The This Week in Fintech Podcast

In this episode, I talked with Tomer London, Co-Founder and CPO of Gusto, and Anu Hariharan, Co-Founder of Avra and former partner at Y Combinator.  Together, we talked about the intersection of their personal passions and their professional innovations, sharing insights from their journeys into fintech and their ongoing efforts to solve complex problems in payments, payroll, and beyond. From Tomer’s mission to support underserved small businesses to Anu’s work shaping the future of fintech through investments in companies like Brex and Monzo, this conversation unpacks the challenges and opportunities in the space. We also discuss the transformative role of AI, lessons learned from setbacks, and the unyielding resilience required to drive growth and innovation in an ever-evolving industry. Let's dive in!

We're lucky to be joined today by Dave Glaser, CEO of American payments giant Dwolla, one of the first fintechs. Dwolla is a fintech company that provides businesses with a connection to the ACH Network or RTP Network (The Clearing House’s privately-owned real-time payments network). The company was founded in 2008 and launched in the United States in December 2010 to a few small banks and retailers. By June 2011, Dwolla had grown to 15 employees, 20,000 users, and $1 million in weekly processing volume. Today, Dwolla has about 650 clients and about 30 million users. It processed $45 billion in payments in 2022, up from $30 billion in 2021 and $20 billion in 2019. About 80% of its clients are small businesses. Dwolla provides a white label service consisting of APIs to use the ACH system[9] and white label services expanded from payouts to include instant bank authorization for debiting bank accounts. Dave Glaser has a long history in fintech: Starting at the turn of the century, he led payment protection and anti-fraud company CyberSource through its 2014 acquisition by Visa, before going on to join Worldpay in the UK as its Chief Product and Marketing Officer for Global eCommerce. Coming back to the US, Dave was brought on by Mastercard as a Senior Vice President for Acceptance Solutions, before being offered the President and COO role at Dwolla and stepping up as CEO in 2023. 💡This is a Sponsored Episode.

Welcome to December's episode of the this Month in Fintech Podcast, recorded live at SF Tech Week with Ramp. TWIF + Ramp hosted a large group of tech builders, founders, and investors for a happy hour at 620 Jones, headlined by a live interview with Nik Koblov, VP of Engineering at Ramp. We had one of the highest insight-to-minute conversations I've had, with Nik taking all of us through: How Ramp crafted their org structure, product philosophy, and launch sequence to ship product so fast How they have become a talent hotbed with folks from so many crazy backgrounds like Minecraft and high school dropouts Balancing shipping speed and UX in fintech How an ex-Ramp founder got them serious about GenAI How to hire your Head of Engineering, and more. Enjoy the show!

This week's newsletter discusses the emerging trend of AI-powered payment agents, exploring the potential benefits and risks associated with delegating financial decisions to artificial intelligence. Security concerns, such as fraud and liability for disputed transactions, are highlighted alongside authorization challenges. The text also examines how the increasing use of cryptocurrencies could further impact AI-driven payments and briefly mentions recent developments in the fintech industry, including product launches, company news, and regulatory changes. Finally, it promotes a fintech awards ceremony and sponsorship opportunities.

Hey everyone, Julie here. Welcome back to another episode of the FinTech OG Season 2. Today I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tom Brown of NYCA and Ed Woodford of ZeroHash. In this episode, we get a front row seat to the evolution of fintech from Tom's early days at Visa, where he played a key role in its IPO, and Ed shares his entrepreneurial journey and how it led to him founding Zerohash. We talk about how financial services are evolving into what Tom calls next gen financial services, and the challenges like regulatory roadblocks and identity security and celebrate wins like how Tap to Pay has transformed payments and earned wage access has cut down on overdraft fees. They also share some personal stories about career highs and lows, favorite books, and even some fun quirks that they each have. Let's dive in. Huge thanks to ⁠⁠CapitalOS and ⁠⁠Prism Data⁠⁠ for sponsoring this week's episode!  With CapitalOS, platforms can launch best-in-class spend management within days without the headache of managing compliance, risk, or bank relationships. Visit their website at CapitalOS.com to learn more.  If you're looking for a way to say ‘yes’ to more customers without taking on additional risk and lend more profitably without sacrificing growth, be sure to check out Prism Data. Cash flow underwriting is a game changer in consumer lending, and Prism Data is the modern analytics provider that makes it possible. 

Welcome to November's episode of This Month in Fintech, recorded live from the Honey Pot at Money2020. I'm joined today by Nik Milanovic, Founder of TWIF, as we sit down with Michael Sindicich, CEO of Navan Expense. Michael, Nik and I launched this episode around Navan's landmark new partnership with (former) rival Brex - BrexPay for Navan. BrexPay for Navan is a seamless integration that directly embeds Brex cards into Navan’s travel management software. Customers can now leverage Brex and Navan to achieve 100% automated travel payment reconciliation on bookings made through Navan. This means receiving a perfect report at the end of the month, where every booking is linked to a traveler and a trip with zero manual effort, thanks to a per-booking virtual card number. Through the direct integration, customers can also instantly activate local currency cards for all their global subsidiaries within one card program, saving countless hours in onboarding and underwriting, besides avoiding all FX fees. We had a lot of fun in this live conversation talking through Michael's journey to Navan (taking him through insurance brokerages and wild valley hacker houses), the art of mastering a partnership with a rival, the business travel whipsaw from Navan's State of Corporate Travel and Expense Report, and a great rapid fire round. Navan is the all-in-one travel, corporate card, and expense management solution. Navan makes business travel and expense management easy, giving users visibility, savings, and control with their all-in-one super app. Their corporate travel and expense solution allows users to easily book, view, and manage business travel and expenses. Navan is reinventing the legacy category of travel and expense with one of the first enterprise technologies utilizing the cloud, mobile, and AI to balance business needs with today's modern standards.  Michael Sindicich is the CEO of Navan Expense. Michael joined Navan as one of its earliest employees in 2016 as an Account Executive and has risen through the ranks to CEO of Navan's Expense business. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science from UCLA. You can find him on LinkedIn and Twitter.  Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor on the Ventures team at OMERS, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area. You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

Welcome to the 2,179 new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 137,000+ other subscribers surfing the AI wave. Today's newsletter and podcast are brought to you by our friends at Silicon Valley Bank. 📢 We're launching a new podcast: In early 2025, Jillian and Julie will be talking to the biggest names at the intersection of artificial intelligence and financial services. Who do you most want to see as a guest? (Btw... speaking of AI x fintech, check out the new Stripe launch from this week.) Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news in this short pod.

Welcome back to another episode of our Fintech OG series. I was thrilled to be joined by Michael Tannenbaum of Figure and Nicky Goulimis of Tunic Pay. From talking about our kids (5 between the 3 of us ages 4, 3, 2x2 and 1) to their time at fintech giants SoFi, Nova Credit and Brex, this was a conversation that I thoroughly enjoyed and know you will too. Many thanks to Method and Mesh for sponsoring this week's episode! Method is the first ever single sign-on for consumer liability and credit accounts, using only identity and consent to authenticate users. They’ve built an extensive network of coverage, supporting over 15k financial institutions to stream real-time data and make direct liability payments. Method helps companies in the personal loans and HELOC space like Figure, SoFi, Upgrade, Happy Money, and Aven incorporate repayment directly into their application flow. Shift4, a leader in global payments, has joined forces with Mesh to enable merchants everywhere to offer seamless, secure cryptocurrency payments right at checkout. With this integration, customers can pay in crypto just like they would with a credit card, while merchants enjoy peace of mind knowing those payments convert instantly into their preferred currency, reducing conversion risks and eliminating chargebacks. It’s crypto payments made simple.

Today, we go to New York to talk with Nelson Chu, the founder and CEO of Percent. Percent has created the modern credit marketplace, empowering investors, borrowers, and underwriters with innovative technology to increase the speed and velocity of transactions at a fraction of the cost. The company’s core infrastructure delivers public market efficiencies to the analog private credit market by powering the sourcing, structuring, syndication, surveillance and servicing of private credit transactions from beginning to end. Founded in 2018, Percent’s platform is becoming the market standard for asset-backed and corporate lending, powering over $1 billion in transaction volume in a multi-trillion-dollar private credit industry. Nelson Chu is a repeat founder who got his start in finance working on the Fixed Income portfolio at Bank of America and then BlackRock. Coming out of banking, Nelson first founded technology consulting business Lumenary, a strategic advisory group focused on bringing innovative and transformative ideas to life. He leveraged his experience at Luminary to become a formal advisor to a few other well-known names in the fintech ecosystem including Recharge Capital and BlockFi, before founding Percent in 2018 (anticipating the currrent private credit boom). Percent is a platform for sourcing, structuring, syndicating, monitoring, and servicing private credit transactions. The platform recently passed $1 billion in transaction volume, and can be found at percent.com.

In the latest edition of This Week In Fintech's OG series, Julie dives into the UAE and interviews industry veterans Gaurav Dhar (MENA and Marshal), Nameer Khan (MENA and Fils) and Ronit Ghose (Citi). The three provide an insightful discussion on fintech developments in the Middle East, regional dynamics, and the challenges and opportunities in fintech innovation across the Gulf and North Africa. Huge thanks to ⁠Public.com⁠ and ⁠Prism Data⁠ for sponsoring this week's episode! With interest rates falling, be sure to check out Public.com's Bond Account, which allows you to lock in a 6% or higher yield with a diversified portfolio of high-yield and investment-grade corporate bonds. If you're looking for a way to say ‘yes’ to more customers without taking on additional risk and lend more profitably without sacrificing growth, be sure to check out Prism Data. Cash flow underwriting is a game changer in consumer lending, and Prism Data is the modern analytics provider that makes it possible.