Leaders In Payments

A proud Chicago native with decades of experience driving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the payments space, and a heartfelt desire to “pour back into others some of the lessons his mentors taught him,” Will Lewis is a dynamic individual. He’s a Drake University graduate, the Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Officer at Experian and he is grateful for the opportunity to speak to you about one of his truest professional passions: financial inclusion.

When it comes to the percentage of the American population who are still un-and-under-banked, it truly is a wonder that we haven’t managed to cross this hurdle in today’s digitally dominated landscape. And this is why people like Will are so valuable to our industry.

With programs like Inclusion Forward: Experian Empowering Opportunities and Experian Boost, Will and his team are driving opportunities for individuals that are currently challenged with the limitations that come from being “credit invisible,” as he puts it. Through advocating on behalf of the consumer, these programs aim to give the cash-only consumers financial opportunities with a more comprehensive view of what could be considered “credit visibility.”

Wil speaks about all things financial inclusion, including the goals of these programs, what Experian is doing to promote financial inclusion and why it’s so important in today’s every-changing ecosystem.

When it comes to payments, it’s no secret that digital is dominating the ecosystem. This, we know. But what about Americans that are either unbanked or underbanked… those that don’t have access to the technology or have the resources required to take advantage of the perks digital disruption provides?

In today’s podcast, Paysafecash VP of Strategic Business Development Jan Marc Kuelper and RentMoola’s Chief Product Officer Jean-Francois Brissot come together to speak about the current landscape of the underbanked demographic and the strides they are proactively making to support this population. 

The ultimate goal? To make the life of the cash consumer as easy as possible.

A creative thinker with 25 years of thinking about all things Fintech, Jean-Francois Brissot is the Chief Product Officer for RentMoola. RentMoola simplifies property payments into one efficient, secure platform. Jean-Francois oversees product innovation, engineering and customer success. 

Also, a big player in the Fintech space and my other guest on this podcast, Jan Marc Kuelper oversees the eCash business (both Paysafecard and Paysafecash) in the United States, with the responsibility of pursuing strategic partnerships to accelerate international expansion. 

Together, they provide some much-needed insight into our lingering dependency on cash, the financial challenges caused by the global pandemic and the impact this has on some of their target verticals (specifically, the rental market).

In this week’s Leaders in Payments Podcast, I speak with The Clearing House SVP of Sales and Relationship Management Elena Whisler about financial inclusion and why there are still so many unbanked and underbanked Americans.

 A mother of two, marathon runner of many and proud Canadian native, Elena is passionate about payments inclusion as she talks about the various initiatives The Clearing House is involved in to proactively service our underserved communities.

 For those of you that may not know, The Clearing House is a banking association and payments company owned by 23 of the largest financial institutions in the United States. They are the nation’s most experienced payments company, with a payment network that clears and settles more than $2 trillion dollars each day.

Rob Lincolne, a self-proclaimed left-handed, homeschooled Tasmanian who currently moonlights as Founder and CEO of Paydock is our special guest this week on episode 122 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.

 Growing up on an island off the coast of Australia in a family that traveled extensively, Rob has a widespread cultural background with global exposure. This coupled with his extensive industry experience has afforded him a rather unique perspective on people, progress and (most importantly) payments. 

 Rob’s vision of a company that not only solved problems but provided value has gone through many iterations that have been (in his words) “rewarding, terrifying and exhilarating.” The most recent manifestation of this is Paydock. Founded in 2015, Paydock is a payments orchestration platform that helps medium and enterprise merchants simplify their increasingly complex payments stacks.

 According to Rob, there are four emerging trends in the payments ecosystem that are already impacting the marketplace and will require us to “future proof” our payments strategy for successful forward momentum.

Lara Hodgson, Co-Founder, President and CEO of Now is our special guest this week on episode 121 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. 

Lara grew up Atlanta, Georgia. She got her undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech and went to business school at Harvard. She has started several businesses in her career including Insomnia and Nourish – which was the inspiration for starting Now.  

Now helps small and medium size businesses get paid immediately after sending an invoice. Their customers sign up for a NowAccount, upload their invoices into their NowAccount and their receivables are basically converted into cash.  

It isn’t factoring and it isn’t a line of credit. Lara shares an interesting startup story about how the company was formed and why. 

Lara has a passion for her family including being room mom and team mom. She loves education and children. She has a professional passion for leveling the playing field for small businesses. 

Sathish N., Chief Product Officer of FSS is our special guest this week on episode 120 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. 

Sathish grew up in a small town in India. He has worked for some of the leading companies in India with assignments in Tokyo, London, Copenhagen and the U.S. and has travelled to over 55 countries.

FSS has been in business for 30 years and provides payments services and technology to banks, central regulators, governments, merchants and more.    

FSS helps their customers with everything from issuer card programs to omnichannel acquiring, digital banking, payment processing, ATM monitoring, payment security and analytics and financial inclusion programs. 

Sathish is a nature enthusiast and enjoys bird watching and wildlife photography. 

Flint Lane, CEO and Founder of Billtrust is our special guest this week on episode 119 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. 

Flint grew up on Long Island, New York and from the beginning thought he was going to be a software developer for life. After a few software jobs, he started a company called PayTrust, sold it and started Billtrust in his basement in September of 2001. 

Billtrust exists to help medium and large companies digitize their financial supply chain – think b2b payments. They went public in January and expect to do $125 million in revenue this year.  

Billtrust has always been in the cloud and is sold via a subscription model. They are the market leader for AR solutions and have been in business for 20 years. 

He’s the Leaders in Payments first star table tennis or ping pong player. He plays competitively several times a week.  

Today we’re taking a special look at the Unattended Retail space with industry leader Cantaloupe. 

Cantaloupe, Inc. is a software and payments company that provides end-to-end technology solutions for the unattended retail market. Cantaloupe is transforming the unattended retail community by offering one integrated solution for payments processing, logistics, and back-office management. The Company’s enterprise-wide platform is designed to increase consumer engagement and sales revenue through digital payments, digital advertising and customer loyalty programs, while providing retailers with control and visibility over their operations and inventory.

On this episode Elyssa Steiner from Cantaloupe is joining me to discuss the results of their recent survey. They targeted more than 2,000 census-based US adults. We’re going to talk about some of the surprises compared to last year, some of the latest trends, micro-markets and much much more.  

Oliver Werneyer, CEO of Imburse is our special guest on episode 117 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. 

Oliver was born and grew up in South Africa and found his way to London after getting married and now resides in Switzerland.  

Imburse provides insurers and large enterprises a single connection point to initiate any payment, collection or payout saving them time and money. Imburse currently has 46 employees and recently closed a roughly $12 million funding round and are growing rapidly. 

Imburse has a unique start up story involving an app that tracked flights, a customer and a major pivot. 

Oliver is really passionate about the people side of the business and loves to play golf with his 6-year-old daughter. 

Trent Sorbe, President and Founder of Central Payments is our special guest this week on episode 116 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. 

Trent is a small-town Midwesterner. He grew up in Iowa, went to college in Iowa and have been in South Dakota for the last 20 or so years.  

Central Payments is the payments subsidiary of Central Bank of Kansas City. In 2013, the bank started to think about future growth and approached Trent to start Central Payments in 2014. 

Central Payments has two customers – traditional fintechs, and embedded finance – which are bigger companies that want to embed a financial product but don’t want to become financial services companies. 

Trent talks about the Open CP which is their API marketplace – where their customers can come in and get access to financial products. 

He also discusses Falls Fintech which is their early stage accelerator program.