Money Isn't Everything

StellarFi is not the first fintech company Lamine Zarrad has founded. This plucky serial fintech founder chats with Mary about his wild ride working as a bank regulator by day, and designing a pot payment startup (Tokken) on nights and weekends -- something he said he felt compelled to do. Now at StellarFi, he is compelled to rethink bill payment. They explore the how and examine unconventional customer acquisition ideas (ahem, buying and forgiving debt) and when (and why) to challenge bank regulators.

Relevant show links: 

• StellarFi
• DealBook article referenced 

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Michael Broughton learned about the complications of the credit scoring system while struggling to access credit to help him pay for a portion of his USC tuition.

Now, as the founder and CEO of Altro, he’s working to expand the ways people can build credit history by reporting subscription payments to credit bureaus. He tells Mary about what he sees broken in the credit scoring system and what it was like to go viral while working on his startup at a hacker house. They also chat about how money apps can foster community as well as how to sort through good and bad venture capitalists.

Relevant show links:

https://www.altro.io/our-story/

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Sophia Goldberg, CEO and co-founder of Ansa and author of "The Field Guide to Global Payments," views Girl Math as a joyful expression. Sophia explores the social media trend with Mary and shares her view on why it matters to all brands. They also discuss what’s broken with gift cards and opine on reward programs that resonate with people.

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Eric Siegel, founder of Machine Learning Week conferences and former Columbia University professor, has focused his attention on cutting through the AI exuberance in his newer book, “The AI Playbook.” Eric talks to Mary about what corporations get wrong about one of the buzziest technologies and offers practical steps to take instead. Eric also talks to her about the tension between fraud and customer experience and what went into making his music video on predictive analytics (yes, that happened).

Show notes:

The AI Playbook: Mastering the Rare Art of Machine Learning Deployment

Generative AI Applications Summit

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Debbie, an early-stage fintech startup, is rewriting the rules on rewards. Instead of offering consumers rewards for spending, Debbie offers rewards for paying down their debt and saving money at a time when credit card and auto loan delinquency rates have increased to their highest level since the Great Recession, per data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Today’s episode: Mary sits down with Debbie’s CEO and Co-Founder, Frida Leibowitz. They chat about how to drive engagement on a dreary subject, offer unexpected techniques to develop a vibrant user community, and discuss something seemingly counterintuitive: How too many resources can interfere with building a bank product – something Frida witnessed firsthand while previously working at Goldman Sachs’ Marcus.

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It’s past and present fintech innovations in this edition of Money isn’t Everything.

In today’s show, Mary sits down with Jim Bruene who founded one of the first fintech events, Finovate, at a time when many didn’t know fintech was becoming a thing.

They explore the challenges of staying creative at a corporation and offer workarounds as well as opine on the latest and greatest in small business banking. Jim also shares  how he dreamed up Finovate (spoiler: the idea started with reading an American Banker article). You’ll also hear which bank couldn’t get into the first Finovate and how Mary fell into a fountain (separate incidents).

Jim is also the founder of Fintech Labs UX.

Finovate: https://informaconnect.com/finovatespring/ 

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Consumers are depleting the savings they built during the pandemic. Mary Wisniewski sits down with Ethan Bloch, the founder of Digit, one of the first algorithmic saving apps to hit the U.S. They examine: overdraft fees, best practices for building a product that inspires behavior change and whether fintech has improved financial services at all. They still manage to laugh. 

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The financial services industry isn’t that basic. Sure, banks and credit unions hold money. But their ambitions are much grander. Hosted by long-time fintech reporter Mary Wisniewski, Money isn’t Everything explores the ways banking may change for better or worse. We’ll hear from rebels of banking, journalists and fintech entrepreneurs every other week to explore financial health, identity issues and the many unexpected places traditional banking is appearing in people’s lives.  We'll have a good time, too.

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