Hear directly from C-level executives in payments/fintech about industry trends, successful strategies, products, services, and what the future holds for the payments/fintech industry. We cover the entire industry from merchant acquiring, payment processing, ISOs, payfacs, fraud, security, issuing,
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 ...
About Leaders In Payments
Hear directly from C-level executives in payments/fintech about industry trends, successful strategies, products, services, and what the future holds for the payments/fintech industry. We cover the entire industry from merchant acquiring, payment processing, ISOs, payfacs, fraud, security, issuing,
Leaders In Payments is a English business podcast from Greg Myers. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.
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