Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring financial services together

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet Editor in Chief, Zack Miller. As a founder of a tech startup, Immad Akhund found that the banks his firm used were all lost in the sea of mediocrity and sameness. He was surrounded by services in other parts of his business that were fresh, fast and worked well. His frustration with banking led him to found and lead Mercury, a bank for startups. The...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. There’s been a lot of talk about Varo, the first US challenger bank to receive a national charter. The bank has rebuilt its technology off its partner bank and is transitioning over its customers to its new technology stack. To do that, it turned to Temenos, the modern core banking software provider. Alexa Guenoun is the...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. As challenger banks battle over getting new customers, the discussion has moved over the big headline numbers to the quality of those new customers. More specifically, digital banks — but really all banks — are being judged on whether these new account openings turn into customers, whether these new users turn to the ban...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. Eliot Buchanan dreamed up the idea of Plastiq seven years ago as an undergrad. A Canadian in the U.S., he got frustrated by how hard it was to transact paying for his tuition. His firm Plastiq enables individuals and businesses to pay for virtually any expense with a credit card — even if a merchant doesn’t take cards. S...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. When Western Union formally began building out its connection to the fintech community, it partnered with Techstars, a well-respected accelerator in Boulder, Colorado. The Techstars and Western Union Accelerator (https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/western-union) focuses on startups looking to shape the future of how...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. As challenger banks expand their capabilities, many with debit and credit cards are adding in rewards as a way to service their customers. Dosh gives millions of users cash back when they shop at top retailers that are using cash back as an acquisition tool. Dosh recently announced a major expansion of“Powered by Dosh,...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. As we’ve discussed many times on the podcast, the pandemic has accelerated a lot of digital trends that were already underway before COVID-19 hit. There’s been a big push away from cash and towards contactless but major US cities are pushing back on cashless retailers. So, where will all this lead? Diebold Nixdorf’s Simo...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. Eighteen months ago, there was a lot of talk around voice and the possibilities of using human speech as a new automated channel in financial services. There’s less talk now but the technology continues to improve. Today’s guest on the podcast is Clinc’s Jon Newhard. He’s been around technology a lot for the past 25 ye...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller, Tearsheet’s editor in chief. Today’s guest is Steve Villegas, vp of payment partnerships in North America for PPRO. He works with acquirers and payment service providers to give them a single integration to offer a variety of local payment options to their customers. We explore a recent whitepaper PPRO published about how COVID has impacted consum...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. Many people know Ingenico as a manufacturer of payment terminals. Over years, the company has acquired firms in the digital payment processing space. Our guest on the podcast today, Andrew Monroe, runs the epayments division in North America, helping large multinational merchants accept payments from consumers across the...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m editor in chief, Zack Miller. Challenger bank Stash is rooted in helping most Americans invest and build wealth, $5 at a time. The company has grown a lot this year. Co-founder and CEO Brandon Krieg joins me on the podcast to update the firm’s growth metrics. Stash recently won Tearsheet’s Challenger Bank Award for Best Card Product for its Stock Back Card, wh...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. BlueVine’s roots are in digital lending to small businesses. Beginning with a factoring product, the company moved into lines of credit. And when PPP rolled out at the beginning of the pandemic, the company ended up helping 155,000 SMBs receive over $4.5 billion in assistance. As the company has matured, it’s also introduced business banking. Fres...

Welcome to Tearsheet’s Outlier Briefing. This subscriber-only event is exclusive for our Outlier members. We go deeper with subject matter experts, to take actionable steps that can impact your business and practice. Today’s expert is Ted Brown. He’s co-founder and CEO of a company called Digital Onboarding. He’s been in fintech for his entire career. His first company, Andera, built the first way...

FIS accelerator/Stratyfy Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor Zack Miller. We’ve spoken to a lot of innovation program execs on this podcast. From corporate venture investing to accelerator programs, traditional FIs, in various ways, are trying to leverage the innovation that’s happening in fintech. This hasn’t been lost on the providers, either. FIS runs its own accelerator that...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller, editor at Tearsheet. There’s still significant friction dealing with international transactions. Payoneer is a pioneer in the space of helping people and businesses transact across currencies. Charles Rosenblatt is the firm’s new chief strategy officer. An executive with decades of experience in payments and financial services, Rosenblatt joins us...

The convergence of retail and financial services is being led by large platforms that help merchants seamlessly reach customers online and offline. Indeed, embedding financial services within commerce platforms helps them unlock additional value from seller relationships, and provides a repository of data to personalize product offerings. A major player in this ecosystem is Shopify, a Canada-based...

Welcome to Tearsheet’s Outlier Briefing. This subscriber-only event is exclusive for our Outlier members. We go deeper with subject matter experts, to take actionable steps that can impact your business and practice. Today’s guest is Jay Nair, who leads the financial services business for Infosys in the Americas. He’s responsible for one of the largest units in the company with annual revenues of...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. When the pandemic hit, lending models didn’t catch up quickly enough. Machine learning, like the kind Zest AI has developed, moved quicker, helping lenders to figure out how quickly things were deteriorating and where. ML models also have been instrumental in identifying and avoiding biases in lending practices. Zest AI CEO Mike de Vere joins us o...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller, editor in chief at Tearsheet. Niamh Kristufek is the head of US business banking at BMO Harris Bank. Her team services about 2 million small businesses with products, digital capabilities and experiences to help them reach their financial goals. Niamh joins us to discuss BMO’s support of women via its collaboration with the 1871 Innovation Program...

For a space as big as commercial cards, there are still so many opportunities to make a difference for startups. This is Tearsheet’s Early Stage podcast and I’m Zack Miller, editor in chief of Tearsheet. Here’s where we drill down on up and coming fintech firms, tackling big problems in large markets. Joining me on the show is PayEm’s (https://www.payemcard.com/index.php/en/) co-founder and CEO It...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Online trading platform Robinhood just raised more money at a valuation over $11 billion. Traditional brokerage firms are keenly aware of what’s going on and they’re also undergoing their own dance with digital. Frank LaQuinta, CIO at Edward Jones, joins me on the podcast to discuss how the brokerage firm is positioning itself to provide more mode...

In this episode of The Challengers, Josh Liggett and Zack Miller explore what Varo Money getting a national charter might mean for the firm and for the challenger banking industry. We compare Monzo, which recently warned about its survivability, and Starling, which said it expects to break even in 2020 and reach profitability in 2021. Lastly, your hosts discuss the new players in the challenger ba...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. We don’t talk enough about community banks on the podcast. Coming in to the COVID crisis, community banks lagged large banks and fintechs in technology. But when you look at what’s happened over the past 6 months, community banks committed acts of heroism to serve their customers during the height of the crisis. Raymond Chandonnet, chief revenue o...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Consumer behavior was already changing before COVID hit. When you ask financial services executives, may will tell you that COVID is acting to accelerate those trends. Beth Johnson, chief experience officer at Citizens Bank, is studying those trends. Citizens recently published its inaugural Banking Experience Survey, which polled over 10,000 cust...

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. WePay provides payment solutions for platforms like marketplaces and software firms. The Chase-owned company provides payment APIs to firms like Eventzilla, Meetup and TouchBistro. Chief revenue officer Jennifer Parker joins us on the podcast to give us an update on the business and to discuss how platforms and their merchants are coping during th...