Peter did at Google and Uber.
• The founding story of Synctera and the opportunity Peter saw.
• The number of banks they have on their platform.
• The kinds of use cases that Synctera is built for.
• Some of the more edge cases that Synctera has helped bring to market.
• How their APIs work for these edge cases.
• How they work with non-fintech companies.
• How they help their clients navigate any regulatory uncertainty.
• What capabilities a bank needs to be part of their marketplace.
• Peter's view of the competitive landscape for banking-as-a-service.
• How they are able to help fintechs as they scale.
• Peter's advice for fintech founders navigating today's environment.
• What they are seeing when it comes to demand for lending products.
• Peter's vision for the future of banking-as-a-service.

Connect with Peter on LinkedIn
Connect with Synctera on LinkedIn
Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

Every lender has to process documents from their borrowers during the application process. Often, there is a large number of these documents from a wide variety of sources. What lenders need is a way to process all of these documents that provides a uniform set of data regardless of where the document came from.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One is Sam Bobley, the CEO and Co-founder of Ocrolus. They have become the standard when it comes to document automation in the small business lending space and they are now tackling consumer lending and the incredibly complex mortgage lending process.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The founding story of Ocrolus.
• What their technology actually does.
• How their waterfall of automation techniques allows them to review any financial document.
• Why it is so important to have humans involved in this process.
• The percentage of documents they can process instantly.
• Why they decided to start in small business lending.
• The number of small business lenders they have on their platform today.
• How their technology helped power many PPP lenders.
• Sam's view of the small business lending landscape today.
• How their fraud detection processes work.
• Details of their business model.
• How they approached the fundraising process.
• What Sam is most excited about right now.

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn
Connect with Ocrolus on LinkedIn
Connect with Ocrolus on Twitter
Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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