Leaders In Payments

Stablecoins are no longer a side project for crypto-native companies, they’re turning into serious payment rails for global business. I sit down with Anna Kratky Strebl, CEO of Confirmo Group, to unpack what stablecoin payments look like when you move past hype and start solving real problems: accepting funds from customers worldwide, sending mass payouts to contractors and traders, and reducing the mess of maintaining countless local payment methods. Anna shares her path from working in inte...

Payments integrations have a reputation for being slow, fragile, and painfully dependent on specialists. We wanted to challenge that assumption, so we sat down with Casey Conley, Chief Product Officer at Payroc, to talk about a shift that’s quickly becoming impossible to ignore: agentic development and AI-driven developer experience for payments. Casey explains what’s actually changing when developers can describe what they want in plain language and let AI agents handle the mechanical work o...

Payments used to be the big unlock for vertical SaaS. Now it is the baseline, and the real question is what you build on top of it. I sit down with Sunil Sachdev, SVP and Head of Embedded Finance and Digital Assets at Fiserv, to get specific about how software platforms can expand from embedded payments into embedded banking, lending, and cash flow tools without losing focus or taking on unnecessary operational risk. We talk through how to define embedded finance in a way that makes sense to ...

Your software might be the system of record, but if someone else owns the money movement, your growth is capped. Greg Myers sits down with Jane Podbelskaya, Founder of Charge Forward, and Jake Colognesi, Founder of Mamba Growth Equity, to dig into what separates “we added payments” from a truly investable embedded finance strategy for vertical SaaS. We get specific about why embedded finance can feel almost unfair when it’s done right: revenue scales with your customers’ transaction volume, o...

Payments doesn’t usually fail because of one big mistake. It fails quietly through a thousand small frictions: too many processing relationships, too many portals, mismatched branding, clunky onboarding, and residual reporting that turns into a monthly spreadsheet marathon. Greg Myers sits down with Ben Griefer, President and COO of Maverick, to talk about what breaks first when an ISO, agent organization, or ISV tries to scale and why “just add another provider” is the fastest way to lose fo...

Embedded finance can be the cleanest growth lever a software platform has, but most teams discover the hard way that launching payments is the easy part. Real success comes down to adoption, ownership, and building a customer experience that makes payments and other financial products feel native, not bolted on. Greg Myers sits down with Revolv Co-founders Ali Mast and Ashley Willson to unpack the translation gap between SaaS operators and payments providers, and why that gap quietly kills at...

This conversation is part of a three-part series about Embedded Finance that Jane Podbelskaya and I are launching leading up to Embedify 2026, our summit for vertical SaaS leaders on October 13 in Lehi, Utah. Embedded finance sounds simple until you try to scale it. I sit down with Jane, Founder of Charge Forward and a former software engineer turned VC and fintech investor, to unpack the real drivers behind embedded finance adoption in vertical SaaS. The big theme is organizational rea...

Trust can be the difference between getting “a couple test deals” and becoming the payments partner an agent builds a business on. Greg Myers sits down with Andie Hill, EVP of Agent Sales at Payroc, to unpack what payment providers must prove to earn an independent sales agent’s confidence and keep merchant referrals flowing over the long run. We dig into the real gap between recruiting and earning the business, including why onboarding is where trust most commonly breaks. Andy explains what ...

QuickBooks and spreadsheets aren’t failing because small business owners don’t care. They fail because owners are busy running the business, and “keeping the books” becomes a second job with high stakes. I sit down with Justin Meretab, co-founder and CEO of Layer, to dig into why embedded accounting is emerging as one of the most practical, high-ROI moves in embedded finance for vertical SaaS platforms. We unpack the difference between accounting software and bookkeeping, then get specific ab...

This conversation is part of a three-part series about Embedded Finance that Jane and I are launching leading up to Embedify 2026, our summit for vertical SaaS leaders on October 13 in Lehi, Utah. AI is making software faster to build, easier to copy, and harder to price with the old per-seat subscription model. So where does durable growth come from when “more features” no longer guarantees higher ARPU and AI agents start doing the work your users used to do? We think the answer is hiding in...

Real-time payments are finally delivering what everyone asked for: near-instant settlement. But when the buffer disappears, a new risk takes center stage: not “was the credential valid,” but “did the actor have authority to create the obligation.” Greg Myers sits down with Jeremy Blackburn, founder and CEO of ChainIT, to unpack why authority verification may become the most important layer in modern payments, especially as AI agents start initiating transactions on behalf of people and busine...

Your “global” checkout is only as strong as its most local payment method. I’m joined by João Del Valle , CEO of EBANX, to unpack what really happens when a fast-growing merchant tries to launch across emerging markets and discovers that international card acquiring alone is not enough. We get specific about why local payments unlock demand, from PIX in Brazil to pay by bank experiences and domestic card brands like Verve, and why these rails can determine whether you reach the market at all....

Trust is the hidden advantage that decides which payments companies earn bigger merchants, stronger partners, and more room to innovate. Greg Myers sits down with Darrel Anderson, Senior Vice President of Compliance at Payroc, to get specific about how trust is built in a world of constant audits, card brand rules, bank expectations, and fast-moving fraud. We share why “perfect security” is easy if you lock everything down, and why the real craft is building a compliance framework that protec...

This episode is part of our Embedded Finance Podcast Series, exploring the strategies, opportunities and challenges shaping the future of embedded finance. The series is leading up to Embedify ’26, the Embedded Finance Summit for vertical SaaS leaders, taking place October 13 in Lehi, Utah. To learn more visit embedify2026.com. Payments don’t fail because the API is hard. They fail because the experience is forgettable and customers never adopt it. We talk with John Badovinac, SVP of E...

Your LinkedIn feed will be full of “great to see you” posts after WSAA 2026, but the real value happens before the photos, in the hallways and late-night conversations where partnerships actually start. I’m joined by Amanda Beam, Vice President of Partner Relations at Exectras and a member of the WSAA Board of Directors, to give you a clear preview of what to expect September 15th through 17th in Palm Springs, California and why this conference continues to be a must-attend for the acquiring ...

Insurance payments are one of the last places you’d expect to still see mountains of paper checks and yet that’s exactly what Todd Greenbaum says is happening across large parts of the industry. We sit down with the President and CEO of Input1 to unpack a simple idea with big consequences: moving money is often the easiest part, while reconciliation, allocation, reporting, and clean data flow are what decide whether billing feels modern or painful. We talk through how premium payments really ...

Payments is full of “after-the-fact” reporting, but we want a world where the system warns you before the damage is done. I’m joined by Ankita Chowdhry, AI Product Lead at Payabli, to break down where AI is genuinely making a difference in payments right now and where it’s still mostly experimentation. We get specific about risk queues, underwriting reviews, compliance workflows, and why modern reasoning models can reduce manual work without sacrificing safety. We also dig into what embedded ...

Legacy payments platforms do not usually fail with a dramatic outage. They fail by slowing every change request, inflating every integration, and turning “simple” upgrades like ISO 20022 into a stress test. Greg Myers sits down with Vijay Oddiraju, CEO and Co-founder of Volante Technologies, to talk about what banks are learning as real-time payments expand and modernization becomes unavoidable. We dig into how Volante started with a focus on automating financial data exchange, then found its...

Payments can be your second or third biggest cost line and one of your biggest levers for growth, yet most companies still treat payment performance like an afterthought until revenue dips. Greg Myers sits down with Klas Back,, CEO and Co-founder of Pagos, to unpack why enterprises keep “leaving money on the table” through avoidable declines, misconfigured vendors, outdated card network programs, and fragmented reporting that hides what is really happening. We get practical about what payme...

Embedded finance is booming, but most platforms miss the point: customers do not want more financial products, they want fewer steps. We sit down with Marni Mullikin, Director of Platform Growth at Maverick Payments, to unpack how vertical SaaS companies can embed payments in a way that actually improves workflow, increases engagement, and creates durable revenue. We dig into why embedded payments is usually the smartest first move, from faster revenue collection and better cash flow to the...

Waiting three to five days for funds isn’t just annoying, it quietly reshapes entire business models. I sit down with Arpit Goel, CEO of Root, to unpack why money movement in the United States still depends on slow, multi-hop workflows and how that slowness creates “float” across payroll, staffing, marketplaces, insurance, and the creator economy. When settlement is delayed, someone benefits, and Arpit makes a sharp case that incentives are the real blocker, not the lack of technology. We d...

This episode is part of our Embedded Finance Podcast Series, exploring the strategies, opportunities and challenges shaping the future of embedded finance. The series is leading up to Embedify ’26, the Embedded Finance Summit for vertical SaaS leaders, taking place October 13 in Lehi, Utah. To learn more visit embedify2026.com. In this episode I sat down with Conn Byrne, Executive Director of Integrated Payments at Payroc, to get practical about what embedded payments and embedded fin...

Merchant onboarding is where growth goes to die, and where fraud quietly sneaks in. We sit down with Noam Izhaki, Co-founder and CEO of Ballerine, to unpack why the payments stack can feel real-time and automated while KYC, KYB, underwriting, and compliance still depend on slow investigations, scattered systems, and ever-growing analyst teams. We walk through Noam’s journey from building early online platforms in Tel Aviv to learning hard lessons in remittances and then at Wix, where the sa...

Payments is getting smarter, faster, and more automated and that makes one question feel urgent: where does trust come from when the tech starts acting on our behalf? We sit down with Marielle Mekkaoui, Head of Marketing at Payabli, to talk about why the future of payments is still human, even in an AI-first era. We get into what embedded payments should actually look like inside vertical SaaS platforms, and why “embedded” cannot be a checkbox feature. Marielle breaks down Payabli’s view of...

Checkout is getting faster, smarter, and more invisible, but the stakes feel more human than ever. We talk with Jaime Hawkins, Managing Director, North America at Ingenico, about what it takes to build technology that quietly works in the background while people stay front and center. From her roots in industrial engineering to years of client-facing operations, Jaime explains how process thinking and data analytics shaped her into a different kind of commercial leader and why one mentor’s bl...

Payments are getting smoother on the surface, but the real story is what happens underneath when something changes, breaks, or needs to scale fast. That’s why our conversation with Ann Berkmeier, Chief Administrative Officer at Dash Solutions, centers on a simple idea with big consequences: companies don’t scale by accident, they scale by design. From her early work in large-scale banking migrations to leading global transformation programs and now operating at the intersection of people, AI ...

AI is racing into payments, but the uncomfortable truth is that speed without trust turns into risk fast. We sit down with Garima Chaudhary, VP of Financial Crime and Compliance AI at ThetaRay, to unpack what it really takes to modernize AML and sanctions compliance while keeping humans accountable for outcomes. Garima shares her career journey from engineering and operational risk into the high-stakes world of financial crime, where “follow the money” reveals both how economies grow and ho...

Payments are not just transactions anymore. They are software experiences, API connections, and full business operating systems, and that shift changes what leadership looks like across fintech. We sit down with Kim Molinaro, Head of ISV at Fiserv, to trace her path from fashion-focused marketing and early sales roles into 24 years in payment processing and partner growth, and to unpack what makes the ISV channel such a powerful engine for scale. We get specific about embedded payments: why...

Payments look like pure software until you move countries, get hit with fraud, or watch a “guaranteed” settlement date slip. That’s where the real story starts, and it’s why I loved talking with Kristin Reischel, Senior Director of Solutions and Partner Marketing at Rapyd, for our Women Leaders in Payments Month series sponsored by Payroc. Kristin shares a refreshingly honest career path: Boulder, Colorado roots, a fine art degree, a pivot into computer science, then early years at IBM wher...

Payments don’t fail as an abstract metric. They fail for a freelancer waiting to get paid, a small business trying to accept the locally normal method, or a customer who gets told “we don’t support how you pay.” That’s why our conversation with Clarice Lehman, Alternative Payments Operations Lead at DLocal, keeps landing on one theme: the future of payments has to stay human, even as the industry gets more automated, embedded, and AI-driven. We start with Clarice’s journey from Urugua...

Payments are getting smarter and more automated, but the real question is simpler: are we making life easier for the humans behind every transaction? For Women Leaders in Payments Month, we’re joined by Kimling Lam, Chief Marketing Officer at Fortis, to talk about what “the future is human” actually looks like inside fintech, embedded payments, and modern go-to-market teams. Special thanks to Payroc for sponsoring this year’s series and supporting the advancement of women across the payments ...

Payments are getting faster and more automated, but the hardest part still isn’t the tech. It’s trust. We talk with Rachel Costello, VP of Platform Growth at Maverick, about why the future of payments is human and how leaders can keep empathy, judgment, and real partnership at the center while AI and automation reshape everything around us. Rachel shares her career path into fintech, from early work in ad tech and e-commerce to revenue operations and growth roles, and why payments became th...

A failed payment is never just a technical error. It’s a customer stuck at checkout, a merchant losing revenue, and a moment where trust is either reinforced or broken. We sit down with Alexandra Dolia, co-founder and COO of Akurateco, to talk about what payments leadership looks like when you refuse to treat the industry like a black box and you build teams that can explain what’s happening end to end. Alexandra shares her path from Ukraine to a formative year in the United States as a tee...

Payments look instant and invisible until something goes wrong. That’s when you find out whether you’re working with a faceless system or a team you can actually trust. We sit down with Alex McCandless, EVP of Marketing and Training at Payroc, to get specific about what “people powered” really means in fintech and why transparency and access to real decision makers still matter in a world of automated transactions. Alex shares her career journey from the agency world into payment proc...

Payments are getting smarter, faster, and more automated, but the stakes are still deeply human. I sit down with Gunita Bindra, CRO of Paymode New Business Development at Bottomline, to talk about what it takes to lead in fintech when AI is reshaping how decisions get made and how money moves. Along the way, Ganita shares her path from computer science in India to roles in software engineering, solution consulting, product management, and now leading sales and partnerships in the B2B pa...

In this milestone 500th episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast, I bring together seven respected leaders from across the payments ecosystem for a special look at the state of the industry. Rather than a traditional one-on-one interview, this episode features perspectives from Jim Oberman, CEO of Payroc; Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore, President of SoFi Tech Solutions at SoFi; Greg Cohen, CEO of Fortis; Alex Shtilman, CEO and Co-Founder of Rapyd; Steve Pinado, CEO of NMI; Jess Houlgrave, CEO of W...

Checks still power a shocking amount of insurance money movement, and that single fact creates slow claims, higher operating costs, and an open door for fraud. Greg Myers sits down with Ian Drysdale, CEO of One Inc, to talk about what it really takes to drag property and casualty insurance payments into a modern digital payments era without breaking the workflows carriers rely on. We unpack how One Inc handles both sides of the insurance payments stack: premium payments (inbound merchant acqu...

Mailing checks to pay off a credit card in 2026 sounds like a joke, but it is still a real debt consolidation workflow at scale. Greg Myers sits down with Jose Bethancourt, Co-Founder and CEO of Method, to unpack why liability payments are uniquely messy and what it takes to make them feel as seamless as modern fintech promises. Jose shares his path from growing up in South Texas near the Mexico border to building products at UT Austin, then turning a personal problem into a company. GradJoy...

Fraud doesn’t usually announce itself with a flashing warning sign. It shows up as a chargeback, a fake account that looks “normal,” or an account takeover that slips through the exact same checkout flow your best customers use. Greg Myers sits down with Tamas Kadar, Co-Founder and CEO of SEON, to unpack how modern fraud actually works and how digital businesses can protect revenue without burying users under friction. Tamas shares the origin story that started with a real loss: a crypto che...

A “successful” card payment can still leave merchants waiting days to actually access their money, paying layers of fees along the way, and carrying fraud risk that never truly goes away. That gap between authorization and settlement is where cash flow gets squeezed, reconciliation gets messy, and margins get quietly taxed, especially as more commerce shifts to e-commerce and other card-not-present channels. We sit down with Marshall Greenwald, Founder and CEO of IoniaPay, to talk about chan...

A $400,000 B2B card payment sounds simple until a processor flags it, the finance team cannot reconcile it, and the invoice sits open while DSO creeps up. That gap between delivering product and collecting cash is where B2B payments either become a growth engine or a constant operational headache. I sits down with Thomas Cecil, Co-Founder of PAYRA, to unpack how modern accounts receivable automation actually works when you have real scale like thousands of invoices per month and customers pa...

AI is moving from “helpful assistant” to autonomous actor, and payments leaders are about to feel the difference. I sit down with Russell Moore, Co-Founder and CEO of Amotivv, to get concrete about what breaks when generative AI and agentic AI leave the lab and touch regulated data, customer outcomes, and real money movement. We talk through why so many AI initiatives stall after a promising proof of concept: not because the model is useless, but because teams cannot control the context, pro...

Payments don’t fail because teams lack ambition, they fail because the infrastructure can’t keep up with what customers expect. We sit down with Mike Milotich, CEO of Marqeta, to unpack how modern issuer processing is changing card issuing from a rigid bank product into configurable, real-time payments infrastructure built for innovation. We trace Mike’s 20-year journey across American Express, PayPal, Visa, and now Marqeta, and use that ecosystem view to explain what actually makes a card p...

Payments are speeding up everywhere, but the real story is what that speed breaks and what it demands from the people running the rails. I’m joined by Jennifer Barker, Global Head of Payments and Trade and Depositary Receipts at BNY, for a clear-eyed conversation about what’s changing in the payments industry and what leaders should do next when complexity keeps piling up. From her journey through consulting and nearly two decades in payments to leading multiple global roles at BNY, Jennifer ...

Paper checks are the easiest payment method to hate and one of the hardest to remove. They are slow, expensive, fraud-prone, and deeply baked into legacy workflows. Greg Myers sits down with Steven Faust, CEO of Dash Solutions, to unpack what it really takes to modernize business payouts and why disbursements have become one of the biggest growth engines in the payments industry. We dig into how Dash builds configurable payments software that supports multiple use cases through a single plat...

Moving money is easy to describe and brutally hard to do well at global scale. When your network supports thousands of clients across 90+ countries and touches thousands of currency pairs, you start to see a different map of what’s changing in payments and what’s just noise. Greg Myers sits down with Debo Sen, Head of Payments, Services at Citi, to unpack what that vantage point reveals about the future of institutional payments. We get specific on why payments have become strategic for corp...

The mid-market is where tech decisions get dangerous. You are big enough that uptime, security, and delivery speed matter every day, but you are not big enough to burn cash on massive consulting retainers or absorb the fallout from a shaky vendor. That “valley in the middle” is exactly where David Robinson lives, and it is why he built Stratos Development Group to offer right-fit technical leadership, managed services, and software development that feels structured without being out of reach....

Cross-border payouts are one of those problems everyone complains about and then quietly accepts: high fees, slow settlement, and endless workarounds to get money into the hands of real people. I sit down with Cyril Mathew, Co-Founder and CEO of Latitude, to talk about why “faster money movement” only matters when the recipient can actually spend it in local currency, not just hold a stablecoin balance. Cyril walks through the career path that shaped his view of payments infrastructure, from...

A “credit card fee” can protect your margins or quietly create compliance risk, and the difference usually comes down to one word: clarity. We sit down with Jim Oberman, CEO of Payroc, to unpack credit card surcharging in a way that merchants, software platforms, and payments teams can actually use, without hand-waving and without confusing it with every other fee customers see at checkout. We start with the fundamentals: what surcharging is, why it exists, and why it applies only to credit ...

Final settlement sounds great until you’re the one holding the fraud and compliance risk. That tension sits at the heart of my conversation with Pete Glyman, Founder and CEO of Coinbax, where we explore what it will actually take for stablecoin payments to work for banks, credit unions, and serious fintech programs. Pete shares his path from building and selling a fintech platform to leading digital asset strategy work, and why the regulatory climate and the rise of blockchain, tokenization,...