Payments Innovation: Fintech | Innovation | Ecommerce

Paper checks are dying. But not as fast as you might think. While many individuals are demanding instant payment systems, most companies still operate by paying bills by check every month.  The overall rates of check usage dropped significantly from 2000 through 2015, but in the last few years the percentage of check usage has plateaued.  There has not been enough disruptive innovation in this particular space to force companies into the next evolution of digital payments. Stuart Bain is the Senior Vice President at Alacriti, Inc. His team at Alacriti is focused on bringing superior payments technology and flexible payment options to companies all over the country. Stuart joined us for this episode of Payments Innovation to discuss billpay industry trends, the evolution of checks as a form of payment, and what younger generations are demanding from new payment methods. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The days of region-locking payments are coming to a close. US Unlocked is a prepaid card for international consumers to make purchases in the US. Brion Bonkowski is the CEO at Tern: Enabling Global Commerce which acquired US Unlocked several years ago. Tern purchased US Unlocked because Tern were interested in acquiring their impressive tech platform.  Tern has now built out tech to enable people to launch other prepaid platforms around the world. Brion joined us for this episode of Payments Innovation to talk about Tern and US Unlocked, the capabilities of their prepaid cards, and the challenges that come alongside operating in this space. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many financial institutions are stuck in the past with outdated technology. But tech innovators like Google and Facebook aren’t going to wait for them to catch up. Don Halliwell is the Senior Director of Marketing and Communications at Zafin, and he’s been in the digital transformation space for over 10 years.  Don and his team are in the partnership space with banks. They provide them with the agility required to meet customers where their needs are. Zafin equips financial institutions with the software technology they need to overcome digital transformation challenges in the ever-evolving digital landscape of the financial industry.  They are the worldwide leader in digital banking, and they work with over 30 largest banks in the world including in the US and Canada. In this episode of Payments Innovation, we’re joined by Don to talk about pushback to digital transformation, the current marketplace in this space, and the future of the digital banking industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more

Why doesn’t the US have real time payments? Many nations around the world, including the UK, have these solutions, but not the US. To dive into this question, we spoke with Tim Mills, the Vice President of Real Time Payments Business Development at The Clearing House. The Clearing House has been around since the middle of the 19th century.  They were established to create more efficiency surrounding interbank clearing and the settlement of payments.  160 years ago, clearing checks between financial institutions was a lot easier said than done. In the past century and a half, The Clearing House has moved to such areas as ACH payments and high value payments. They have moved to acting as an advocate around payment related issues for the financial industry.   And now in the 21st century, they are playing a leading role to modernize the payments landscape. Tim has a 20 year background in payments including time in Bangladesh and Trinidad.  He has been with The Clearing House since 2004 working to make real time p

Many entrepreneurs fall into no man’s land when it comes to their bank account. They’re too big to keep a personal account, and too small to get attention from banks. Every specializes in bank accounts for online businesses, and they are looking to simplify the entire bank account process for online entrepreneurs. Jeremy Black is the Co-Founder and CEO of Every.  He began his career as an online entrepreneur in a pre-Shopify world. He ran an e-commerce operation in music industry before he moved onto roles in the tech community. Jeremy spent a lot of time in banking and enterprise software before he felt the call to return to the entrepreneur life. His role at Every is to advocate for the next generation of online entrepreneurs. This week, we spoke to Jeremy about Every’s platform, his target market, partnerships, and the future of his business. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Community Banks fund over half of the small businesses in the US. They are an essential and often overlooked part of the economy. Tina Giorgio is the President and CEO at ICBA Bancard. Tina has been in this role for a little under 2 years, but she has spent the last 30 years in community banking. “Community Bankers, at our core, are about serving our local community.  There’s a lot of communities in the United States who would not be properly served if it wasn’t for their local community bank.” Many community banks simply can’t compete with larger entities.  They need representation, especially in the evolving world of payments.  So Tina and her team are advocates for these banks. They have specifically been working in the area of merchant funded rewards.  ICBA Bancard provides benefits through these reward programs to both merchants and their customers.  Merchants see a higher number of transactions by implementing these programs, and merchants get to support both national and local business while getting re

Paying strangers for big purchases is difficult. Do you pay with cash?  Most people don’t like walking around with that much money.  Do you make a bank transfer? That might take more time and involve more fees than you bargained for. Pete Janes is the Founder & CEO at Shieldpay, a company specializing in digital escrow accounts that help remove the danger of large transactions with strangers. A lot of private marketplaces leave buyers and sellers to their own devices, and as a result there is a large fraud rate. As high as 12%!  Shieldpay was born when a friend of Pete had his car stolen via a fraudulent purchase back in 2016. Pete knew this was a large problem that needed to be solved.  He also knew it had implications for the real estate world. And that this type of transaction was applicable for international payments as well! In this episode of Payments Innovation, Pete talks to us about Shieldpay’s method, the vetting process, their advantage over competition, real estate transactions, and the future

Buying from Amazon versus ordering from a catalog. One is a lot easier than the other.  One is a lot faster than the other. And one feels a whole lot more “2018” than the other. So why do many B2B companies still make purchases through outdated means?  John Tomich is the CEO & Co-Founder at Credit Key, and he believes that many B2B practices are lagging 10+ years behind B2C, and that includes ecommerce.  But the tide is shifting. As people are getting used to purchasing B2C products so easily through Amazon and other online retailers, they are starting to expect the same experience on the B2B side of things.  Why should they have crawl through a clunky, poorly designed distributor site? Or order manually through a catalog? Yes, that still happens! John’s company, Credit Key, is bringing that simple shopping cart solution to the B2B world.  Their platform allows B2B companies to offer innovative payment options and real-time credit extensions all within an easy to use interface that matches B2C Ecommerce e

Banking is becoming more mobile. You want to be able to manage your portfolio and trade stocks on the go, but security is at the forefront of everybody’s mind.  How do you ensure that your favorite apps are securely storing and managing your data? Nathan Richardson is the CEO at TradeIt, an API infrastructure that links retail investors and app developers with any online financial broker.  Nathan first dove into the API space when he headed up Yahoo Finance in the early 2000’s. Nathan and his team developed a financial data ticker as a widget that they distributed to partners. Years later, Nathan started TradeIt when he saw that many financial institutions in the US were behind in implementing API technology.  He knew he could build a platform that could help brokers offer secure solutions to customers. He found that financial institutions that adopted API strategies and learned to innovate tended to be the most successful. These same institutions are engaging their customers better -they are meeting them in

Customer loyalty matters. But there aren’t many examples of modern companies that are rewarding their customers very well. Michael Rolph is the CEO and Co-founder of Yoyo Wallet, a platform that helps retailers surprise and delight their customers through streamlining payment options and customer loyalty programs. Retailers can use Yoyo’s technology to allow customers to pay through their own app and get rewarded for purchases.  Or, as Michael would describe it, “We’re doing Starbucks meets clubcard, democratized for all retail, and better.” Yoyo provides real time data and insights to go along with these campaigns so retailers can see exactly what is working and what is not.  Marketing doesn’t need to be a shot in the dark, and Yoyo helps retailers see their customers more clearly. In this episode of Payments Innovation, we sit down with Michael to talk about customer loyalty, lessons learned by starting Yoyo, the Yoyo platform, and the future of the company. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i

As an entrepreneur, you don’t get many shots.  Time is a finite resource, so how do you choose where to spend your time when investing in a dream? Daren Jackson (President, CEO, and Founder of Rapid Financial Solutions) has experience in this area.  Over the years, Daren has spent time navigating regulations and complexities in the Payments world, and has come with up some do’s and don’ts for FinTech Entrepreneurs. In this episode of the Payments Innovation podcast, we talk to Daren about how he got his start in FinTech, how he’s learned to roll with the many changes in the US Payments system, and how to succeed as a FinTech Entrepreneur. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if there were a better way to buy and sell rental homes without having to go through the pain of waiting until tenants moved out, letting the home sit empty for months while it sells, losing rent, maintenance costs, and property value? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How many bills do you have to pay every month?  If you sat down and listed out all of your bills from memory, I bet you’d miss one or two. Some bills change every month.  They can be due on different days, be for different amounts, and they can even hit you with huge late fees if you let one slip through the cracks.  It can feel like a stressful full-time job just to make sure you’re paying your bills on time every month. Steve Gordon, VP of Product at Handle Financial, was sick of wasting his time paying (and sometimes missing) bills.  Steve was instrumental in developing a platform called Prism that allows people to not only keep track of all of their bills within one place, but to pay their bills more quickly and efficiently as well. In this episode of Payments Innovation, we talk to Steve about outdated methods of tracking bills, building the Prism platform, the benefits of Prism, and how to get started with the App. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Regulations, compliance, identity verification, bank partnership, the list goes on. In fintech, there’s a growing list of obstacles to consider when developing your financial product. Wouldn't it be nice if you could peer into the mind of someone who’s sole goal was to solve these issues? You can. On our latest Currency Cloud Podcast, we spoke with Sankaet Pathak, CEO and Founder of SynapseFI. Sankaet’s growing company now handles these account creation issues, as well as, compliance services, bank partnerships,  fund settlement, account aggregation, risk mitigation and others. With a growing list of customers north of 150 fintech clients, Sankaet’s knowledge on the industry is profound. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fact: If you have no fraud, you’re losing business. On today’s Payments Innovation podcast, Chris (Currencycloud) talks to Tedd Huff (VP of Product, GlobalOnePay) about who has the most online fraud, what makes fraud “friendly,” and where the future of fraud prevention is headed. “Online fraud on average ranges anywhere from 0.3% up to 3% of total revenues for businesses in North America,” Tedd said. It usually isn’t possible to stop a breach once it’s happened. So stopping it ahead of time is the key piece to handling fraud. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Doing business across borders adds complex layers to your enterprise. But moving payments into other currencies? This should be simple. That’s what we think … and that’s what our latest guest thinks. He’s built an entire business on the premise of ethical, common-sense trading. On our latest podcast, Jeff Scanlon, CEO and President of Paymentearth joined us to unravel the complexities of FX payments. Previously, Jeff worked at Ruesch International overseeing the LA Territory,  and later at Commonwealth Foreign Exchange, where he quickly topped the chart in the sales department as customers enjoyed his ethical and transparent style. After nearly 25 years in the FX industry, he and a colleague decided a better, simpler, more transparent option needed to be available to small and medium size businesses doing international payments. That’s how Paymentearth was born in July of 2016. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the steady increase of Fintech start-ups, is there a sense of reliability with these financial services? How trustworthy are fintechs in general? Do they have any regulations like a bank? These are challenges that fintech companies have to hurdle, when proving to consumers that they are a reliable source. And it all starts with transparency. Joined with us today, we have financial technology expert, Rocky Motwani, president and cofounder of Jiko. We will discuss how fintechs try to become a trustworthy financial resource. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Payments Innovation! Today, Chris (Currency Cloud) is interviewing Bruce Parker (Modo Payments) about what he means when he says payment interoperability. After two decades in the software side of the payments business, Bruce has seen a lot of technology and infrastructure challenges when it comes to managing data in payments… and navigating exchange between systems and networks among all the various participants in the payments ecosystem. At Modo, he’s focused on how payment data gets exchanged—and, in particular, how to achieve interoperability. “What Modo does is connect the dots,” Bruce said. “We connect between the new and the old.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most consumers, especially next-gen consumers, don't have access to the tools they need to live healthy financial lives. They grapple with problems such as erratic cash flow, limited savings, and access to responsible credit. Banks and fintechs offer no holistic solutions. We interviewed Colin Walsh, CEO and co-founder of Varo, an app that integrates basic banking products with financial health tools. Before starting Varo out of his guest bedroom, Colin spent 25 years working in traditional financial services companies. Varo's mission is to improve the financial life of the customer. They want to merge big bank capacity with startup fintech focus to create a bank that helps people live better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Money matters to small businesses. Working capital can be hard to secure when operating a small business and BlueVine is helping to change that. In our interview with Eyal Lifshitz from BlueVine, a FinTech company specializing in providing fast funding to small businesses, we talk about how they are passionate about helping customers and how their industry is evolving. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.