Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. Today’s guest on the program is Amit Parikh, executive vice president of its banking as a service (BaaS) division. In this role, Parikh will lead the organization responsible for delivering end-to-end technology and program management to Green Dot’s banking as a service partners, and building financial ecosystems for some of the world’s most prominent consumer and technology companies, like Apple, Uber, and Quickbooks. Parikh joins Green Dot from Apple, where he built partnerships and features. He was most recently Head of Wallet Services Partnerships, a role in which he led a team responsible for transit, access and new initiatives; and he served as Chief Operating Officer of Apple Payments. Just four months into his new role, Amit joins me on the podcast to talk about banking as a service and where he plans to lead Green Dot in the future.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet Editor in Chief, Zack Miller. One of the things I find so interesting about JPMorgan Chase is its ethos of being an underdog in spite of having 56 million digitally active customers on its website and mobile app. The firm is actively developing and rolling out new functionality with a frequency that belies its size. Today’s guest on the show is Allison Beer, Chief Product Officer and Head of Customer Experience and Digital at Chase. In a discussion around the future of digital banking as we reemerge after the pandemic, we talk about three key trends: automation, personalization and real-time payments. Allison provides us a look into the firm’s product roadmap -- we also look back to Chase’s Finn brand and what the takeaways were from that experience. Lastly, we discuss how Chase looks to fintech, Big Tech, and other non financial brands for inspiration around UX with a vision towards the future of banking. Allison Beer is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet Editor in Chief, Zack Miller. As an early PayPal employee, Oded Zehavi jumpstarted the firm’s Middle East and Africa business. From there, he joined Payoneer to help with a turnaround by optimizing sales, product and marketing. Now, Oded is the CEO and co-founder of Mesh Payments, a corporate payments firms that uses a speciality in helping firms manage their subscription spend to eventually handle their total spend. We talk about the changes Oded has seen in the payments industry over the past 15 years and where he thinks it’s headed in the future. We drill down into opportunities for payments firms in the SaaS economy and how Mesh uses its experience managing SaaS payments to expand into its clients total spend -- it grew 600 percent over the past year. Oded Zehavi is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with employment data platform Argyle to create a podcast series about the rising importance of employment data and how lenders, banks and fintechs are using this data to make financial products available to more people, solving some of the challenges with today’s financial services. Thanks to rapid technological advancements, everything we know about work is constantly changing. The pandemic also brought about massive job losses and many career paths changed as a result. With the rise of the gig economy, this new reality means more and more people are joining the non-traditional, multi-income workforce. Financial systems, like credit scoring, weren't built for this new worker -- they were built for the W2 worker, with a single full-time job and monthly pay stubs. This leaves non-traditional workers underserved by traditional financial services, and puts major hurdles in the way of deserving folks toward their financial wellbeing. Fintechs like Argyle look to technology to create transparency and empower everyday people.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet Editor in Chief, Zack Miller. An important theme we’ve covered has been the rising availability of earned wage access solutions. As more workers engage in the gig economy, fintech and payment solutions are emerging that help people access their wages as they earn them, instead of waiting for a monthly or bi-weekly pay cycle. Payfare is one of those companies. Fresh off an IPO in Toronto in March of this year, the company works with platforms like Uber, Lyft, and Doordash to enable their workers to get paid. Payfare CEO Marco Margiotta joins us on the podcast to discuss the move to go public and what changes that presented to management. Marco discusses trends in gig economy payments and earned wage access. Lastly, we look ahead to see where earned wage access matures to and how Payfare’s products will continue to support workers. Marco Margiotta is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with employment data platform Argyle to create a podcast series about the rising importance of employment data and how lenders, banks and fintechs are using this data to make financial products available to more people, solving some of the challenges with today’s financial services. Good fintech solutions address the status quo of who gets to benefit from financial services. They do so by first recognizing that there is power in non-traditional data, and secondly that the ownership of that data belongs with its creator: the consumer. From providing mobile-based banking services where brick and mortar banks don’t compete, to simplifying payment flows for one-person businesses, fintechs empower individuals by giving them the financial tools and pathways to improving their lives. I spoke with Hannah Arnold, vp of business development at Argyle, about using employment data to supplement poor or nonexistent credit in the lending process.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Tearsheet Editor in Chief, Zack Miller. OppFi is a fintech platform offering financial products to most Americans. The business was built on a core small-dollar monthly installment loan product for near prime customers. As it goes public, OppFi is expanding its product set into credit cards and payroll deduction products serving consumers with FICO scores under 620 with incomes of $50,000 a year. OppFi CEO Jared Kaplan joins me on the podcast to discuss the types of financial products 150 million Americans can use to live their lives and what their alternatives are. We discuss OppFi’s growth trajectory and plans for the future as a public company. Lastly, we hit on how the firm differentiates from its competitors, including Upstart, which at first blush, feels quite similar.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. When you look at investment behavior, people are more likely to invest in things family and friends invest in than they are to follow professional advice. That’s why there have been an infinite number of social investment platforms created that allow investors to copy one another. But when it comes to investing in real estate or creating businesses together, friends and families had to essentially recreate the wheel each time they made an investment. That includes creating a company with legal documents, funding an account, managing a cap table. There’s a lot that goes into it and that’s what Tribevest wants to help with. Tribevest is an early stage company that provides what an investor group needs to make investments: including a bank account, a schedule of contributions and communication tools. CEO Travis Smith joins me on the podcast to talk about his own personal journey putting money in private investments that he took with his brothers. We talk about who’s using the platform, the investment use cases he’s seeing on the platform, and his plans for the future. Travis Smith is my guest on the Tearsheet Podcast.

T>he following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with employment data platform Argyle to create a podcast series about the rising importance of employment data and how lenders, banks and fintechs are using this data to make financial products available to more people, solving some of the challenges with today’s financial services. A fintech CTO’s job is wide and varied. Building a secure fintech solution that handles sensitive financial and employment data requires you to tread carefully. You can’t really move fast and break things. It gets really interesting when you imagine the challenge of getting at employment data, for example, requires building new tools on top of legacy tech stacks that weren’t built with modern fintech requirements in mind. Argyle's CTO Audrius Zujus speaks to Tearsheet editor in chief about the challenge and opportunity to build fintech solutions that are scalable and secure.

I’m Zack Miller, editor in chief of Tearsheet. The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with employment data platform Argyle to create a podcast series about the rising importance of employment data and how lenders, banks and fintechs are using this data to make financial products available to more people, solving some of the challenges with today’s financial services. The nature of work is changing. People are taking on more gigs, driving for Uber, freelancing on projects. I talk with Argyle CEO and founder Shmulik Fishman about the opportunity to build an employment data ecosystem, connecting employers, payroll providers, and consumers. We discuss his entrepreneurial journey, the technical challenges ahead, and the role of consumer-permissioned data in the financial industry.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. This article was sent out to subscribers to EarlyStage, Tearsheet’s newest newsletter. With EarlyStage, we go deeper on some younger companies that point to trends, products and services, and entrepreneurs that should be on your radar screen. Into a sea of sameness, new challenger banks are launching left and right. More are focusing on demographic needs, like providing banking services to the LGBTQ community or to immigrants. Better Financial, on the other hand, addresses a problem the majority of Americans know well: financial shocks. It could be losing a job or getting sick. Better Financial has embedded insurance products into its banking platform that provide a safety net for when something unexpected happens. It all happens behind the scenes. Thiel fellow and founder Kaushik Tiwari is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. Revenue based financing is quickly becoming a popular route for businesses to tap into needed capital. Structured like a loan and not equity, new financing firms are using this new/old type of financing to help all types of businesses to scale. ClearCo brands itself as the world’s largest ecommerce investor. It’s fresh off of closing its own $100 million equity round, including $250 million debt facility. The company, which rebranded from Clearbanc, has close to a $2 billion valuation and is sharing new data on how Clearco’s proprietary AI is democratizing funding to female founders and people of color. ClearCo’s co-founders, Michele Romanow and Andrew D’Souza, an entrepreneurial couple, join me to discuss their plans for with this new round of funding and why ClearCo is well positioned to fuel entrepreneurship outside of typical venture networks and regions.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. The journey from screen scraping consumer financial data to API, permissioned access continues. U.S. Bank recently announced a partnership with technology partner, Plaid. Gareth Gaston from U.S, Bank and Ginger Baker from Plaid join us to talk about the recently announced integration between the two around consumer financial data. We discuss the nature of the integration and why it’s significant. Both Ginger and Gareth describe the relevance of the US Bank permission hub and Plaid portal synching. We also talk about the impact API deals like this have on consumer behavior and fintech uptake.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. Corporate credit card firm Ramp is hot off a big fundraising making it one of the youngest firms to reach billion dollar valuation status in history having launched in February 2020. Eric Glyman, Ramp’s co-founder and CEO, joins me on the podcast to talk about how Ramp’s positioning to help its business clients spend less has impacted its trajectory. We discuss the most recent fundraising round that saw Stripe, Goldman Sachs, and Thrive participate and what’s interesting investors around Ramp’s software-led model. Eric describes how Ramp’s product is changing, maturing. Ramp’s Eric Glyman is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. Money continues to pour into the space. From IPOs to large venture rounds to SPACs, there’s a lot of liquidity sloshing around. And yet, there are still lots of opportunities. JAM FINTOP Banktech is a $150 million investment fund, looking to deploy capital into tech firms serving community banks around the US. What’s really interesting is all 66 of the fund’s limited partners are community banks, accounting for $600 billion in assets. That would rank as the fifth largest US bank. The fund is a partnership between Fintop Capital and Jacobs Asset Management (which we’ll refer to as JAM.) On today’s show, we have Joe Maxwell of Fintop, joined by Adam Aspes and Ryan Zechariah of Jacobs Asset Management on the show to talk about the fund and its investments, sure. But it’s also a conversation around the future of community banking and what kinds of tools and technologies they’ll need to be competitive in the future.