The Headless Banking Podcast
The Headless Banking Podcast explores how traditional banking services are being transformed by software, crypto, and technology platforms. Host Jeff Forkan discusses the future of banking, predicting that physical branches and online portals will become obsolete within the next decade. The podcast features insights on the intersection of finance and technology, aiming to educate listeners about the evolving landscape of banking.
Episodes
Revolutionizing Open Banking with Unified APIs
In this Headless Banking Podcast episode, Jeff talks with Ruben, co-founder and CEO of Quiltt, a unified API for open banking that provides access to multiple account aggregation and enrichment platforms through one integration and contract. Reuben shares his background in financial data (including S&P Capital IQ), how building a consumer budgeting app on Plaid revealed how messy and hard-to-use a
Revolutionizing Stablecoin for Cross-Border Payments with Conduit
In this episode of the Headless Banking Podcast, Jeff interviews Kirill, CEO of Conduit, to discuss the company's journey and the evolution of the stablecoin market. Kirill shares his background in financial services and fintech, including his experience and frustrations with outdated banking systems. He details Conduit's pivots, from providing DeFi APIs to focusing on stablecoin payments, particu
The Future of Global Treasury: Stablecoins, Blockchain, and AI
In this episode of the Headless Banking Podcast, we welcome back Jared Slivers from Fireblocks to discuss the current state and future of global treasury management using crypto and stablecoins. They explore why corporate treasurers have been slow to adopt these technologies, considering factors such as regulatory barriers, technology readiness, and the need for better local liquidity solutions. T
How Clair Built Earned Wage Access
Nico is a wizard when it comes to building fintech solutions, understanding regulation, and navigating difficult partnerships with Sponsor Banks. It was a joy to have him on and to hear how Clair was built from the ground up. Hope you all enjoy the episode. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit headlessbanking.subs
Global Banking for LATAM Startups
In this episode of The Headless Banking Podcast, Chris interviews Bernardo Brites, co-founder and CEO of trace financial, a company that provides international payments, FX, and multiple use bank accounts to help globalize LATAM businesses. Bernardo talks about his journey through FinTech, starting a money transfer business, and the evolution of their products.This episode was recorded at a very i
Unlocking Payroll Data
In this episode of The Headless Banking Podcast, Jeff interviews Brian Karimi-Pashaki, Head of Partnerships at Pinwheel, a company that provides income verification, direct deposit switching, and payroll data connectivity for FinTech & banks. Brian talks about his background in FinTech, starting at Goldman Sachs and buying third-party technology to build a Marcus. He also discusses the challenges
Globalizing the Investment Infrastructure
How do international entities allow their customers to get access to the US market? With the uncertainty of markets and currencies, Alpaca is facilitating the pipes for companies to expand their offerings by stretching out their technology globally to give access as they were located in the US.I sat down with Yoshi Yokokawa, Co-Founder and CEO of Alpaca, to discuss how they set this up and tirele
The Rise of eToro: A Social Trading Platform
In a world dominated by traditional brokerage firms, eToro stands out as a disruptor in the financial services industry. Founded in 2007, eToro offers a unique social trading platform that has attracted millions of users worldwide. The company's co-founder, Ronen Assia, has been instrumental in shaping eToro's vision and growth. eToro's rise is a testament to the power of disruption and innovation
Joseph Akintolayo | Founder, Deposits
I had the pleasure of speaking with Joseph Akintolayo, Founder and CEO of Deposits, the turn key solution for banks and brands to deliver experiences to customers without the need for technological expertise. Building personalized user experiences do not need to be massive cost and take a year to build. Joseph and his team are helping programs and FI’s get to market quick without breaking the ba
Sardine | Changing the Foundation of Fintech
If you haven’t yet heard of Sardine or you have but you aren’t sure what they do then you need to listen to this episode where I chat with Aditya Goel, Co-Founder of Sardine. Essentially Aditya & team have built the one-stop shop for creating the foundation of a Fintech company. They are tackling the most difficult problems that many folks consider boring but are absolutely foundational to the suc
Chris Joins the Fun!
A good friend and former colleague, Chris D’Antuono, will be hosting new episodes of the Pod. Can’t wait for his interviews with some great thought leaders in the Fintech world! In this episode, we give a brief background on Chris, talk about the stealth fintech he is building, some of the challenges he faced, and how he was able to overcome them. This is a public episode. If you would like to di
FTX Meltdown & Impact for Crpyto
Jared Silvers (Fireblocks) & Asaad Faquir (Crowe) both old friends & previous guests on the show join me to unpack what happened with FTX, what it means for the crypto industry in 2023, and why BTC is the only true decentralized currency vs altcoins, CBDCs, etc.. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit headlessbankin
Automate Your Most Annoying Task, Taxes!
I was fortunate to interview Ben Borodach, Co-Founder, of April and I was amazed by what he and the team have created. The company's vision is to democratize access to the tax code, enabling any company to develop and incorporate tax features and filing into their application. The platform today focuses on helping people file their taxes simply & seamlessly with aims to disrupt the biggest players
Increasing Loan Approval Rates with Upstart
Many consumers and small business owners have likely experienced pain and unfair rejections when requesting a line of credit from a traditional bank. Upstart is working to solve this by using machine learning, AI, and tailored risk models that increase loan approval rates. Jeff Keltner & I unpack these issues and what Upstart is doing to solve them.Jeff is SVP of Business Development at Upstart an
Banking for SMBs Designed by SMBs
Stephanie Sample is a serial entrepreneur and franchise owner who just recently decided to jump into fintech after experiencing the troubles firsthand. Fundid enables SMBs to get access to business capital, an expense management card to control cash flow, and all the resources you need to make business finance simple.Stef’s first foray into the SMB world happened when she was 22. Stef & her husban
Bitcoin is the Best Tool for Financial Inclusion
We’ve got another great podcast here. I think it’s clear by now if you are listening that I’m a believer in BTC, DeFi, and all of the great innovations that can come from blockchain technology. In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing, Patrick Sells, Chief Innovation Officer at NYDIG. NYDIG is a bitcoin company that’s fusing high tech with institutional-grade finance to usher in a new e
The Secret Fintech Accelerator in South Dakota
I enjoyed this episode with Nikkee Rhody. Nikkee has amazing energy and it’s so exciting to see what Falls Fintech a Central Payments Accelerator has been able to achieve in just the last 2 to 3 years.The big differentiator Falls Fintech has is that they are a bank! Crazy idea, I know! But Falls Fintech has effectively embedded Central Payments bank charter into their own API driven financial tech
Ship Better Fintech Products Faster
In this episode, Jake P. Vacovec & I spend some time unpacking his almost 7 years at Behalf.com and how he came to found FlyCode.com. Jake’s first job was as an intern at Behalf where he grew to become VP of Product (US) by the end of his time there. Jake recently left to found Flycode.com and has successfully raised a pre-seed round of $2M.FlyCode connects directly to your code to identify parts
From Space Shuttles to Payment Rocket Ships!
I always learn something new when I speak to Darren Beyer, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Qolo. Darren started his career working on space shuttles at NASA for 10 years and then made the totally natural pivot to payment & card processing! Darren launched his first payments business on January 1, 2000, with another NASA engineer. That business was acquired by Wildcard which is where he met the
Down the Embedded Finance Rabbit Hole with Productfy
It feels like the market is missing a Payments & Banking operating system for digital platforms that want to embed financial services into their ecosystems. BaaS companies are looking to solve this but if a digital platform is large they already have multiple banking partners. Further once a platform gets large enough it makes sense to move away from BaaS and go direct to banks to get enhanced pri
Embedding Crypto to Your Business
I really enjoyed this conversation with Jared Silvers from Fireblocks. Hundreds of crypto and digital asset businesses use Fireblocks software and APIs to custody, manage treasury operations, access DeFi, mint & burn tokens, and manage their digital asset operations.Jared & I worked together a Currencycloud for a few years so we really got into the details of how a startup or platform company coul
The Payment Operations Rocket Engine
As David Haber & Seema Amble wrote in their article, “How to Move Money in the 21st Century,” there is a massive opportunity to enable better payment & banking operations tools designed for software platforms, marketplaces, and fintechs that need to automate newly embedded financial services in order to scale their fintech operations. Banks have been using dedicated Payment Hubs & Translation Laye
The New Go-To Bank for Fintech
In this episode, I speak with Rodrigo Suarez, Head of Bank Innovation at Piermont Bank. Piermont Bank is doing things differently, pushing limits, and changing the approach to fintech & bank partnerships. This journey began with Piermont Bank being issued the first bank charter by the state of New York since the Global Recession, no small feat. Since Piermont launched in 2019 and is now powering m
How to Build an SMB Credit Platform
I had a blast speaking with Ken So, CEO and Founder of Tillful.com and Flowcast.ai. Ken is an industry expert when it comes to credit modeling and analytics. Flowcast is an enterprise AI fintech founded in 2015 and is used by some of the largest banks in the world to better assess credit risk for their customers. Ken took the knowledge gained from building a successful credit analysis solution and
One Platform for Everything Your Startup Needs
In this episode I speak with Claudio Romano, CEO & Founder of Orchid B. Orchid B is a platform designed to help entrepreneurs launch their businesses and remove red tape. Orchid B focuses on 3 key areas of difficulty: business registration, banking, and insurance.I really enjoyed speaking with Claudio and look forward to seeing the success of Orchid B.Jeff This is a public episode. If you would li
Building Embedded X-Border Payments with Currencycloud
I loved having my old colleague Chris D’Antuono on the podcast. We cover the changes in the x-border landscape, US embedded banking market, and how potential inflation in the US could impact x-border money movement & FX.There are a few sponsors banks & BaaS platforms that will patch a fintech into Currencycloud’s platform. Listen to the episode to learn which banks are x-border friendly.BONUS - Ch
Launching a Wallet in the Middle East
We branch out in this episode and learn how to launch a digital wallet in EMEA. I really enjoyed speaking with, Jon Edward Santillan, CEO of Denarii, and gaining insight into how fintech works in the Middle East & Asia. Denarii Cash enables money transfer using a mobile wallet to help overseas workers to send money home with zero fees.Jon built Denarii Cash in the UAE. He quickly realized he was g
Launching on a Highnote!
In this episode, I speak with Deb Bardhan, Chief Business Officer at Highnote. Highnote just emerged from stealth and announced a mind-blowing $54m Series A with a super ambitious goal of taking on Marqeta in card issuing infrastructure.Deb is a veteran of the fintech, banking, crypto, and VC space. Deb previously worked at Synapse as Head of Revenue and before that he was Entrepreneur in Residenc
Sponsor Bank Matchmaking for Fintech
In this episode, I speak with Danny Cepin who is Director of Sales at Treasury Prime. Treasury Prime removes many of the compliance & bank partnership difficulties that create barriers for embedding financial services so fintech’s can focus on their product and go to market rapidly.We discuss how Treasury Prime leverages a network of sponsor banks to become a “fintech matchmaker” pairing fintech’s
Fintech Fund Raising Gone Wild
In this episode, I speak with Nikil Konduru from Lithic. Lithic is a payment platform that focuses on card issuance to make payments easier. Lithic was formerly privacy.com and you can read the back story on the shift to Lithic.Lithic is flying, raising Series B & Series C in the last few months with a valuation of $800m.We cover a lot of ground including how wild the current fintech market is, Li
Powering Consumer Remittances & How Dodd Frank Applies with Asaad Faquir
Assad and I unpack the Dodd-Frank regulations as they pertain to consumer remittances specifically and what a fintech firm should know. We also go into Sponsor Bank models and how US Fintech regulation may continue to evolve.Here's our Dodd Frank article which is a great reference for all the details we cover.Find Assad on Linkedin This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this w
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