Every bank that decides to get into the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) space already has an existing legacy business. Most of those legacy businesses have very little crossover with fintech and BaaS, so internally at the bank, there is a completely new skill set that needs to be developed. But then there are those banks that were born digital and for which BaaS is a natural extension of their existing business.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Mike Butler, the CEO of Grasshopper Bank. I first had Mike on the show back in 2019, when he was the CEO of Radius Bank - that was the bank that LendingClub acquired in 2021. So, Mike is back at the helm of another digital bank, bringing his deep experience in BaaS and digital banking. And he has big plans for Grasshopper.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Mike went from selling Radius Bank to becoming CEO of Grasshopper.
• The core offerings of Grasshopper.
• Why Grasshopper has a "work from away" culture.
• How much they focus on BaaS versus serving customers directly.
• The core learnings he brought from Radius Bank to Grasshopper.
• Who Mike thinks of as his main competitors.
• How the BaaS challenges of 2024 impacted Grasshopper.
• Why you can't dip your toe in the water when it comes to BaaS.
• How the expectations of fintechs have changed.
• The types of fintechs they work with today.
• Why they decided to acquire Auto Club Trust, an insurance company.
• Where Mike sees the future growth for Grasshopper.

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If you have ever tried to rollover a 401(k) from a previous job you know what a painful process that can be. Another big problem with 401(k)s is that many people will move jobs and ultimately forget about their old 401(k). Both of these problems are hurting people trying to maximize their wealth in retirement. Enter Capitalize.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Gaurav Sharma, the CEO and Founder of Capitalize. His company solves both problems: they make it much easier to do a rollover and they help find any old 401(k)s that have been forgotten about. And in doing so, they are helping Americans have a more prosperous retirement.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Gaurav came to be in this country.
• Why he became fascinated by the retirement market.
• The total number and amount of forgotten 401k accounts.
• How Capitalize helps individuals transfer retirement accounts.
• The regulatory hurdles that Capitalize has to deal with.
• How and why they pivoted from direct-to-consumer to B2B.
• What the consumer experience looks like at Capitalize's partners.
• How they manage the different points of friction in this rollover process.
• How working with the legacy asset managers is different than the fintechs.
• The typical amount of money they move in a rollover.
• How they are going to be working with RIAs.
• How Capitalize makes money.
• The scale they are at today.
• How Gaurav thinks about the retirement landscape and the role Capitalize can play.

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In the last year I don't think there is any area of fintech that has received more attention than the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) space. And it is not just the Synapse debacle, it is all the consent orders that have come out of the bank regulators. We have a banking system that pretty much demands that fintech companies partner with banks and we are still yet to figure out what the optimal business model is here.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Jason Mikula, the publisher of Fintech Business Weekly and the Head of Industry, Strategy, Banking and Fintech at the risk decisioning platform Taktile. He has become one of the leading authorities on BaaS and has recently authored a book on this topic. It is the most comprehensive look at BaaS and the many challenges it has faced and we delve into these challenges in this episode.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Jason ended up living in the Netherlands.
• His impetus for starting the Fintech Business Weekly newsletter.
• What attracted Jason to focus so much on Banking-as-a-Service.
• Why he decided to write a book on BaaS.
• How he frames the difference between BaaS and embedded finance.
• Why fintech companies have been attracted to omnibus or FBO accounts at banks.
• The interview that Jason did with founder and former CEO of Synapse, Sankaet Pathak.
• Where we are with the Synapse saga (as of mid-February, 2025).
• What Jason thinks the likelihood the impacted consumers will get their funds back.
• Whether we will ever learn what happened to missing 90-odd million dollars.
• His thoughts on the middleware model that was core to the development of BaaS.
• How he views the BaaS model evolving long term in the U.S.

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While text is a big part of our daily communications most corporations, particularly those in financial services, use it sparingly. Why is that when texting gets many times the engagement of email? We explain why in this interview. But this is all changing, in large part due to the work of my next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast. 

Dave Baxter is the CEO of Solutions by Text (SBT), a text and payments platform focused on financial services. Their compliance-first approach to texting has resulted in the adoption of integrated text payments by many fintechs and banks as these companies realize they need to meet their customers where they are at. And that is via text message on their phone.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The big names in tech and finance where Dave cut his teeth.
• How and why he came to be CEO of SBT.
• Why SBT is focused on the consumer finance vertical.
• Why many companies in financial services have been hesitant to use texting.
• How SBT is able to assuage their concerns around using text as a channel.
• The most popular use case where SBT clients start.
• How they onboard a client and integrate into existing systems.
• What happens when someone clicks on a text payment link.
• How texting effectiveness cuts across demographics.
• How SBT is using AI in their text messaging systems.
• What they learned in their recent study with Datos Insights.
• The potential for text messaging in consumer finance.

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The co-branded credit card space is a mature market. Chase and American Express have large deals with airlines and hotels as well as the likes of Amazon and Disney. These are typically huge programs with not just millions but tens of millions of customers. But what about those Fortune 500 companies that are not big enough for Chase or Amex but still want to do their own co-branded credit card? That is where Imprint comes in.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Daragh Murphy, the CEO and Founder of Imprint. Daragh realized that the bank technology being used to power the co-branded card space was decades old and inflexible. He saw the opportunity to build a new tech stack to provide a much better experience for large brands. And they didn't take any shortcuts to get there.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What first brought Daragh from Ireland to the U.S. and why he stayed here.
• How he landed on the idea of co-branded credit cards.
• The hardest part about building a credit card company.
• How granular they can get with their rewards program.
• Why Chase and Amex only have a limited number of co-branded programs.
• The size of company that Imprint is looking to partner with.
• Why they do no outbound marketing whatsoever.
• Why a typical billion dollar company shouldn't do a co-branded card program.
• How they were able to get started when dealing with large enterprises as a startup.
• How they embed the Imprint technology into their clients' app.
• The thought process we went through when choosing their bank partner.
• How long it took them to build their own credit card platform.
• How they are getting their card to the top of wallet.
• Why they decided to build a call center themselves.
• How they have deployed AI into their customer support.
• What is next for Imprint.

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Despite the challenges and the obvious risk of failure, Americans are starting small businesses in record numbers. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well but the difference today is that the tools have become so much better. And they are going to continue to improve, particularly as small business owners start taking advantage of the latest AI tools.

My guest today on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Karen G. Mills. She is a senior fellow at the Harvard Business School, and she was the head of the Small Business Administration under President Obama from 2009 until 2013. She was first on the show back in 2015 and again when she wrote the first edition of her book, Fintech Small Business and the American Dream, back in 2019. She has now published a second edition that includes a deep analysis of the changes that the pandemic and the PPP had on the American small business landscape. She is very optimistic on American small business and thinks we are on the cusp of reaching small business utopia.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What has changed since Karen wrote the first edition of her book in 2019.
• The three layers of complexity that prevented the predicted changes from happening as fast as expected.
• Why she decided to write a second edition.
• Why the narrative about PPP fraud was not accurate.
• What fintech lenders did that traditional banks would not do during that time.
• The analysis they did to demonstrate the success of PPP.
• How the SBA performed in administering the PPP.
• Karen's take on the state of community banks and small business lending.
• Why she thinks big tech is not going to dominate small business lending.
• Who the winners are going to be.
• Why small business lending is one of the biggest opportunities out there.
• Her vision for smart regulation of small business lending.
• What it will take to get to small business utopia.
• Why she is optimistic about the future of U.S. small business.

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In an article last year, the International Monetary Fund said that the global private credit market topped $2.1 trillion globally in 2023, with 75% of that in the U.S. That number has been rising rapidly for many years as more companies look beyond banks and the public debt markets to raise capital. Along with this rise in private credit, some fintech companies have taken advantage of this growth, bringing new opportunities to investors.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Nelson Chu, the CEO and Co-Founder of Percent. They have created a marketplace where private credit deals get underwritten and presented to a wide range of investors, including individual accredited investors. They have provided access to this fast-growing asset class to many investors for the first time. Full disclosure, I have been an active investor on the Percent platform since 2019.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What Nelson saw in the market that led to the founding of Percent.
• Why they decided to focus on retail accredited investors.
• Why private credit has boomed the last two to three years.
• How investor interest has changed over time.
• How they can graduate their borrowers to much larger amounts.
• How their platform works.
• The geographies where they have borrowers.
• How they decide what deals make it onto their platform.
• How they work with credit funds that bring asset-based deals.
• The different revenue streams they have.
• The huge range of deal sizes that come on their platform.
• The performance they have provided to investors.
• How their technology stack has improved over time.
• How they manage balancing their multi-sided marketplace.
• The blend of retail and institutional money on their platform.
• The scale they are at today.
• Nelson's vision for the future of Percent.

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• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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The earned wage access (EWA) space is maturing and now has some players that are getting real scale. In many industries, it has gone from a curiosity to a must-have for employers. As the space scales, there are bigger questions in play. How can we ensure that all salaried workers have access to this innovative product, so they don't need to provide an interest-free loan to their employers every pay period?

My guest today on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Alex Bradford, the CEO and founder of Rain. Rain is part of the new breed of EWA providers that learned from the lessons of the early movers in the space when building their product. They now have over a million employees on their app and they see the real financial benefit that EWA is providing their users, particularly those living paycheck to paycheck.

In this podcast you will learn:

• Why Alex got so excited when he discovered the EWA space.
• Why he thought the timing was great to start his company in 2019.
• How their system works for both the employer and employee.
• The different types of users of Rain.
• How they know Rain is being beneficial for their users' financial health.
• How using Rain has changed their users' behavior.
• The impact that Rain has on employee retention.
• What they are doing with the large HR software companies.
• How Rain is engaging with state and federal regulators.
• What they have on their product roadmap.
• What it will take to make EWA ubiquitous.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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Technology has impacted so many areas of lending but one niche that has remained a manual, human-powered process is middle market lending, where deals are typically $5 million to $100 million. These deals have been consummated on the golf course or at expensive dinners after often months of analysis and negotiation. That is not an efficient way to do business in 2025. Enter Arc.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Don Muir, the CEO and Co-Founder of Arc. Arc is first and foremost a technology company, providing startups and lenders the tools they need to manage their finances. Where Arc shines is in helping companies raise debt capital, they have built one of the most sophisticated systems on the market today to bring borrowers and lenders together to get deals done quickly and easily, even deals in the tens of millions of dollars.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The aha moment that led to the founding of Arc.
• Why banks are not interested in serving the lower middle market.
• Why they launched with a direct lending model.
• How their two-sided debt marketplace works.
• Details of their commercial banking offering.
• How they make lenders decisions easier.
• The range of deal sizes they are doing today.
• What they offer in their cash management platform.
• How the SVB collapse has impacted their business.
• How Arc Intelligence uses AI to helps lenders make decisions more efficiently.
• Why they have decided to focus exclusively on debt and not do equity.
• Why demand has been so strong for the last year or more.
• How Don is thinking about Arc long term.

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• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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If there is one thing that the last decade of fintech innovation has achieved, it is more awareness around consumer credit scores. The majority of the population know their approximate score and even teenagers are talking about it. For better or worse (I think it almost uniformly positive) consumers look at the score as a measure, maybe even the measure, of their financial health.

My next guest on the Fintech One on One podcast is Adrian Nazari, the CEO and Founder of Credit Sesame. It is companies like Credit Sesame that have been at the forefront of the increased awareness of credit scores. Now, with a new B2B offering they are poised to reach even more consumers than ever before.

In this podcast you will learn:

• Why he decided to start Credit Sesame.
• What is still missing to help consumers manage their credit.
• What Credit Sesame offers for consumers today.
• The various ways they are using AI at Credit Sesame.
• Why they are exclusively focused on credit for financial wellness.
• Why they decided to start a B2B offering.
• Who they are focused on with this product.
• How Adrian is managing both a direct to consumer and a B2B offering.
• Why he thinks the B2B side will be the growth driver moving forward.
• How they are working with lenders to improve the borrower experience.
• How they are different to Credit Karma.
• The state of the US consumer today when it comes to their credit score.
• His vision for Credit Sesame.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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