Leaders In Payments

Your churn dashboard might be accusing your product of something your payments stack actually did. When a renewal charge fails, customers can disappear even if they still want what you sell, and that “involuntary churn” quietly drains ARR, wrecks retention analysis, and forces teams to make the wrong fixes. In this episode I sit down with Charles Rosenblatt, CEO of Butter , to unpack how subscript...

The moment AI agents can buy things for us, payments stop being a simple “click to pay” problem and become a trust problem. Greg Myers sits down with Sanjay Saraf, SVP and Global Chief Product Officer for Merchant Solutions at Fiserv , to map out what agentic commerce really means for merchants, ISVs, and the broader payments industry as software moves from assisting the shopper to acting for the...

Most payments teams obsess over money in, then act surprised when slow payouts drive churn, support tickets, and lost growth. Greg Myers sits down with Ran Grushkowsky, Co-Founder and CEO of MassPay , to unpack why “time to money” is becoming a product feature and why the companies that treat payouts as strategy will outpace the ones that treat it as plumbing. We get into what MassPay actually doe...

Your BNPL strategy can’t be “pick one provider and hope.” When you sell across borders, buy now pay later becomes a payments infrastructure problem: different countries, different regulations, different checkout habits, and a constant pressure to keep conversion high without turning your team into an integration factory. We sit down with Cihan Duezguen, CEO and Co-Founder of Green Banana , to unpa...

Payments is full of noise: legacy processors, vendor sprawl, duplicate onboarding, and merchants who just want their money faster. We cut through it by showing a pragmatic path from point products to a unified embedded finance stack that actually scales. With Jaris founder and CEO Chris Aristides and VP of Platform Partnerships Matt Thomas, we unpack why “foundation first” beats bolt-on every time...

Fraud doesn’t wait for your roadmap. We sat down with Jess Kirkpatrick, VP of Risk and Fraud at Worldpay now part of Global Payments , to unpack how platforms can move beyond checkbox KYC and build a living risk program that protects growth, strengthens brand trust, and prepares for Payfac readiness. With experience spanning community banking, 17 years at PayPal, and global risk leadership, Jess b...

What does it actually take to secure a payments company in an era of sophisticated, well-funded cybercriminals? In this first episode of The Trust Advantage Series , brought to you by Payroc , host Greg Myers sits down with David Edwards, Payroc 's Senior Vice President of Information Security, for a candid and eye-opening conversation about modern cybersecurity in the payments industry. With...

What if checkout was the growth engine instead of an add-on? We sit down with Ismael Wrixen, CEO of ThriveCart , to explore how a payments-first platform can power the modern creator economy from a $99 template to a $10,000 mastermind without locking you into a brittle tech stack. Ismael breaks down how ThriveCart layers affiliates, an LMS, and marketing automation on top of payments, then uses sm...

In this first episode of a new series on the Leaders in Payments podcast, host Greg Myers sits down with Chris Aristides, Founder and CEO of Jaris , to explore what it truly takes for payments companies and ISOs to remain competitive as the market shifts toward owned, embedded finance experiences. Chris brings an unconventional background to the payments world, having spent 22 years in the hedge f...

In this episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast, host Greg Myers sits down with Alex Dewison, Director of Digital Solutions at Global Payments , to explore the rapidly evolving world of online commerce and checkout experiences. Alex brings a rich background to the conversation, having started his career in software development before moving into payments at Worldpay, where he worked with major...

Payments leaders are feeling the squeeze of shrinking margins, price-driven churn, and rising expectations from merchants who want funding that feels as seamless as a card transaction. We sat down with Aarati Soman, Head of Product at Parafin, and Jaron Ruckman, Product Manager at NMI , to map the new playbook: embedded lending that meets merchants where they already work, backed by real-time data...

Fraud hasn’t disappeared - it got smarter. Organized rings now aim upstream at SaaS platforms and ISVs that embed payments, where a single gap in onboarding, transaction logic, or refund flows can be scaled into thousands of attacks overnight. We sit down with Brian Rust, SVP and Deputy Chief Information Security Officer at Worldpay, to map the real fraud journey (entry, action, exit) and the conc...

Ever launched a beautiful product only to watch payments derail the experience? We sat with Viktoria Soltesz - founder of PSP Angels and the Soltesz Institute - to map the hidden decisions that make or break money movement. From onboarding demands and documentation to routing choices and settlement timelines, Viktoria shows how banking and payment flows now shape product, compliance, data, and bra...

If your AR feels like a maze of phone calls, spreadsheets, and “we’ll match it later,” this conversation shows a cleaner path. We sit down with Fauwaz Hussain, Senior Director of B2B Partnerships and Strategy at Global Payments , to break down what actually speeds cash and what quietly stalls it. From card-not-present realities to complex terms and partial shipments, we map the B2B differences tha...

Money keeps moving while the world sleeps, and the rails behind it are evolving fast. We sit down with Pat Antonacci, Chief Product Officer at The Clearing House , to break down how CHIPS, ACH (EPN), and RTP each power a different promise - liquidity, scale, and always‑on finality and why that mix is reshaping how businesses and consumers move funds. Pat explains why CHIPS dominates high‑value cro...

In this Signal Series episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast, I sit down with Matt Downs, President, Integrated and Platforms at Global Payments , to unpack the biggest platform-payments shifts heading into 2026. Coming off the newly closed Worldpay and Global Payments combination, Matt shares what scale means for ISVs and platforms, and why payments is no longer “just a feature.” It is a grow...

Money is changing faster than most teams can update a roadmap. We sit down with Farooq Malik, Co-Founder and CEO of Rain , to unpack how stablecoins and tokenized dollars are moving from crypto headlines to the hidden plumbing of real payments - powering card programs, cross-border payouts, and embedded finance at enterprise scale. Farooq breaks down Rain ’s vertically integrated stack: pay-ins an...

Forget the hype - small merchants need tools that actually work when a line forms and a card won’t tap. Andrew Helms, CEO USA at SumUp digs into a merchant-first approach that puts transparency, service, and growth at the center of payments. Andrew shares his unconventional path from Middle Eastern studies and consulting in Dubai to entrepreneurship, scaling Home Chef through acquisition, and ulti...

Money that waits for Monday is losing ground to rails that never sleep. Greg sits down with Edward Woodford, CEO and Founder of zerohash , to explore how stablecoins and tokenized deposits are reshaping cross-border payments, account funding, and global payouts for merchants, platforms, and marketplaces. From MIT roots to building one of the largest movers of stablecoins, Edward explains why veloc...

Payments shouldn’t feel like a maze. We sit down with Kurv ’s CEO, Afshin Yazdian, to unpack how a legacy “lifestyle business” evolved into a modern payments platform by stripping out friction, investing in human-centered service, and doubling down on tools that make small businesses stronger. From tap-to-pay on everyday smartphones to faster access to funds, the strategy centers on clarity and sp...

What if account-to-account payments felt as dependable as swiping a card? We sit down with Keith Raphael, Co-founder and CEO of Straddle , to explore how a trust-first approach can transform ACH, RTP, and FedNow into fast, reliable options that product teams and finance leaders can actually count on. Keith’s journey from hardcore compliance to building a unified API offers a rare, inside look at w...

Cash flow used to mean waiting and worrying. Today, it can mean deciding and doing. We sit down with Ana Garcia of JPMorgan Payments and James Chi of Block to unpack how real-time payments are reshaping the small business playbook - turning every sale into instantly usable working capital and replacing uncertainty with visibility you can act on. Ana pulls back the curtain on how instant payments a...

The backbone of the economy is feeling both confident and squeezed, and we wanted to get specific about what actually helps. In this episode I sit down with Shruti Patel, Chief Product Officer for Business Banking at U.S. Bank , to unpack fresh small business data and the concrete tools that turn payments into faster cash, lighter admin, and clearer decisions. We start with the Small Business Pers...

In this episode, we dig into how modern SaaS platforms turn payments into a core product, a revenue engine, and a defensible moat without breaking customer trust or slowing product velocity. With NMI ’s CMO Peter Galvin and Product Director Luis Peña, we unpack the real path from “just accept cards” to a fully integrated commerce stack that handles fraud, chargebacks, compliance, and omnichannel e...

Growth shouldn’t stall at the border. We sit down with Peter Dougherty, President of Spreedly , to unpack how an open payments platform helps global brands launch faster, reduce vendor risk, and optimize authorization rates without ripping out their stack. Peter traces the evolution from card‑centric orchestration to a broader layer that now includes tokenization, a secure token vault, fraud and K...