Advertise on podcast: Leaders In Payments

Trust gets harder when your company stops feeling small. When teams spread across time zones, layers appear, and acquisitions bring in new colleagues overnight, culture can turn mechanical fast unless leaders build it on purpose.  We sit down with Angela Antrim, Chief Human Resource Officer at Payroc, to unpack what “trust at scale” looks like inside a high-growth fintech payments company and how a people-first culture can survive real operational complexity.  We talk about the exact tension most scaling organizations face: you need systems, consistency, and accountability, but you cannot bury entrepreneurial thinkers under bureaucracy. Angela shares a practical lens for HR strategy and leadership: start with the problem you’re solving, keep processes simple, and protect employees’ ability to challenge the status quo. We also dig into how trust is built through small, repeatable actions, like closing the loop on employee feedback, communicating openly about tradeoffs, and designing benefits that respect the reality that people have lives outside work.  Acquisitions add another layer, because employees are asked to trust leaders they didn’t choose. Angela explains how to earn that trust through listening, transparency, and respect for what the acquired company already built, plus what should be standardized across the organization and what should never be erased. We end with a clear reminder of Payroc’s core belief: people do business with people, and that starts with the employee experience that fuels customer and partner experience.

Stablecoins are no longer a side project for crypto-native companies, they’re turning into serious payment rails for global business. I sit down with Anna Kratky Strebl, CEO of Confirmo Group, to unpack what stablecoin payments look like when you move past hype and start solving real problems: accepting funds from customers worldwide, sending mass payouts to contractors and traders, and reducing the mess of maintaining countless local payment methods. Anna shares her path from working in international trade for the British government to helping grow Confirmo from a small Bitcoin-focused product into a global stablecoin infrastructure provider. We talk candidly about what changed when stablecoins entered the stack: near-instant settlement, low fees, and far less volatility than Bitcoin, which unlocks product-market fit for digital platforms and even large e-commerce players. We also get into the uncomfortable truth that consumer checkout UX is still hard to beat, while stablecoin payouts are exploding because cross-border disbursements remain slow and expensive on traditional rails. Regulation is a big part of the story. We cover why compliance is becoming a competitive edge, how Europe’s MiCA framework is reshaping vendors, and what transaction monitoring means on pseudo-anonymous blockchains. Then we look forward: agentic payments, AI in fintech, microtransactions, and why machine-to-machine commerce may force the payments industry to adopt programmable money faster than most teams expect. If you’re building in payments, fintech, or global commerce, listen, subscribe, and share this with a teammate, then leave a review with your take: are stablecoins a feature or the next default?

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 of mapping specs, assembling an integration plan, provisioning sandbox access, and guiding testing. We dig into Payroc’s approach to “AI native, not AI only” and why that distinction matters when you’re dealing with regulated money movement, disputes, chargebacks, compliance requirements, and products like surcharging. Speed is real, but fast does not have to mean unsupervised. We also get practical about how different software companies embed payments. Some ISVs want a light referral model, others want to own onboarding and the end-to-end checkout experience, and vertical SaaS teams often need flexibility across card-not-present, card-present, and wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay. Casey shares how Payroc designs for multiple paths and what the payoff looks like beyond engineering: faster time to revenue, better product differentiation, and fewer roadmap delays caused by payments complexity. If you’re building embedded payments or modernizing your payments API strategy, listen through the end for how Casey thinks AI agents may become a second user and eventually the standard user in commerce.

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 operators: start with the customer’s pain point, then match the right product to the right moment in the workflow. That includes lines of credit that increase purchasing power, options that bridge payment gaps in industries like healthcare, and ways to deliver more value from the money already flowing through your platform. Along the way, we dig into the “point of need” concept and why even great products fail when they are surfaced at the wrong time. Complexity is real, so we also cover the unglamorous parts: sponsor banks, KYC and KYB, compliance, fraud, settlement, and reconciliation. Sanil breaks down the tradeoffs between a processing-only approach and a full-service embedded finance model, and how to decide what your SaaS should own versus what a partner like Fiserv can handle. If you are planning your embedded finance strategy for the next two to five years, this conversation is a clear blueprint.

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, one financial product naturally unlocks the next, and a platform can build multiple monetization streams across payments, lending, payroll, and insurance. Jane and Jake share why the best roadmap starts with customer interviews and real pain points, not trends, and how niche markets can suddenly have far more runway once you add a financial services layer. Then we shift into the scorecard. Jake breaks down what investors look for in the numbers like payments revenue mix, attach rate, and net take rate and Jane adds the “second-order” metrics that can make or break enterprise value: net dollar retention lift, CAC payback improvement, and the stickiness that comes from being mission critical. We also cover the operator reality: CEO alignment, true product ownership, compliance and go-to-market planning, plus the tracking and reporting infrastructure that turns embedded finance into a managed business line. If you’re building in vertical SaaS and want embedded finance to drive valuation, not complexity, listen now, and share this with a founder who needs a clearer embedded finance playbook.

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 focus. We get into how Maverick approaches the market as a reseller focused, privately owned payments infrastructure provider, including what it takes to deliver a unified, white label experience across sponsor banks, risk ownership, gateway capabilities, and ACH processing. Ben shares why partner empathy matters when you’ve lived the sales side, and how a single operating system for merchant onboarding, reporting, chargeback management, residuals, and support tickets can reduce operational noise so partners can actually grow. Then we zoom out to the bigger trends shaping the future of payments: embedded payments in vertical SaaS, ISVs looking to monetize payments as SaaS pricing tightens, and why ISOs and ISVs may be more complementary than people assume. We also dig into AI in payments with a clear stance: use AI to boost productivity and protect SLAs, but keep human expertise where relationships, support, and judgment calls make the difference. If you care about payment APIs, white label payments, embedded finance, and what modern partners expect, this conversation delivers the playbook.

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 attachment rates and margins. We dig into the most common places companies get stuck: chasing a new processor when the real issue is strategy, approaching payments like a cost center, and skipping the internal work required to scale. Ali and Ashley share what actually moves the numbers: integrating payments into the product journey, aligning product, sales, customer success, finance, and leadership, and enabling reps with pricing tools and incentives that make payments revenue worth the effort. We also talk about when to optimize a current provider versus running an RFP, and why hard cutovers can backfire if you have not stabilized the business first. Then we zoom out to “what comes after payments.” You will hear the framework Revolv uses to evaluate lending, banking, issuing, payroll, and more, including why issuing is climbing fast as providers lower the operational burden. If you care about embedded payments adoption, take rate, monetization, and building an embedded finance strategy that stands up to board scrutiny, this is a practical roadmap.

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 readiness: if you cannot name the customer problem, the workflow moment, and the senior leader who owns the business, payments or lending will stall no matter how clean the integration looks. We also dig into what a “virtual team” looks like in practice. Rather than hiring a massive new department, the winners pull together product, engineering, finance, sales, marketing, customer success, support, legal, and a clear owner to run partner oversight. Jane explains why embedded finance changes go-to-market, why support needs new playbooks for issues like failed payments and fraud, and why leadership must treat this as a new P&L mindset inside the existing SaaS motion. On the technology side, we move past the API checklist and talk about what you need after launch: ledgering, reconciliation, error visibility, shared support workflows with your embedded finance vendor, and an operating system that helps you act on customer signals. Finally, we cover the metrics operators and investors watch most, from addressable GMV and adoption to share of wallet, take rate, and retention lift. If you’re building embedded payments, embedded lending, or insurance inside vertical SaaS, you don’t want to miss this episode.

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 agents are protecting when they bring a merchant over, why “no one to call” is a deal killer, and how support responsiveness and residual accuracy often matter more than small pricing differences. When something goes wrong, we talk about the two-part fix: resolution plus clear, accountable communication that preserves the relationship. We also explore how product can strengthen trust, from compliant surcharge programs and evolving state regulations to POS and software integrations that make merchants stickier. Along the way, Andy shares the behavioral signals that show trust is deepening, and what separates a basic provider from a true strategic growth partner who understands an agent’s goals and business model. If you care about merchant experience, agent retention, and sustainable growth in the payments industry, this conversation is for you.

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 about why accounting belongs in the embedded finance roadmap right alongside payments, banking, and lending. When your platform already owns the operational workflow and the payments flow, you have the richest possible data to automate reconciliation, reflect refunds and fees correctly, and generate a clean profit and loss statement without the painful setup that comes with horizontal accounting tools. Justin also shares what “good fit” looks like for embedded accounting, especially for businesses doing roughly $50K to $5M+ in revenue that need clarity without hiring a full in-house finance team. We also talk platform strategy: who should own the product, what the SaaS team should own in go to market and support, and how AI is changing everything from transaction categorization to behind-the-scenes bookkeeping automation. If you’re building embedded finance, this conversation makes the case that accounting might be the simplest way to deliver immediate value, drive retention, and turn your software into the financial hub your customers already want. If you find this useful, subscribe, share the episode with a builder in vertical SaaS, and leave a review so more fintech teams can find it.

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 plain sight: the financial activity already running through your platform. In this episode I sit down with Jane Podbelskaya, Founder of Charge Forward, to unpack the embedded finance playbook for vertical SaaS. Jane explains how transactional revenue aligns with customer success, why embedded finance can protect profitability when AI tools carry higher costs, and what “embedded finance” really means beyond just payments. We also dig into where to look for monetizable moments inside real workflows, from obvious money movement to subtle signals like CSV exports, QuickBooks detours, and repeated integration requests. We then go past the hype into execution: what it means to manage embedded finance as a product and a P&L, how to think about pricing and packaging, how to drive adoption with clear UI and messaging, and why compliance-aware marketing matters even when a fintech partner handles most of the back-end complexity.  Subscribe for the next parts of the series, share this with a SaaS operator who’s rethinking pricing, and leave a review with your biggest question about embedded finance.

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 businesses.  We talk through ChainIT’s approach to zero-trust commerce, including biometric authentication, verifying identity and organizational roles through authoritative sources, and turning those verified claims into reusable digital tokens. Jeremy explains the difference between traditional network authorization and governance-derived authority, plus how transaction guardrails can be enforced at the moment of execution. We also dig into what “complete commerce” looks like when agreements, compliance, and payment movement happen as one governed workflow.  You’ll hear practical examples like construction draws and insurance claims, where verification, conditional lien releases, and AML checks often drag on for days. We also zoom out to the biggest payments industry trends: RTP and FedNow, stablecoin and programmable money, agentic commerce, and why quantum security is already on the horizon for cryptographic infrastructure. If you care about fraud prevention, compliance, and the future of enterprise payments, this is the conversation to bring back to your team.

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. We also dig into the commercial reality behind expansion: setting up local entities, teams, and infrastructure can take years, while many companies want to go live in 50 to 100 countries in parallel. João explains how EBANX helps global merchants accept alternative payment methods, enable installments, improve authorization rates, and deliver unified reporting and settlement across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. We talk through the verticals where this matters most, including retail marketplaces, streaming and digital services, advertising, and travel, where local installments can be the difference between abandonment and purchase. Then we zoom out to the biggest payments trends reshaping the industry: AI, early moves toward agentic payments, stablecoins for cross-border payments, and blockchain as settlement infrastructure. A major thread is the rapid rise of account-to-account payments, driven by financial inclusion, cost dynamics, and a consumer desire for predictable money movement without surprises.

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 protects the business while still enabling growth. We dig into what trust looks like operationally: transactions that keep flowing, the right data showing up consistently, and issues getting caught before they become fines or sanctions. Darrel explains how experienced compliance teams don’t just say no, they help product and sales teams find a safe path to yes, and that credibility extends beyond merchants to regulators, card networks, and partner banks. We also talk about speed, including a simple test for reckless launches: if you cannot clearly explain the risk and controls back to someone else, you are moving too fast. When incidents happen, we focus on what preserves customer confidence: frank communication, involving customers in the solution, and taking ownership until resolution is complete. Darrel also shares leadership frameworks like the red balloon theory and “smoke detectors versus fire extinguishers” to push teams toward prevention over reaction. Finally, we tackle AI in payments compliance and fraud: how it can remove repetitive work and sharpen detection, and why criminals using AI means the arms race is just getting started.

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 Embedded Commerce at Flute, about what vertical SaaS leaders can do differently when they want to own the payments experience and turn it into a real line of business. We get practical on the building blocks: how to model profitability, pick a pricing policy that matches your go-to-market, and design onboarding that feels native inside your product. John explains why “launching” is only the start and how the best platforms drive payment adoption by placing invoicing, text-to-pay, stored credentials, and checkout moments directly inside the workflow users already live in. Then we look forward. John shares how AI dev tools can cut integration timelines from weeks to days, lowering the barrier to embedded payments and embedded finance. He also lays out a compelling next step: embedded intelligence, where AI helps surface working capital, instant payouts, and other financial products at the right time for the right customer. We close with what to avoid, what to demand from a payments partner, and why urgency and long-term alignment matter as you scale.