Payments Innovation

The term “disruption” doesn’t just get thrown around occasionally. “Disruption” gets thrown around incessantly — especially in tech, and, perhaps even more especially in fintech.

Let us introduce perhaps the one founder who is not actually trying to disrupt traditional banking.

Meet Eric Solis, a 3-time fintech founder, former SVP of investments for Merrill Lynch, former VP of Investments for Prudential Securities, a full stack entrepreneur with educational credits in bitcoin, AI, and business from MIT, Oxford, and Stanford.

Eric came on the Payments Innovation podcast to share about his latest creation — MovoCash, and how he’s using it to solve problems for the underbanked, without disrupting traditional banking.

What we talked about:

• What is MovoCash
• Eric says they solve 3 problems traditional banks couldn’t:
• • 1) Guaranteed payment
  • 2) Getting money off the ledger 
  • 3) Preventing fraud & creating denominations
• Eric’s not actually out to disrupt the banks

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here. 

Until next time!

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Across the United States, challenger banks are springing up, such as Chime and Simple. But, within the US, most of these don’t actually have their own charter.

Meet Varo Money — the digital bank that wants to become the first challenger bank to receive its own US charter.

I spoke with Wesley Wright, Varo’s COO, on the Payments Innovation podcast to hear about why pursuing their own charter is so important. Wesley’s response?

Because they want to own the entire customer experience.

What we talked about:

• Traditional banks haven’t responded to everyone’s needs
• Varo focuses on long-term, core banking relationship with customers
• Varo’s goal: own the customer experience
• The sponsor bank model versus being a chartered bank
• What would need to change to become their own charter
• How does Varo determine which processes to keep in house and which to outsource?
• Varo’s “customer-centric” approach

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here. 

Until next time!

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Have you ever tried purchasing life insurance? It seems like it should take less than 60 minutes, but it rarely takes less than 60 days.

So Yaron took that process, laden with pdfs, phone calls, and paperwork, and turned it inside-out, co-founding Haven Life.

On this episode, Yaron gives his insights on:

• Why buying term life insurance has been so difficult traditionally
• Giving customers what they need
• Allowing customers to purchase how they want
• How Haven Life is using modern tech to align with the customer
• Rapid application approval
• How Yaron defines success
• Yaron’s insights into the future of insurtech

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here. 

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It would be easy to chalk Brandon’s passion into something driven by his near-death experiences. But that’s only half the story. 

Brandon Dewitt is CTO at MX, a company that grew from the merging of his own company, MyJibe. At his heart, he’s a computer scientist. He wants to help people solve real-life problems, by separating out those things computers do well to help people with their lives.

But a while back, he found out he had over a dozen tumors. The docs gave him 30 to 90 days. That was over 4 years ago.

On this episode of the Payments Innovation Podcast, Brandon discusses his passion for consumer-friendly, computer-driven financial analysis built for the everyday person.

What we talked about:

• Everyday people need a different financial visualization
• Visibility for consumers
• Showing a consumer’s “trajectory,” with colors and graphs, not just the exact numbers
• Consumers don’t want to look at their own numbers
• The banking industry is becoming more consumer-focused
• Banks actually want to do what’s best for the consumer
• Brandon’s beating more than cancer
• Financial services is really good at reducing risk

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here. 

Until next time!

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Problem: Local financial institutions don’t have the access to resources or multiple branches that a larger bank like JPMorgan has. So, usually, local community lenders find a niche, and double down on 1 type of lending products. But, that creates at least 2 problems:

• An over concentration in geography
• An over concentration in 1 lending product

So Ian Lampl stepped in, and by comparing lending to the bond market, LoanStreet was born.

On this episode, Ian tells us all about his end-to-end lending platform that 600 local financial institutions are already falling in love with. 

What we talked about:

• Community lenders had 2 problems: geography & product
• Most people thought ‘matching’ would solve the issue
• The problem wasn’t ‘matching.’ The issue was infrastructure
• How LoanStreet modeled their loan platform after the bond market
• LoanStreet’s platform is actually better than the bond market’s standardization model 
• Example LoanStreet in action

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here. 

Until next time!

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“I don’t have that much cash available. Is there any way I can get a loan to finance this?” 

“I’m sorry, not really,” said the dentist. Adam Rice overheard the conversation, and the idea for Loan Connect was born. Their goal is simple: provide Canadians with personal loans that lenders actually compete to provide. 

On this episode, Adam discusses how the platform works, and how it’s defying the odds (and the banks) in Canada.

Adam is the CEO and Founder of Loan Connect, with an MBA from UNSW, and a Masters in Communication and Management from UWO.

What we talked about:

• Loan Connect had a “chicken-and-egg” problem
• Canadian banks are slow to change
• Example of getting a personal loan in Canada 
• Loan Connect’s desire to help the end-user
• Why Adam went around the “big 5” & focused on credit unions. 
• Traditional Canadian banking
• Fintech in Canada
• Lending/borrowing in Canada

To contact Adam: 

• Email him at [email protected]
• Connect with him on his LinkedIn

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here. 

Until next time!

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Richard Donaldson is the VP of Management and Marketing for Requis, a technology company that according to their website “connects buyers and sellers, enabling enterprises to procure, manage, and dispose of assets with greater visibility, simplicity and capital efficiency.”  Richard joins us on the Payment Innovations podcast to share his insights for how the future of enterprises are changing, all because of the way that their company is changing asset management. 

There is a very large gap of technology solutions of the enterprise supply chain, which Requis is working on filling. 

Of the global 2,000 enterprises (as measured by Forbes) those companies represent more than $12 Trillion of procurement per year. Their massive amount of buying and selling each year adds up to over $20 Trillion  per annum--which is the same size as the entire US economy based on GDP. That’s twice as big as the consumer economy!

In order to keep all of this working like clockwork, Requis has four main pillars which are the keys to their success. They are:

Requis has four main pillars

1. Procurement
2. Marketplace Facilitation
3. Directory Creation
4. Asset Management

Never before have all four coexisted within one company that was built to be cohesive.

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Daniel isn’t interested in using tech to provide a better, faster way to use your credit or debit card over your cell phone, online, or anywhere else.

He’s interested in building something better than credit and debit cards altogether.

On this episode, Daniel Muller, Founder & CEO of AeroPay, joined us to share how he’s disrupting the entire payments industry (and helping both customers and businesses make and save money).

What we talked about:

• Why Daniel started AeroPay
• What is AeroPay
• AeroPay’s main focus (small & local businesses … for now)
• The pitch to consumers via education
• But what about debit cards? 
• AeroPay’s business model (it’s actually not about the fee)
• Interchange fees
• Debit card fees
• Credit card fees
• Mobile payments

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here. 

Financial services make plenty of sense. If you are a financial services professional. But what about the rest of us? 

On this episode of the Payments Innovation Podcast, our guest Carey Ransom joined us to discuss his passionate belief that financial services should revolve around the average human’s life.

What we talked about:

• People in financial services understand the financial game. But what about the rest of us?
• Customer-focused product dev vs. profit-focused profit dev
• The 1 product Carey is particularly proud of — Payoff
• The 1 problem Carey is waiting for a founder to solve: 
• AI & ML in fintech

Checkout these resources we mentioned during the podcast:

• Carey’s podcast, AccelerateOC

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here. 

Until next time!

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Successful people get our attention.

We’re fascinated by how they got to where they are.

Well on the latest episode of the Payments Innovation podcast, we didn’t just interview someone successful. We interviewed Brendan Holt Dunn who’s carrying on his family’s legacy — five generations’ worth of successful business. Brendan is the CEO at Holdun Family Office and Founder at Holt Fintech Accelerator. 

He came on the show to talk about his family, their businesses, and their fintech accelerator.

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here. 

Until next time!

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