Payments Innovation: Fintech | Innovation | Ecommerce

There’s no getting around it. It’s tough to enter a foreign market. From the application process to the fees to the language barriers; it can be a balancing act. We had the opportunity to chat with someone who knows this journey all too well. Marcus Shin from WireBarley answered all of our questions regarding entering a foreign marketplace with an M2M business model. In this episode, w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rick Lynch is the senior vice president for business development at Verifi. He got into the payments industry in 1999, and has been innovating in the space ever since. We sat down with Rick on this week’s episode of Payments Innovation to learn more about what Verifi is doing to shake up the industry and equip business owners to take control of their chargebacks.  They’re creating post-authorization tools to help reduce risk and loses after the sale by preventing and fighting chargebacks, preventing customer disputes, and any other negative events that happen after the sale. While most of the vendors you see in the marketplace today are really focused on before-the-sale, Verifi is focused on the opposite--and it’s really working out in their favor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Government grants nearly equate to free money for businesses. Owners and founders don’t have to dilute their equity by taking on investors, and, usually, there’s no requirement to pay back any money. Plus, there is a lot of it. North of $200B a year, in the US, Canada, and the UK alone. How can companies access these pools of cash? We asked Teri Kirk, founder of Funding Portal how businesses can access this money and write winning grant requests. She told us how on this episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Has your company considered Point of Sale financing? Here’s a better question: does your company even know what Point of Sale financing is? And how it could benefit your business by bringing in more customers, allowing them to potentially spend more money with you? On a recent episode of the Payments Innovation podcast, we sat down to chat with Daniel Shain, co-founder at Credit Genie, for a discussion around why businesses choose Point of Sale Financing, why customers choose Point of Sale financing, and why it may just lead to bigger profits for your organization. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you probably double-down on your personal skill set, pursuing those pieces of your business(es) that you’re most passionate about. The other areas of the business, whether it be HR, legal, or financial, may not get the attention they need. That’s where entrepreneur Marc Alloul found himself. He’s a physicist engineer who left a $12B enterprise in 2000 to start his own company. He quickly found there was no real user-friendly budgeting platform built for high-level, fast-moving entrepreneurs who don’t necessarily have a background in finance or accounting. So, he started Budgeto. In a nutshell, it’s a budgeting software program developed for entrepreneurs to get a budget up and running with just a few clicks. Currently, 35 thousand budgets are on the platform. This episode explores Budgeto’s features, why it was started, and who’s using the platform. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of the Payments Innovation podcast I sat down with Andrew Graham to get an inside look at what his team did to generate additional revenue, increase customer satisfaction, and improve efficiency in their company. Andrew is the Co-founder and CEO at Borrowell, a Canadian Fintech company helping consumers with their credit decisions. Andrew is also a Harvard MBA and is member of the Fintech Advisory Committee. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On another episode of Payments Innovation podcast, we interviewed Rafael Lourenco, Executive Vice President, at ClearSale.  Many merchants think of fraud prevention as a technical decision, but it’s much more than that. In this episode, Rafael explains why fraud management can drastically affect a business’s revenue, costs, CX, and overall bottom line. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On another episode of Payments Innovation podcast, we interviewed Brian Billingsley, Chief Revenue Officer, at Modo. Brian talked about how Modo adds value to customers and why Modo is set apart from its competitors. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you grow up in a family of small business owners, it’s as if you’re raised with a unique sense of empathy for this special kind of entrepreneur. So much so that you usually become one yourself. That’s the story of Eytan Bensoussan. He grew up watching his grandparents faithfully work in their business day in and day out. But he noticed a pattern that didn’t sit well with him. At the end of a long day running their business, his grandparents would retreat in their home to do their bookkeeping. They’d sit and work on payroll, invoices and all the other financial responsibilities that fell on them. That’s why he founded NorthOne, a small business banking service built on the idea that API’s should power the future of banking. The kind of banking that will be mobile first. He wanted to create a way to remove as much of the financial “busy work” as possible from small business owners. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Payment options options are endless. PayPal, Visa/Mastercard Debit, Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Amazon Balance, … The list goes on. This provides phenomenal variety for consumers. But consider a commercial payer. They now have to have multiple systems to pay a variety of payees in each of their methods of choice. Or risk losing a partner or contractor by not providing payments in their desired method. That’s why when we found out about Sipree, we were astounded. Being in the payments space ourselves, we understand how impressive it is to have a uniform payments system. Sipree takes in payments on the payer’s side, and then spits them out to the payees … in almost any method on the market. We had to find out more, so we invited Mark Sole, Sipree’s CEO and Co-Founder on our Payments Innovation podcast. He gave us all the details on their amazing platform. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While plenty of new pay methods are soaking up all the attention, ACH is being left left out of the popular arenas. We understand why. ACH can be cumbersome, requiring layers of authorization to finalize a single transaction. Many perceive it as outdated, awkward, and time-consuming. It’s time ACH had a makeover. Yelena Reznikova joined us on this episode of the Payments Innovation podcast to show how she’s leveraging the power of ACH and tech to drive profit for businesses, and convenience for consumers. Yelena is currently the Director of Partnerships at Quovo in New York, a data platform that provides connectivity to financial accounts and is now a part of Plaid, where she’s worked since receiving her MBA from Harvard Business School. Previously, she worked in VC and product at Indicator Ventures and Troops. She doesn’t believe ACH is dead. She believes with some technological TLC, it becomes an underutilized alternative to the dizzying amount of new payment methods on the market. Listen in for 3 reasons

Ever split a bill with a group of friends? Ever get stuck with more than your fair share? That’s the sort of issue CashStash is committed to solving: Co-Founder Turner Coggins came on the Payments Innovation podcast to share how his new application allows users more transparency in their shared payments. With CashStash, users can store funds in a shared virtual wallet, giving all members visibility into who’s paid, who hasn’t, and who may need a reminder message. Turner is a Senior Financial Consultant at Capco., has worked with PwC, and received his MBA from Emory. He’s seen it all in finance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Millennials are clouding out prior generations in the coveted 18-34 consumer space, they are using credit cards less and less. Many of them have no credit, which puts them in the never-ending “you don’t have credit, so we can’t offer you credit” cycle. Or they’ve been told to steer clear of the debt trap, so traditional plastic is a non-option for them. This leaves gaps, for both consumer needs and merchant revenue. And that’s where Sezzle comes in. Sezzle is a payment method that offers 0-interest 0-fee lines of credit to consumers while they are shopping. See a $200 jacket at a participating merchant? Use Sezzle and break that up into 4 easy payments of $50. We brought on their CEO and Founder Charlie Youakim, for our Payments Innovation podcast. He shared how the app works, why it works, and why merchants are partnering with him. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Payments shouldn’t be the only thing going digital. Giving to your favorite local charity should be easy. Digital easy. Hector Pages knows. He grew up in Puerto Rico and saw firsthand devastation from natural disasters. So when he found In/PACT, he had to jump on board. In/PACT is the creator of Good Coin, an integrated giving solution that allows payments to nearly 1.8 million nonprofits. Now, users can give straight to their favorite charities through their mobile banking app or online.  Hector serves as the Chief Growth Officer for In/PACT, and he joined us on the Payments Innovation podcast to tell us all all about the collision of giving and digital. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Artificial Intelligence. Machine learning As buzzwords go, they’re the hottest things in almost any tech space. “AI” conjures spectacular images of Sci-fi films and robotic engineering. But when it comes down to the reality of your international commerce, you need to know how AI affects your business. We went straight to the top of the AI and machine learning industry by roping in Emerj CEO and Founder Dan Fagella for our latest episode of the Payments Innovation Podcast. This guy’s career is nothing short of mind-blowing: He’s a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu champion, started and sold his first company just to “pay for Ivy League grad school,” and since then has been a serial entrepreneur. Currently, Dan is running his highly successful AI and Machine Learning research company, Emerj, which has become the international go-to for businesses and executives needing to understand the implications of AI upon their companies. He delivered an action-packed 15 minutes of what AI means for fintech and international commerce.

Cookie cutter solutions don’t work for everyone.  Often, smaller community banks are left out, especially when considering international exchanges. Mike Salerno, Vice President of Global Banking at FNB Omaha, saw a host of opportunities  following the recession as larger banks tightened up.  This allowed other correspondents to come in and establish partnerships. Mike and FNB have made a commitment to continue to service their downstream and correspondent banks.  This includes partnering with them to help them come up with and work on creating a solution set. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More and more workers are abandoning the traditional "Nine to Five" jobs for contract 1099 work. While this provides more freedom for workers, Dylan Massey, Co-Founder and CEO of Intercheks, says this also presents some issues when it comes to streamlining the payment processes for individual contractors, some of whom may come and go or have multiple side jobs. Dylan talks to us about his pathway to Interchecks and how his team is helping to solve specific problems by working to streamline the payment process. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As US merchants expand their operations across the world into emerging markets, they quickly discover an interesting fact: Many cash-centric nations, have leap-frogged over the usage of plastic. Now, many of these traditionally cash-heavy nations, have found tech integrations that allow merchants to sell online and collect cash with receipts, QR codes, and other methods. There’s around 300 different major payment methods available across the globe. If your company is going global, it can be intimidating navigating the cultural, regulatory and technical aspects of such a wide variety of payment options. That’s what Steve Villegas does. He’s a pro at payment integration. He’s the Partner Management & Head of US Office for PPRO, where he and his team are educating companies on how to accept payments in the preferred method of countries from Eastern Europe to Africa to Asia. You don’t want to miss this. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s a simple way to make international transactions easier for you and your clients: Make payments in local currency. Bob Murray is the Director of Foreign Exchange at Brookline Bank and he’s been involved in foreign exchange markets since the early 80’s.   Throughout the years, he’s seen how foreign exchange can really touch all areas of a bank.  From international payments to wire transfers, having a solid foundation in foreign exchange markets is critical for the success of a bank.   Bob has also noticed something else that has stayed the same in the several decades he’s been in this space: it’s still fundamentally a relationship market.  Without a relationship formed between a foreign exchange salesperson and a customer there can be no hope for a productive and lasting business exchange between the two parties. We sat down with Bob in this episode of Payments Innovation to talk about Brookline Bank, the foreign exchange market, international currency exchange best practices, and educating customers on

Jeff is passionate about all things Fintech and Payments. He has consulted with eCommerce platforms, PSP's, Challenger Banks, and Financial institutions of all types and sizes to deliver business-critical payments, banking, and compliance solutions via cloud and on-premise. With over 10 years working in the finance, banking, and payments space, Jeff has extensive knowledge in solving problems and removing barriers to entry for Fintech's in the new digital era. In this episode we welcome Jeff to the hosting team at the Payments Innovation podcast.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.