Wharton FinTech Podcast

In this episode of the Wharton FinTech Podcast, Bobby Ma sits down with Dean Brauer, President & COO of Cybrid.

Dean shares his experience building Cybrid, who combines stablecoin, fiat, and compliance into a single API-first platform helping financial institutions, FinTechs, and enterprises integrate stablecoin infrastructure and launch end-to-end cross-border payment solutions to more than 150+ countries, at up to 90% lower cost, and with full transparency. The Company raised a $10 million Series A funding round led by BDC Capital and has grown 5x in the last 12 months.

We discuss:

- Dean’s journey building Cybrid and his deep entrepreneurship experience

- The solutions Cybrid offers in orchestrating stablecoin payments

- The Company’s bespoke thought partnership with customers in creating and executing their stablecoin strategy

- Recent regulatory & industry trends driving forward this rapidly growing space

In this episode of the Wharton FinTech Podcast, Bobby Ma sits down with Sam Lewis, CEO of Fruitful.

Sam shares his experience building Fruitful and how the company is reimagining personal finance through a membership model that combines CFP® guidance with AI automation to transform every paycheck into progress. Fruitful has raised $37 million to date and serves thousands of members across all 50 states.

We discuss:

- Building Fruitful and scaling its membership model for personal finance

- Why income allocation matters more than asset allocation for most Americans

- Closing the execution gap between financial advice and real-world action

- The role of AI in scaling CFP® workflows

In this episode, Jackson Ellis speaks with Stripe’s first employee and the founder of Increase, Darragh Buckley, about building reliable, scalable banking infrastructure. We discuss lessons from Stripe’s earliest days, how Increase is modernizing access to payment rails, and why trust, uptime, and simplicity matter more than ever in today’s financial system.

In this episode of the Wharton FinTech Podcast, Jackson Ellis sits down with Cindy Turner, Chief Product Officer at Worldpay, to explore what it takes to build and prioritize products at one of the world’s largest payment processors. Cindy shares her unconventional path into payments, lessons from leading product at companies like Visa, JP Morgan, PayPal, and Braintree, and how Worldpay operates across 185+ countries and trillions of dollars in annual volume. The conversation dives into AI’s growing role in payments, the rise of agentic commerce, shifting liability models, and how global processors compete and evolve in an increasingly complex fintech landscape.

In this episode of the Wharton FinTech Podcast, host Vaibhav speaks with Riya Grover, co-founder and CEO of Sequence, an AI native revenue platform that unifies quoting, billing automation, and receivables so finance can finally run at the speed of sales.

Riya shares her journey from investment banking and Harvard Business School to exiting her first startup and then launching Sequence to fix one of the most neglected parts of the CFO stack, quote to cash and accounts receivable. She goes deep on what it really takes to find product market fit in a saturated software world, why AI native entrants can out execute incumbents, and how Sequence is using agents to automate complex finance workflows.

They also unpack Riya’s recent Series A fundraise, the story that resonated with investors, and her candid advice for founders building in a noisy, AI heavy, but more competitive than ever venture environment.

In this episode, we learn about:

- Why quote to cash and revenue operations have lagged behind AP and spend in automation

- How Sequence uses AI agents to read contracts, generate invoices, and support finance teams

- What investors really cared about in Sequence’s Series A, from logo quality to 190 % NRR

- How Riya stays close to customers while scaling a fast growing infra company

- Her advice for aspiring founders on standing out in today’s crowded AI landscape

In this episode of the Wharton FinTech Podcast, host Vaibhav sits down with Sarah Levy, CEO of Betterment and former executive at Disney, Viacom, and Nickelodeon. Sarah shares her insights on the evolution of financial services, why trust is the cornerstone of financial decision-making, how Betterment balances simplicity with expanding investor choice, and how AI is shaping the future of wealth management. Sarah emphasizes the significance of fiduciary responsibility and the role of simplicity in financial tools, while also providing advice for aspiring entrepreneurs in the wealth management space. She also shares key insights from Betterment’s latest Retirement Readiness Report, including why Gen Z is both confident and deeply anxious about the future. A wide-ranging conversation that blends behavioral finance, product strategy, and the future of wealth tech.

In this episode of the Wharton FinTech Podcast, host Meaghan McGowan sits down with Mike Yu, CEO and Co-founder of Vesta, to explore the modernization of the mortgage technology stack. Mike shares Vesta’s origin story and how he and his team are rebuilding the loan origination system to be flexible, automated, and API-first. The episode explores:

- How modern workflows, partner integrations, and recent developments, including Vesta’s partnership with Pennymac, are reshaping lender operations

- Macro trends, the growing role of AI, and how lenders are rethinking their technology stacks

- The future of “self-driving” origination, and

- Advice for founders building in regulated financial infrastructure

In this episode, Jackson sits down with Ximena, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Prometeo, to discuss the future of financial infrastructure in Latin America. Ximena shares her journey from tech journalism to entrepreneurship, the inspiration behind building Prometeo, and how the company is creating a unified API layer across the Americas to power open banking, real-time payments, and next-generation financial innovation.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

- How Prometeo became one of LatAm’s leading open banking infrastructure platforms

- The challenges of building across highly fragmented regulatory and technical environments

- Why true financial inclusion requires more than just account access

- How real-time payments, cross-border rails, and agentic financial services are reshaping the region

- Prometeo’s philosophy on trust, cybersecurity, and building long-term infrastructure “legacy”

In this episode of the Wharton FinTech Podcast, host Ruhi Jain sits down with Aaron Kaplan, Co-CEO of Prometheum, Inc., for a deep dive into the digitization of capital markets and the future of fully regulated digital assets. Aaron shares his journey from securities attorney to fintech founder, why he believes U.S. federal securities laws offer the most resilient pathway for blockchain innovation and how Prometheum’s end-to-end infrastructure aims to reshape how digital assets are issued, traded, custodied, and settled.

Together, Ruhi and Aaron explore:

- Why the regulatory lens is essential in building blockchain-based financial infrastructure

- Efficiency gains blockchain can unlock across settlement, transparency, capital usage and market structure - and what this means for both institutions and retail investors

- A forward-looking view into the future of capital markets, the evolving role of intermediaries and the “wild-card” risks Aaron believes the industry is overlooking

A must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of blockchain, securities regulation and the next decade of digital market infrastructure.

In this episode, Wharton FinTech’s Abhi Chadha sits down with Michele Alt, Co-Founder of The Klaros Group and former OCC regulator, to unpack the evolving relationship between fintechs and the U.S. banking system. Michele shares her insights from two decades at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and her current work helping non-banks pursue bank charters. They discuss the shifting regulatory climate across administrations - from the OCC’s early fintech charter attempts, to the Biden-era freeze, and now a renewed openness under Trump 2.0. Michele explains the nuances of charter types like industrial loan companies (ILCs) and national trust banks.

The conversation explores:

- The history and future of fintech chartering

- Differences among OCC, FDIC, and Fed oversight

- How U.S. fintech regulation compares to Europe and the U.K.

- Challenges foreign fintechs face when entering the U.S. market

- How Michele’s OCC experience helps startups navigate complex regulatory processes

Michele also shares her perspective on the cyclical nature of financial regulation - from deregulatory “sugar highs” to inevitable crackdowns - and offers advice for those eager to build a career in fintech regulation and compliance.