Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together
by Tearsheet Studios
Tearsheet Podcast explores financial services together. We're the podcast of record for news and opinion about the finance industry. Weekly, we identify, track, and analyze top trends impacting the business of finance, with an eye on the digital disruption wrought by fintech and new financial technology. Every week, your host, Zack Miller, Tearsheet's founder and editor in chief, interviews thought leaders, senior executives, and entrepreneurs helping to form the next generation of financial services and technologies.
Episodes
-
At Stellar's Meridian conference, Anthony Scaramucci tells banks to "kill the iPod in your business"
Anthony Scaramucci bought his first bitcoin at about $6,000. In October 2020, he bought nine figures' worth for himself and his clients, and some of those clients fired him for it. He had been a skeptic, and he had already missed the run from $500 to $2,000. What changed his mind was working out...
-
What Bluevine learned from $2 billion in mobile check deposits and a growing partner stack
A $2 million general contractor pays subcontractors, invoices clients, issues employee cards, and keeps its own books. Most banks still serve this business the way they serve a consumer, just with a larger balance. Owners fill the gaps by stitching together a dozen or more apps. Digital banks...
-
If you disappeared tomorrow, would your customers care?
For Episode 3, we asked a simple question: Which fintechs would we genuinely miss if they disappeared tomorrow? Millions of users don't necessarily mean a company has built a bomb product or something people can't live without. Customers might stay for convenience, better pricing, or simply…
more -
Banks look to close the expectation gap with data, real-time infrastructure, and human judgment
Customers hold their banks to a standard they learned somewhere else. Brian DuVal, President of North America at Temenos, points to the speed and ease of use they have become accustomed to booking a hotel, renting a car or buying with one-click on Amazon. Yet their banking experiences don’t…
more -
Why small businesses hesitate on AI in finance, and how BILL is addressing it
Why small businesses hesitate on AI in finance, and how BILL is addressing it by Tearsheet
-
Why B2B payments are a whole-journey problem ft. TreviPay
Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at TreviPay, argues that a new generation of digital-native buyers is the biggest force reshaping how businesses buy and pay. Accustomed to frictionless consumer experiences, they expect the same convenience and omnichannel consistency from their suppliers.…
more -
Why Salient bet everything on auto lending and never looked back
Most AI startups chase breadth. They build a capable, general-purpose product and sell it across as many industries as are willing to buy it. Ari Malik, CEO of Salient, took the opposite approach. He picked one vertical, auto lending, and went deep enough that he eventually moved his company's...
-
Nubank's Ethan Eismann: 'You have to love your customers fanatically for them to love you fanatically'
Nubank spent thirteen years building one of the most loved financial brands in Latin America, growing past 140 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. This month, that brand entered the US for the first time, launching Nu Global alongside a dedicated US product built around a Nu...
-
Over and Underhyped: The banking trends we’re getting wrong
For the second episode of The Editors’ Room, we flipped the format around. One trend we think the industry is overhyping, and one that isn’t getting nearly enough attention. Managing Editor Sara took the overhyped side: the race to become a customer’s primary financial relationship. Founding…
more -
Venture banking 3.0: How Stifel is rebuilding trust after Silicon Valley Bank
When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March 2023, it took with it a bank that had quietly become infrastructure for the startup ecosystem, holding the majority of the venture debt market and serving as the one relationship founders and fund managers trusted for everything from a wire transfer to…
more -
Live Oak Bank's BJ Losch on why AI is an accelerant, not a strategy
Most banks seem to chase small business customers as one segment among many. Live Oak Bank was built around a bet that specializing beats generalizing — and it started about as narrow as a bank can start, lending only to veterinarians. Today, Live Oak has grown that thesis into 40 verticals…
more -
“Amy has the what. I help with the how”: Inside Bank of America's data and AI partnership
Amy Avery, Managing Director, Analytics, Modeling and Insights, took her job at Bank of America because of a number. When she interviewed at Bank of America, she was told that the bank interfaced with, at the time, 67 million clients. "Gosh, that's so much information," she remembers thinking....
-
How enterprise AI is moving up the stack in 3 layers
Welcome to The Editors’ Room, a new Tearsheet Podcast series where Editor-in-Chief Zack Miller and Managing Editor Sara Khairi take the conversations that usually happen behind the scenes about our biggest stories and put them on the record. There isn’t a rehearsed interview or carefully...
-
Mastercard's Marc Pettican on the road to a $17.4 trillion virtual card market
Every account payable and account receivable department runs on the same friction: invoices chased four or five times, payments late more than 30% of the time, and credit control teams that can run 20, 30, even 50 people deep at a mid-sized corporate. Virtual cards were built to solve exactly…
more -
How BILL is rebuilding for the Fortune 5 million and gearing up to take big swings on AI
For most small and midsize businesses, financial operations still look a lot like they did a decade ago. Bills get keyed in manually. Receipts pile up. W-9s get chased down at tax time. While the tools have multiplied, the work hasn't gone away. “Most finance teams work in an incredibly manual...
-
Trust, stablecoins, and the AI margin squeeze:What McKinsey and QED's fintech report means for banks
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast, where we explore financial services together with an eye on technology, innovation, emerging models, and changing expectations. I'm Tearsheet's editor in chief, Zack Miller. Fintech just lived through four distinct ages — pioneers, growth-at-all-costs, the…
more -
How Figure and Method closed the loop on debt consolidation and cut delinquency in half
Debt consolidation has always rested on a promise lenders couldn't verify. A borrower takes out a HELOC, says they'll pay off their credit cards, and the lender hands over the cash and hopes for the best. Credit bureau data lags by 30 days. There's no mechanism to confirm the debt actually got...
-
The bank account is the product: Slash's bet on vertical SMB banking
Small business banking has always had a structural problem: the companies that hold your money and the companies that build your financial software have been two different things. One moves the money, the other tracks it, and small business owners are stuck in the gap between them. A new…
more -
How Kudos built a consumer data moat on top of credit card rewards
Most people leave money on the table every time they swipe — not because they're careless, but because the credit card rewards ecosystem is genuinely complicated. Thousands of cards, millions of merchants, shifting bonus categories, buried benefits. The promise of AI is that it can do that...
-
Stablecoin infrastructure is rewiring cross-border payments
Unlock how stablecoin infrastructure is transforming cross-border payments, global treasury, and enterprise fintech strategy. In this episode, Avinash Chidambaram, Founder & CEO of Cybrid, breaks down how stablecoin rails are becoming production-ready payment infrastructure for fintechs…
more -
How Block built a $200 billion credit operation by seeing customers traditional lenders can't
The credit system in the US was built on a fundamental assumption: that past borrowing behavior predicts future risk. That assumption has left roughly 100 million Americans essentially invisible to lenders — no score, thin file, or a history that doesn't reflect who they actually are financially...
-
How Huntington modernized without touching the core ft. Qolo
The pressure building on commercial banks today comes from several directions at once. Corporate treasurers are younger, more digitally native, and less tolerant of manual reconciliation. Business structures are more complex: A franchisee group running fifty locations needs fifty entities managed...
-
Squarespace's Corey Zettler on building a financial services suite for small businesses
For two decades, Squarespace has been the platform entrepreneurs turn to when they want to build something that looks like they hired a designer. But over the past few years, something has changed. Squarespace has been building a financial stack. Payments launched in 2023. Capital followed in…
more -
How Paze is betting bank trust can crack the digital wallet market
Early Warning built Zelle into the dominant peer-to-peer payments network in the U.S. — processing over a trillion dollars in yearly transactions. Paze is their next bet: a bank-backed digital wallet for e-commerce checkout, backed by the same seven major banks, designed to bring that same...
-
How KeyBank and Qolo are modernizing corporate treasury without ripping out the core
A mid-market company with dozens of bank accounts shouldn't have to deploy a small army to figure out where its money is. But for most commercial banking clients, that's still the reality because the systems tracking it haven't kept up. Banks know this. Most of their commercial clients know this....
-
How Modern Treasury is building a payments platform for a hybrid money world
For years, companies that needed to move money at scale faced the same frustrating tradeoff: build their own bank integrations and compliance infrastructure — a process that could take months — or stitch together a patchwork of specialized vendors, each covering a different rail. Modern Treasury...
-
Truist's Dontá Wilson: 'Innovation without empathy is empty’
There's a tension at the heart of modern banking that technology doesn't seem to totally resolve: how do you be both, digitally excellent and deeply human at the same time? Most banks have picked a lane: either betting on digital efficiency or doubling down on relationship banking. But consumers...
-
Pathward's Anthony Sharett on why sponsor banking's future is about evolution, not revolution
Sponsor banking has become one of the most scrutinized business models in financial services. The headlines focus on enforcement actions and regulatory pressure, but behind that noise is a more interesting question: when done right, how do bank-fintech partnerships actually expand financial…
more -
Why banks need to adopt a product mindset for their digital channels
Digital banking has become the largest branch of modern banking, yet most banks and credit unions still aren't approaching these experiences with a product mindset. They're managing digital channels the way they've always managed technology: as IT projects, rather than products that need constant...
-
How TruStage Ventures built connective tissue between fintechs and credit unions
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast, where we explore financial services together with an eye on technology, innovation, emerging models, and changing expectations. I'm Tearsheet's editor in chief, Zack Miller. For fintechs, cracking the credit union market is notoriously difficult. It's...
-
How FIS is helping financial institutions evolve loyalty beyond rewards
Financial institutions are rethinking loyalty at a critical moment. Credit card spending sits at record highs, but economic uncertainty looms. For banks aiming to stay relevant, loyalty can no longer be an afterthought – it needs to be embedded into every customer experience from the start. At...
-
Banks reclaim commercial lending through technology and strategic partnerships
Commercial banks are confronting a rapidly shifting landscape as private credit markets grow toward $3.5 trillion and fintech competitors accelerate their offerings with AI-powered tools. Rather than retreating, traditional institutions are doubling down on technology investments and reimagining...
-
How community banks are balancing urgent pressures with long-term modernization
Community and regional banks operate in an environment of perpetual tension. They need to grow deposits and drive lending profitability while managing operating costs that threaten to overwhelm smaller institutions. They must also prevent increasingly sophisticated fraud while delivering customer...
-
Why every bank now needs a stablecoin strategy (whether they like it or not)
The GENIUS Act brings regulatory clarity to stablecoins, but Conduit CEO Kirill Gertman argues that clarity alone won't guarantee success. Banks face a choice between building their own infrastructure or becoming the pipes for others. Kirill Gertman has watched the stablecoin industry evolve from...
-
Why venture capital infrastructure is finally getting automated
The venture capital world has a liquidity problem. With IPOs scarce and M&A exits few and far between, investors have been stuck in positions for years, unable to return capital to their LPs or move into new opportunities. But while traditional exit doors have stayed shut, technology has opened…
more -
How to build a partnership that can survive market disruptions ft. Cross River and Best Egg
Some partnerships in financial services begin with a handshake and end with a contract dispute. Others start with a Sunday morning LinkedIn message and evolve into something that transcends the typical vendor-client relationship. The collaboration between Cross River Bank and Best Egg falls…
more -
How CFOs can regain strategic control in times of economic volatility ft. FIS’ Chrissy Wagner and Seamus Smith
CFOs are abandoning quarterly planning cycles for week-by-week assessments as trade tensions, tariff uncertainty, and supplier volatility force a new short-term reality onto financial leadership. Seamus Smith, EVP and Group President of Automated Finance at FIS, and Chrissy Wagner, SVP of GTM at...
-
Banks or Pipes: Where financial institutions go when agents take over
Welcome to a special 4dFi podcast exploring the latest trends and technologies reshaping finance. I'm Zack Miller, Tearsheet's Editor in Chief. Today, we're unpacking the rise of AI agents and their potential to transform how consumers interact with financial services. I'm joined by my partners...
-
AI agents in production: Nvidia's Kevin Levitt on infrastructure for live banking systems
Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast, where we explore financial services together with an eye on technology, innovation, emerging models, and changing expectations. I'm Tearsheet's editor in chief, Zack Miller. We've been covering AI in financial services for a while now—chatbots, generative AI…
more -
FIS's McWilliams on SMBs, data sharing, and the strategy that wins in a competitive environment
Banks dramatically underestimate how their customers share financial data, and most of it happens through insecure screen scraping that creates fraud vulnerabilities and slows performance. Shane McWilliams, Head of Retail Digital Banking at FIS, breaks down the three critical challenges…
more -
How Wix built payments, checking, and capital for 293 million users
Although every company is becoming a fintech now, Wix didn’t set out to do so – the firm’s entry into financial services started from observing what millions of small business owners actually needed when building their online presence. For Amit Sagiv and Volodymyr Tsukur, co-heads of payments at...
-
How Lendflow is helping embedded lenders reduce system fragmentation and gain an edge in AI
SMBs don't have access to the same level of sophisticated lending options as consumers.There is one fundamental problem that prevents this class of product from pushing forward: lenders juggle multiple data vendors, wrestle with disconnected point solutions, and these tools lack the ability to...
-
How Upstart's AI is mastering growth, credit performance, and profitability
Welcome to the Tearsheet podcast, where we explore financial services together with an eye on technology, innovation, emerging models and changing expectations. I'm Tearsheet Editor in Chief, Zack Miller. There's an old theory in lending that you can only master two or three things: growth…
more -
Temenos embeds AI at the core, not just around it ft. CPO Sai Rangachari
In a sector where AI is promising a significant leap forward, financial institutions demand speed — with safety. Temenos has a track record of innovation and the customer trust to bring AI into the core of banking. Chief Product Officer Sai Rangachari is just nine months into his role at Temenos,...
-
Understanding the jabuticaba factor: How QED's Camila Vieira mastered local nuance in Latin American fintech investing
Today, we're joined by Camila Vieira, a Partner at QED Investors focused on Latin America. Camila brings a wealth of experience to our conversation, having established herself as one of the region's most influential fintech investors. Camila joined QED in 2022 as the company's first employee…
more -
How FIs are using modular modernization and the cloud to keep up with the change in payments ft. FIS and AWS
The payments landscape is experiencing regulatory upheaval, forcing financial institutions to rethink their approach to money movement modernization. With ISO message format changes, Swift updates, and evolving fraud requirements hitting simultaneously, banks are facing a complex web of…
more -
'We're changing the narrative on athletes being dumb money': The Player's Company
Today on the Tearsheet Podcast, we're diving into a story that captures the evolution of modern finance — where professional athletes aren't just endorsing products, but building the infrastructure that empowers the next generation of wealth creators. I'm joined by Sheldon Day, Co-Founder and...
-
How design-thinking powers Temenos' empathy-driven experiences
From streamlining complex onboarding flows to surfacing the right information at the right time, design thinking encourages product design teams to bring empathy and intentionality into every layer of product development, creating experiences that are intuitive, responsive, and centered around…
more -
Why record keepers are becoming workplace financial wellness firms, ft. FIS
More than half of Americans report that they will run out of money when they stop earning a paycheck and millions haven't saved enough to maintain their standard of living in retirement, There is an urgent need to re-imagine the role record keepers play in financial wellness, and it starts by...
-
The jazz ensemble approach: How Fundbox's dual leadership model powers lending growth
As fintech companies transition from scrappy startups to scaled operations, traditional leadership models often hit their limits. The demands of managing complex partnerships, navigating regulatory requirements, and driving sustainable growth require a different kind of executive structure than…
more
About this show
Tearsheet Podcast explores financial services together. We're the podcast of record for news and opinion about the finance industry. Weekly, we identify, track, and analyze top trends impacting the business of finance, with an eye on the digital disruption wrought by fintech and new financial technology. Every week, your host, Zack Miller, Tearsheet's founder and editor in chief, interviews thought leaders, senior executives, and entrepreneurs helping to form the next generation of financial services and technologies.
Hosted by
Tearsheet Studios
Categories