Latest / Leaders In Payments / The Disbursements Playbook with Stephen Faust, CEO of Dash Solutions | Episode 491

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The Disbursements Playbook with Stephen Faust, CEO of Dash Solutions | Episode 491 · 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 top.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Greg Myers, and today's special guest is Steven Faust, the CEO of Dash Solutions.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: So, Steven, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Greg.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Great to be here and reconnect with you.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I looked it up.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: You were here in May of 2023.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: So it's been three years.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Before we dive into some of the things that have been happening over the last couple of years, can you just give us a quick snapshot of your personal background, maybe where you grew up, where you call home today, a few things like that?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, and went to college at the University of Tennessee, worked back in New Orleans and Dallas, and then have called Birmingham home since 2007 when I joined the formerly known as Prepaid Technology, but now Dash Solutions Business.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we're in Birmingham.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the headquarters are for our business.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a great place to live and raise kids and do some great things at Dash.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't mind, can you walk us through your professional journey and how you got to Dash?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Dash Solutions, the company has been in business since 98.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: When I graduated from the University of Tennessee, I went into the marketing and advertising world.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I worked in Dallas for a while, like I said, back in New Orleans, helping brands execute and do various things.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: After that, I helped a company get started, which kind of scratched that entrepreneurial bug for me in Jacksonville, Florida.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it was the first entree for me into financial services.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of an all-inclusive financial services offering for doctors in the state of Florida that touched a very different range of solutions that they may need.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: But we started that business from scratch, got it rolling and get it growing.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: During that time, Tommy McCully, who founded the Dash Solutions business, who was a former Am South Regions banker, saw an opportunity, had started the company, and had a vision on where it could go.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And Tommy is my father-in-law.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Tommy was looking for a partner to really put some gas in the car and push the pedal a little bit.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided to join him and be the second employee and really start to crank the business up.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so in 2007, I joined him to help him kind of with the vision of because he knew banking so well, he knew that us building a solution set and distributing it through financial institutions out of the gate would be a smart go-to-market strategy because he knew the need was there.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: He knew the gaps were there in their product and solution set.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I believed in the vision, believed in him, came here and we cranked it up together from the ground floor, and it's been a lot of fun.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if you don't mind, will you tell our audience exactly what Dash Solutions does?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then maybe if you don't mind, go into kind of from when we last talked to today, some of the progress that you've made.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Dash Solutions is a financial technology company.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're building software that helps businesses distribute payments more efficiently.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that looks like a lot of different things.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: What's interesting about our solution set and our technology stack is we're not typically going to solve one solution in one market, kind of a very specific, vertically integrated solution for an individual market.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: What we look at payments as a way to use technology and allow configurability within the technology to solve for many different payments needs in market.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And what's been great about that is we've always kind of brought a consultative approach to how we go to market.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we can listen to a business and solve for multiple payment challenges or opportunities to drive more value, be more efficient, whatever the goals may be of that business through a single stack technology platform.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what really differentiates us is that one, we built the technology to do it, and we understand these various payments, challenges, and needs, and we can solve for them very quickly and create a lot of value for these businesses that we work with.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of speaks to that foundation from a banking standpoint, because what we knew is that from a banking perspective, businesses would come to their financial institution and look for solutions to modernize their business, to find efficiency, to add value, all those various things.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we knew it would be a great partnership to say, hey, we can build this technology, we can go to market together, and we can meet needs of customers.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where the Dash Solutions came from, and having that as part of our brand and our name is we've always just been so passionate and dedicated to delivering actual solutions that are adding value for customers.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: That has been part of the go to market.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And as our technology stack has expanded and we've moved into more modern API connectivity and others, the distribution channels change, you know, and that's probably the fastest growing area of our business is allowing our solutions to be configured and then embedded into other software businesses for greater distribution.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So they see a need, they want to embed payments into their solutions.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: We've got that solution set.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: We can embed those through a simplified API structure or other connection points, and they can meet needs of those customers.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the distribution channels have expanded.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Our direct sales for businesses have expanded.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And to your question about what's really been exciting and growing over the last couple of years is we saw the start of this really big emerging disbursements market post-COVID.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: We were in the right place using that stack and technology structure to solve for it and the know-how from our team to understand these markets.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we've really leaned into being the best in that market, providing what we call the best payee experience out there.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: So payers can not only send the payment more efficiently, but really build in engagement as part of that payment to that end user.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So they know why they got it, they get it faster, more securely, have more choice on how they can use the money, which is really a great fit in the market today.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what the last couple of years has been looking like.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: The great news is we've been seeing kind of all of our various lines of business go up over the last couple of years, with the disbursement segment being the fastest moving, which is really exciting for us.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of that solution set that can be configured kind of goes into a couple of different markets.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: One, we have got solutions for wage payments, we've got solutions for rewards, incentives, and engagement payments.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: We've got B2B expense management solutions, and then we've got this disbursements area where we are providing various things from refunds to reimbursements to royalties to rewards to you name it, all the Rs, but a lot of different payments going out with a lot of big companies.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of where we've been focusing.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: The business has been growing.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: We've been attracting great talent, adding new distribution partners, and having a lot of fun.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a great three years.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, what would you say is the biggest challenge that your company is solving for your customers?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: We see a lot of different things.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: One, they know they want to do this.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: They just don't know how and when they should do this.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, what we've done is to really try to simplify it, to say, hey, we've got flexible systems.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: We can work with what you got going now.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: We know we can get you to this finish line faster.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was just speaking at a conference and I asked the audience that we're speaking to.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, how many of you guys love sending paper checks out to people?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: No one raised their hand, everybody laughed.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody knows they need to get rid of it, but it's just been so embedded into their companies for so long that it's a challenge to think about, okay, how do I pick that up and solve for that now?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: But it's becoming table stakes for these recipients demanding it.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: So companies need to modernize.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And if they can do it by reducing costs, by adding security, by being more efficient in their business, eliminating achievement liability of these checks, check fraud has increased, check cost has increased.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of reasons why.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's why we're seeing some great growth with the offering that we're providing.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: But that's probably the biggest challenge.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's also a reason why we work with distribution partners, because a lot of times, if this distribution partner they're already working with, be it a bank, be it a tech company or so on, has this solution embedded into their platform and they've already vetted us and picked us as the best in the market to be their embedded B2C payments provider, then it allows them to say yes and activate that solution a lot faster.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's part of our go-to-market strategy, in addition to just calling on those.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: But that's probably the biggest challenge is it's not if, it's when.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned financial institutions.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think you recently announced something with Regions.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you want to talk about that for a minute.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been great.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: We've been working with banks around the country for a long time, providing solutions to them.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Regions is in our backyard.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Our founder was a former Am South Regions executive.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we've always had a lot of friends and neighbors and did some good work with them, but they ran a process and selected Dash, and it's been great out of the shoot.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of need across their customers for modernizing and embedding these solutions.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's new, but we're seeing some great things there.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's all about the same thing: it's delivering client success, adding value, and having a kind of embedded solution that's easy to turn on.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: And what would you say differentiates you the most from your competitors out there?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's about how we go about things.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's one, we understand this market so deeply.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: We've recruited some of the best talent in the market, people that understand payments, understand these different industries, have been there, done that, understand technology, understand the right way to support customers and really get to where it's not about selling them a product.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's about understanding what their goals are and meeting those needs and adding value for those businesses.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: That alone, I think, diversifies us, but it's also going back to the how we built our technology from a configurability standpoint and being able to one, configure a solution that feels very kind of bespoke for that business, but to do it at scale and be able to also solve for their next needs that they have in payments.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: We've kind of coined this phrase internally, we call it diagonal thinking, where we want to provide vertical solutions to customers, but we need to do it at great horizontal scale.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Doing it with a way where you can provide very configurable solutions for many different vertical markets versus specializing in just one vertical market and doing it at scale is kind of the exciting area where we find ourselves in, is kind of this diagonal thinking where we can push through tens of billions of dollars through the platform and the technology, but delivering solutions for all these various huge addressable markets that feel very specific to what their needs are and what they want their end users to feel and touch as part of their payment experience.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the exciting stuff about what we're doing.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're going diagonal at that.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's talk about the future a little bit.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you see the biggest growth opportunity for your segment of payments?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: What's exciting is I really feel like we're in very early innings in kind of the disbursements world.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: We've been through that kind of selling concept before product and getting to that inflection point where buyers are buying and that kind of snowball effect is happening.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, one, I think it's leaning into that understanding where these very large trillions of dollars of payments in these big addressable markets from healthcare to utilities to telecom to oil and gas to legal payments, so on, that are all just ripe for continued success and solutions to being delivered.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then for us, it's like really leaning into the payee experience.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: We've changed it from user experience to pay experience.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: We are so focused on how they engage with a payment, how quickly do they activate their digital payments, what do they do once they're in the application and how they choose to use that payment and or move the money out to a bank account or through Vedmo or PayPal, or what do they want to do and how do we monitor that and try to always accelerate and enhance the user experience and that payee experience to one, meet the goals of the payer, but also the light, the end user payee.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're focusing as a business for the future is how we can use AI to enhance that.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So right now or previously, those are all interaction points that we would have to monitor.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we would look at the data and we would constantly make tweaks to say, okay, how do we improve the delivery?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: How do we improve the messaging in the brand?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: How do we improve the click-through experience and reduce steps while meeting all the needs of a financial instrument from accepting terms and conditions to educating them on how to use it?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: But what we're doing in the business now is using AI and building agents that can track these different steps and not promote code to change it, but to bring concepts into our developers and our product team to try different things that says, hey, we should move this button up to make it easier because they're clicking this one first.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Or we should send messages during this time of day because we're getting a higher click-through and activation rate at this time.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all complex things that we do in the business, but those are things that we can continuously improve and track results of programs to meet KPIs that are agreed upon with the business.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, that's super exciting as we kind of build more agents into our business to help us delight customers and users and meet needs and increase opportunity, increase profitability, and all the great things associated with that.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we're doing that across the organization, but that's a pretty interesting kind of product application that we're working on and using artificial intelligence to really kind of transform the way that we deliver product and market.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really exciting thing.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just like the very beginning of that conversation, it feels like.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Rarely do I have one of these discussions where AI doesn't come up, right?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Different use cases, and obviously yours is a little unique too.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: What does success look like for Dash Solutions over, say, the next three to five years?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: For us, for success, it's always been about building a great business and meeting needs of customers.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: We know that there is a massive market opportunity for us in payments and for delivering solutions and market.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: The more we live up to our commitments and exceed expectations with customers, we know that'll create more opportunities with those businesses.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be more entrenched with those customers.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: We will delight these partnerships that provide distribution for us because we're going to be winning together.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that allows NASH to grow, allows us to recruit great talent, continue to invest in the platform to be on the cutting edge of payments technology and solutions.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what gets me up every day, keeps me excited.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Really, it's not about a market that we have to continue to add new features and technology to maintain customer engagement.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much greenfield.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest challenge for us has been to stay focused on the real market opportunities because it's like every day there's a new one that we've never heard of before that is a tremendous payments flow that we could be solving.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: But first things first for us, that's what the next couple of years are, you know, and I think that the company can continue to grow at a fast pace, continue to have great returns, provide great jobs, and build a great business.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: When you step back and look at the big picture, what are some of the biggest trends that you think are reshaping the payments industry?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest trends I see is that with AI not being new but maturing now, I really think it can make the pie a lot bigger for us in the payments world where everybody wins.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to allow us to move faster.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to allow us to build solutions faster.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to allow us to meet needs faster, which all creates an opportunity to grow faster.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think everyone in the payments industry should be thinking about it that way.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: I know other markets right now are scared about what AI can do to them, but how I look at it is we can drive operational efficiency in our business, we can develop solutions faster, we can meet more needs and more customers faster and grow faster.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the opportunity is there.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's really untapped.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, it's early inning.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what the kind of the future holds, in my opinion.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's super exciting.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's about how can prosperity grow for everybody and businesses can operate more efficiently, delight their customers because they're engaging with great partners like us that are there to meet needs, add value, and be there for the long haul.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pretty exciting time.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, a couple of final questions.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: If you could go back and give yourself advice at the start of your career, what would it be?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was just on the Memorial Day weekend, and kid that was graduating high school asked me the same question.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I told him I would be as bold as possible, take risks, calculated risks, be smart about it.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: But when you find yourself in an exciting market that has huge potential, be bold, go fast, break things, work hard, and you'll have a lot of success.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think earlier on, we probably could have pushed the gas a little bit harder, but we got here, we kept on, and we're definitely pushing the gas hard now.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: That would be the advice I would give myself or others that are coming out of school and looking to figure out what they want to do next.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: One final question.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: What's the one thing that payments leaders that are listening to this show today, what should they be thinking about right now?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's kind of what we were talking about on how exciting the future is.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's the ability to meet needs and add value for customers could not be more well positioned than it is right now.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you understand what the challenges are and you understand what success looks like when you deliver a solution, the ability to do that now should be made a lot easier with some of the tools we have and the market maturing enough where people are ready to take on these solutions.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: So if I was in the payment space, I would be really excited.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be leaning into technology, artificial intelligence, I'd be talking to smart people, I'd be networking because the pie is so big that there's plenty of room for all of us to have a lot of success and meet a lot of needs and do some great things.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got our approach.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're really excited about what we're doing.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to work somewhere great, come join us at NASH and we're transforming things over here.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I'd be telling them.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that's a great way to wrap up the show.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: So, Steven, thank you so much for being on the show.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Greg.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's always great to see you and talk again soon.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: And to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: And until the next story.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
• 19:44
  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.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed listening, please share on your social channels as well.