My guest this week has a genuine passion for building products, teams, and businesses. He has worked for some of the largest payment brands in our ecosystem and his focus is always on reinvention, which would explain why he, himself, holds 27 patents in the payment space. Convera our CEO Patrick Gauthier moved to the U.S. 30 years ago for what was supposed to be a three-year stint and, fortunately for us, and never looked back.

You may not know, Convera (also previously called Western Union Business Solutions) is a cross-border payments company with a mission to make cross-border transactions easy so a variety of businesses with global aspirations can grow with confidence. And according to Patrick, confidence is the main ingredient for the success of their platform. 

Convera serves 200 countries and territories and supports more than 140 different currencies. They serve a variety of different industry segments, including higher education, nonprofit, import/export, travel, and financial institutions. And their two main offerings revolve around something called Spot Payments, which provides payments across currencies and across borders immediately, as well as various different options that help companies successfully analyze and manage their risk over time.

Tune in this week to hear Patrick talk about his journey to CEO, including the one question he always asks himself when it comes to any new venture or project: “How can we meet the customer need differently for a better outcome?” I also talk about where he sees the industry growing in the next 10 years as it relates to several “megatrends” he specifies throughout the industry: Electronification, democratization, and the evolution of the increasingly complex regulatory framework.