Building the Bank-Grade Ledger That Payments Infrastructure Was Missing With Patricia Montesi, CEO of Qolo

Patricia Montesi didn't start her career in payments, she started it in car rental. After nine years at Alamo and National Rent-A-Car, she was recruited into fintech with zero industry experience. That outsider perspective became her edge, and she never let go of it. Today, she's the CEO and co-founder of Qolo, a payments infrastructure platform that combines card issuing, money movement, and a bank-grade ledger on a single API-first stack.What We CoveredHow nine years in car rental shaped Patricia's outsider approach to paymentsGetting recruited into Wild Card Systems with no payments background, and why that fresh lens became an advantageThe fragmentation problem at the heart of payments infrastructure and why point products create hidden complexityQolo's three-product suite: Quantum Ledger, Qascade money movement, and Qinetic card issuingWhy Qolo isn't quite a side core, it overlays and integrates with existing bank cores rather than running in parallelRail agnosticism and why Qolo still supports checks in 2026The dual go-to-market: commercial banks and B2B fintechs, same platform, different vernacularHow the Synapse collapse changed the ledger conversation for banks and fintechs alikeWinning KeyBank in a competitive RFP against much larger players, and launching virtual account management in nine monthsHow banks are using Qolo to protect commercial deposits from modern non-bank competitorsAI inside Qolo: from Glean to Claude, and their internal "Turning Hours into Minutes" program130% year-over-year growth and 142% net revenue retentionKey TakeawaysThe moat problem: Patricia set out to build a company where customers stay because of the value delivered, not because switching is too painful. That philosophy shaped every product decision at Qolo.Ledger first: Most point-product fintechs have basic ledgers that only support one rail. Qolo's bank-grade dual-entry forward-posting ledger underpins every rail, making reconciliation and real-time money visibility a solved problem rather than a vendor management challenge.Synapse's legacy: The debacle forced banks and fintechs alike to ask harder questions about who actually owns the ledger and where money sits at any given moment. Qolo had been making that argument for years before the market was ready to hear it.Bank as distribution: KeyBank and Huntington aren't just clients — they're strategic investors using Qolo to defend their commercial deposit base against modern non-bank alternatives.About Patricia MontesiPatricia Montesi is CEO and co-founder of Qolo, a payments infrastructure company she built from the ground up after more than 20 years in the industry. She started her career at Alamo and National Rent-A-Car before being recruited into fintech with zero payments background — an outsider perspective she has held onto ever since. At Qolo, she and her team built the ledger, money movement, and card issuing stack as first-party infrastructure, without relying on third-party processors underneath.Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes