Leaders In Payments

Bill Wade, the CEO of Company.com is our special guest this week and this is episode 65 of The Leaders in Payments podcast.

Bill grew up in Connecticut, and was a professional drummer before “hitting it big” in the payments industry. He was recruited by Marriott Corporation out of college, and spent a decade with them in the executive program before shifting into sales and mortgage banking, eventually making his way into the payments space.

Company.com now provides resources and services to business owners. While not serving the payments industry exclusively, because of Bill’s previous decades of experience in payments, it has consistently been one of Company.com’s top priorities.

According to Bill, the single biggest differentiator for Company.com is their focus on the overall user experience. With several members of his team coming from a payments background, they have an in-depth understanding of the industry’s competitive nature, as well as the importance of differentiation.

A continuing payments trend, according to Bill, will be progressive advancements related to speed of transaction settlement, as well as increased opportunities for business with solid technology backgrounds that can effectively address the user experience.

Bill is tremendously appreciative of the team members he’s had over the years, and is excited about helping more companies find and take advantage of opportunities moving forward. His advice for newcomers: Be innovative, be scrappy and work hard.

This is the second episode in our series "The Pulse of Payments" and Shaun Abraham, the CEO of Transaction Insights is our special guest this week. 

Before co-founding Transaction Insights, Shaun held leadership positions in both JP Morgan and Bank of America, and has tremendous expertise in market intelligence. Today, his company helps businesses keep track of the payments space as well as find opportunities in it.

According to Shaun, one of the trends that is coming in our space is the rebundling of financial services, with companies looking to partner with and/or acquire businesses in order to expand their service offerings.  

Shaun also believes that the “Buy Now Pay Later” (BNPL) space has interesting things in store in 2021, and will continue to see growth. Managing it responsibly, however, may prove to be challenging moving forward.

Another hot trend, according to Shaun, is the shift toward payments in the cloud. With a partnership between Global Payments and Google Cloud having been recently announced, he believes that other similar partnerships are forthcoming. With the goals being speed to integrate, speed to market and flexibility to adapt and change, “future-proofing” your platform will continue to be a top-tier agenda item in the payments industry.

Cleveland Brown, the CEO of Payscout is our special guest this week and this is episode 63 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.

Cleveland grew up in San Jose California with Apple and IBM being in his backyard. Cleveland went to college at UCLA and majored in philosophy and business economics. While in college he started a company building ecommerce platforms and software for public school systems. He currently lives in LA.

Payscout is a payment technology company that builds proprietary solution designed to increase conversions, enhance compliance and reduce processing costs – focused on highly regulated ecommerce sectors like medical billing, health care, cross border, education and enterprise level entities.   

The culture of Payscout is what differentiates the company having won multiple awards for best places to work. 

According to Cleveland one of the trends that is coming in our space is payments in immersive experiences like virtual reality or augmented reality.  

Cleveland has a passion for building the best culture at Payscout. He also some great advice for those just joining our industry.  

Bill Lodes, Chief Revenue Officer at linked2Pay is our special guest this week. This is episode 62 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.

Bill was born in New York and comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Bill learned the value of hard work at his dad’s own restaurant where he also learned the details of opening and operating a small business – from the pot sink to being a bartender to a line cook.   

Linked2Pay is a payment technology company that provides credit and debit card processing, ACH and payment integration tools to software partners as well as offers a white label payments platform to banks, channel partners and more. 

One of the ways linked2Pay differentiators themselves is to really understand the pain points of their partners and their customers and then build the technology to help solve for these pain points. 

Bill has some great insights into the future of payments based on the behavior changes of consumers. 

This is the first episode of the Q1 2021 “The Pulse of Payments” series. My special guest this week is Krista Tedder, the Director Payments for Javelin Strategy and Research. 

During this episode we’re discussing how the payments industry will be affected by the new Biden administration here in the U.S. and the fact that the Democrats hold majorities in both the House and Senate. 

Krista talks about how interchange revenue could be regulated – both debit (again) and credit. She also covers topics like digital currencies, cannabis and online betting.     

She also discusses what the payments industry will look like post Covid-19 as well her thoughts on the continuation of M&A activity and PE/VC investments.   

This episode is part of our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about. 

This special series is brought to you by Wnet and Paysafe.

Wnet or The Women's Network in Electronic Transactions is celebrating 15 years of helping women achieve greater personal success, influence, and professional parity in the payments industry. Wnet is a not-for-profit organization with a mission of creating a stronger and more diverse industry by empowering and investing in women. Learn how at wnetonline.org.

Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com. 

I’m honored to be joined on the eighth episode of our special series on D&I by Andrew Greening, the Managing Partner of Greenings International. 

 Andrew Greening has been a pioneer in the Executive Search industry for over 30 years. Andrew has disrupted and challenged the possible for cross-border executive search and talent acquisition, from turning around international offices and acquisitions to building out new methodologies for client success. Andrew’s global network is driven by his interest and passion for people, helping to further careers and being fully invested in his clients.

Adrian Sanders, the CEO of Chargehound is our special guest this week and this is episode 59 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. 

 Adrian was born and grew up on a small farm in Corvallis Oregon before going to Bennington College in Vermont. Prior to starting Chargehound he had started and was running a crowdfunding company. He currently resides in Oakland California with his wife and 2 young kids.  

Chargehound is the only fully automated chargeback representment service available and they use technology to drive better win rates, and better performance for their merchants. 

Their pricing is based on pay for performance meaning they take a percentage of what they win back which helps them align with their merchants.  

Adrian has some great insights about how behavioral changes of consumers will affect the future of payments and he also provides some sound advice for those just starting out in payments.  

This episode is part of our special series on The Digital Payments Tipping Point. In this three-part series I'm talking with executives from WEX’s Corporate Payments division who partnered with the research team at The Economist over the summer of 2020 to look into the state of business-to-business payments in financial services, fintechs,  and technology companies. The research found that companies that have grown most robustly during the pandemic are almost all accelerating their evolution away from slow, manual, paper-based payments into secure, data-rich, real-time digital payments.

This 3-part series digs into the issues surrounding this rapid evolution in digital payments. Our first episode featured Greg Sassone, SVP of Business & Partner Growth at WEX Corporate Payments, and focused on whether banks should build, buy or partner when it comes to adopting new technology or innovation. 

This episode will focus on the interchange realities that the payments industry needs to face. To wrap the series, we’ll talk with WEX Corporate Payments President Jay Dearborn about the shape of payments to come. 

My special guests on this episode are Dylan Jones and Laura Shen. Dylan Jones is the Vice president of operations for the Corporate Payments Solutions division at WEX and Laura Shen is the Director of Strategy for WEX Corporate Payments.   

WEX is a B2B Payments Technology Company. Their Corporate Payments division focuses on innovating digital payments solutions for financial institutions and fintechs as well as large corporations that need to modernize their AP processes. 

This episode is part of our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion. In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about. 

This special series is brought to you by the Wnet and Paysafe.

The Wnet or The Women's Network in Electronic Transactions is celebrating 15 years of helping women achieve greater personal success, influence, and professional parity in the payments industry. Wnet is a not-for-profit organization with a mission of creating a stronger and more diverse industry by empowering and investing in women. Learn how at wnetonline.org.

Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com. 

I’m honored to be joined on the seventh episode by Nasiya Acklen the DE&I Manager at Discover. 

Nasiya Acklen is a native of Nashville, TN. She received her undergraduate degree from Hampton University and began her career with General Mills in the Consumer Food Sales division. After receiving her MBA from Cornell University in 2015, she transitioned into Human Resources at ExxonMobil. Eventually she became the first to serve as the company’s Inclusion & Diversity Advisor focused on creating a more coordinated global strategy for the 3rd largest Fortune 500 company. 

Since that time, she has joined Discover Financial Services as Diversity Equity & Inclusion Manager. She is hailed as a strategic and courageous leader that is passionate about helping others internalize the value of giving a seat and a voice to all those at the table. In addition to her daily responsibilities, Nasiya is a highly regarded speaker, holds training workshops, offers DEI consultation services, and has launched an Executive Coaching practice. 

Nasiya is proud to have been inducted into the Hampton University 40 Under 40 Society in 2019. In addition, she serves as the MLT Alumni Council lead for the Houston area and is an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated.

As a self-professed foodie, good dancer, and lifestyle blogger, Nasiya has adopted Maya Angelou's quote as a personal mantra: My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

Adrian Talapan, CEO of Fee Navigator is our special guest this week. This is episode 56 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and I’m your host Greg Myers 

Adrian was born and grew up in Romania. He came the U.S. through an opportunity to go to West Point. He has started multiple companies in the healthcare space before launching Fee Navigator.  

Fee Navigator takes a merchant statement whether scanned or a PDF and produces in about 10 second a custom proposal. 

Fee Navigator doesn’t process transactions, so they are neutral and focus on ISOs, acquirers, banks, ISVs and more. They also offer a widget that can be added to a website to collect statements from prospects with minimal human interaction – thus a lead generator. 

Adrian has some great insights into the future of payments and provides some sage advice about adopting change.