Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. Listening to Sammy Rubin and it’s hard not to feel his infectious excitement about his firm YuLife. He’s taking the humdrum of life insurance and gamified it -- YuLife’s app feels more like an exercise or meditation app than it does insurance. It’s that openness to reimagine financial services that colors his leadership, company, and products. Sammy joins me on the podcast to discuss the genesis of YuLife, his previous entrepreneurship in the space, and his approach to life insurance. We talk about how early customers of his firm have responded to gamified insurance -- how they’re using the app and how they’re making positive changes in their lives. We also look forward to see what else he’s gearing up to do. YuLife founder and CEO Sammy Rubin is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. As banks and credit unions look to modernize to digital payments, they’re turning to firms like Payveris to handle things like bill pay and P2P transfers. Payveris provides cloud payment software to 265 banks and credit unions. Payveris Chief Innovation Officer Marcell King joins me on the podcast to talk about the evolution of banks’ participation in payments and where the market is headed in the future. In a world of Square and PayPal, Marcell describes where banks can compete and find a competitive edge. Shortly after we recorded this call, bill payment player Paymentus announced that it was acquiring Payveris in an attempt to increase the addressable market opportunity for the combined firm. Here’s my conversation with Marcell King.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with small business lender BlueVine to produce a four part series on creating financial solutions serving historically underserved small businesses. In this episode, we spoke with the CEOs of both BlueVine and NEXT Insurance -- two companies founded on addressing the needs of small businesses, out of a recognition that small businesses make up a huge deal of the economy.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. It may be surprising to hear that 124 million Americans are credit union members. Serving that constituency isn’t always easy. That’s because client expectations are high as financial service providers compete on experiences with Netflix and Amazon. CUNA Mutual Group partners with over 95% of all credit unions in the US to help them better serve their membership with insurance and investment proucts. CUNA Mutual Group also invests in fintech. Brian Kaas is the managing director of CMFG Ventures, the firm’s venture capital arm. He joins me on the podcast today to discuss the challenges credit unions face and the role fintech is beginning to play to help them level the playing field. We talk about CMFG’s mandate and some of the firm’s investments like Affirm, Current, Good Money, and Steady.. Lastly, we look ahead to see just where Brian is interested in investing in the future. Brian Kaas is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

When you talk to Bill Barhydt about his days at Netscape, you can’t help but feel that he’s reliving that excitement today -- with cryptocurrencies. He’s the founder and CEO at Abra, a crypto wealth management platform that includes a brokerage, high yield investments, as well as a cryptocurrency lending service. Bill joins us on the podcast to talk about the firm’s genesis story, going global, and how Abra services the needs of its consumer and institutional clients in almost 100 countries. We discuss about the evolution of crypto and how the old school banking world and digital asset ecosystems are already working together. Bill shares more about the firm’s recent launch of its crypto lending service and where that product might go in the future. Bill Barhydt is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with payment as a service provider Volante Technologies to produce a two part series on banks transforming their payments to the cloud and the road to streamlining the customer journey. The payments space is changing. Technology providers are stepping up and offering FIs the ability to modernize their existing payment processes. Through their cloud-based platforms, Payments as a Service providers make it possible for banks to provide digital services that modern customers desire and expect. The move to partnering with a PaaS provider means that FIs can reap the benefits of moving to the forefront of digital transformation -- but what does that really mean?

Today’s guest on the podcast is Matt Sueoka, head of global strategy, partnerships and enablement for Amex Digital Labs. We discuss what it takes to scale new form factors in digital payments. Matt shares how Amex Digital Labs makes investments, chooses partners and prioritizes its product pipeline across form factors like QR, tokenization, and P2P -- Matt gives real like examples of projects that were headed by his part of the organization that eventually found a home in American Express’ product portfolio.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with crypto brokerage Paxos to create a podcast series about the mainstreaming of crypto, the genesis of Paxos, the rise of stablecoins, and crypto’s energy and environmental impact. Alongside the mainstreaming of crypto are concerns about the impact of its mining on the environment. While a significant amount of crypto is mined with renewable sources like solar and hydro, much of it still relies on non-renewable, carbon dioxide emitting sources. For the final episode of this series, we spoke with Paxos’ CEO Charles Cascarilla about the truth behind the concerns, the relationship between economy and energy, and what he learned from building his own crypto mining farm.

Retail is enjoying a fintech Renaissance of sorts -- from BNPL and other new forms of payments to a maturation of the ecommerce checkout experience. Fast is building one-click checkout on merchant sites across the internet. Much like Uber made payments invisible, Fast is doing something similar for shopper identities. Creating accounts on sellers’ sites has always been an impediment to the payment flow. Fast takes away that friction with an elegant solution that shares user information with merchants and also integrates to include SKU-level data. Allison Barr Allen is co-founder and COO of Fast. She joined Fast from Uber, where she was head of global product operations for the Money Team. As my guest on the podcast, Allison describes some of the challenges inherent in ecommerce payments. We chat about the opportunity to go both global in scale as well as niche down into specific industry solutions. Allison Barr Allen is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with payment as a service provider Volante Technologies to produce a two part series on banks transforming their payments to the cloud and the road to streamlining the customer journey. Volante helps banks around the world rise to the challenge of digital transformation. Through simplifying payment systems and processes, they help banks modernize their customer experience. And what sets Volante apart is its technology architecture -- it was built from the ground up for the cloud.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. With all the fintech and focus on the unbanked and underbanked, there are still tens of millions of Americans who lack access to mainstream financial services. Those are Mission Lane’s customers. A spinoff of LendUp, the firm’s credit card is the first product in a portfolio designed to address this demographic’s financial needs and wants. Shane Holdaway is Mission Lane CEO. After a career on the other side of the aisle, running businesses for large traditional financial institutions, he’s charged with leading the company into its next stage of maturity. We talk about his personal transition from finance to fintech and how that informs his work. We talk about why the financial industry has failed so many and what he and his firm plan to launch and grow in the future. Shane Holdaway is my guest on the Tearsheet Podcast.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with crypto brokerage Paxos to create a podcast series about the mainstreaming of crypto, the genesis of Paxos, the rise of stablecoins, and crypto’s energy and environmental impact. The mainstreaming of crypto means the mainstreaming of blockchain technology as well. Through blockchain, it is now possible to hold all assets — within and outside the cryptocurrency market — safely and decentralized. Stablecoins are an attractive digital asset, because they promise to pave the way for a new and improved movement of money.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. 47 percent of professionals in the US are considering investing in and launching embedded finance offerings. That’s according to a new report produced by Plaid and Accenture Research. A majority of non-financial companies are using partners, buying, or licensing technology as part of an embedded finance strategy. Plaid’s COO Eric Sager joins Ben Brown, cross-industry financial services lead at Accenture, on the podcast to talk about embedded finance -- what competitive trends are at work, where embedded finance is headed and what it takes to be a winner in the space as new brands move into banking and finance.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with Q2, a digital banking software company, to create a four part podcast series on the interplay between banks and fintechs. We no longer view them as diametrically opposed. With new embedded finance and banking as a service technology, banks and fintechs can work together to serve customers better. Banks and fintechs can collaborate to give customers what they’re best at delivering. Jonathan Price, Q2: My name is Jonathan Price. I run emerging businesses at Q2. It’s an organization that we set up in late 2019, early 2020 that brings together the fintech ecosystem and the bank and credit union ecosystem that Q2 has always served. There's really four legs of the stool to the emerging businesses group at Q2. The first two are the enterprise wide functions of corporate and business development: how we think about and execute M&A, as well as partnerships. And then the other two legs of the stool are incubated startups inside the company. One called Q2 BaaS, which is our banking as a service business. And then what we announced just a couple of weeks ago, Q2 Innovation Studio. That's an interesting new business we launched in 2020 and just went GA last month. We're letting the third party ecosystem ride the rails of our digital banking platform, our core product of the company, and opened up that SDK to third parties, allowing them to access the channel of banks and credit unions that use our digital banking platform. That includes over 18 million end users, as well as approximately 2 million small businesses.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with crypto brokerage Paxos to create a podcast series about the mainstreaming of crypto, the genesis of Paxos, the rise of stablecoins, and crypto’s energy and environmental impact. We’ve reached a point in history where there are no longer two distinct financial systems: the incumbent financial system and the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Some of the most popular fintech apps like PayPal, Revolut, and Venmo have introduced access to crypto. Many of the largest banks have plans to offer crypto trading to their clients. And credit card companies are making it easier to convert crypto to fiat at the point of sale. We call this the mainstreaming of crypto.