Wharton FinTech Podcast

Russell Matambo hosts Henry Ward, CEO and co-founder of Carta, a global equity management platform on a mission to unlock the power of equity ownership for more people in more places. They discuss Henry’s entrepreneurial journey, the challenges of simultaneously innovating and scaling a company, Carta’s mission to democratise ownership, and much more! About Henry: Henry is the CEO and co-founder o...

Russell Matambo hosts Serigne Dioum, Group CEO of MTN Fintech, an African mobile financial services platform and subsidiary of MTN, Africa’s largest mobile network operator. With a footprint of 16 countries, over 69 million customers, and an annual transaction value of over US$220 billion, MTN Fintech is among the largest mobile financial services platforms in Africa. They discuss MTN’s ambition t...

Zoey Tang sits down with Vinay Nair, founder and CEO of TIFIN, a fintech platform that drives personalization for wealth using AI and investment intelligence. TIFIN operates a collection of fully-owned subsidiaries in wealth and investments that are shaping the future of investor experience. Vinay was also the Founder and Chairman of 55ip, which was successfully sold to J.P. Morgan. As a serial en...

Nate Gee hosts Anthony Scaramucci, Founder and Managing Partner of SkyBridge Capital, an alternative investment firm with a significant focus on digital assets. In this episode, they cover: - Anthony’s partnership with FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried - What led to FTX’s 30% stake in SkyBridge, and takeaways from FTX’s collapse - Risk-taking, facing criticism, and moving on from mistakes - Insights from...

In today’s episode, Kailee Costello hosts David Haber, General Partner at a16z. David focuses on technology investments in financial services. David was previously a senior executive in Firmwide Strategy at Goldman Sachs where he helped lead partnerships, new ventures and M&A. Before joining the firm, David was the Founder and CEO of Bond Street, which aimed to transform small business lending thr...

Zoey Tang sits down with Mark Fiorentino, partner at Index Ventures. Founded in 1996, Index Ventures is a global Venture Capital firm with offices in San Francisco, New York City, and London. Index Ventures has previously invested in prominent fintech companies such as Adyen, Plaid, Robinhood As part of the early members of the San Francisco team, Mark is focused largely on fintech and application...

In this episode, Blythe Masters reflects on her career that spans three decades within financial services. She discusses pivotal moments, from navigating through major mergers and market upheavals to becoming a mother at an early age. Addressing the evolving landscape of financial services, she delves into the transformative impact of AI and technology on Motive’s investment thesis, portfolio comp...

In today’s episode, Kailee Costello hosts Nikhil Lakhanpal, Co-Founder at Narmi. Narmi’s mission is to offer financial institutions the best digital banking platform in the industry. Narmi does this through an API-driven platform that layers on top of existing banking infrastructure to give these financial institutions access to Narmi’s products, including digital account opening, consumer and bus...

In today’s episode, Rhea Advani hosts John MacIlwaine, Co-Founder & CEO at Highnote. They delve into the evolving payments processing space, emphasizing the rise of innovative embedded finance platforms like Highnote. The conversation also unveils insights into Highnote's latest Credit Issuing product. In this episode, you will hear about: The complexities of payments processing and regulatory cha...

Nate Gee hosts Jeremy Tsui, co-founder and CEO of Finley, which simplifies and streamlines companies’ debt capital raise and management. In this episode, they discuss: -Finley’s inspiration from innovations in consumer credit and equity capital management -Trends in private credit and Jeremy's original idea for Finley -Jeremy’s views on AI in fintech and beyond -The ways Finley helps companies man...

Kailee Costello sits down with Stacy Greiner, Chief Operating Officer at DailyPay. DailyPay offers an on-demand pay solution that helps employers to improve the financial well-being of their workforce. DailyPay has over 1000 enterprise clients, and over 4 million of these company’s employees use the DailyPay platform. In this episode you will hear about: - DailyPay's mission to provide employees w...

Rob Straathof, CEO of Liberis - Embedded Finance and Small Business Lending Trevor Prince sits down with Rob Straathof, CEO of Liberis, an embedded finance platform that partners with companies like Klarna, Barclaycard, and Worldpay to empower small businesses with funding solutions. Through analysis of data on its partners' platforms, Liberis provides small businesses with pre-approved funding of...

Joshua Benadiva sits down with Arad Levertov, founder and CEO of Sunbit, a pay-over-time, point-of-sale financing solution for everyday expenses such as auto-repair, dental care, vet care, and more. Sunbit offers a no-fee credit card, as well as a point-of-sale lending option available at over 20,000 service locations. In-line with Arad's founding vision, Sunbit approves over 90% of borrowers, and...

Russell Matambo hosts Anthony Noto, CEO of SoFi, a member-centric one-stop shop for digital financial services in the US. In this episode you will hear about: - SoFi’s trajectory since Anthony took over as CEO 5 years ago - the background to the SoFi stadium naming rights deal - what it will take for SoFi to meet its goal of becoming a top 10 financial institution in the US - how Anthony’s upbring...

Joshua Benadiva hosts Bill Capuzzi, the CEO of Apex Fintech Solutions, a leading provider of custody and clearing services for the financial industry. Apex's powerful brokerage solutions and APIs serve over 300 customers including Betterment, SoFi, and Public.com. Bill is also a partner at PEAK6 Investments, the parent company of Apex Fintech Solutions, and a board member of DTCC, a leading provid...

Zoey Tang hosts Urvashi Barooah, a fellow Wharton alum and Principal at Redpoint Ventures. At Redpoint, Urvashi specializes in early-stage fintech investments, and her portfolio includes ventures such as Dune Analytics, Offchain Labs, XMTP, Flexe, among others. In our conversation, we delved into various aspects of Urvashi's journey. We discussed pivotal moments in her life, including her transiti...

“We build the monetisation engine for Google. We build the entire stack that moves money and we do it at Google scale. The reason we have to build it internally is (because) at our scale and with all our different business models and products that we support at Google there is not really one product out there that does it all. You have to piece together multiple different things and some of that i...

Zoey Tang hosts Kevin Zhang, partner at Bain Capital Venture. At BCV, Kevin partners with inception-stage entrepreneurs at the intersection of business software and financial services, with particular emphasis on finserv enablement, productivity & automation, and data infrastructure. During our conversation, we delved into Kevin's professional trajectory, his initial attraction to fintech, and the...

Nate Gee hosts Eric Satz, Founder and CEO of Alto, a self-directed IRA custodian that facilitates individuals’ tax-advantaged investments in alternative asset classes. With the goal of “alternatives for all,” Alto aims to be the world’s premier alternative assets marketplace. In this episode, they discuss: - Eric’s career journey and how Alto came about - Why alternative investments as a means of...

Zoey Tang hosts Gary Hoberman, Founder and CEO at Unqork. Unqork provides a codeless enterprise application platform designed for customers in financial services, insurance, health care, government, and others. Throughout our conversation, we explored Gary's career journey and the motivation behind initiating Unqork. Our conversation delved into how Unqork empowers clients through its no-code appl...

Joshua Benadiva hosts Itzik Cohen, Co-Founder and CEO of PayZen, a patient financing platform for healthcare. PayZen helps hospitals, health systems, and physicians groups of all sizes to offer affordable payment plans to their patients, while funding providers up-front for all billings regardless of a patient’s credit score. PayZen was founded in 2021 by Itzik and his co-founders to fight the hea...

Kailee Costello hosts Matt Streisfeld, General Partner at Oak HC/FT. Oak is a venture and growth equity firm investing in companies driving transformation in healthcare and fintech. Oak was one of the earliest venture investors in fintech, and now has over $5B in assets under management. In this episode you will hear about: - The M&A environment for fintechs - Opportunities in AI and Machine Learn...

"Every time we scale, I rethink the problem and how we are solving it…” Listen in as Josh Benadiva hosts Ariel Cohen, CEO and Co-Founder of Navan. This episode is a riveting exploration of Ariel's journey in tackling evolving challenges and driving continuous product innovation as his business scales. Ariel shares his unique approach to product development and organizational alignment. He discusse...

Kailee Costello hosts Harsh Sinha and Steve Naudé from Wise. Harsh is the Chief Technology Officer, and Steve is Head of Wise Platform. Wise has built a leading cross-border payments network and processes £9B in cross-border payments every month on behalf of over 16 million customers. Wise’s IPO on the London Stock Exchange took place in 2021. In this episode you will hear about: - Wise’s journey...

Nihar Bobba hosts Khalid Meniri, Co-Founder and CEO of Selfbook, a fintech startup bringing modern payments innovation to the world of hospitality. Prior to Selfbook, Khalid built and ran a digital agency, Six, where he and his team combined data architecture, e-commerce infrastructure and digital design expertise to serve clients such as Net-a-Porter, Unilever and Hearst. Today, Selfbook partners...