Leaders In Payments

My guest this week has a passion for figuring out “how to do things different and better,” and his first experience of moving money was helping Fannie Mae move their federal funds across telephone lines. Verituity CEO Ben Turner keeps his philosophy pretty simple when it comes to business: “All you should ever have to say is how much to who and when, and the rest should just happen.” And for those customers transacting through the Verituity platform, it does! For those of you who may not...

My guest this week is an avid tennis player with a passion for alternative payments. She started her career as a programmer in the brokerage business, with a degree in computer science, and ended up the CEO of alternative payments platform Payverse. So, how did she get from one end of the spectrum to the other? You’ll have to tune in to find out! According to CEO Sandra Blair, Payverse is a company that “enables payment processing traditional payment processor don’t typically do.” What does...

My guest this week started as a software engineer but soon discovered he had a love for payments. Brightwell CEO Larry Hipp has had a fascinating journey throughout the fintech space. He has a genuine passion for seeing people succeed and places a tremendous amount of intention and importance on the resiliency that a strong company culture can provide. For those of you who may not know, Brightwell is a fintech company that grew up in the prepaid industry. They cater predominately to the...

What does an avid Squash player with an underdog mentality and a passion for sales have to do with payments? A lot! My guest this week is Engagesmart CEO Bob Bennett. He has run four different companies over the last 30 years and been in the payments ecosystem long enough to acquire a passion for the electronic payments industry and a desire to create differentiation within that space. For those of you who may not know, Engagesmart is a bill presentment company that simplifies customer and...

My guest this week has been in the payments industry for 20 years and credits the lifespan of his prolific career to a small decision that was motivated by an empty gas tank. It all started in the basement of a dental office, at a startup ISO space with no windows, and an inclination that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. But he needed enough gas to get to where he was going next, so he decided to give it a chance and the rest is history. TRNXN Company CEO Paul Hadfield has made it his...

My guest this week has an absolutely fascinating background in the payments industry. He’s still as competitive now as he was when he was in his 20s and has a driving passion for sales, competition and, of course, winning. Trust Payments Group Chief Commercial Officer and CEO of Trust Payments U.S. Jonathan O’Connor gives a dynamic interview you don’t want to miss! For those of you who may not know, Trust Payments is a technology-based fintech with a presence all over Europe and a satellite...

My guest this week has had a truly fascinating journey to the top! SpotOn Co-Founder and CPO Doron Friedman comes from a family of Holocaust survivors that were forced to take the entrepreneurial journey after losing everything they had. He’ll be the first to say that his father discouraged any of the children from becoming an entrepreneur, so Doron’s first ambitions were towards investment banking. But it didn’t take him long to figure out that, despite his father’s wishes, he had the...

So, how does a professional basketball player become president/CEO of a fintech payments company? Well, he’s 6’8" with a passion for solving problems and a love for transformative technology. PayZen President and CEO Itzik Cohen is on a very bold mission to revolutionize the healthcare payments industry. How? The mission-driven goal of PayZen is to underwrite each individual customer into a payments plan they can afford in order to maintain standard healthcare and make good health more...

An Australian native and previous casino dealer, Identitii CEO John Rayment is passionate about people, payments, and a bucketed approach to life. He is a global citizen with a global platform and his company, of course, drives a global initiative. In his own words, Identitii “helps the global financial services industry reduce their regulatory risks without having to replace legacy technology.” The Identitii business model is uniquely focused on enhancing technology already in use to...

For my guest this week, I have a one-time Disneyworld employee who was once recruited by Visa and MasterCard simultaneously. Finexio CEO and Founder Ernest Rolfson has a self-proclaimed passion for creating transparency around what he perceives to be a very opaque industry by teaching people about payments, software and all things that move money. For those of you who may not know, Finexio is an accounts payable payments-as-a-service company that targets the middle market sector and...

As we wrap up diversity and inclusion month, I speak with Cantaloupe Director of Human Resources, Alyssa Braniecki, on what it looks like to employ D&I as part of the total employee experience. Alyssa credits her ability to find her voice as a female in the workplace to growing up in a blended Hispanic/Italian family with two volumes: loud and louder. She originally got her degree in psychology with an emphasis in developmental psych but has always had a passion for facilitating groups and...

Moving right along with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) month, my guest this week refers to herself as a global citizen with a broad range of diverse experience and an entrepreneurial career that all started with one question: “Software outsourcing is huge. Do you want to start a business?” As I’m sure you can imagine, the answer was yes, and this led Chargeback Gurus Founder and CEO Srii Srinivasan down a wildly successful entrepreneurial path that all started with a diamond...

As we continue our deep dive into diversity and inclusion, we meet this week with Covenant Pay CEO Quincy McKnight. A fully registered ISO looking to “really change the payments industry,” one of the questions I have for Quincy is how he prioritizes something like diversity and inclusion in a small company that already has so many priorities when it comes to establishing growth and momentum within the industry? His answer? “Leadership reflects attitude. Whatever they’re putting out at the...

I can’t think of a better guest to kick off diversity and inclusion month than Remitly Chief Customer and People Officer Rene Yoakum. With more than 40 years in Big Tech, including 19 years at Microsoft alone, Rene is more than qualified to speak to our listeners about this crucial topic. According to Rene, diversity, equity and inclusion (or DEI) means making sure your workplace offers a broad set of thinking, lived experiences and people with different identities and cultural backgrounds....

This week marks the last episode for our Pulse series featuring Open Banking platform Trustly. And to close it out with a bang, I have Trustly President of North America Pete Ohser. Pete is a true industry veteran with more than 20 years in the payments space and a byline that includes an integral part in developing the first risk system for online money transfer platforms. In his own words, Trustly is “a payments company that does data really, really well.” They have been in the...

For someone who never thought he would end up in payments, Fleetcor Group President of North American Fuel Cards Alexey Gavrilenya sure has proven himself wrong. Having been with the company for more than 13 years, Alexey has overseen operations in Russia, London and now stateside in Atlanta. And he credits a lot of his success to his two passions: bringing the future forward and continually learning new things through a burning curiosity. Fleetcor is an established player in the payments...

In this episode, I continue my deep dive into the unattended retail sector of the payments space with industry leader Cantaloupe. Their Vice President, GM Micro Markets Michael Johnson is my guest, and he has been in the autonomous retail space for quite some time now so the perspective he offers on this rapidly growing niche within our industry truly gives some food for thought about the future of where consumer engagement is headed. For those of you who may not know what the unattended...

Our Open Banking pulse this week is on Trustly VP of North American Bank Partnerships Eric Foust – and for good reason! Not only is Eric a 20-year veteran in the banking space, he’s also the first VP I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with that has almost a super-hero theme to his roles and responsibilities within the Trustly empire. His chosen staff? A Trident. And the responsibilities represented by the three prongs? 1. Facilitating all of Trustly’s banking relationships concerned with...

What does an avid snowboarder with three degrees (legal, accounting and business) and a lifelong passion for solving problems have to offer to the payments space? You mean besides a genuine desire to accelerate the industry and a resume that includes 5 successful companies to establish his foundation before he even went fintech? A lot! Anchor Co-Founder and CEO Rom Lakritz has taken his passion for problem solving to the next level with his automated invoicing and accounting software that...

A self-driven man with a passion for innovation that changes the marketplace and “doing payments right,” One Inc. CEO Ian Drysdale is a true leader in the payments space, with a resume that includes some of the biggest names in payments. So, how did he get his first job at PNC? He simply cold called the CEO and asked him for it. For those of you that may not know, One Inc. is a leading digital payments platform for the insurance industry. They facilitate upwards of $20 billion in payments...