Latest / Leaders In Payments / THE SIGNAL: Payments as the Small Business OS with US Bank's Shruti Patel | Episode 456

Transcript

THE SIGNAL: Payments as the Small Business OS with US Bank's Shruti Patel | Episode 456 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Signal, powered by the Leaders in Payments Podcast, where we are cutting through the noise to reveal what truly matters in payments and fintech.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Greg Myers, and today's special guest is Sruty Patel, the Chief Product Officer for Business Banking at US Bank.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, Struthi, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me, Greg.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm delighted to be on the show.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: So this episode is part of our signal series where we're cutting through the noise to reveal what truly matters in payments and fintech.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: According to the U.S.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Chamber of Commerce, in the US, small businesses constitute 99.9% of all businesses and are vital to the economy, employing approximately 60 million people, which is around 46% of the private sector employees, and accounting for 43.5% of US GDP.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: So today we'll be discussing small business sentiment, the economy, US bank small business strategy, and much, much more.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, Shiruthi, before we dive into the meat of the conversation, can you walk us through your professional journey, how you got to US Bank, and a little bit about your role today?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, happy to.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So again, thanks, and I guess hello to everyone who will be listening to the podcast.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I spent about 12 years at American Express across both their corporate card business as well as their network merchant services business.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went, I spent about four years at JB Morgan.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was leading embedded payments and tokenization capabilities.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then about two years at Shopify, where I led product partnerships and monetization across their embedded FinTech space.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then for the last two years, I've been at US Bank.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the head of business banking.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: We serve small businesses from 100K to about 50 million in annual revenues across our banking and payments and digital servicing and tool products.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And really the aim at US Bank is how do we understand the small business ecosystem?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: We have about a million and a half small business customers, and our job over the last two years has been really getting an in-depth understanding of the jobs to be done and providing all of those embedded suites and solutions across our banking and payments products.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so talking about payments, I mean, I think most people listening will be familiar with the Elevon brand.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: So how do US Bank and Elevon work together in a way that creates value for small businesses?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, earlier in the year, we actually launched what we call our business essential solutions, and it's a bundled offering to make life for small businesses really easy.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Small businesses, especially the startup entrepreneurs, are looking for easy, quick solutions to which they can onboard into a single application and get become bank customers.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're looking for a no-fee checking account, that's right, I said no fee.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of our peers and competitors are introducing fees for small business accounts.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: We actually have no annual maintenance fee.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you have part of the business essentials bundle, we have fraud detection tools, we have unlimited money movement digital transactions, which we are offering.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in addition to that, what we have done is we have coupled it with our L1 acquiring product.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so you get a free Mobi card reader and you can start accepting payments immediately.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And because you are part of the L1 customer suite, we are giving you same-day availability of funds.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Small businesses are really looking for cost-efficient ways to run their operations.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And with business essentials, because of the access to both a single operating balance account as well as a merchant accepting or payment acceptance product, we're making sure that they can actually start their businesses ASAP at a really low cost.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how we are bringing our banking and our payment suite capabilities together.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for mentioning that.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's important that people kind of know how they work together.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go ahead and dive into the first topic for today's conversation: small business sentiment and the economy.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: You launched a small business survey back in June called The Small Business Perspective.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: What were the major insights from that survey?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, US Bank launches a small business survey each year.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's our annual survey.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: This was our third year of conducting the survey, and really our intent is to understand both sentiment and the needs or the struggles small businesses are facing.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you said it very eloquently at the at the top of the hour, where essentially you said, you know, we have about 36 million small businesses.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: They are the backbone of the US economy.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: They drive a huge ton of GDP and, you know, millions of jobs in the country.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so the intent of the survey is understanding both their sentiment, their outlook, the challenges they're facing.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: How can banks like US Bank essentially address some of their needs?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: There were a few notable findings, not surprising actually, at all.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: We had a bunch of small businesses, almost 90% of our small businesses were very optimistic about the future of their business as well as the success they have experienced in the past year.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: But there were lingering challenges they kept facing year over year.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, inflation, we all know that the cost of goods as well as the cost of running businesses is becoming very expensive for small businesses.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And essentially, they are in a a little bit of a catch-22 situation, whether they absorb these costs or they pass these costs on to the consumers.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so supply chain disruptions, inflation or rising inflation cost, as well as in May, you know, we were just coming off the back of the introduction of tariffs in the economy.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a lot of uncertainty small businesses had with respect to tariffs and how that was going to impact their business, their cost of operations, as well as the cost of goods.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, those were some of the notable findings.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to that, some of the other ones, you know, given the rates environment, obviously access to working capital, small businesses need funds to run their business.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: They are operating on really thin margins.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea is how can they get access to working capital really quickly and easily?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So those were some of the findings.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But in addition to that, there were some really good observations which came out as well.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of small businesses, surprisingly, had already started leveraging AI tools to drive efficiency in their businesses, whether this was, you know, customer recommendations, product marketing in their contact centers or operations, or even simple, easy ways to service their customers was very top of mind.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Almost 60% of them were leveraging AI tools or beginning to think about the introduction of tools and running their businesses.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then last but not the least, one of the other notable findings was the generational shift we are going to experience over the next few years.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, almost I think two-thirds of our small business owners are reaching the age of 65, which means they are beginning to think about transitioning their business and succession planning.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I think banks can play a really important role through advisory services and helping small businesses think through succession planning.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks for sharing that.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, as you know, being in this industry, there are a lot of buzzwords.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about them on this show all the time.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Things like stable coins and crypto and blockchain and AI.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't mention most of those.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: AI, you did mention.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: But small businesses, like, what's the impact to them with those kind of buzzwords and things that are going on in the industry?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: What's the real impact to them?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: I would say it's very early to determine, you know, how small businesses are thinking about stable coins or crypto.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: We do see stable coins and tokenized deposits being very relevant in our custodies business.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And as large businesses think about cross-border money movement, especially to you know, high-risk currencies or high-risk countries.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think in small businesses we haven't seen a lot of that very specific use cases come through.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is definitely top of mind for them.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: But rest assured, I think some of the other challengers, such as cost or tariffs, or economic outlook, is more top of mind.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned earlier, AI is very, very, you know, evident in the way small businesses are beginning to adopt, especially as they try to keep the cost of operations low.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so you will see a lot more adoption of AI in the coming months in small businesses.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're already seeing that in our base.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of them are asking us, our customer services, our branch bankers, on how US Bank is deploying AI to help small businesses.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the second topic I'd like to dive into is your strategy and product set that you have for small business.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned it a little bit already, but you launched a few new products focused on small business in 2025.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: But before we go there, let's start at the high level.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: What's the overall strategy when it comes to small business for the bank?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: A number of strategies are in play.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think you have seen, or I'm sure you have witnessed, the transition from MOPS, which is method of payments, to jobs, the jobs to be done.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so our strategy is very centered around understanding the small business needs and the jobs to be done.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, small businesses, as you know, wear a number of hats.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're CFOs, they're CEOs, they're CMOs.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the time, what we would like to do within our banking infrastructure and ecosystem is give them a perfect combination of banking, payments, and digital servicing.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have great banking products, both our small dollar loans as well as large dollar loans to give them access to capital.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just mentioned that we launched the business essentials bundle, which combines our checking product with payment acceptance capabilities and a number of other features and benefits.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to that, we obviously have our savings, money market, and CT products.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: On the payment side, we have an excellent shelf of small business cards.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Cards or lending lines, you know, lines of credit are very important for small businesses to run their businesses.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: We obviously have LO1, which provides excellent payment acceptance capabilities as well as all of the robust money movement, you know, so that they can efficiently pay their vendors or pay their bills.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to that, what we've done is over the last two years, we have really embedded a very tech forward strategy in terms of bringing more digital services within our online banking and mobile app.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, whether you're a small business or a mid-market client, you want to pay a bill, you want to pay an employee, you would like to pay a vendor.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure we give you all of the payment rails relevant.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so earlier this year, we launched in partnership with the FinTech Medio and Pfizer, our bill pay product for small business.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Cashflow Central.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a seamless customer experience.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can use your card to pay your bills or any of the money moments like ACH or electronic check.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: We just partnered with Gusto and we launched embedded payroll capabilities.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, if you're a small shop with less than 10 employees, or even, you know, even if you have a larger employee base, we want to make sure that you can easily link your bank accounts to paying to doing payroll and offering all of the benefits needed.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, lastly, all of the money movement capabilities within online banking as well as our other platforms.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure that we are able to drive primacy and engagement for small businesses and to the extent all of the important jobs to be done are done within our banking ecosystem, we would gladly support it.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, our intent there is to make sure, you know, obviously we would love small businesses to be lasting customers of the bank and drive engagement.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: But we also hear very loud and clear from small businesses that the number of software and subscription services cost which they have to incur is getting bigger by the day.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And within banking, our idea is to provide a lot of these services for free.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, really, we're helping them save cost in their back office operations and hopefully drive efficiency through that.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, specifically around payroll and the build pay product, how well are they being received in the market?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen very good adoption early on, you know, specifically for Built Pay.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would say a lot of our new to bank customers are very seamlessly engaging and onboarding onto the solution.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of our existing customers who were on the legacy Build Pay will be customers of that as well.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we're getting very good early feedback.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: The adoption is high, feedback is very positive.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And same with payroll.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the biggest feedbacks we've received so far is just how they were actually paying for this cost outside of their banking ecosystem.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And by minimizing that cost and just enrolling within our embedded payroll solution, they still get access to the full suite of Gusto solutions.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: But in addition to that, they're able to, you know, bring their cost of operations low.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: So again, very positive feedback.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: We have a number of new features and enhancements coming up in their new year.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're quite excited on both of those fronts.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously you have a strong set of products for small businesses.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: How do you package them together?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe asked a different way.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: How do you create that seamless experience for your customers?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what so many people talk about, right?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: The customer experience and how seamless it needs to be.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you bring all these together and create that experience?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a great question.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that really ties to how we're thinking about product bundling in the small business space.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Business Essentials was sort of our first product where we were combining both banking and our acquiring suite.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to continue to iterate and enhance those bundles, whether that's small business cards, small business lending, access to free digital services.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, with the help of a bundle, what we're doing is we're onboarding a customer to multiple products within a single application and a single onboarding flow.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you really compare that to how it happens today, you know, a customer first walks into the branch or online and opens up a checking account, and then they are opening up multiple other services or accounts.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And really through our bundling strategy, we want to take away that pain point and essentially drive multi-product onboarding in a single flow.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So really excited about some of those future iterations and how we continue to add more products to the bundles and take them upmarket.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: But in addition to that, you know, once the small business is enrolled in our online banking suite or within our mobile app, we're just not giving them access to transaction history or, you know, account history.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: What we're helping them do is actually easily on board to all of the digital services I mentioned earlier.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a one-click experience, whether they want to send a bill or pay an employee or get enrolled into some of our money moment capabilities.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really the intent as to bringing down the number of clicks or steps.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And none of what I'm saying is, you know, new news.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have been at this journey for a very long time in the industry across all the banks and fintechs.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea is, you know, selling multiple products or onboarding a small business to multiple services all in a single click.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's harder to do, especially if you are a big diversified bank, a fifth largest bank in the country with the kind of infrastructure you have.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: But we have figured out a way to get a lot of this together.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's easy to say and hard to do, I think, for anybody, let alone the bigger companies like you mentioned.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: So let's end the show with a few questions around the future.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So we're recording this in late 2025, but looking ahead, and it's going to launch in early January of 2026.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: So looking ahead into 2026 and beyond, what will small businesses need to do to be successful?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think in the next 12 months, you're going to see a lot more faster adoption of AI in small businesses as they feel the cost pressures and as the macro environment continues to shift, whether positively or minimally positively, we're going to see them leveraging AI tools for customer recommendations, servicing, running their back office very efficiently, whether that's bookkeeping or cash flow management.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: We are already beginning to deploy AI within our infrastructure, whether that's through our contact center or operations.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think you'll see a lot more of that.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, very clear use cases for stable coins and crypto will emerge.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And right now we hear a lot about that within custodies and our capital markets and the institutional client group.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I think over the next 12 months, across the banking ecosystem, you know, how does stable coins or tokenized deposits feel relevant to small businesses or our commercial banking clients will emerge very clearly.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say, last but not the least, I still think, you know, one of the biggest needs for small businesses is access to working capital.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, whether that's the private credit market, whether that's banks, and how banks continue to accelerate their back-end infrastructure to accelerate, you know, speed of decisioning, speed of approval, and getting the loans quickly in the hands of small businesses will continue to be an area of optimization.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So quite excited in addition, obviously, to all of the bundling strategy we have in play around how we continue to enhance our back office.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, when you look at specifically payments and the role of US Bank, what changes do you expect in the next few years?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe, you know, two years and beyond?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Our Elohon merchant acquiring solutions are very robust and sophisticated.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we continue to think about how we combine our acquiring solutions, which are banking products, you know, we're thinking about verticalized offers, for example.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, thinking about what does a retail client versus a services client or a restaurant really need, you know, whether it's in-store solutions, online, and how they can leverage some of our payment acceptance capabilities.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: We also launched spend management earlier in the year, which is very finely coupled with our small business cards.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are a small business card customer of US Bank, you get access to our spend management solution.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you the ability to track, monitor spend, delegate employee cards, and really manage all of your business spend in one place.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're in fact one of the few banks or the only bank right now who offers a very robust spend management capability.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we've seen some great adoption numbers come through that.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's all about managing your payments.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I think in the payments front, both as we continue to think about verticalized offers within our L1 business, as well as, you know, bringing up new tools like spend management are going to be very top of mind for us.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And how do we continue to drive adoption through those?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, going off script here a little bit, and I have to ask because it comes up all the time, are you hearing much from these small businesses around agentic commerce, having agents going out and buying things on consumers' behalf?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: What are your thoughts on agentic commerce?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we are hearing so much buzz and all good buzz around agent e-commerce, and you are already beginning to see a lot of the platforms which power these small businesses, whether that's e-commerce platforms or market platforms, help them with agent e-commerce or leveraging some of that.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that you will see a lot of news around that.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: The early findings or observations do tell that they help drive a More sales for small businesses, and if that's the case, I'm sure that will be welcomed, especially with small businesses who are trying to reach a vast customer base or are trying to amp up their distribution channels.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Leveraging agent tick commerce can really be a big upside for them and will definitely help them bring their marketing costs down, but also help drive more sales conversion.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, quite excited to see what that does for some of our small businesses, especially in the retail space, because retail is a, I would say, a very attractive but a very tough industry.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally agree.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: So one final question.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: What's the one takeaway you want the audience to take away from this conversation?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would say the one takeaway is just the emergence of banking payments and digital services and how banks are beginning to invest in the ecosystem, especially US Bank.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: We have made a ton of investments on behalf of the million and a half small businesses we serve in the country across our banking payments and to digital servicing.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to continue to do that because our aim is to make sure that we are serving our customers right and helping them run their operations efficiently and you know hopefully drive engagement and loyalty through that suite.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Srithi, thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I know your time's very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for having us.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: This was a wonderful conversation, and uh look forward to many more.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And until the next story.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right, before I hit stop, anything else?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Are you good?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was awesome, by the way.