Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

The growth of digital banking has also welcomed the emergence of virtual cards. Virtual cards exist only in digital form, in a digital wallet. Say bye to plastic and hello to code. This is a big reason why virtual cards are increasing in popularity – they offer more robust security measures, making it harder for hackers and fraudsters to skirt the system. There's also very compelling business use cases for virtual cards. Corporate expense management might be moving from tediously having to submit all that boring info about that client lunch to just tapping a virtual corporate card with a smartphone. Some have even called this a revolution in business expense management – no more boring time consuming software, now a company can issue however many corporate cards it wants and each card can have its own restrictions. I'm talking about all of this today with my guests Kalpesh Kapadia, CEO at Deserve, a credit-card-as-a-service provider, and Brian Barnes, CEO at personal finance platform M1. Click here to read the transcript of our conversation: https://tearsheet.co/where-credits-due-podcast/where-credits-due-ep-13-the-growing-popularity-of-virtual-cards-with-deserve-and-m1

Welcome back to the Power of Payments podcast. I’m your host Ismail Umar, and in today’s episode, we will discuss why JPMorgan Chase is launching a digital rent payment solution, and how American consumers plan to use more flexible payments this holiday season. We will also talk about MoneyGram’s recent crypto expansion, and the potential role of digital currencies in the remittance industry.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. I’m just back from Money 20/20 and a big theme this year was embedded finance. There were a host of old and new players vying for position in the financial tech stack. It makes sense – a few years ago, you could have counted the embedded platforms on one hand. Now there are dozens, just in the US. Enter Lithic, a software infrastructure company that enables companies to launch new card programs. I sit with co-founder and CEO, Bo Jiang, who shares his firm’s genesis story and describes the impact being born out of a consumer app has had on Lithic. We talk about how the firm stacks up against other embedded finance players and the need to scale as a platform in the space. Bo Jiang is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Today we're talking about voluntary carbon markets and carbon credit ratings. So many companies are now making net zero commitments, and the way to get there is by cutting down their own emissions and using voluntary carbon credits to compensate for residual emissions, as it's nearly impossible to be perfectly carbon neutral without them. However, the voluntary carbon credit market is relatively new and many companies are over relying on carbon credits in the rush to call themselves carbon neutral. In order for this market to function properly, it needs accessible and quality information as well as trust and integrity. We need more funds to flow towards climate solutions, and carbon markets can facilitate this by creating investable carbon assets. But we need to ensure that on the supply side, the carbon credits are of the highest quality, and on the demand-side we need to avoid ‘greenwashing’ by ensuring those credits do not allow companies to avoid cutting their own emissions. I'm talking about all this today with Tommy Ricketts, CEO of BeZero Carbon, a company that provides carbon credit ratings and research tools to support buyers, intermediaries, investors, and carbon project developers. To read the transcript of our conversation, visit Tearsheet.co.

With a recession looming, consumer spending and overall financial health is under pressure, creating a tricky environment for B2C fintech lenders. Today, thereʼs less demand for consumer loans, and lenders are tightening their credit books. The ʻcautious approachʼ narrative prevails in many interviews and conference calls. But not every fintech lender is the same. There are many business models currently on the market – some more successful than others – and on most of them, the juryʼs still out. Most havenʼt been tested yet by a down market, which is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome for any lender. In this context, I sat down with Renaud Laplanche, CEO at Upgrade, one of the main direct-to-consumer fintech lenders in the US. We discussed the macro environment, and how he designed Upgradeʼs business model in a way that is proving resilient during these turbulent times. To read the transcript of our conversation, head over to Tearsheet.co.

Welcome back to the Power of Payments podcast. I’m your host Ismail Umar, and in today’s episode, I’m joined by Chris Tsai, co-founder and CEO at Resolve. Resolve is a B2B payments firm that offers a BNPL solution for business purchases. It allows merchants to extend net terms to their business customers by taking care of credit checks, invoice financing, and accounts receivable processes. Resolve spun out of Affirm and is backed by Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal and Affirm. In our conversation, Chris talks about how Resolve’s product is different than that of consumer BNPL providers like Affirm and Klarna, how current macroeconomic challenges are affecting firms in the space, and what we can expect from the B2B BNPL sector in the coming years.

When it comes to investing in sustainable projects, there are still many unknowns. Demand from investors is growing, but it's not consistent across the board and connecting it to the supply side remains challenging. Project financiers usually take less technical risks on more mature technologies, and when it comes to sustainability, many technologies are new. We need tools that enable project financiers to get comfortable with exploring and entering new markets. It will be interesting to see how the new Inflation Reduction Act will help on this front, and we are chatting about this today with Amanda Li, Co-Founder and COO of Banyan Infrastructure. Banyan is an investment facilitator for sustainable infrastructure headquartered in San Francisco, a business on a mission to unlock capital for the financing of green infrastructure projects of all sizes in a profitable way. Amanda has over ten years’ experience in engineering for sustainable development. Passionate about opening financial doors for green infrastructure projects. We had a real fun conversation, so let's dive right in.

Today we're having an honest conversation about Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). The ease of use of BNPL products has been associated with increased spending and could drive negative consumer consequences, prompting US regulatory agencies to look deeper at this rapidly growing space. Last December, the CFPB launched an investigation into the business practices in BNPL sector due to mounting concerns about “accumulating debt, regulatory arbitrage, and data harvesting in a consumer credit market already quickly changing with technology.” Then the bureau issued orders to five BNPL lenders, asking for detailed information on the activities and risks inherent to their lending practices. Director Rohit Chopra ordered Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal, and Zip to submit information so that the bureau can report to the public about industry practices and risks. Now the report is out, and we're exploring it in today's episode with my guest Marshall Lux. With a credit risk experience spanning over three decades, including serving as JPMorgan Chase’s Chief Risk Officer of consumer products during the global financial crisis, Marshall supports enhanced regulatory oversight in the BNPL space. He wrote a paper on the risks associated with BNPL, and on what regulation could look like in this space. You can check it out here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/mrcbg/files/182_AWP_final.pdf To read the transcript of our conversation, please go to Tearsheet.co.

Welcome back to the Power of Payments podcast. I’m your host Ismail Umar, and in today’s episode, we take a look at how digital wallets have performed in the US over the past year, and why credit cards are struggling to fight off competitors like BNPL and debit cards. We also discuss Visa’s latest move indicating its growing interest in the global creator economy.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Zack Miller, Tearsheet's editor in chief. Building on top of a bank – the way Banking as a Service enables a tech company to do – has some interesting side effects. Who controls the traffic in the network? Regulators are increasingly interested in sorting out how financial institutions partner with tech firms and that means understanding how all these constituent parts fit together. Today’s guest is Andrew Coward, general manager of IBM’s software networking business. His team works with financial institutions on SDN – or software defined networking – to bring control and policy management back into their infrastructure regardless of where their application lives. Andrew explains what SDN is and how we got here in history. We discuss how SDN plays into the future of financial services, too. I ask Andrew about the rollout of 5G and how that impacts banks and traditional FIs. Andrew Coward is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

In addition to making a profit, banks can be a societal force for good. This is why Ken LaRoe came out of retirement to start Climate First Bank, the world’s first climate-focused, FDIC-insured commercial bank. Climate First Bank joined the Net-Zero Banking Alliance in January 2022 and is currently in the process of building out its 2050 plan. Climate First Bank is based in Florida, a state destined to be the epicenter of climate change-induced effects. They really want to set an example for other banks, especially when it comes to emissions reporting. We also chat about the politicized world of climate change. It's not easy to be a climate advocate in Florida, where the political winds blow against this agenda. To read the transcript of our conversation, please visit tearsheet.co.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with payments provider Fiserv to create a podcast series about open finance and the work of empowering fintechs, brands, and FIs to collaborate and innovate together. In our sixth conversation in the series, we speak to SVP and head of fintech at Fiserv, Sunil Sachdev, and senior strategic sales manager at ConsenSys, Daniel Lynch. We discuss the potential for fintech to leverage Web3 technology to enhance customer experiences and inspire loyalty.

Welcome back to the Power of Payments podcast. I’m your host Ismail Umar, and in today’s episode, I’m joined by Gaurav Sethi, chief strategy officer at Citizens Pay. Citizens Pay is a bank-owned BNPL offering from Citizens Bank, one of the oldest financial institutions in the US, which provides retail and commercial banking products and services to individuals, small businesses, and large corporations. In our conversation, Gaurav talks about how being a bank-owned BNPL provider differentiates Citizens Pay from other major players in the space like Klarna and Affirm, how the current macroeconomic climate is impacting Citizens Pay as well as other BNPL firms, and the recent report from the CFPB and what increased regulation would look like for BNPL lenders.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s founder and editor-in-chief, Zack Miller. If we were only talking about the benefits of open finance a couple of years ago, we’re already seeing open finance take root today. Firms like Plaid and Codat are showing the power of integrating customer financial data across firms and into apps. New use cases are popping up all the time. Today’s guest is Peter Lord, CEO of Codat. Codat zeroes in on small business financial data. That’s a very different problem to solve than, say, aggregating consumer data. Pete joins me on the podcast to talk about the challenges of wrangling SMB financial data. We also chat about how and where he decides to provide value-added services on top of the data he’s sharing versus just providing the raw data. Pete shares his feedback on the evolution of use cases for SMB financial data he’s seen over the past 5 years of running Codat.

We've talked a lot on this podcast about the growing consumer awareness around climate change. Considering the scale of the problem, a lot of us feel like we're not doing enough, but also that there's only so much we can do. It's hard to know even where to start as a person, and it gets even harder at company or government level. But we are learning, and one of the biggest lessons that I think will define this decade is how our financial choices impact the planet. We choose to shop at a particular store, we choose to buy from a certain brand and we choose to eat what we eat. Same goes for the financial system – banks and financial institutions choose who to lend to, and they choose which sectors warrant investments. Studies show that when it comes to their bank, consumers do care about alignment with personal values – it was the second-most prized service by bank customers, right after higher interest rates on savings accounts. The majority of people want to know more about the environmental impact of how they spend their money and want their banks to help them take action and reduce their environmental impact. Moreover, consumers also want their banks to decarbonize, considering the financial support they've given over the past decades to the fossil fuel industry, for example. But in order to make the right choices - that is, the choices with the least negative impact on the planet - we need information, we need tools. This means data and technology at scale. I'm talking about this today with my guest Emma Kisby, UK & Europe CEO of Cogo - a company that provides carbon footprint management products that enable individuals and businesses to measure, reduce and offset their impact on the climate. There's lots to cover, so let's dive right in. To read the transcript of our conversation, click here: https://tearsheet.co/the-green-finance-podcast/the-green-finance-podcast-ep-10-tangible-steps-banks-can-take-to-help-their-customers-lower-their-carbon-footprint/