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 separating thriving institutions from those being left behind: serving small and medium businesses as a central financial hub, enabling secure data sharing through APIs, and moving beyond product-centric thinking to build sticky customer relationships. McWilliams reveals that when he asks bank executives to guess what percentage of their customers are sharing data with third parties, "they're not even close" to reality. He explains how modern SMBs expect their banks to integrate everything from cash flow monitoring to accounting systems, why personalization needs to go beyond UX optimization, and how banks that orient around customer needs rather than products will win in today's competitive environment.

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 Wix, the path to serving these SMB customers well was paved through financial products: Wix had to take the payment infrastructure it had built for itself and transform it into tools that could help merchants manage their businesses. The foundation was already there. Wix had developed sophisticated billing systems to support its freemium model, accumulating deep expertise in payment routing, risk management, and global processing. "We built tremendous payment capabilities," Sagiv explained. "The billing manager of Wix wanted to take that offering and build a service for our users." What started as a small project evolved into a comprehensive financial platform serving businesses across the globe. The company now processes over $3 billion per quarter with a team of 160 people, covering payments, checking accounts, and capital lending. Listen to the podcast to hear how a chance collaboration between Wix's billing team and gateway developers turned into a fintech operation processing billions quarterly. Sagiv and Tsukur discuss why they deliberately avoided becoming a full-fledged bank, and how website data reveals creditworthiness before transaction history does. It’s a conversation that dives deep into what it means to be serving SMB customers digitally and how firms can do embedded finance right.

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 paint a full picture of the SMB customer and their needs. The result is an ecosystem where a majority of time is spent on solving operational blockades rather than building solutions that cater to the whole lending lifecycle of a SMB customer. “We need something that covers everything. There can't just be a bunch of point solutions," says Jon Fry, founder and CEO of Lendflow. Lendflow has tackled this challenge by building a unified embedded lending infrastructure that works with over 200 companies to streamline three critical pillars in the lending lifecycle: distribution, decisioning, and workflow automation. The firm is not a lender today, nor are they interested in becoming an embedded lender in the future; instead it has positioned itself as the technology backbone that enables existing lenders to become embedded lenders themselves. Lendflow’s approach is paying off for clients like BHG Financial, which uses the firm's entire platform suite and has seen dramatic improvements in operational efficiency and approval rates through the partnership. Listen to this podcast to learn how Lendflow is helping lenders break out of the fragmentation quagmire and access a full agentic AI toolbox that helps re-engage borrowers, as well as improve efficiencies for internal processes.

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, credit performance and profitability. For decades, this has been accepted wisdom, until AI started changing the fundamentals of how we assess credit risk. Today, I'm joined by Paul Gu, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Upstart. Paul's journey reads like a modern Silicon Valley story—from Chinese immigrant to Yale dropout. He became part of the inaugural class of Thiel Fellows before co-founding Upstart in 2012. Under his leadership, Upstart has gone from zero model training data points in 2013 to processing 91 million data points today. Their AI predicts both default and prepayment likelihood for every month of a loan's term, and Paul believes Upstart's AI is bringing them closer to achieving all three pillars of lending—an approach that could redefine consumer lending across the entire credit lifecycle. We'll explore how this evolution is playing out, dive into Upstart's 2025 roadmap, including their push for 10x AI leadership and GAAP profitability, and discuss what this means for the future of credit.

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, but his mandate is sweeping: simplify product experience, co-create with banks, and embed AI across the entire platform. “There are three things that you hear from leadership and customers. Number one is product experience, resiliency, availability — investing more in making it easier to consume,” he said. “The second one is co-creation. Customers want to give us more advice. They want to be in the room. They want to help shape the products. Ultimately, they are the users so we welcome it.” The third undertaking is layering AI across Temenos’ entire product suite. With Product Manager Copilot, FCM AI Agent and AI Studio, Temenos is helping clients simplify workflows and enhance decision-making, and giving them the flexibility to build and scale their own AI use cases within a trusted, regulated environment. In this episode, Rangachari discusses why traditional technology providers are in a better position to help banks integrate AI than fintechs, how Temenos’ AI strategy could change the way we experience retail banking, and where he sees traditional providers’ competitive advantage.

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 based in São Paulo, Brazil, where she focuses on early stage investments. As an investor and operator with experience working across different regions, she brings a well-rounded perspective to the table, connecting founders and startups to valuable resources while leveraging QED's deep fintech expertise. Prior to joining QED, Camila built her career at the intersection of technology and financial services. She started at Moody's, a credit rating agency, before joining Goldman Sachs to focus on corporate credit and economic risk. Later, as part of Goldman's investment banking division, she helped fintech, software, and e-commerce companies raise capital and navigate the transition from private to public markets. She went on to join the global strategy and corporate development teams at Ceridian, a global software company servicing more than 160 countries. More recently, Camila spent time at Hotmart, a Brazilian tech unicorn whose platform facilitates sales of digital products, enabling creators to build, monetize, manage, and grow globally. There, she led strategy and operations, ESG, and investor relations. Today, we'll explore the dynamic Brazilian fintech ecosystem, discuss cross-border investment opportunities, and uncover lessons that US investors and financial professionals can apply when looking to diversify their portfolios into these high-growth regions. Before we jump in, I just want to tell you about a new initiative we’re running at Tearsheet.  4dFI is an exclusive group of out-of-the-box builders and investors knitting together a community to invest in the next wave of fintech startups. We’re bringing together current and former banking executives interested in investing in and learning about emerging market fintech startups. 4dFI’s network will be able to both help new companies reach maturity faster, while startups can provide new ways of thinking to our community members. At 4dFI Capital Partners, I'm joined by Russell Weiss, experienced product and startup builder and Josh Liggett, who has led fintech and blockchain diligence, investments, and strategic partnerships at OurCrowd. If you are interested in learning how emerging market fintechs are changing the financial services landscape around the globe and would like to play a part in crafting this new future, signup on https://tearsheet.co/4dFI.

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 compliance demands that require immediate attention. "The regulatory agenda for money movement is probably one of the most aggressive we have," said Elaine Duff, SVP and Head of Money Movement at FIS. "It's across the globe. We're seeing the ISO message intended to help firms standardize their messaging, become more efficient, and make their operations much more standardized." Yet the scale of change extends far beyond simple messaging updates. The oncoming change affects fraud tools, digital channels, reporting formats, and entire operational workflows. For many institutions, the traditional rip-and-replace approach to modernization has become both financially and operationally untenable. Nick Dovaras, Global Account Manager at AWS, emphasized the broader pressures driving urgency: "There's customer expectations as well. Customers are expecting 24/7, instant, and customer-friendly mobile applications that are connected to online systems.” Dive into this episode to hear about how financial institutions are navigating regulatory pressures through modular modernization strategies. FIS’ Duff and AWS’ Dovaras break down the critical role embedded fraud protection is playing in real-time payments, and why cloud-based solutions are enabling banks to modernize their money movement capabilities without the risks of traditional rip-and-replace approaches.

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 President of The Player's Company, a collective of over 500 professional athletes and accredited investors who are rewriting the playbook on financial empowerment. As a NFL defensive tackle with the Washington Commanders and eight-year veteran, Sheldon understands firsthand the financial realities that athletes face both during and after their careers. The Players Company isn't just another investment club — it's a platform democratizing access to wealth-building tools once reserved for the ultra-wealthy, while providing financial education many athletes never received. Since 2019, TPC has facilitated investments in startups like ZenWTR, Teamworks, and Public.com, proving athletes can be sophisticated capital allocators when given the right resources. We'll explore how Sheldon went from reading defensive formations to reading investment prospectuses, and how The Players Company is scaling to empower athletes across all sports to build generational wealth.

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 real human needs. Temenos is leading the charge to bring that mindset back to banking innovation, with Erik Johnson, Head of Product Design, at the helm. For Johnson, creativity and collaboration go hand in hand with functionality. On this episode of the Tearsheet podcast, Johnson talks about structuring his design team in a “centralized, hybrid” model, solving design challenges with data and empathy, and how Temenos’ Innovation Hub in Orlando is structured to be a “we space” for exploring and co-creating new banking products.

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 leveraging technology to close the gap between capabilities and customer expectations. “When I look at things like automatic enrollment and automatic increase, that's where it starts,“ explains Will Hicks, Head of FIS Global Retirement Products and Services. “Then it bleeds into the technology phase in terms of how you deliver that. How do you actually let participants know how that impacts their financial future?“. The sector is in transition, where traditional retirement record keeping is expanding into comprehensive financial wellness platforms. Scott Parker, Partner at Deloitte Consulting and leader of their wealth retirement practice, notes that the industry is “at the cusp of taking it to the next level and getting outside of what we've always done in the past, which is more and more communication.“ The change is driven by both technological capabilities and changing expectations which center around integrated solutions: “Our clients are asking us to bring those solutions together, because they want a clear picture of not just their retirement, but what are they doing in the banking space?“ said Sherry Baker, SVP and Head of Global Wealth Products and Services at FIS. Listen to the podcast to discover how retirement industry leaders are breaking down traditional silos to deliver integrated financial wellness solutions that go far beyond the 401(k). Learn the role that modernization, data, personalization, and cybersecurity play in pushing record keepers forward. It's a conversation on record keeping organizations can meet regulatory requirements while meeting the daily engagement expectations of younger participants.

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 the founder-led approach that got many companies off the ground. Today, I'm joined by Prashant Fuloria, CEO of Fundbox, and Anchit Singh, the company's Chief Business Officer, to explore how they've developed a collaborative leadership model that's helped drive Fundbox's evolution in the embedded finance space. We'll dig into the CEO-CBO dynamic, how they divide responsibilities, and what other growing fintechs can learn about building leadership structures that scale.

Americans give nearly half a trillion dollars to charity each year—over 2% of GDP. Yet despite this massive scale, charitable giving remains stuck in the past, dominated by donor-advised funds marketed exclusively to the wealthy and clunky processes that make generosity harder than it should be. Today I'm joined by Adam Nash, co-founder and CEO of Daffy, a modern platform that's democratizing charitable giving through technology. Adam brings decades of experience building consumer fintech products as the former CEO of Wealthfront and in leadership roles at LinkedIn, Dropbox, and eBay. During the pandemic, he recognized that while fintech had revolutionized how we save and invest, charitable giving had been largely untouched by innovation. We'll explore why Adam left Wealthfront to tackle charitable giving, how Daffy's membership-based model differs from traditional approaches, and why he believes donor-advised funds will soon be as common as 401ks. Adam will share insights on tax-advantaged giving as more people hold appreciated assets like stock and crypto, how Daffy is incorporating AI, and why they've opened their APIs to partners like Betterment and Robinhood.

As the banking landscape accelerates toward digital transformation, some financial institutions are questioning how fast and far to leap. Others have long made the jump. As Canada’s first cloud-native bank, EQ Bank is already ahead of the curve. Its early adoption of a cloud-native core banking platform through a partnership with Temenos is now powering its next phase: real-time data and AI-driven innovation. Behind it all is a long-standing relationship between EQ and Temenos that encourages mutual collaboration and support. In today’s episode, Temenos’ Chief Revenue Officer Will Moroney and EQ Bank’s Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Geoff Vona discuss the benefits of cloud-native banking, improving customer experiences through real-time data, developing new capabilities powered by AI and how technology partners and banks can offer each other deeper value.

Today, traditional insurance faces mounting pressures from new technologies and market entrants, and digital transformation has become an imperative rather than an option. Kamiel Bouw, Global Head of Insurance for Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions, joins the show today. He brings extensive experience navigating this evolving landscape, where efficiency, data-driven approaches, and customer-centricity have become paramount. With traditional insurers working to adopt new technologies within legacy infrastructure, Buow describes how Citi has positioned itself to strategically support these organizations capture opportunities while enhancing customer experience. Throughout the interview, Buow explores several transformative themes reshaping the insurance industry. He uses real life case studies to emphasize the tremendous opportunity in digitizing payment processes — both for premium collections and claims payments — highlighting how instant payments can create superior customer experiences while providing operational benefits. Buow also discusses how Treasury functions must evolve beyond their traditional role as financial settlement centers to become innovation leaders, engaging across enterprise-wide initiatives and providing expertise in risk management and end-to-end payment flows. Listen to the podcast to gain unique insights into emerging technologies like digital assets and tokenization and their growing role in insurance, and how organizations can start with small, focused use cases to drive learning and foster broader adoption of this new tech.

Banking executives face a familiar dilemma: decades-old core systems technically constrain innovation while replacement costs can reach hundreds of millions of dollars and take years to implement. Meanwhile, fintechs launch new products in weeks while traditional banks remain trapped in months-long approval cycles. The challenge extends beyond technology. "Most banks duct-tape capabilities onto what they already have, and eventually they break," explains Ritesh Rihani, Vice President of Enterprise Banking at Galileo. "You've seen the number of outages we've had in the industry recently. That's all happening because they put duct tape upon duct tape." The pressure to modernize comes from multiple directions. Customer expectations have evolved toward integrated experiences and ease of use and operational risks multiply as the pool of COBOL programmers shrinks through retirement. Regulatory compliance becomes increasingly difficult with manual processes and fragmented systems. This podcast explores five critical dimensions of core modernization: balancing costs with competitive necessity, understanding operational and regulatory risks, implementing incremental transformation strategies, enabling product innovation, and unlocking the future potential of modern banking architecture.

Isabelle Guis understands the need for marketing to speak technology's language. With an engineering background, Guis sees her strength as Temenos’ Chief Marketing Officer in bridging the communication gap between technology innovation and the value it brings to customers. In a conversation at the Temenos Regional Forum Americas 2025 held May 28-30 in Miami, Guis explained that Temenos values customer centricity above all else. “There is this reliability, this expertise that’s needed to make sure you deliver,” she said. “And you innovate without compromising what you already have.” Guis also discussed how banks are investing in technology to stay competitive amid economic uncertainty, and why legacy systems can hinder that progress. She outlined paths that banks can take to modernize their core infrastructure, offering alternatives like the choice between cloud or on-premise solutions — or even module-specific upgrades. Guis also shared how Temenos’ new motto “Leading Banking Forward” captures the company’s vision for collective progress in the banking industry. Today’s podcast episode explores Temenos’ customer-centered perspective, the need for digital transformation in banking through modern infrastructure, and the company’s strategic vision of how it can emulate industry-wide progress and leadership.

The infrastructure for crypto-native finance is maturing beyond proof-of-concepts into real financial products. Tokenized securities are moving from experimental pilots to regulated offerings, stablecoin infrastructure is becoming the backbone for 24/7 payment systems, and traditional fintech companies are quietly integrating crypto rails to improve settlement and unlock new capabilities. I'm joined by Juan Lopez, General Partner at VanEck Ventures, where he focuses on investments at the intersection of traditional finance and blockchain technology. Before joining VanEck, Juan was at Circle Ventures, giving him a front-row seat to how institutional-grade crypto infrastructure has developed. His portfolio includes companies building the regulated infrastructure enabling this shift from experimental to operational. Juan's perspective on where real value is being created—from tokenized equity platforms achieving regulatory approval to stablecoin routing systems—offers insight into how crypto infrastructure is becoming essential plumbing for modern financial services. We'll discuss what's driving adoption, where the next wave of exits will come from, and how fintech companies are integrating blockchain technology to improve their core business models.

While co-branded credit cards have dominated consumer wallets for decades, a new option is emerging in the payments landscape. Co-branded debit cards represent an untapped opportunity for brands to deepen customer relationships while addressing the preferences of a generation that increasingly chooses debit over credit. Derek White, CEO of Galileo Financial Technologies, has been at the forefront of this shift. Under his leadership, Galileo recently powered Wyndham Rewards’ launch of what's being called the industry's first co-branded debit card in the US. "The opportunity is huge here, where we have customers that have a deep loyalty with the brand," White explained. The timing for this launch is strategic. 30% of customers are pulling out debit cards when making purchases at major travel and entertainment brands, "even though they're not getting rewards associated with it." This value gap represents millions of transactions where brands could be deepening customer relationships but aren't. Listen to this Tearsheet podcast episode with Derek White to learn about how co-branded debit cards are creating new monetization opportunities for brands, what consumer behaviors are driving this new product, and how the convergence of AI, blockchain, and quantum technologies might fundamentally change how money moves through payment systems.

SMBs are drowning in a sea of disconnected financial tools, juggling separate platforms for banking, payments, accounting, and lending. Many business owners find themselves logging into five or six different systems just to manage their daily operations, creating inefficiency and driving up costs at a time when economic pressures are mounting. U.S. Bank's latest 2025 Small Business Survey shows that SMBs are looking to their FIs to collapse these various digital solutions into one integrated experience. "They are overwhelmed by the number of standalone software solutions which exist in the marketplace," explains Shruti Patel, Chief Product Officer for the Business Banking segment at U.S. Bank. "They would like to consolidate these so that they're not constantly juggling with multiple tools or playing mental gymnastics, all while streamlining costs." The survey data, drawn from approximately 1,000 SMB owners across the country with revenues up to $25 million, shows a clear trend toward viewing banks as comprehensive financial hubs rather than simple repositories for funds. SMBs are seeking integrated solutions that combine banking, payments, and software capabilities under one roof. Listen to this podcast to learn about U.S. Bank’s Shruti Patel is helping U.S. Bank position itself as the primary re-bundlers of financial services in the post-pandemic era.

Financial institutions are drowning in payment complexity. Between legacy systems, and the accelerating pace of change in how people pay, banks face a modernization crisis that threatens their competitive position. At the FIS Emerald Conference 2025, FIS announced a partnership with Episode Six which is designed to address these challenges head-on. Episode Six, an API-driven payments technology provider, will now be working with FIS to deliver a cloud-based, end-to-end digital payments platform. The collaboration brings together FIS's global scale and institutional relationships with Episode Six's modern, configurable payment infrastructure. The new partnership will allow FIs to scale beyond their local borders, without having to build new tech and processes from scratch. "We did some pretty hefty research over an extended period of time," said Rob Hudson, Head of International Banking, at FIS. "It became very apparent very quickly that Episode Six was the one that we wanted to work with. This was the standout opportunity for us, without doubt." John Mitchell, CEO and co-founder of Episode Six, emphasized the strategic nature of the partnership. "We've always envisioned that if we had a partner with the strengths and the scale of FIS, that our platform would be used in a much broader capacity," he said. "This partnership is going to enable us to present a solution that will allow all of our clients to innovate at scale." Listen to the podcast to learn what financial executives can do to navigate legacy system constraints surprisingly well, tackle global payment complexity to expand internationally, and implement progressive modernization without putting careers on the line. It's a conversation on practical strategies for overcoming institutional resistance to change while delivering the cloud-native solutions that modern banking demands.