Leaders In Payments

What does fintech have to do with cooking? In this podcast, a lot! This week I talk to Solid Founder and CEO Arjun Thyagarajan about living the American dream, the right recipe for a successful fintech business and how fun is always the most important ingredient.

 For those of you who may not know, Solid is a modern fintech company providing infrastructure as a service for any aspiring fintechs looking to go to market quickly and successfully. Coined by Arjun as “the AWS of fintech,” Solid offers the following core products to any and all of their users: 

·       Banking 

·       Payments 

·       Card issuance 

·       And cryptocurrency

They are use case agnostic and have an ideal offering for just about any company challenged with the art of payments and getting paid. According to Arjun, Solid offers “the best-in-class ingredients for each company’s individual recipe” and they tout themselves as being in the business of simplifying fintech. As for their competitive advantage, it revolves predominantly around their one-stop shop offering that includes a simplistic strategy, agnostic platform, and consultative approach.

Also worthy of mention? Solid just closed a $63 million funding round, reached $10 million in annual revenue, and officially became profitable (all this year), after founding in 2019 and going to market in 2020.

Tune in this week to hear Arjun talk about his journey to CEO and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years, including fintech then and now, the upcoming embedded experiences to rival even the seamless Uber approach, and how fintech as a whole is not even one percent done. We also talk about his tried-and-true business and life philosophy: If you’re having fun, results will follow.

My guest on this episode has been with Citizens for more than 10 years, previously serving as the Head of Student Lending. She is a 30-year veteran of the financial services industry and has held several roles at the company, including sales, branch planning and operations, and product management. Her favorite role so far? She loves being a mentor. Head of Citizens Pay Christine Roberts has a genuine passion for finding and growing talent. 

For those of you who don’t know, Citizens Pay is the market leader in combining point of sale financing with buy now pay later. Citizens is one of the nation’s oldest and largest financial institutions, with $226.7 billion in assets as of June 30, 2022.

As for what put Citizens Pay on the map, we have Apple to thank for that. According to Christine, Citizens Pay spearheaded the buy now pay later (BNPL) industry in an effort to help iPhone users have the financial bandwidth to consistently upgrade their technology.

As for what makes Citizens Pay different than many of the other BNPL companies out there, a lot of it has to do with their direct affiliation with Citizens Bank. Simply stated, they are prolific lender with advanced technology capabilities that enable them to successfully operate in a regulated atmosphere while other fintechs sometimes struggle in the regulated lending space. 

Their dominant verticals are technology, medical/dental, furniture, travel, and home improvement, and they offer an open line of credit to their qualified consumers that allows for repeat purchasing within the same credit line. And this is a huge benefit for merchants in that it allows their consumers to make larger purchases and even upgrade their repeat purchases at a faster rate.

Tune in to hear Christine talk about the crucial elements that impact the sustainability of the lending space, and how Citizens Pay is navigating being the leader in combining point of sale financing with BNPL.

On this episode we recap the entire month of October that was dedicated to Financial Inclusion. We had a great lineup including: 

·        Elena Whisler from The Clearing House

·        David Rocha from Prosperas

·        Ken Weber from Ripple

·        Reed Luhtanen and Gail Hildebrand from the Faster Payments Council

·        Jeanniey Walden from DailyPay

In our recap we cover topics including faster payments, earned wage access, a streamlined process to get credit and other programs that are helping to solve the global challenge around financial inclusion. 

David Rocha from Prosperas summed up the entire series this way, “Someone gave us a chance and that's really what we're trying to do for this broader community is give them a chance. And we know that if we do, they'll take it. They'll maximize it and we'll all be better for it.”

We hope to bring awareness and visibility into at least some of the programs, companies and initiative that are helping to serve the global population of unbanked, underbanked and underserved. 

And a special thanks to The Clearing House for sponsoring Financial Inclusion month. 

For those of you who’ve ever been curious enough to question why one would ever have to wait two weeks to receive money they’ve already earned, this podcast is for you. DailyPay Chief Innovative Marketing Officer Jeanniey Walden talks with us this week about financial inclusion, breaking the invisible barriers around our financial system and what it looks like to have immediate access to your earned wages.

DailyPay is a company focused on changing pay for good. Their objective is to look at ways they can create new solutions that have a positive impact on the entire financial system. Jeanniey talks a lot in this episode about the invisible rules created around money that have been alive in our ecosystem for centuries and have ultimately become barriers that result in subsets of our communities such as the unbanked and underserved.

Their target audience is the employer, the employee and everyone in between, and their mission is to bring more transparency to the employee around the money they make, when they make it, and do it in a timely enough manner that they have the opportunity to generate more financial confidence as a result of it. So, we’re basically talking about real-time access and on-demand pay. Not to mention, DailyPay has enabled hourly workers to see their earned wages in real time for the first time – ever.

Tune in this week to hear Jeanniey talk about the invisible barriers preventing us from financial inclusion, what the average household looks like in the post-Covid, high inflation economy and what more our global financial system could commit to in an effort to strengthen financial inclusion.

It’s financial inclusion month! And in this 4th episode of the month we have two top-notch experts discussing one of the main drivers for financial inclusion: faster payments. With me today are Faster Payments Council Executive Director Reed Luhtanen and National Consumers League Representative Gail Hillebrand have much to say about financial inclusion and so much more!

Coming to us with more than 40 years of combined experience in the payments industry, Reed himself was a part of the Federal Reserve task force payments initiative to create an overall governance framework for the transition to faster payments in the United States. From this, the Faster Payments Council was founded in 2018. Their goal? To bring about inclusive governance framework to help advance ubiquitous, safe, and easy-to-use faster payments. Gail, on the other hand, has spent the majority of her time in consumer advocacy and helped push the initiative for the National Consumers League – a working group that has made it their mission to protect U.S. consumers since 1899 with a focus on safety in the marketplace.

The two of them agree that financial inclusion and faster payments overlap in that faster payments can be a pathway to greater financial inclusion by removing risk and adding certainty to the transaction. As part of this podcast, we talk in depth about a recent white paper launched to the marketplace that gives recommendations on the topic of financial inclusion as it relates to faster payments. The paper identifies eight specific barriers to financial inclusion, three of which we discuss in detail on this podcast: trust, design and fraud.

Tune in to hear Reed and Gail discuss the 7.1 million Americans who currently don’t have bank accounts, the 50%+ of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and the most prominent recommendations to address three of the main barriers to financial accessibility. 

The Faster Payments Council has created multiple resources pertaining to financial inclusion including the following: 

·       Infographic: https://fasterpaymentscouncil.org/blog/10015/Faster-Payments-for-Financial-Inclusion-Infographic

·       White Paper: https://fasterpaymentscouncil.org/blog/9874/Faster-Payments-and-Financial-Inclusion-White-Paper

·       Podcast on Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/off-the-rails-from-the-u-s-faster-payments-council-fpc/id1553535872

This is our third episode in Financial Inclusion month. Every year we dedicate one month to financial inclusion – my goal is to highlight and bring awareness to what the payments and/or fintech industry does today to help with the global challenge of financial inclusion and to discuss what more we can do. 

Ripple is fundamentally a fintech that uses new innovative technologies such as blockchain and crypto to improve financial services. They are focused on real-world use cases that create value for businesses like for example cross-border payments.

Ripple Impact has four pillars

1.      Engaging their employees to get involved in social and environmental impact areas

2.      The application of financial technology to accelerate and expand financial inclusion

3.      A focus on sustainability and climate

4.      Ripple impact is responsible for their research and innovation programs

Ken provides an in-depth explanation about why Ripple believes there are pathways into formal financial services for the unbanked globally that are enabled by blockchain and cryptocurrency. 

Ken and I go on to discuss the University Blockchain Research Initiative, Ripple’s work around sustainability and carbon markets, and finally how exciting it is to think about how new or newer technologies like blockchain and crypto can help solve big global challenges like Financial Inclusion. 

I want to give a special thanks to The Clearing House for sponsoring Financial Inclusion month. To learn more about the Clearing House just visit www.theclearninghouse.org

This is our second episode in Financial Inclusion month. Every year we dedicate one month to financial inclusion – my goal is to highlight and bring awareness to what the payments and/or fintech industry does today to help with the global challenge of financial inclusion and to discuss what more we can do. 

Our special guest is David Rocha, CEO & Co-Founder of Prosperas. Properas, known as the Financial Inclusion company, enables lenders to instantly qualify anyone on earth for credit using only the anonymized, non-biased and consumer consented data from their smartphones. 

There are 4 billion underbanked or unbanked people in the world, including 90 million in the United States and 70% of them have a mobile phone. Prosperas isn’t changing the way people get credit, they are changing the fundamentals behind it. They have built a 2-sided marketplace. One side includes the people or micro businesses looking for credit and the other side are the lenders. Anyone with a smartphone can be evaluated for credit. 

David and I go on to talk about their involvement in the Mastercard Start Path program and the Santander X Global Accelerator program and their involvement with a Super App launching in Latin America.  

I think the conversation can best be summed up by this quote directly from David. 

“Someone gave us a chance and that's really what we're trying to do for this broader Community is give them a chance. And we know that if we do, they'll take it. They'll maximize it and we'll all be better for it.”

To learn more about Prosperas please visit www.prosperas.com or visit them on LinkedIn. 

A special thanks to The Clearing House for sponsoring Financial Inclusion month. You can learn more about the Clearing House by visiting www.theclearninghouse.org

This is our first episode in Financial Inclusion month. Every year we dedicate one month to financial inclusion – my goal is to highlight and bring awareness to what the payments and/or fintech industry does today to help with the global challenge of financial inclusion and to discuss what more we can do. 

The Clearing House is a banking association and a payments company that is governed by about 23 of the largest financial institutions in the United States. They move money through wires, ACH and check images and maybe are most known for their RTP network which is the nation's newest payment system that provides instant clearing and settlement of payments here in the United States. 

Elena and I go on to talk about some of the challenges that the under-banked and unbanked face, how important it is to bring these segments of the population into the financial system and how companies and other organizations are leveraging the Real Time Payments network. 

We go deep on the importance of Earned Wage Access for both the employee and the employer. This is a vital program that can help the underserved community and is becoming more and more popular. 

Before we dive into the episode, I want to give a special thanks to The Clearing House for sponsoring Financial Inclusion month. To learn more about The Clearing House just visit www.theclearninghouse.org

My guest this week is a Canadian native with a degree in computer science and a lifelong passion for music. In fact, before he decided to go corporate, he was the lead guitarist in a breakthrough band with a passion for clean-cut stardom. Versapay CEO Craig O’Neill started his corporate journey in wealth management before coming to the more pivotal side of payments, but never left his guitar behind.

For those of you who may not know, Versapay is a fintech company with a focus on both software and payments to simplify and automate A/R. They facilitate upwards of $60 billion in payments between participating companies and their mission is to change the way businesses do business together by simplifying the transaction process. How do they do this? By modernizing how companies transact in a wildly untapped market space.

One of the things we talk about in this podcast are the factors that actually drive a company to modernize. According to Craig, this includes:

·       Getting paid faster

·       Reducing cost of manual labor 

·       And optimizing the customer experience

As for their competitive advantage, Craig touts Versapay’s ability to solve the disconnect in payments through collaborative A/R. According to him, 50% of the time, customers say they never even received their invoice. And if you then combine this with a lack of visibility and lack of integration, you then land on process friction as the main catalyst to what slows payments collection down. Versapay aims to solve this disconnect through solutions that do more than just automate the A/R process and integrations that allow for time to market in just days.

Tune in this week to hear Craig talk about his journey to CEO and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years, including the rapid growth of electronic payments, the pain points that arise, and the need for smarter payments that carry not only dollars but data as well.

My guest this week is an avid basketball enthusiast, Michael Jordan memorabilia collector and actually gets a lot of his business inspiration and insight when he’s courtside. Rapyd CEO Arik Shtilman has a professional passion to build the biggest company he can – and at a rapid pace. 

For those of you who may not know, Rapyd is a fintech company that provides API for other SMBs and enterprise-level organizations to build financial services applications on top of their white label platform. Arik will be the first to specify though that they are not a payments company but, rather, a fintech-as-a-service company.

So, what is fintech-as-a-service? According to Arik, it breaks down into four basic categories:

·       Payments 

·       Money disbursement

·       Card issuing

·       Digital wallets

And all of these comprise their white label offering that they provide for their clients to be payments prolific with a fully functioning platform. Not to mention, they take care of all the global compliance regulations behind the scenes. So, this means clients coming from almost any space on the globe can transact with confidence and without burden.

Also worthy of mention, the company has raised a total of nearly $800 million in funding, with a $400 million revenue stream and a valuation of $15 billion.

Tune in this week to hear Arik talk about his journey to CEO and where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years, including a push for even more fintechs, a checkout experience that happens without you even knowing it, and a growth strategy focused solely on gross margin.