What does an avid cook with a graduate degree in law and epidemiology have to do with payments? A lot more than you may think! Banyan CEO and Founder Jehan Luth has a passion for item-level data and credits his background in both computer and food science as the foundational building blocks for his success.

For those of you who may not know, Banyan set out three years ago to build the infrastructure to both manage and utilize item-level data. And with this data, they work with merchants, banks and fintechs to power new experiences and use cases leveraging this type of granular information.

So, what are we talking about when we say item-level data? It’s a very distinct specificity around what you choose to buy versus where you choose to spend your money. And the most prolific use cases are, of course, card-linked rewards and loyalty offers. It’s the difference of being able to take the standard loyalty offer of, let’s say, $25 off your next purchase at a certain location and optimizing it to a more personal offer that gives you $25 off pet food the next time you shop that store. Why pet food? Because that accounted for 75% of your total bill the last time you shopped there. 

As for their competitive advantage, Jehan talks about powering the rails to leverage experience-based value in a way that has never been done before. In this way, Banyan is not just taking an existing product and trying to make it better but, rather, creating the infrastructure for a product that has yet to even be mainstream enough to optimize.

Tune in this week to hear Jehan talk about his journey to CEO, including why the Indian banyan tree provided the inspiration for his thriving ecosystem. We also talk about the power of atomic nodes, V2 fintech and the future forward trend of merchants and banks coming together on behalf of the customer journey.