Account payable automation software is one of those areas of fintech that doesn't get as much coverage as it should. Creating an efficient accounts payable system is a pain point for pretty much every company, but particularly for those businesses occupying the middle market. This is the opportunity that our guest today seized upon when starting his company nearly 25 years ago.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Michael Praeger, the CEO, Chairman and Co-Founder of AvidXchange. Mike founded his company all the way back in April 2000 and it is been through several phases in its growth to where it is today. It took them 10 years to get to $10 million in revenue but in the following decade they went from $10 million to $400 million. And then he took the company public. How he was able to do this makes for a really interesting discussion.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The catalyst that led to the founding of AvidXchange in 2000.
• How they were able to grow over 30% a year for 12 years in a row.
• What excites Mike is the business today.
• Why they decided to raise a large amount of money in 2015.
• How he describes the different components of their business.
• The huge number of accounting systems they integrate with.
• Why they focused on the middle market and have not gone after small businesses.
• The core benefit they are bringing to the table.
• How Avid Pay Direct is able to enhance a standard ACH payment.
• Why cross border payments is not a major part of their business.
• Why middle market companies are not focused on speed of the payment.
• Examples of how they are using AI in their systems today.
• How being a public company has changed AvidXchange.
• Why he decided to start his own podcast and what it is about.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

While there are tens of millions of Americans still struggling with their financial health the reality is that fintech is starting to have a significant impact here. Some companies are reaching scale and are helping those people living paycheck to paycheck save huge amounts of money in aggregate particularly when it comes to punitive bank fees.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Zuben Mathews, the CEO and Co-Founder of Brigit. As a college student, he lived the challenges of not having enough money and was motivated to do something about it. Today, Brigit is helping over one million people become more financially healthy, and in the process saving them over $1 billion in overdraft fees.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The problem Zuben had in college that led to the founding of Brigit.
• How he got the company off the ground.
• His thoughts on the impact of overdrafts and NSF fees.
• What Brigit's app provides and how it helps consumers.
• Why they decided to make subscriptions their primary revenue stream.
• The top use cases for their wage advances.
• How they are measuring their impact on the financial health of their users.
• The mechanics of how their advances work.
• The data they look at in their underwriting process.
• How their users are becoming more educated about financial health.
• How their credit building system works and why it is different.
• How they help people earn more income.
• The astounding amount of revenue they are earning per employee.
• Why they decided to call the company Brigit.
• Zuben's vision for Brigit.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

Imagine serving unsecured consumer loans to a population that has no credit file and no banking activity whatsoever. This population primarily uses cash and operates outside of the traditional financial system. Is it even possible to serve this population with short-term loans profitably?

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Roberto Salcedo, the CEO and Co-Founder of Baubap. Roberto and his team have done exactly that, building the technology and the underwriting models themselves to serve Mexico with small dollar loans. How he has been to do that makes for a fascinating story.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How he was able to leverage his knowledge as a banker to start Baubap.
• Why Mexico has lagged the rest of Latin America in adoption of financial services.
• Why the cash economy in Mexico makes it harder for banks.
• Baubap's core lending product and how quickly it is delivered.
• How they created their hypothesis for their unique approach to underwriting.
• The types of data they feed into their underwriting algorithms.
• How they started using AI in their initial models.
• Why they created all the fraud, identity verification and KYC features themselves.
• How they have been able to improve their approval rates over time.
• Some of the signals they use to indicate creditworthiness.
• The typical borrowers they are working with.
• Their lucrative referral program.
• How they are finding their borrowers.
• Their track record of profitability.
• How they were able to close a $120m debt facility from a US investor.
• Roberto's expansion plans for Baubap.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

Despite all the advances in fintech lending, the way data has been furnished to the credit bureaus has remained largely unchanged for several decades. We still operate on a 30-day payment cycle with no allowance for real time data. Not to mention all the recent credit innovations such as BNPL and short-term cash advances. This is about to change.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Christian Widhalm, the CEO of Bloom Credit. They have created a system that can work with cash flow data, can work with BNPL, can work with real time payment data, all while staying within the legacy confines of the Metro 2 data format of the credit bureaus.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Christian helped the founder of Bloom Credit get things going.
• Why Bloom Credit pivoted from B2C to B2B.
• What convinced him to join as CEO in 2021.
• The problems with Metro 2, the 26-year-old credit bureau data format.
• How their solution works as the intermediary between the bureaus and lenders.
• How Bloom Credit works with real time payment data.
• Why they store the payment data themselves.
• The types of FIs using Bloom Credit today.
• How Bloom Plus works and how it is different from Experian Boost.
• How Bloom Plus can help people build credit without taking on debt.
• The key trade lines from a checking account that are reportable to the bureaus.
• How new immigrants and new adults can enter the credit system.
• Why this is such a great opportunity for community banks and credit unions.
• How winning Finovate Best in Show in May has helped Bloom Credit over the last few months.
• Christian's vision for Bloom Credit.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

When you think about it, most, if not all, fintech innovation comes via the analysis and application of data. And financial services is more data-dependent now than at any time in its history. But this creates a challenge for brand new startups. How do you get access to data when all you have is an idea? Enter Fintech Sandbox.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Sarah Biller, the co-founder of Fintech Sandbox. This industry non-profit provides free access to financial services data that can be critical for startups as they develop their initial products. As the need for large datasets accelerates an organization like Fintech Sandbox provides ever more critical for the growth of the startup ecosystem.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The driving force in starting Fintech Sandbox.
• How they persuaded their first data providers to provide free access to data.
• Some of the companies providing data for them today.
• How they go about finding new data sources.
• What their Data Access Residency program is and who it is for.
• How the types of companies they see have evolved over the last decade.
• The impact of AI on the demand for data from their new cohorts.
• Some of the companies that have been through their program.
• How open banking is going to impact fintech once the new rules are implemented.
• What is happening at Boston Fintech Week (Oct 14-18) this year.
• Why it is important for Fintech Sandbox to be a non-profit.
• How they are funded.
• How Sarah is thinking about the next 10 years of Fintech Sandbox.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

Today, the back office for many lenders and originators is still very manual and human-intensive. We are talking lots of emails, reading contracts and processing Excel files. In some cases these processes have been in place, pretty much unchanged since the 1990s. That is because there has never been a comprehensive solution available to automate the capital markets process for originators and lenders.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Stu Wall, the CEO and Co-Founder of Setpoint. They call themselves "the operating system for capital markets" because their system can replace the manual processes that have been in place with state of the art technology that takes advantage of automation and standardization. While they started in the real estate space they are now making real inroads into other lending verticals.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The founding story of SetPoint.
• The mission and vision of the company.
• What they mean when they talk about the "operating system for asset-backed lending".
• How they replace the existing processes based on Excel and email.
• How SetPoint has earned the trust of the market.
• Their response to the build-buy-partner conversation.
• The biggest challenges in capital markets for asset-backed lenders and originators today.
• Why they started in the real estate space.
• The different lending verticals where they operate.
• Some of the originators they are working with today.
• Why this will likely be a winner take most market.
• How they were able to get Citi and Wells Fargo to back their company.
• Their biggest challenge in getting deeper market penetration.
• Some of the features that are on their product road map.
• What is involved in onboarding a new lender or originator.
• Stu's vision for the future of SetPoint and the automation of capital markets.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

"AI is probably the most talked about and least understood topic within financial services today," said John Sun, the CEO and Co-Founder of Spring Labs (previously, I had another co-founder of Spring Labs, Adam Jiwan, on the show back in 2020). The company is at the cutting edge of AI innovation in financial services with several interesting use cases in production today.

The Spring Labs team decided that what the industry needed was a new event focused on AI applications beyond just the use of chatbots. So, they created the AI-Native Banking and Fintech Conference, happening in Utah on October 7. Tickets will be available here right up until the show kicks off.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Spring Labs has evolved since its founding in 2018.
• Where they are focused today.
• What Gen AI applications they have in market today.
• The key markets they are focused on.
• The first use cases they deployed for their Gen AI product.
• How they are inserting AI tools into existing workflows.
• The outputs that come from these tools.
• Why they decided to start an AI-focused fintech conference.
• Why they chose Salt Lake City as the location for this first event.
• Who is attending the event.
• The AI topics they will be covering.
• What John is personally looking forward to on the agenda.
• How people can get tickets to the event.
• John's vision for Spring Labs.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

There is no faster-moving space in finance right now than the anti-fraud space. With all the advances in Generative AI, the fraudsters are more difficult to catch than ever. But there is one place where fintechs and banks can focus that has real promise: authenticating the mobile phone. 

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Rodger Desai, the CEO and Founder of Prove. They have developed sophisticated tools to verify identity through a mobile phone that can help banks and fintechs across a variety of touchpoints. We explain why the phone may hold the key (literally) to the future of ID verification and authentication.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What led to the founding of Prove.
• Why they decided to focus on financial services.
• The different types of services Prove offers today.
• ID verification best practices and why you need to add authentication.
• Rodger's thoughts on the ready availability of PII due to data breaches.
• What data they are returning back to their clients around authentication.
• How they work with transactions that happen on a desktop rather than a phone.
• How we should be thinking about sophisticated fraud rings today.
• How to combat Gen-AI deep fakes.
• Why key management is the answer to how you authenticate.
• The role of visual cues when it comes to verification.
• What the popular attack vectors are for criminals.
• Who is winning in the arms race between the criminals and the good guys.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

Today's show is our special 500th episode of the Fintech One-on-One podcast. Rather than do a retrospective or a look back at some highlights from the last 11 years of interviews what I decided was to do my regular interview but with a fintech pioneer. I wanted a big name so I was delighted when the CEO and Founder of Cross River Bank, Gilles Gade, decided to join me.

I first interviewed Gilles (along with Adam Goller) on the show way back in Episode 32 in March 2015. A lot has changed since then as Cross River Bank has become a market leader in Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) and they have expanded way beyond their initial focus on marketplace lending.

A lot has happened in the BaaS space over the last year and we discuss this in depth as Gilles shares his thoughts on the past, present and future of bank-fintech partnerships. And much more.

Enjoy episode 500!

In this podcast you will learn:

• The origin story of Cross River Bank.
• How Cross River has been able to stay as a leader in the fintech lending space for over a decade.
• The staggering numbers of loans that have flowed through Cross River.
• How they expanded beyond the lending space.
• How they developed their payments capabilities.
• Why they moved away from the core providers to develop their own banking core.
• The points he was making in his recent American Banker op-ed.
• The lessons learned from the recent challenges in the BaaS space.
• Gilles' thoughts on the higher bar now required to work with a BaaS bank.
• What was behind their decision to start an investment bank earlier this year.
• The scale that Cross River Bank is at today.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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

An e-commerce merchant is a unique type of business. They are built on top of a platform like Amazon, eBay or Shopify and as such there is a great deal of empirical data about their business. Which means that there is rich data available for lenders to feed into their underwriting models.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Ricardo Pero, the CEO and Founder of SellersFi. He saw the opportunity for a lender focused on e-commerce when a friend of his with an Amazon store was looking for a reliable source of working capital. He realized that lenders were not serving this market segment well.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Ricardo got the idea to start SellersFi.
• Why he started with Amazon and how they have evolved since then.
• The number of e-commerce platforms they work with today.
• The suite of working capital solutions they offer.
• Why they created a digital wallet for multiple currencies.
• How they gather the data to make an underwriting decision.
• When they use accounting data.
• The reasons they decline loan applications.
• The impact of Amazon closing down its own lending program.
• The different sizes of merchants that are connecting to their platform.
• The scale that SellersFi is at today.
• How demand is trending from e-commerce merchants.
• Ricardo's vision for SellersFi.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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