Leaders In Payments

A failed payment is never just a technical error. It’s a customer stuck at checkout, a merchant losing revenue, and a moment where trust is either reinforced or broken. We sit down with Alexandra Dolia, co-founder and COO of Akurateco, to talk about what payments leadership looks like when you refuse to treat the industry like a black box and you build teams that can explain what’s happening end t...

Payments look instant and invisible until something goes wrong. That’s when you find out whether you’re working with a faceless system or a team you can actually trust. We sit down with Alex McCandless, EVP of Marketing and Training at Payroc, to get specific about what “people powered” really means in fintech and why transparency and access to real decision makers still matter in a world of autom...

Payments are getting smarter, faster, and more automated, but the stakes are still deeply human. I sit down with Gunita Bindra, CRO of Paymode New Business Development at Bottomline , to talk about what it takes to lead in fintech when AI is reshaping how decisions get made and how money moves.  Along the way, Ganita shares her path from computer science in India to roles in software engineering,...

In this milestone 500th episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast, I bring together seven respected leaders from across the payments ecosystem for a special look at the state of the industry. Rather than a traditional one-on-one interview, this episode features perspectives from Jim Oberman, CEO of Payroc ; Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore, President of SoFi Tech Solutions at SoFi ; Greg Cohen, CEO of For...

Checks still power a shocking amount of insurance money movement, and that single fact creates slow claims, higher operating costs, and an open door for fraud. Greg Myers sits down with Ian Drysdale, CEO of One Inc, to talk about what it really takes to drag property and casualty insurance payments into a modern digital payments era without breaking the workflows carriers rely on. We unpack how On...

Mailing checks to pay off a credit card in 2026 sounds like a joke, but it is still a real debt consolidation workflow at scale. Greg Myers sits down with Jose Bethancourt, Co-Founder and CEO of Method , to unpack why liability payments are uniquely messy and what it takes to make them feel as seamless as modern fintech promises. Jose shares his path from growing up in South Texas near the Mexico...

Fraud doesn’t usually announce itself with a flashing warning sign. It shows up as a chargeback, a fake account that looks “normal,” or an account takeover that slips through the exact same checkout flow your best customers use. Greg Myers sits down with Tamas Kadar, Co-Founder and CEO of SEON , to unpack how modern fraud actually works and how digital businesses can protect revenue without buryin...

A “successful” card payment can still leave merchants waiting days to actually access their money, paying layers of fees along the way, and carrying fraud risk that never truly goes away. That gap between authorization and settlement is where cash flow gets squeezed, reconciliation gets messy, and margins get quietly taxed, especially as more commerce shifts to e-commerce and other card-not-presen...

A $400,000 B2B card payment sounds simple until a processor flags it, the finance team cannot reconcile it, and the invoice sits open while DSO creeps up. That gap between delivering product and collecting cash is where B2B payments either become a growth engine or a constant operational headache. I sits down with Thomas Cecil, Co-Founder of PAYRA, to unpack how modern accounts receivable automati...

AI is moving from “helpful assistant” to autonomous actor, and payments leaders are about to feel the difference. I sit down with Russell Moore, Co-Founder and CEO of Amotivv , to get concrete about what breaks when generative AI and agentic AI leave the lab and touch regulated data, customer outcomes, and real money movement. We talk through why so many AI initiatives stall after a promising proo...

Payments don’t fail because teams lack ambition, they fail because the infrastructure can’t keep up with what customers expect. We sit down with Mike Milotich, CEO of Marqeta , to unpack how modern issuer processing is changing card issuing from a rigid bank product into configurable, real-time payments infrastructure built for innovation. We trace Mike’s 20-year journey across American Express, P...

Payments are speeding up everywhere, but the real story is what that speed breaks and what it demands from the people running the rails. I’m joined by Jennifer Barker, Global Head of Payments and Trade and Depositary Receipts at BNY , for a clear-eyed conversation about what’s changing in the payments industry and what leaders should do next when complexity keeps piling up. From her journey throug...

Paper checks are the easiest payment method to hate and one of the hardest to remove. They are slow, expensive, fraud-prone, and deeply baked into legacy workflows. Greg Myers sits down with Steven Faust, CEO of Dash Solutions , to unpack what it really takes to modernize business payouts and why disbursements have become one of the biggest growth engines in the payments industry. We dig into how...

Moving money is easy to describe and brutally hard to do well at global scale. When your network supports thousands of clients across 90+ countries and touches thousands of currency pairs, you start to see a different map of what’s changing in payments and what’s just noise. Greg Myers sits down with Debo Sen, Head of Payments, Services at Citi , to unpack what that vantage point reveals about the...

The mid-market is where tech decisions get dangerous. You are big enough that uptime, security, and delivery speed matter every day, but you are not big enough to burn cash on massive consulting retainers or absorb the fallout from a shaky vendor. That “valley in the middle” is exactly where David Robinson lives, and it is why he built Stratos Development Group to offer right-fit technical leaders...

Cross-border payouts are one of those problems everyone complains about and then quietly accepts: high fees, slow settlement, and endless workarounds to get money into the hands of real people. I sit down with Cyril Mathew, Co-Founder and CEO of Latitude , to talk about why “faster money movement” only matters when the recipient can actually spend it in local currency, not just hold a stablecoin b...

A “credit card fee” can protect your margins or quietly create compliance risk, and the difference usually comes down to one word: clarity. We sit down with Jim Oberman, CEO of Payroc , to unpack credit card surcharging in a way that merchants, software platforms, and payments teams can actually use, without hand-waving and without confusing it with every other fee customers see at checkout. We st...

Final settlement sounds great until you’re the one holding the fraud and compliance risk. That tension sits at the heart of my conversation with Pete Glyman, Founder and CEO of Coinbax , where we explore what it will actually take for stablecoin payments to work for banks, credit unions, and serious fintech programs. Pete shares his path from building and selling a fintech platform to leading digi...

Gift cards have a branding problem and it’s costing the payments world a big idea. Alex Preece, CEO and Co-Founder of Tillo , joins us to make the case that gift cards aren’t really “gifts” at all. They’re programmable stored value, a modern redemption rail that can sit inside bank apps, fintech wallets, cashback programs, employee rewards, refunds, and payouts. Once you see them as a payment inst...

“Instant” payments are usually a well-designed illusion. The customer experience feels real-time, but behind the scenes money still crawls through delayed settlement, fragmented rails, and market-by-market workarounds. That gap is exactly where stablecoins start to look less like hype and more like infrastructure. We sit down with Tony Tom, CRO and Co-Founder of Stable Sea, to unpack how enterpris...

Vertical SaaS wins when it feels like it was built by someone who has actually done the job, and that same principle is reshaping payments and fintech. We sit down with Brad Pinneke, Head of Enterprise Business Development at Worldpay (is now Global Payments), to unpack why vertical SaaS platforms have become the day-to-day operating system for small businesses and why “embedded payments” is no lo...

The payments world is full of shiny objects. The hard part is deciding what actually matters to clients and then delivering it safely at global scale. I’m joined by Rich Clow, Head of Innovation and Strategies for Global Payments Solutions at Bank of America , for a grounded look at how a large financial institution evaluates emerging payments technology, turns strategy into products, and keeps th...

Waiting 47 days to get paid for work you already finished is more than annoying, it’s a cash-flow killer. I sat down with Garima Shah, President and Co-Founder of Biller Genie , to talk about the unglamorous part of payments that decides whether a business thrives: accounts receivable. We get practical about what actually slows payments down and why “just run the card” ignores the messy reality of...

Owning payments sounds like a power move until the real bill shows up. We sit down with Brock Robertson, CRO at Payroc , to unpack how payment strategy for software platforms is shifting again and why so many vertical SaaS leaders are stepping back from the “everyone should be a Payfac” era. We trace the evolution from payments as a bolt-on utility to embedded payments as a true growth engine, the...

Payments alone rarely make a software platform unforgettable. The moment merchants start using your product to access working capital, manage cash flow, move money through payouts, and keep reconciliation tight, the relationship changes. I sit down with Whitney Ganibegovic, Senior Sales Executive at Worldpay (now part of Global Payments), to unpack why embedded finance is quickly becoming one of t...