Leaders In Payments

This is episode 45 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Atif Siddiqi, the CEO of Branch is our special guest this week.  

Atif grew up in Southern California and got his undergrad and MBA from USC and currently is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.   

Branch is a challenger bank that partners with employers to help Americans grow financially. They offer financial wellness tools to employees, fee free checking accounts, early access to earned wages, budgeting tools and more. They have 90 employees today. 

Branch works with companies like Dominoes to digitally distribute tips to the delivery drivers onto the Branch wallet so the drivers can get paid right after they make a delivery. 

One of the core themes at Branch is to eliminate or reduce as many fees as possible – the solution is free to employees and employers.  They make a small fee when the debit card is used at a merchant.  

Atif is very passionate about payments and learning about the technology behind payments and specifically blockchain.

www.branchapp.com

www.leadersinpayments.com 

This is episode 44 of the Leaders in Payments Podcast – this is also our very first episode in 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. 

Our generous sponsors for this series are 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 this very first episode by Gail Burgos. Gail serves as senior diversity and inclusion manager at Global Payments. In her current role, Gail leads Global Payments’ efforts to continue to build its inclusion and diversity efforts across the company. Prior to her current responsibilities, she served as the senior advisor to the chief information officer, supporting all business lines and aspects of the information technology business at legacy TSYS.

This is episode 43 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Nick Fredrick, the President of Rebar Technology is our special guest this week.  

Nick grew up in north central Ohio and now lives in Nashville, Tennessee. He also had a few stints in LA and in New York. 

REBAR is an acronym for Recurring Billing and Revenue.  They have built a platform that manages the subscription lifecycle for recurring b2c type merchants. They are completely cloud based and target the larger enterprise merchants that often need some form of customization. Rebar is an offshoot of a consulting firm called W Capra Consulting. 

Early in his career Nick was on the road in the music business specifically tour management. He then transitioned into finance and payments which led him to W Capra and then President of Rebar Technology. 

The modular way they have built their solution provides true differentiation in the subscription billing market.

www.rebartechnology.com

www.leadersinpayments.com

This is episode 42 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Denelle Dixon, the CEO and Executive Director of The Stellar Development Foundation is our special guest this week.  

Before joining Stellar, Denelle served as COO of Mozilla. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for Net Neutrality. A lawyer by trade, Denelle previously served as a general counsel and legal advisor in private equity and technology.

The Stellar Development Foundation is a non-profit and non-stock entity that focuses on shepherding the code base for the Stellar Network which is an open source global decentralized network very similar to the underpinning of the Internet. The network is similar to a blockchain but without the history or challenges that some people might think exits with blockchain. 

Stellar is hyper focused on making money fluid so people all over the world who don’t have bank accounts, can for example use their mobile phone to make payments or send money anywhere in the world. 

Denelle provides several use-cases that help bring this mission to life and has some great advice for those just starting their career in payments or fintech. 

www.stellar.org

www.leadersinpayments.com

www.podcast609.com

This is episode 41 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Chad Anselmo, the President of F1 Payments is our special guest this week.  

Chad grew up in southern California went to school in Utah and today lives in Austin, Texas. 

F1 Payments is a leading merchant processing company that targets those verticals that are tougher to board such as nutraceuticals or the health and beauty vertical. They work closely with banks to make sure these merchants are approved. F1 Payments processes payments for roughly 2,500 accounts and has grown from 8 employees 2 years ago to 35 employees today.  

Chad has some great thoughts on the future of payments as well as some great advice for those just starting their careers in payments. 

www.f1payments.com

www.leadersinpayments.com

This is episode 40 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Chris Brunner, the CEO of Authvia is our special guest this week.  

Chris grew up on southern California went to University of Arizona and today lives in Las Angeles. He has a professional passion for the creating a great customer experience and typically enjoys golf, sailing and travelling but being the father of two teenage daughters he spends his time today with his family and running the business.  

Authvia is the leading text to pay platform on the market today. It is contactless, secure and simple and runs over all the major messaging channels. There are no links, no passwords and no apps, the platform simply runs a transaction, a payment, or a donation over of the existing messaging channels.  

The company started working with recurring billings merchants 4 years ago but is now in 20 plus verticals. Beyond just payments the platform can help manage scheduling, calendaring, and more. 

Authvia is connecting into 2 dozen payment processors and gateways and 4 of the top 6 largest payment processors either refer or resell the platform. 

www.authvia.com 

www.leadersinpayments.com

www.podcast609.com

This is episode 39 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Lenny Crotty, the President of Metrics Global is our special guest this week. 

Lenny was born in a small town in Ireland called Ennis where the local airport has the claim to fame of having established the world’s first airport duty free store. Lenny was named President at Metrics Global at the end of August after spending the last 20 plus years in payments. 

Metrics Global is a global payments and fintech company that has been around about 15 years. They are headquartered in Las Vegas and have built a unified commerce and payments platform that connects both merchants and technology and payments partners to a global marketplace. 

They support international multi-currency acquiring in about 170 countries and currencies and have local acquiring capabilities in 59 markets.   

Lenny has a passion for payments and fintech and a personal passion for self-development, wine, travel, reading and running.  

www.metricsglobal.com

www.leadersinpayments.com

www.podcast609.com

This is episode 38 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and our special guest this week is Danny Shader the CEO of PayNearMe.  

Danny was born and currently lives in Palo Alto, California but in between he lived in New York and LA. 

PayNearMe is a payments CRM company that manages the customer financial interactions between a biller and their customer. They process all the payments, run the payments portal, the mobile experience, the IVR, the software the customer service reps use, and much much more. 

They process the cash too – through their proprietary cash network where they have integrated into the point of sale systems at 27,000 retail locations including CVS, 7-11, Family Dollar and others. A bar code is issued to the customer and then scanned by the clerk behind the counter and they pay their bill just as they would for a gallon of milk. And this is all done in real-time so before they even reach their car in the parking lot the bill has been paid.    

Their perfect customer is one that is managing recurring billing where they don’t want to custom code their own customer relationship management system or cobble together a solution of outside vendors. Ideal customers are those handling recurring billing through multiple channels and want to increase their payment volume, decrease their customer service calls and spend their engineering resources on things that will move their business forward. 

Danny provides some sounds advise for those starting their careers in fintech or payments. He suggests to find something you are very interested in, work with people you really like and work hard – do those things and you’ll do well. 

www.paynearme.com

www.leadersinpayments.com

www.podcast609.com 

This is episode 37 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Stephen Pair, the Co-Founder and CEO of BitPay is our special guest this week.  

Stephen is a Georgia native and went to Georgia Tech where he got his Computer Science degree and currently he lives just outside of Atlanta.  

BitPay was founded in 2011 with the idea of enabling companies to accept BitCoin payments similar to accepting credit cards. BitPay built an API similar to a common payments gateway for merchants to tap into so they could accept BitCoin – which at the time was the only cryptocurrency.  

Their customers are traditionally in the IT services or cloud hosting space, electronics retailers or in the video gaming space. They also process transactions in the B2B space.   

If you look at all of the cryptocurrencies and blockchains today there are hundreds of billions of dollars or wealth stored in these blockchains and by adding cryptocurrency into your payments platform you can tap into that wealth. When a company adds cryptocurrency as an alternative payment method, they see that 40-50% of those customers who pay with BitPay are actually net new customers.   

Stephen tells an interesting story about how they got the domain name bitpay.com Stephen has a passion for solving difficult problems using technology. From a personal perspective he loves flying. He is a pilot and has his own plane and uses flying as an escape from the daily grind of running a business.  

If you want to learn more about BitCoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain as it relates to the payments industry this is the episode you need to listen to. 

This is episdoe 36 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and Jeremy Almond, the Co-Founder and CEO of Paystand is our special guest this week.  

Jeremy grew up in Stockton, California. He was one of the first people in his family to attend college and grad school and currently lives on the beach in Santa Cruz. 

Paystand is a b2b payment network. So, what Venmo does for consumers, Paystand does for companies engaging in large commercial transactions.   

Paystand brings transformation in three areas 1. no paper – meaning digitization and automation, 2. no fees as they operate as a SaaS business model and 3. the value of an open industry. 

Jeremy has a fascinating story about how and why he started the company, including a turning point in his life driven from a family tragedy.  

He provides some great insights about the future of payments and also provides some great insights for those just starting their careers in fintech or payments.