This Week in Fintech

🎙️ 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.

The intersection of AI and traditional finance (TradFi) is an angle we haven't explored yet in our AI series. Today, we change that by taking a deep dive into how AI is transforming large financial institutions. Jillian and I are joined by two experts shaping the future of AI in finance: Stevi Petrelli  – Head of Blackstone Innovations Investments , where she leads early-stage strategic inves...

On March 4th, This Week in Fintech had their debut event in Canada, bringing together hundreds of people across the tech ecosystem for an evening of networking, food and drinks, panels from local leaders, and even a magician working the crowd. We had nearly 500 people register when it was all said and done, showing the enthusiasm and depth of the Toronto tech ecosystem. We don’t know how it took u...

On March 4th, This Week in Fintech hosted their debut event in Canada, bringing together 150+ people across the tech ecosystem for an evening of networking, panels from local leaders, and even a magician working the crowd. We had nearly 500 people register , showing the enthusiasm and depth of the Toronto tech ecosystem. We don’t know how it took us this long to get to Canada, but we’re glad we di...

In my latest interview, I spent some time with  North's SVP of Product, Preet Patel , to talk about his journey from Citi to AmEx to North , what's changed in the company since he joined (hint: they were previously known as NAB ), and how he takes a consumer products mentality to his merchant payments product work at North . Preet Patel has served as the Senior Vice President of Product...

In this episode of our Fintech and AI series, Julie and Jillian dive into the evolving world of lending with two industry leaders shaping the space. Tim Li, CEO of LendAPI , and Justin Potts, CTO of Canopy Servicing , break down AI’s impact on everything from underwriting and fraud detection to loan servicing and borrower experience. They explore the regulatory shakeups affecting fintech, the rise...

In today's episode,  ⁠Ryan Zauk⁠  sits down with global fintech legend Oliver Hughes , Chief International Growth Officer at TBC Bank Group , a London-listed financial + banking services provider in Georgia in Uzbekistan. Before TBC, Oliver was the CEO of Tinkoff and Head of Russia for Visa. He is also on the Board of Tabby , a leading shopping and financial services player in the Middle East...

  In this episode of our Fintech and AI series, Julie and Jillian sit down with two leading voices in fintech to explore how AI is revolutionizing the payments landscape. Alexis Zhu of Stripe and Yunyu Lin of Ramp break down AI’s role in fraud prevention, workflow automation, and financial decision-making. From personalized checkout experiences to the future of real-time payments, this episode is...

This week, I managed to grab some time in the (very busy!) schedule of Neha Narkhede . Neha is an Indian American technology entrepreneur who is the founder & CEO of  Oscilar , co-founder and former CTO, and current board member of  Confluent  (CFLT NASDAQ). As a software engineer at LinkedIn , she helped develop the open-source messaging system Apache Kafka , now used by more than 80% of the...

Hi everyone! Jillian and I are thrilled to be kicking off our podcast series on all things AI. In our premier episode, we're joined by Naftali Harris, CEO and Founder of Sentilink, a company that stops fraud for over 300 banks and financial institutions, including 10 of the 15 largest in the U.S. as well as A man Abraham , Co-founder & CEO of  DeepTrust , which focuses on protecting voice...