This Week in Fintech

Welcome back to  This Week in Fintech  and another episode of the Fintech OGs! Today, I’m joined by two incredible voices who have helped shape the future of financial technology from both the founder and investor perspective. First up, Jillian Williams, co-founder of Field Ventures, a new seed-stage fund focused on vertical software and fintech. Jillian has spent her career investing in the secto...

This week, I sat down with Eli Wachs , the Co-Founder and CEO of Footprint , a company building the identity infrastructure of the internet. It was a far-reaching conversation – Eli's an interesting guy – and we touched on everything from his deep-dives into identity in the Stanford library to working with economist Raj Chetty to philosophy and what it means to be authentic to yourself. Footp...

Welcome back to another episode of Fintech OGs with This Week In Fintech! Today, I’m joined by two incredible founders who have each redefined their corner of the financial world: Jack Zhang , Co-founder & CEO of  Airwallex , the global payments and banking platform powering 150,000+ businesses Leif Abraham , Co-founder & Co-CEO of  Public , the next-gen investing platform helping the top...

Nik sits down for 10 minutes with Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas to talk about the company's 2025 performance and where they are headed. Overview Coinbase is at inflection point, with strong Q2 performance including custody volumes and derivatives trading hitting all-time highs, and the USDC market cap exceeding $60 billion. Stablecoin revenue of $332 million in Q2 represents 12% growth quarter-ove...

Welcome back to  FinTech OGs ! This week, I’m joined by two leaders whose careers have shaped the evolution of modern financial technology:  David Haber , General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and co-lead of their AI Apps Fund, and  Owen Jennings , an executive officer and Block’s Business Lead. From early ventures like Bond Street and the first days of Cash App to today’s frontier of AI in finan...

In today's episode,  Ryan Zauk  sits down with PayPal President & CEO Alex Chriss . Alex took over as PayPal CEO in September 2023 after a nearly 20-year run at Intuit . Today, Alex (and PayPal) are at the epicenter of some of the most disruptive trends in global technology & commerce. Since joining PayPal less than two years ago, his tenure has turned several heads in the industry. P...

Welcome back to this week in FinTech and another episode of the FinTech OGs. This week I'm joined by two guests whose careers have helped shape. The evolution of modern wealth management. We have Charles Birnbaum partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, and Cynthia Loh, who is a senior vice president at Capital One. Charles and Cynthia first crossed paths in the early days of Betterment. This is...

In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with Firdaus Bhathena, CTO of FIS. FIS is one of the world's largest financial technology companies, building solutions for leading financial institutions, businesses, and developers. Their scale is incredible...Over $16Tn moves through their systems annually. They process $75 billion of transactions globally, serve tens of thousands of clients, an...

You know you’ve found true fintech OGs when your guests were almost roommates before “fintech” was even a buzzword. That’s exactly the case with today’s guests, Sheel Mohnot and Amit Kumar—two longtime friends and collaborators who’ve not only seen the fintech industry evolve over the last decade-plus, but have helped shape it. In this episode, we dig into their early startup days—FeeFighters, Car...

🎙️ Welcome back to Season 3 of the Fintech OG series on This Week in Fintech! To kick things off, we’re joined by two of the most influential voices shaping the future of financial infrastructure:  David Marcus , CEO of Lightspark and former head of Libra at Facebook, and  Dan Kimerling , founding partner at Deciens Capital and early pioneer in banking-as-a-service. We cover everything from the ri...

"It's going to be a great decade to be a banker. But probably a better decade to be a customer of a bank." In today's episode,  Ryan Zauk  is joined by  Junta Nakai , Global Vice President at Databricks . Junta leads the Financial Services, Cybersecurity, Sustainability, and Public Sector Go-To-Market (GTM) for one of the world's largest and most exciting startups at the b...

In the final installment of our AI series, we explore one of the most unexpected yet explosive areas for AI innovation: accounting. Julie and Jillian sit down with Alex Hagerup, CEO and co-founder of Vic.ai, and Chris Sluty, co-founder of FloQast, to discuss how automation is reshaping the finance function—from ERP integrations and auditability to real-time data for CFOs. We unpack why accounting...

In today's episode,  Ryan Zauk  is joined by Christina Cacioppo , Co-Founder & CEO of Vanta . Ryan and Christina recorded this episode live at Newcomer's Breaking the Bank Summit in San Francisco. The Summit was an invite-only, one-day summit for fintech founders, builders, and investors to explore the future of finance and technology. Breaking the Bank was a phenomenal event, with s...

Welcome back to our weekly fintech podcast! This week, I had the chance to sit down with Sumant Shringari , the CEO and Co-Founder of Pontus, and Sandeep Sood , the Founder and CEO of Kunai . Pontus was established in 2023 to automate the large, difficult, and often fragmented back-office operations critical to large enterprises – such as the Global 2,000 banks that they count as customers. It was...

KYB might not be the buzziest acronym in fintech—but maybe it should be. In this episode, we’re joined by Will Lawrence, CEO of Greenlite, and Kurt Ruppel, CTO and Co-founder of Middesk, two leaders rethinking how financial institutions identify and monitor business customers. We cover the evolution from manual checks to AI-powered automation, the difference between KYC and KYB, and why ongoing mo...

Welcome back to our weekly fintech podcast! This week, I had the chance to sit down with Peter Hazlehurst , Co-Founder and CEO of Synctera , and Matt MacDonald Financial Technology Service Leader & IT Assurance Senior Manager at Wolf & Company . The conversation was wide-ranging, starting with Wolf & Synctera's partnership to build a compliant bank-fintech partnership model that S...

In this episode, we sit down with  Lukas Haffer , CEO and Co-founder of  Casca , and  Ryan Hildebrand , Chief Innovation Officer at  Bankwell , to explore how AI is transforming small business lending—starting with SBA loans. They discuss the challenges of building on top of legacy banking systems, the stress-test of the COVID-19 PPP era, and how a human-in-the-loop approach is key to deploying AI...

We hosted an insightful live conversation and podcast at New York Fintech Week, hosted by This Week in Fintech and PingPong . ​Key Topics: ​Real-Time Payment Rails: Exploring the latest innovations in real-time payments and how they’re reshaping cross-border transactions. Cross-Border Money Movement: Analyzing the challenges and opportunities in facilitating smooth cross-border B2B payments. ​Spea...

In today's episode, Ryan Zauk is joined by Art Levy , Chief Business Officer at Brex . Brex is the modern finance platform that empowers growing companies to spend smarter and move faster in 120+ countries. Brex combines global corporate cards, expense management, banking, and travel. Their platform is trusted by 30k+ companies including ServiceTitan, DoorDash, ScaleAI, and Wiz. In this episo...

In this episode of the  This Week in Fintech  podcast, hosts Julie and Jillian are joined by Rex Salisbury (Founder of Cambrian Ventures) and Erica Dorfman (Head of Financial Products at Brex) for a wide-ranging conversation that sits at the intersection of AI, fintech innovation, and practical applications across startups and scale-ups. From agentic AI to OCR replacements, from startup go-to-mark...

TWIF host Nik Milanovic sat down with Prashant Fuloria, CEO, and Anchit Singh, CBO, of Fundbox , a pioneer in embedded finance for SMBs since 2013. Fundbox has partnered with platforms like QuickBooks and FreshBooks to provide fast access to over $5 billion in capital to 125,000 small businesses. Prashant, Anchit, and Nik discussed the evolution of embedded finance, emphasizing the importance of d...

Welcome back to the Fintech AI Series! Today’s episode dives deep into one of the most critical topics in both Fintech and AI— Compliance . We’re joined by two amazing guests:  Reggie Young , Chief of Staff at  Lithic , and  Jesse Reiss , CTO and Co-founder of  Hummingbird . Between Reggie’s legal background and Jesse’s technical expertise, this episode offers a unique and practical look at how re...

In March, we traveled to the inaugural HumanX conference in Las Vegas to meet founders, builders, and investors at the bleeding edge of AI. The conference was a great success, and we're excited for it to relocate to San Francisco next April. While at the conference, I had the chance to sit down with Shannon Scott , SVP and Global Head of Product at Airwallex . Airwallex is the global payments...

In March, we traveled to the inaugural HumanX conference in Las Vegas to meet founders, builders, and investors at the bleeding edge of AI. The conference was a great gathering of AI leaders, and we're excited for it to relocate to San Francisco next April. While at the conference, I had the chance to sit down with May Habib , Co-Founder and CEO of Writer . If you've been around AI x FS...

TWIF founder Nik Milanovic talks to Bits About Money writer ⁠Patrick McKenzie⁠, on topics ranging from agentic payments, to generative AI-enabled fraud, to deposit insurance and the banking crisis of 2023, to the epistemology of synthetic IDs.