
Hosted by Greg Myers · EN

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 scaling partnerships at Facebook to seeing the payout pain firsthand at Uber, then helping launch international expansion at Coinbase and working on USDC. That experience leads to a hard-earned lesson from Stripe: even if stablecoins let you reach 100 countries, adoption stalls if users cannot convert easily into pesos, reals, or other local currencies to pay for everyday life. The real product is the bridge between stablecoins and fiat, built with compliant rails, strong controls, and the “boring” payment details that enterprises demand.We break down what Latitude is building with its Liquidity Network, how stablecoins can reduce cross-border payment costs, and why real-time settlement can cut the need for prefunding and complex treasury float. We also cover where the biggest growth opportunities are showing up right now, including creator economy payouts, contractor payments, AI data labeling, fintech apps going global on day one, and the looming question of how AI agents may transact across borders.If you care about stablecoins, blockchain payments, real-time payments, or global payout infrastructure, this episode is for you.

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 cards, not debit or prepaid. Then we cut through the biggest source of mistakes by separating four commonly mixed concepts: surcharging, dual pricing, convenience fees, and service fees. From there, we get practical about the rules that matter in the real world, including Visa’s 3% surcharge cap becoming the de facto standard, Mastercard’s different limit, and how brand enforcement programs and secret shopping can expose sloppy implementations.The bigger story is why surcharging has taken off so fast. Technology now makes it possible to present buyer choice at the exact moment of payment, across online and in-person experiences, with options like debit, ACH (electronic check), and emerging rails like real-time payments. Jim explains why embedded payments and ISVs increasingly treat surcharging as more than cost recovery: it can be a strategic feature, a trust-builder, and a way to keep reconciliation and settlement clean for merchants at scale.

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, and stablecoins pushed him back into founder mode. We get concrete about the real blockers to adoption: not speed, but controls. We unpack how smart contracts can support payment workflows people already trust, including escrow, lockup periods, delays, and even reversibility, while layering in fraud mitigation, OFAC screening, and multi-party account verification. The goal is simple: make on-chain payments feel safe, compliant, and operationally usable inside existing bank compliance systems.We also look forward. Pete explains why cross-border payments are an obvious early win, why domestic “wire-like” payments could be rebuilt with programmability, and why agentic payments could create an entirely new machine-to-machine economy. We close with a direct challenge to payments leaders: stop waiting, start tinkering, and learn the rails firsthand.

Gift cards have a branding problem and it’s costing the payments world a big idea. Alex Preece, CEO and Co-Founder of Tillo, joins us to make the case that gift cards aren’t really “gifts” at all. They’re programmable stored value, a modern redemption rail that can sit inside bank apps, fintech wallets, cashback programs, employee rewards, refunds, and payouts. Once you see them as a payment instrument, the market looks a lot less like novelty and a lot more like infrastructure.We dig into how Tillo built a two-sided marketplace that connects thousands of retail brands with the businesses that want to reward customers and employees. Alex explains why a single API matters in a fragmented global ecosystem, what it takes to support multi-country catalogs, and how better tooling and transparency can make brands more confident partners. We also talk about a surprising insight: most volume is self-use, not gifting, because people are optimizing everyday spending by converting earned value into higher-impact rewards.We zoom out to the bigger payments trends reshaping rewards and loyalty: the demand for real-time gratification, the opportunity created by open banking and faster payments like RTP and FedNow, and the emerging push toward “global but local” benefits that actually work when customers travel or live abroad. If you’re building in payments, loyalty, or fintech growth, this is a practical look at where rewards infrastructure is heading and why it can change behavior at the moment of decision.

“Instant” payments are usually a well-designed illusion. The customer experience feels real-time, but behind the scenes money still crawls through delayed settlement, fragmented rails, and market-by-market workarounds. That gap is exactly where stablecoins start to look less like hype and more like infrastructure.We sit down with Tony Tom, CRO and Co-Founder of Stable Sea, to unpack how enterprise stablecoin payments can improve cross-border payments, shorten settlement times, and reduce the operational drag that finance teams accept as normal. Tony shares how his journey through payments led him to Block and then to building Stable Sea, plus what he learned by watching stablecoin adoption accelerate outside the US. We talk liquidity, on-ramp and off-ramp realities, and why “bank-grade” processes matter when you’re moving serious volume.A big part of the conversation centers on trapped cash: revenue stuck in markets with capital controls or limited FX access, from Argentina to Nigeria and beyond. We also explore stablecoin treasury management, the need for a single view across wallets and bank accounts, and how automation and rules-based movement can turn visibility into action. Finally, Tony lays out why regulated, Wall Street-aligned tokenized real world assets may be the bridge that pulls stablecoin settlement deeper into mainstream enterprise payments.

Vertical SaaS wins when it feels like it was built by someone who has actually done the job, and that same principle is reshaping payments and fintech. We sit down with Brad Pinneke, Head of Enterprise Business Development at Worldpay (is now Global Payments), to unpack why vertical SaaS platforms have become the day-to-day operating system for small businesses and why “embedded payments” is no longer a nice add-on. When the workflow lives inside the software, money flow becomes unavoidable, and the platform that handles both can deliver a cleaner experience and a stronger business model.We dig into what customers now expect from modern payment processing inside software: one login, one system of record, one support layer, and a single source of truth that connects checkout, settlement, reporting, and reconciliation. Brad explains how natively integrated payments can reduce back-office headaches, improve trust, and increase retention, plus what separates platforms that weave payments into the fabric of the product from those that simply tack it on.Then we get practical about the hard parts. Selling money is not the same as selling software, and the margin for error is smaller when uptime, compliance, PCI, funding, and fraud risk are on the line. We close with the next wave: AI in fintech and how AI plus payments data can turn a system of record into a system of action through predictive cash flow, risk modeling, automated pricing, and standout fraud detection.

The payments world is full of shiny objects. The hard part is deciding what actually matters to clients and then delivering it safely at global scale. I’m joined by Rich Clow, Head of Innovation and Strategies for Global Payments Solutions at Bank of America, for a grounded look at how a large financial institution evaluates emerging payments technology, turns strategy into products, and keeps the focus on real outcomes like faster settlement, better data, and lower fraud.We unpack what payment volumes and behavior patterns reveal right now: why most transactions are still domestic, why ACH remains a workhorse, and why cross-border payments are still largely wires running through SWIFT. Rich explains where real-time payments (RTP) are gaining traction, how data requirements can slow adoption, and why improving ERP integration is a turning point for reconciliation, payouts, and just-in-time corporate payments that support smarter liquidity management.From the treasury perspective, the conversation gets practical: streamlining accounts payable and accounts receivable across checks, ACH, wires, cards, lockbox, and virtual cards, while upgrading security and fraud prevention with layered controls. We also go deep on digital treasury and AI, including CashPro Forecasting, CashPro Chat, and mobile approvals, plus how “always-on” 24/7 banking changes operations, investigations, and even how upgrades are handled. If you care about payments innovation, real-time payments, treasury management, AI in banking, fraud prevention, and digital payment strategy, you’ll get plenty to take away.

Waiting 47 days to get paid for work you already finished is more than annoying, it’s a cash-flow killer. I sat down with Garima Shah, President and Co-Founder of Biller Genie, to talk about the unglamorous part of payments that decides whether a business thrives: accounts receivable. We get practical about what actually slows payments down and why “just run the card” ignores the messy reality of invoicing, accuracy, and collections.Garima explains how accounts receivable automation tightens the whole workflow. Send invoices on time, protect data integrity so the right customer gets billed correctly, and give people an Amazon-like way to pay with a simple button for credit card or ACH. That shift can take a typical service business from getting paid in weeks to getting paid in days. We also dig into the real-world benefits beyond money, like saving 10 to 15 hours a week of admin work and giving owners time back.We also unpack what makes Biller Genie different in the payments ecosystem: a partner-first model built for banks, processors, and ISOs, deep payment gateway integrations, and bi-directional sync with accounting platforms like QuickBooks and Xero to support clean payment reconciliation. Garima shares where she sees growth in AR software, how AI in payments is accelerating product and insights, why stablecoin acceptance is “easy but early,” and what industry consolidation means when two partners suddenly become one.If you care about SMB payments, B2B invoicing, AR automation, and the future of merchant services, this one is packed with ideas you can use.

Owning payments sounds like a power move until the real bill shows up. We sit down with Brock Robertson, CRO at Payroc, to unpack how payment strategy for software platforms is shifting again and why so many vertical SaaS leaders are stepping back from the “everyone should be a Payfac” era.We trace the evolution from payments as a bolt-on utility to embedded payments as a true growth engine, then get honest about what “control” actually requires: underwriting, compliance, disputes, fraud monitoring, security, systems, and specialized teams. Brock shares what he’s hearing from software companies that tried to become payments companies and felt their brand identity drift away from the features that made them win in the first place. If you have global expansion plans, we also dig into how regulation and operational complexity multiplies fast.From there, we explore what a modern referral partnership model looks like today, including hands-off referral, hybrid co-sell, and approaches that preserve customer experience while reducing operational burden. The thread that ties it all together is trust: transparency, support, aligned economics, and the confidence to represent each other well when your customers’ money is on the line.If you’re evaluating integrated payments, payment processing partners, APIs, or the Payfac path, this conversation will help you choose the level of involvement that fits your team and your product roadmap.

Payments alone rarely make a software platform unforgettable. The moment merchants start using your product to access working capital, manage cash flow, move money through payouts, and keep reconciliation tight, the relationship changes. I sit down with Whitney Ganibegovic, Senior Sales Executive at Worldpay (now part of Global Payments), to unpack why embedded finance is quickly becoming one of the most practical drivers of retention, account growth, and long-term platform value for ISVs and software platforms.We get specific about what platforms still underestimate: embedded finance does not have to be a massive multi-year build with a new compliance team and a brand-new support motion. With the right partner infrastructure, platforms can add value-added financial tools while staying focused on the vertical software that made them successful. Whitney shares why expanding from embedded payments to a broader financial suite can increase customer lifetime value, lift revenue per merchant, and create real platform dependency because these tools plug directly into daily workflows.We also dig into where many rollouts go wrong. “Embedded” does not automatically mean adopted, so go-to-market timing, vertical nuance, and marketing automation matter. Whitney explains why working capital is often the simplest entry point, how payments data enables smart pre-qualification, and which metrics go beyond surface-level revenue: multi-product adoption, engagement, cash flow penetration, contribution margin, retention, and net revenue retention. The guiding image we keep coming back to is the “nonstop flight” experience: one login, one place to operate, fewer handoffs, less stress.If you care about embedded finance, fintech strategy, and building software platforms merchants cannot replace, listen now.