Leaders In Payments

For my guest this week, I have a one-time Disneyworld employee who was once recruited by Visa and MasterCard simultaneously. Finexio CEO and Founder Ernest Rolfson has a self-proclaimed passion for creating transparency around what he perceives to be a very opaque industry by teaching people about payments, software and all things that move money.

For those of you who may not know, Finexio is an accounts payable payments-as-a-service company that targets the middle market sector and provides partner solutions that enable a very prolific ecosystem. Their long-term goal is to empower large accounts payable, procurement and ERP software platforms with a white-label solution that provides a broader toolset and revenue stream when it comes to their payments offerings.

Being a solo founder before the tailwinds of the global pandemic escalated the drive towards digital, Ernest’s story is a fascinating one. He knew he had a winning concept when he did his research and found that there was still $12 trillion dollars in paper checks being processed through the US payments ecosystem. This broke down to $4 trillion for the small business market, $4 trillion for middle market, and $4 trillion for large enterprise. Given his background and expertise, Ernest decided to target the middle market sector and the rest, as they say, is history.

Finexio is very narrowly focused on payments optimization, execution and support on the backend and can deliver 10 different payment methods with a truly white-label approach. And they offer a very specific partner methodology that enables a turnkey go-to-market solution without a costly technology investment. Tune in this week to hear Ernest talk about his journey to fintech, including where he sees the industry 2-3 years from now as it relates to cryptocurrency, cross-border payments, and the fast-emerging trend towards being multi-rail. 

As we wrap up diversity and inclusion month, I speak with Cantaloupe Director of Human Resources, Alyssa Braniecki, on what it looks like to employ D&I as part of the total employee experience. 

Alyssa credits her ability to find her voice as a female in the workplace to growing up in a blended Hispanic/Italian family with two volumes: loud and louder. She originally got her degree in psychology with an emphasis in developmental psych but has always had a passion for facilitating groups and creating balance within them. Her desire to be part of the total employee experience eventually led her to Cantaloupe, a digital payments solution in the unattended retail sector that also provides logistical software servicing to the locations of those unattended retail spaces.

To her, diversity and inclusion are two very separate things that cannot work independently of one another. Diversity is the different characteristics and attributes that define the employees within the company — their race, ethnicity, gender, etc., while inclusion is embracing all those differences and welcoming them fully, as well as appreciating and nourishing them. Diversity is a fact while inclusion is a choice. You can gather data about adversity but if you’re not intentional about inclusion, you’re not truly going to see a diverse and inclusive workforce.

Alyssa and I discuss how the industry is doing as a whole when it comes to D&I, as well as what advice she has for companies getting started on their own diversity and inclusion program. One of the important points she has to offer is diversity and inclusion are not something that starts with the hiring process. Well-established hiring protocols are only part of a successful D&I program. They are not the point of origin. 

According to her, it all starts from the top down and Cantaloupe’s CEO, in my opinion, does an exceptional job of driving this point home. Tune in to get the details on this and more!

Moving right along with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) month, my guest this week refers to herself as a global citizen with a broad range of diverse experience and an entrepreneurial career that all started with one question: “Software outsourcing is huge. Do you want to start a business?”

As I’m sure you can imagine, the answer was yes, and this led Chargeback Gurus Founder and CEO Srii Srinivasan down a wildly successful entrepreneurial path that all started with a diamond merchant.

In this episode, we discussed not only her business model, go-to-market strategy and niche offering, we also talk a lot about what she does proactively to ensure DEI in her organization. When asked what her definition of diversity is, Srii explains that “it’s truly about radical acceptance in all our life experiences, no matter who it is or what they experienced. Diversity by itself will not work. You also have to have equity and inclusion, which means voices are heard and met with acceptance.”

Among the many things we discuss around DEI in this episode, one of the most interesting to me is this concept around diversity including not only the employees, but the customers stakeholders and investors as well. It’s a concept that starts from the top down and must include every touchpoint the company has. In order to make it truly successful, DEI has to be in the corporate DNA.

Tune in to hear us discuss important best practices like writing a diverse job description, asking questions and actively listening to the answers, hiring and training leaders on the importance of DEI and creating successful DEI best practices in a virtual company culture. 

As we continue our deep dive into diversity and inclusion, we meet this week with Covenant Pay CEO Quincy McKnight. A fully registered ISO looking to “really change the payments industry,” one of the questions I have for Quincy is how he prioritizes something like diversity and inclusion in a small company that already has so many priorities when it comes to establishing growth and momentum within the industry? 

His answer? “Leadership reflects attitude. Whatever they’re putting out at the top will be what’s executed at the bottom.” According to Quincy, Covenant has a strong company culture that encourages diversity and rewards employees who aren’t afraid to bring ideas to the table. He will be the first to say that people are very different, in many different ways, and it’s these differences that make any company stronger if they allow them to. 

And from an industry perspective, he will be the first to admit that it’s very obvious diversity and inclusion are not being practiced as a priority within our ecosystem given the lack of female and minority leadership. 

“Sometimes it feels like a bunch of used car salesman running around. We need to get a handle on not only how to use the technology but how to nurture the relationships.” 

Another point he brings into consideration from the consumer perspective is the impression your leadership team is giving to the public. If there aren’t any representatives that look and talk like the diverse community members, they will be less likely to transact in your playing field, according to Quincy. 

Tune in this week as we continue our deep dive into D&I and get some good perspective from the only fully registered ISO that is completely minority owned. Hear how they do it and what makes it successful!

I can’t think of a better guest to kick off diversity and inclusion month than Remitly Chief Customer and People Officer Rene Yoakum. With more than 40 years in Big Tech, including 19 years at Microsoft alone, Rene is more than qualified to speak to our listeners about this crucial topic. 

According to Rene, diversity, equity and inclusion (or DEI) means making sure your workplace offers a broad set of thinking, lived experiences and people with different identities and cultural backgrounds. And it’s not just about recruiting ethnic minorities. You have to make sure you have practices that allow diversity and inclusion to genuinely thrive in the workplace, in a manner that engages everyone from the employee to the customer.

For those of you that may not know, Remitly is a money remittance service that helps immigrants send money back to their families and home community. They serve more than 5 million customers, with 17 send and 25 receive countries in their global portfolio. And, as if that wasn’t impressive enough, the company can service up to 1 billion of the 7 billion people on the planet — either immigrants or the families from the developing countries they’ve come from.

Tune in this week and hear us discuss everything from best practices for managing large-scale diversity programs to creating a corporate culture that thrives on inclusion and equality. And as far as where to start on DEI, we tackle that too. Here’s a hint: “diverse recruiting is false advertising without also nurturing and growing a diverse employee experience.”

Don’t miss this one!

This week marks the last episode for our Pulse series featuring Open Banking platform Trustly. And to close it out with a bang, I have Trustly President of North America Pete Ohser. Pete is a true industry veteran with more than 20 years in the payments space and a byline that includes an integral part in developing the first risk system for online money transfer platforms.

In his own words, Trustly is “a payments company that does data really, really well.” They have been in the marketplace since 2008, originating in Europe where the Open Banking platforms are much more widely used. But according to Pete, the U.S. is primed for adoption and the need is growing at a rapid pace. What are some of the main motivators for early adopters? A lot of it has to do with speed and low-cost payment options. And when it comes to the benefits, they are strong on both sides of the equation. From a merchant perspective, they have less risk, an amazing user experience and all at a lower cost. From a customer perspective, Pete focuses on the value that comes with enabling them to build a relationship with their bank data that goes beyond what certain banks have the capacity to offer. 

 According to him, “the world is ready for alternatives to cards” and Trustly has a strong commitment to blazing that trail in the Open Banking space. Tune in and hear him talk about the journey of open banking from the EU perspective, the rise of adoption in the U.S. and what the future looks like for Open Banking as it relates to the simplification of cross-border payments, geographic expansion, greater bank regulation and the possibility of one single API to hit the entire world.

For someone who never thought he would end up in payments, Fleetcor Group President of North American Fuel Cards Alexey Gavrilenya sure has proven himself wrong. Having been with the company for more than 13 years, Alexey has overseen operations in Russia, London and now stateside in Atlanta. And he credits a lot of his success to his two passions: bringing the future forward and continually learning new things through a burning curiosity.

Fleetcor is an established player in the payments space, with more than 20 years in the ecosystem, and a market cap of $20 billion. As for their core offering, they “help businesses be more effective by providing them best-in-class payment tools,” according to Alexey. Their model caters to a two-sided marketplace in that they not only work with customers, but they also acquire merchants and drive revenue to their bottom line. Their global headcount is around 10,000 employees, with a US presence of 2-3,000.

When it comes to their competitive offering, one of the most important things they provide is competitive data analytics that enable significant value adds to their customers. Some examples of this include blending connected legal data with payment transactions to offer electrical payment solutions that allow customers to consciously impact their carbon footprint with carbon-neutral fleets. They can also authorize or decline in real-time based on location, use machine learning to provide credit lending options to SMBs and implement real-time fraud detection.

In fact, felt cards generate less than half of their revenue annually. Tune in to hear more about this dynamic company from one of their seasoned leaders, including a glimpse into the future of fintech as it relates to big tech, embedded finance and going beyond payments for legacy players.

In this episode, I continue my deep dive into the unattended retail sector of the payments space with industry leader Cantaloupe. Their Vice President, GM Micro Markets Michael Johnson is my guest, and he has been in the autonomous retail space for quite some time now so the perspective he offers on this rapidly growing niche within our industry truly gives some food for thought about the future of where consumer engagement is headed.

For those of you who may not know what the unattended retail space refers to, think the free-standing snack and drink kiosk’s you see at the airport, or the unmanned shops in corporate breakrooms and hotel lobbies. Cantaloupe is a digital payments and software company that acts as a full-service technology partner for businesses looking to expand their reach into the self-service micro market. In a nutshell, they help companies collect money through payments, run a tight ship with business efficiency and build life-long customer relationships through meaningful engagement practices. 

As a result of the global pandemic, self-checkout and unattended retail went quickly from a nice-to-have classification to an absolute must. And Cantaloupe has been the industry leader driving all the buzz. 

Tune in this week to hear Michael talk about the growing consumer demand for a frictionless experience when it comes to payments, how AI has helped us take the enormous data dump that came with the digital age and make that data both meaningful and profitable, and what to expect moving forward in terms of cryptocurrency and relevant trends or unique applications predicted to dominate the unattended retail space. 

Our Open Banking pulse this week is on Trustly VP of North American Bank Partnerships Eric Foust – and for good reason! Not only is Eric a 20-year veteran in the banking space, he’s also the first VP I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with that has almost a super-hero theme to his roles and responsibilities within the Trustly empire. His chosen staff? A Trident. And the responsibilities represented by the three prongs?  

1.     Facilitating all of Trustly’s banking relationships concerned with originating depository financial institutions (ODFI).

2.     Overseeing all of Trustly’s Open Banking support for financial institutions in the U.S.

3.     Collaborating with corporate bank partners to become resellers of the Trustly product suite.

So, to say this podcast is full of invaluable takeaways would be an understatement. 

For those of you that may not have a baseline on the Trustly brand, they processed more than $10 billion in 2021, with more than 10 million users here in North America and just closed out a YOY growth revenue increase of 537% in the North American territory alone.

Impressed? I was too! And listening to Eric discuss the Open Banking ecosystem is fascinating. He relates it to a stage of actors that feature the consumer as the main character (of course) and the merchant as the supporting role with other notable performances given by the banks (or keyholders) and the fintechs (technology wizards). 

Tune in to hear him share his invaluable perspective on the Open Banking concept from the frontline – including the three pillars of regulation, lessons from across the pond and what the future looks like as it relates to standardization and 24/7/365 banking.

What does an avid snowboarder with three degrees (legal, accounting and business) and a lifelong passion for solving problems have to offer to the payments space? You mean besides a genuine desire to accelerate the industry and a resume that includes 5 successful companies to establish his foundation before he even went fintech? A lot! 

Anchor Co-Founder and CEO Rom Lakritz has taken his passion for problem solving to the next level with his automated invoicing and accounting software that targets the service provider sector. According to Rom, when they started developing the idea for Anchor, they looked at the payments space and saw they could divide it into two segments. Half of all payments in the world are completely automatic, with the other half initiated via more of a manual process in the B2B space. And with this manual process comes elevated risk. There’s the risk of chargebacks, fraud, duplicate payments and the like. And with $200 trillion B2B payments being transacted worldwide, Rom set out to solve this very real challenge and mitigate that risk.

And, thus, Anchor was conceived (on the way up a ski lift during a snowboarding trip, no less). To put it simply, Anchor is an autonomous billing and collections platform that strives to take the manual process out of accounts receivable by automating it.

And one of the biggest issues Rom targets with his software? Revenue leakage. In the U.S. alone, this impacts 4.6% of top-line revenue for service providers which, according to Rom, actually effects between 30-40% of their overall profit margin. Tune in to hear about his problem-solving solution, his journey up the corporate ladder and where he sees the B2B payments space in the next 2-3 years.