Latest / Leaders In Payments / Kevin Sisk, President of Bill360 | Episode 438

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Kevin Sisk, President of Bill360 | Episode 438 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast, where we talk to sea level leaders from across the payments landscape.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the topic.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Greg Myers, and today's special guest is Kevin Sisk, the president of Bill 360.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, Kevin, thank you for being here and welcome to the show.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Greg.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Excited to be here.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Just for the audience, Kevin and I actually worked together.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Can't believe it was like nearly 20 years ago at Chase Paymentech.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So definitely look forward to catching up with you today.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: No, I know.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to when you say it out loud, it's just like, really?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Can't be that long, but I know it's been a while, but it's great to see you, great to be here, great to visit.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, before we dive into your career in the company, can you give us a quick snapshot of your personal background, maybe where you grew up, where you call home today, a few things like that?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I I actually grew up in El Paso, Texas.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: And if anybody's ever been there, it's a it's uh about 700 miles west of Dallas.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: So it gives you an idea how big Texas is.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: But uh so that was my hometown.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Right now I I currently live in Dallas, Texas, my wife, my kids, as we raised our kids.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: But I spent an enormous amount of time in Tampa, Florida, and or Jacksonville, Florida.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Tampa, Florida is our current headquarters for Bill 360.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: And Jacksonville is our direct sales office.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: But I've been in Dallas, though, since 1994.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: We separated from the military.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: I was in the military before that.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Both my wife and I were in the Marine Corps separated from the military, and then short time in Atlanta, and then we moved to Dallas, and my brothers were there, and then eventually my mom, who was in El Paso, she moved, and so uh so that's what we call call home, even though I spend just about every week in Florida right now.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Your second home is in Florida.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome, awesome.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, can you walk us through your professional journey and how you got to Bill 360?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been in payments, and I I tell everybody I've been in payments really my my entire private, you know, or civilian career.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I was in the military and then got out, landed in payments in 1995, which was then first USA, that became payment tech and ultimately part of JP Morgan Chase.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so my very first job there was a as a tech support rep.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: And at the time I had not, I didn't know anything about payments.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: I I really didn't know anything about the civilian community.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was just trying to get a job.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember one of the things that the HR person that was interviewing me asked me what what my ideal, and you know how they asked those questions, you know, where you want to be in five years, what's your ideal, this and that?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so, and I hadn't really practiced anything, but she asked me that question about, hey, what's your ideal work environment?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was just coming out of the Marine Corps and I said, Hey, if it's climate control, then I can eat when I want to.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's my ideal work environment.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: And she uh she looked at me like, do I write that down?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Is he serious, or should I ask security to come take?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: It was one of those moments, but I was dead serious.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, man, if I, you know, when I'm hungry, I can eat, and if it's inside, I don't care what I have to do.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, so that began my journey in payments, and then I had a host of different roles and responsibilities along the way, primarily on the operational service side of the house for the first, you know, six, seven years, and then I was handed our agent bank business, and then ultimately our our ISO or independent sales organization business, and and pretty much stayed within that realm for a handful of years, left Chase, went to first aid at FireServe, essentially doing the same role there, and then uh a couple of years as the chief operating officer for Bank of America Merchant Services, unwound that JV, which was a JV between Bank of America and FireServe, and then another tour through FireServe as the GM for the JV of Wells Fargo and FiveServe.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I had a you know the JV of Paymentech that was Chase and First Data, and then with Bank of America and First Data, and then with Wells.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I I had my run through the JVs, but in that run during the Chase days, the Paymentech days, is when I met Paul Hunter, who's our CEO and founder of Bill 360.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: And Paul was a customer of ours at the time.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: His ISO, Sterling Payments, bought front-end authorizations off of the Chase or the Payment Tech Network, which is actually was here in Tampa.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's how I became acquaintances with Paul, and then we got to know each other pretty well over the years.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: And the one thing about Paul, it always stood out.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: And this this wasn't me just saying it, it was all of us on the Chase side who were exposed to the whole entire ISO community, is that he was very much not your typical ISO-like person, and uh and he had some many other different businesses and all that, and he kind of got into the payments in a roundabout way, but he ran a you know impeccable organization that ultimately sold to Evo, and then that resold again to Global Payments.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: So his business is now part of global payments.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: But he and I have known each other then so you know it's 20 plus like you, you know, 20 something years.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And when he started Bill 360, which was about January 2021, he had some board members, uh, one of which was Dan Sharon, one of my former bosses, and many of you may know know the name.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then Dan gave me a call, so I guess it was in late 2022 and told me what Paul was up to and said we should connect.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so Paul and I started talking, and the next thing you know, because at the time I I didn't know, I don't want to say the word retire, but I was thinking about, hey, do I do something different?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: Just completely outside of payments, you know, just not not necessarily thinking about money.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, hey, if you're gonna do something and you're not thinking about money, you're thinking about what do I want to do.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I actually contemplated for a brief period of time of and I always love trains, is like, what would it like to be a you know, a train engineer for these freight trains, you know, across the country.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, man, that'd be like, you know, as a kid, I always thought that would be such a fun thing.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: But then I started talking to Paul and and was visiting him here in Tampa, meeting the team and all that, and then within a couple months, you know, I was on board and I hadn't looked back.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's my first run through a startup.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, my you know, it's the military, and then it's all been big corporate.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been everything that people think it is, uh, times 10.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: So there's nothing easy about it, but there's a it's an it's very, very rewarding.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: And what I told Paul right before we sort of you know formalized our agreement, he said, hey, this could be you know a great way to really end your career, you know, and help them build a company and a platform and you know, leave a mark in the industry.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: And and I thought about that for a while, and then I said, you know, Paul, I don't really think it was a great way to end my career.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: I said, now that I've got to know the business better and what they're doing, because I spent, you know, a month, month and a half, you know, before we actually, before, you know, full time.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, I feel like it's everything that I've done, you know, even the military, big corporate, all that is really was just preparation for this.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it's almost as as if I feel like now I'm getting a jersey and getting on the field.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you're inside the big corporations, right, I mean, you and you can have people have successful careers there and everything else, but you're still part of that big machine and your impact, you know, it's hard to tell like how big is that.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: But in a startup, you know it quickly, and it can be really good and it can also be really bad, right?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: They, you know, you you find out quickly.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: The the marketplace doesn't is not uh sensitive in that way.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so, and so I really feel like everything up until I joined Bill 360 was really just preparation for this.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not something basically it wasn't something, hey, I end my career.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's like this is like the test of everything you've been doing is can you really do this thing?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so so anyway, that's how I got to Bill 360, and that's that was in April of 2023, is when we formalized it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'd been going back and forth in from January 2023, but we formalized our agreement in April of 2023 and haven't looked back.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we've both said the name of the company several times, so tell our audience what Bill 360 actually does.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess that's a good point.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: So Bill 360 is a we're a payment facilitator, but we're a accounts receivable automation.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that's a mouthful to say, but our software provides you know full service accounts receivable automation for primarily the small and medium-sized businesses.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: And and if you think of account receivable automation, there there's there's some providers out there who will have software that do elements of it, but our our fundamental belief is to really have that comprehensive automation, you have to be able to facilitate the payment.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so, and that was our genesis, right?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so to become a payment facilitator so that when we install the software to our customers, that we also can make the payment happen.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have to introduce a third party, which is just more friction or more points of failure.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're the one throat to choke for all the customers on our platform.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: But most people are familiar with AP, a lot of there's tons and tons and tons, you know, hundreds of AP systems out there, and and probably a lot of individuals, you you sign up, you know, for bill pay service so you can pay your water bill and whatnot.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if you think of accounts receivable automation as kind of the reverse of that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're a small business owner and you have customers that want to pay you through an AP system that they've signed up with, will you as a small business, you have to, there's some element of work you have to do to be basically signed up on that platform.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: But if you have hundreds of customers and they're using dozens and dozens of AP systems, then that's multiple things that you have to sign up for as the business to get paid that way.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: AR automation reverses that.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it puts the business owner in the driver's seat to help their buyers.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: It gives them a way to more easily pay them, but this way they're not having to sign up and manage all these multiple AP systems.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: And we're we're focused on B2B.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: So any business out there that sells to another business and uses an invoice as the primary means of getting paid, that's our target.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: So we automate that whole process.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been a process fundamentally that it's from an automation standpoint hasn't really been touched because it is hard.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's very difficult to automate that.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so therefore it just hasn't been.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's where we felt that that was a gap in the marketplace, even though it's hard to fill and solve, but we it's one that's now it's worth it's very worthwhile.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: And we bring real change and real uplift to these small business owners where you know the Coca-Cola's of the world or the IBMs or the Exxons, right?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: They're always gonna find ways to automate their processes.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: They have the resources and whatnot, but the small, medium-sized folks, they're just they're just not, you know.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it's until the technology arrives at a point in time where it's cost effective, one, for somebody to build it and two for them to consume it.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're at that place now, but that's our primary solution is the counts receivable automation with uh payment facilitation.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: So well, what would you say is the biggest challenge your company is solving for your customers right now?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: All these businesses, they have their processes.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: And and like any small business, primarily they're focused on growing, right?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: How do you get new sales and things like that?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: And oftentimes the back office or the the receivable, impayables just gets neglected.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's so it's somebody who's been sitting back there for years and they just figure out how to do it manually, and they've got their process, and and you know, people don't question it.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so for us, I always use the iPhone, even though it's not quite that same you know, parallel, but it's similar.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like we didn't know, you and I didn't know we needed iPhones in 2007, but in 2008, you know, when iPhones came onto the marketplace, we said, hey, we need iPhone.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: Accounts receivable automation is similar to that.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we're talking to a lot of these small, medium-sized businesses, they have these rooted processes that are very manual.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so you're there's an element of process change.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: So it's one thing, you know, people can see it quickly and go, wow, this is amazing.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's easy, it makes my life easier.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: But then it's like, oh, now I had these three people that were doing these functions that I don't really need them to do that much anymore, you know.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: So all of a sudden you're encroaching on this sort of embedded process to these businesses with modern technology, and so so sometimes that's an effort to help people see like changing that process means hey, either you're gonna have to repurpose some of these people, or in some cases, you know, they don't need them anymore, and that is not always an easy thing to do.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: And but it is a real dynamic in helping people, you know, it's not just adopting the technology, it's adopting a process change.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that tends to be a hard, you know, for anybody, right?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: Your change is process, and it's it's it's bigger than you know, than what you just installing new software.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: So well, what would you say differentiates Bill 360 from your competitors?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right off the top, we are intensely focused in the B2B space.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: So there are some, you know, and I say competitors, you know, air quote competitors, is that they have some elements of what we do, but they it's really a they're really B2C centric, and they put a little bit of a B2B wrapper around it, but it in the end, it's really a B2C offering, and that just doesn't fit small businesses.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it may move them a little bit, but not in the way Bill 360 does.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so our genesis was with the small business in mind that sells to other small businesses, you know, to other business, I mean they could be big businesses too, but businesses that are selling to business.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: So we're intensely focused in the B2B space, which includes a service element of that with real human beings, because we also fundamentally believe that small, you know, these business owners deserve to have live customers and not trying to work through a chat or email, and you know, because some of the competitors, you know, you really can't find it.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: And they don't they don't try to like hide that.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: They just their business model isn't through a phone number, their business model is through the chat bots or email, and we fundamentally believe that you know business owners deserve to have a that human touch, and uh so that's a cornerstone.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: But it's not, you know, our platforms built in such a way that it's uh it's a very light touch, right?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: They don't need a lot of support.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: Once they're up and running, they don't need a lot of support.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, from time to time things come up or they're confused about something, or we roll out new features and stuff like that, and we like to call them and talk through, help them understand how they can use it.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: All that is, you know, we get tons of feedback on that, that they really, really love that.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: They've got comparative data and in previous experiences where they just could never talk to somebody.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you know, everybody experiences that to some level and just in our personal lives, you know, if you call in eight, you know, trying to get an 800, trying to get somebody, and you got to get, you know, navigate the mazes and everything else, and it's just difficult.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: And certainly as a small business owner, you know, when you have some issues, especially as it relates to your money, like it's nice to be able to talk to somebody and somebody that knows what they're doing.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's talk a little bit about the future.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you see the biggest growth opportunities in your segment of payments?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: So we're really the software, you know, vertical-specific software.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: So if you think there's a lot of pick a software, right?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: Or pick an industry and there's dozens of software companies that are serving the needs of that industry.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: In other words, help that industry be more efficient in how those businesses operate.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's a core part of our growth strategy is partnerships with those types of software companies and helping their end use.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, in effect, what we do is we amplify that software because most of them aren't going to do payments and they're certainly not going to bring accounts receivable automation.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's just, you know, if I'm an industry-specific software provider, I'm focused on all the attributes of that industry and make it an easy industry.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to go solve this receivable that's very complicated, and back offices that are very different from business to business, even in the same industry.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: So they sort of stop there or they'll create the invoice.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we pick up there.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so we make that software really more complete for their customers because then we bring helping them get paid.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: And not only helping them get paid, getting them paid faster, and how those customers actually manage the interactions with their customers, you know, suppliers, buyers.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: So we make that whole process much better so that customers, the friction sometimes that comes when people are collecting money, right, on an aged invoice, that we help them automate all that and do things too where it doesn't become aged, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: If there's questions and things like that that a buyer might have on an invoice that they can communicate easily with that supplier and it's not an email, we got an integrated tool so that way they're communicating together.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: And if people change, right?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: If an employee at the supplier or an employee at the buyer, if they change roles, somebody new, it's all that history is within the tool, it's not within people's email boxes.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: So if I'm communicating with you, and then I leave, and then you're going, hey, where's Kevin?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he left, and then you get so well, it's in Kevin's email.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he's gone, so now we got to go figure out his email.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: So we have all in the tool.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: So if people change, it doesn't matter.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: The tool's still there, it has all the residual history and communications and invoice between those, the buyer and the seller.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it takes the friction out of what sometimes could on the collection side, we remove that, make it easy, let the tool manage that, and then let those business owners, hopefully, they spend more time on business development or relationship management.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Are those vertical software companies that you mentioned, are they a sales channel or like do you partner with them and get embedded in their software, or is it more like a channel?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's uh uh I mean we can do it either way.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: We do full integrations, it can be you know referral type relationships, it can be you know partial integrations.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: It really depends on the software partner and their objectives with their own customer base.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: We can do them all.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: So if they want to fully integrate to us, we're all over that.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: If it's partial or if it's just referral, but we have comprehensive go-to-market strategies for each one of those channels to ensure success, no matter how they choose to connect with us.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what does success look like for Bill 360, say, over the next three to five years?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, in the next three to five years, that we got hundreds of thousands of buyers and suppliers on our platform or within our network that are that we're servicing every single day.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: And what's unique, and and I didn't really touch on this, is that in traditional payments, and I know there's a there's a lot of people, you know, in traditional payment that that might be listening, is that when you normally, you know, and I'll use Chase as an example.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: If Chase signs up a customer to accept payments, it's kind of one-dimensional, right?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: They accept payments and that's it.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: But that the Chase doesn't necessarily know who that customer they just signed up, who all their customers are, right?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, as the transactions come, they see the transaction, all that.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, with Bill 360, when the direct customer signs up with us, which we call supplier, when a supplier signs up, on average, you know, if they're sending out, let's say, 200 unique invoices a month to unique customers or their buyers, is what we refer to as, is now we have visibility.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: They sign up with us, synced our platform, we have visibility of their customers.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: So that's really we have the one supplier who's now in the network plus their 200 customers.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: So we sign one, our network just grew by 200 in one.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: And we have complete visibility of that history between that buyer and the and supplier, you know, their past invoices, you know, how often they buy, what they buy, what their average, you know, purchase invoice, how much they spend.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: So we have all this history that in a normal relationship you don't have.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so, and there's a lot of things that we're that we're gonna be doing within that network to bring value to those buyers and and sub and suppliers.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, you ask three to five years, is that we have high aspirations around what we do within that network that's gonna be really beneficial to all the parties involved, but in ways that you can't you can't do in just traditional merchant acquiring.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: So we're really excited about that.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: That network effect is is something kind of unique, right?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: To your business.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, very okay.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what are some of the biggest trends that you see reshaping the whole payments industry?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: Dare I say AI?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: It comes up in every conversation.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right, it comes up in every conversation, everybody says it, and it means a lot of things to a lot of people.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, and in you know, like many Ventechs and and certainly startups, that we we have an intense amount of focus around that.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: And not not in, you know, so if you think about it in two ways, we think about it in internally, right?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: And we do use it, you know, intensely internally to develop faster our own service models and you know, all the things that people are trying to do to leverage AI for uh productivity output.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: But then it's the things what are you doing to actually help your customers make make their lives easier?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: So the personalization of AI.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so we have an enormous amount of uh focus around that, which includes it back to that network, but helping our customers make decisions about their business in ways that maybe they could get there if they were thinking about it and they had somebody to do the right amount of analysis, but we're gonna help them in ways that they probably haven't even thought about yet.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's good, they could that they'll not only be able to make better decisions, but we'll we'll have options for them to let the AI implement that option if they choose it.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think the personalization of AI, I mean, of course, fraud prevention and all those things, I think those are all gonna be big drivers as we move forward in in payments.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: But the personalization of it, I think, is gonna be a big driver in the next 12.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: It certainly is for us in how you bring that to bear to really help your customers' lives get better, make them make them smarter about their business and just easier to run it.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think, you know, people also talk about real time and instant payment.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think those are also gonna be, you know, those are gonna get, you know, more and more traction, and especially, you know, if if it's cross-border type things, that's that's definitely gonna get legs and and along with digital digital assets, you know.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: So you kind of think of those all one group, I mean another different, but it's still it's outside the card networks, basically.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: The digital and certainly with the regulatory environment, that's gonna start adding more clarity.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: And with more clarity, right, then you're gonna have more entrance into the market and helping people to you know use those assets is in in a way, you know, is uh us as consumers that's easy for us to use.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think those are gonna be that's gonna take on a new momentum and embedded finance and embedded lending.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think those are and those are things we're you know, we're focused on too, and we have an offering.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think people are familiar with the kind of the buy now pay later model, but it's also you know, we think there's gonna be a movement to sort of a kind of a traditional lending within these embedded apps, right?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because with AI, you can do so much more analysis and underwriting and risk management quicker, so it only makes sense, right, that traditional lending could also take place in that same sort of buy now, pay later, you know, embedded model.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas before, right, it was more limited and it made sense, and you kind of had these payment periods, whereas now with the information you can have access to, it's it's just as easy to do kind of a traditional loan.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, those are some of the things we we see.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: This is certainly the next 12 months.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: There's uh there's other things, but that's a hand.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a couple of final questions.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um so if you could go back and give yourself some advice, maybe at the start of your career, what would that be?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's funny.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: I just had this conversation with a young man, close friend of my son's.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: They went to high school together, and and he's kind of in that transition period in his life trying to figure out what he's gonna do next.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I pointed him towards payments, and that's one of the things I wished, you know, had I been intentional about it, because oftentimes in the payment, and I like to ask people that, and you're probably no, most people swerve into payments, right?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: They don't get up and go into payments like, hey, I want to go be a lawyer, or I want to be a chiropractor, or I want to be an engineer, you know, those are intentional decisions.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's rare that people are going, hey, I want to go into payments.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: But I encouraged him and I gave him some things to read and some things to think about, and that it's it's the one industry, right?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody needs it's needed, you know.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: We know we we agree to that, and you know, sort of the recurring nature of it, but it really is the sort of the the glue of the free enterprise system, right?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: Making it increasingly easier for people to move money between businesses and individuals is always going to be a necessity.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I encourage this young man to take a hard look at the payments industry and starting out really on the selling side.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, if I had it all to do over, knowing what I know now, that's probably what I'd have done day one, and with some uh being intentional about it.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: But but I think it's it's a it's a great industry, and for you, and especially for young folks that are, you know, maybe they just finished college or they didn't go to college and they're just thinking about or they're fresh out of the military, young and trying to trying to think of what the next thing to do.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's just it's a it's a great industry that's always gonna be there.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's also you know, you're running the tangent with technology too.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: So even though it's that core thing, like the the need to move money is always gonna be there, running the free enterprise system, but also that technology that's helping that, you're always gonna be part of that edge of technology too.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not like, well, I want to go into the tech space, so therefore I can't do payments.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's like it's the place you can go into, and then you're gonna be part of that technology wave.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: You'll always be on the edge of that.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean maybe the way to sum it up is it's that's there's an old Chinese proverb that says, you know, when's the best time to plant a tree?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: And the answer is 20 years ago, and then it's when's the when's the next best time to plant a tree?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: Today.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think in payments, it's one of those things, the sooner you get started, you won't regret it.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I I've I fell into payments.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly, you know, was in other places before and just kind of fell in, and here I am, you know, 20 years later, still still doing it.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, here we are talking about it, you know, and it and and the same same thing for me.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's funny because I do people that have been in it for a while, I always like to ask them that because there's always a story there.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's never, hey, I decided I want to be a payments person.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's always a story of how they got there, and it's usually some a friend or either some fluky thing that got them there, and you know, but then they stay.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's the other thing, too, is then they stay.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one One final question.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: What's one thing that people listening to the show today should be thinking about right now when it comes to payments?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think security, that's the thing.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: And we haven't really touched on that.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we talk about AI and all the positive things that it can and does do and has done.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: I know everybody's used at some some level, even their personal, but it can also be weaponized, right, in the payment system.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so the fraudsters also have access to AI and very committed to it.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would just say security in the you know the payments, that's just like just being hyper-vigilant all the time is you just can't afford not to be there because really because of AI and and the speed with which the fraudsters evolve.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to stay up with them, but but we have to.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would just that should be on the top of everybody's mind.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: I know we didn't talk about it much, but it's it's always for us.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a it's a nonstop thought, you know, security, because you know, that second you're not paying attention or you let your guard down is is not a not a good thing.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: So, but yeah, security.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: And in your personal lives too.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, change of path, all those things.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they they're getting better, their fishing attacks get better.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: All the deep fakes that that they can even in voices and things like that.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I would just say security, security, security.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that's a a great way to wrap up the show.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, Kevin, thank you so much for being on today.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, thank you, Greg.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's great seeing you, and thanks for having me on.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's great.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, yeah.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: I really enjoyed it.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: And to all your listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And until the next story.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you visit our website at leadersandpayments.com, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed listening, please share on your social channels as well.