Episodi

  • Control Your Financial Data, Open Banking, and Section 1033 with Steve Boms, FDATA

    Control Your Financial Data, Open Banking, and Section 1033 with Steve Boms, FDATA
    Oct 31 2026
    At Money20/20, I spoke with Steve Boms, Executive Director of the Financial Data and Technology Association (FDATA). FDATA represents financial technology companies whose products depend on access to financial data with the permission of consumers or businesses.Why this mattersSteve makes a distinction between a market where data-sharing products are available and one where people have consistent rights to use them.In the U.S., financial data connections often depend on arrangements between the institution holding the account and the third-party provider. Those arrangements can determine the data available, the way it can be accessed, and the conditions attached to access. Steve argues that a consistent right to share data with an authorized provider would give customers more choice and reduce the importance of individual commercial agreements.Open banking is not the same as open dataI challenged Steve on the name “open banking.” To a consumer, it can sound as though financial information is becoming public.That is not how consumer-permissioned data sharing is intended to work. The idea is that you decide which provider can access specified information to perform a service you have chosen.Steve also pushed back on my concern that users do not know what they share. He pointed to disclosures and consent flows created by data aggregators, even without a uniform U.S. open-banking rule. My question remains whether those practices are consistent enough across the market.The useful distinction is between a provider’s current consent process and an enforceable, widely applicable right to access and share data.What Section 1033 changesThe 2024 CFPB rule was designed to establish requirements for covered financial institutions and authorized third parties. Steve describes it as the foundation for clearer disclosure, consent, data protection, and API access expectations.FDATA supported much of that framework and has been advocating for a new version that preserves its underlying consumer data-rights principles.Canada provides a useful comparison. In March 2026, Canada enacted a new Consumer-Driven Banking Act to establish a legal framework for customer-directed data sharing. Enacting a framework does not mean every connection is already operational, but it offers a clearer statutory direction than the uncertain U.S. implementation path.Agentic commerce raises the stakesWe also talked about the attention paid to agentic commerce at Money20/20.A useful framework needs to establish what the customer authorized, what the agent can do, when new permission is required, and who is responsible when something goes wrong.Steve’s position is that rules for consumer-directed data access are part of the foundation for this next generation of financial services.What it means for your teamIf you build financial products, use data aggregators, or consider adding pay-by-bank, treat data access as part of the product and operating model, not just an integration step.Your product may work technically with the institutions in your test environment while customers at other banks experience different coverage or terms. Consent design, access revocation, failure handling, and customer support should be part of product discovery and provider selection.For teams exploring AI agents, write down the boundary between reading information, giving recommendations, and initiating financial activity before designing the experience.Resources* FDATA* Steve Boms — FDATA leadership biography* CFPB — Personal financial data rights and litigation status* Canada — Consumer-Driven Banking Act (2026)* FDATA — Access to Action: Agentic Fintech & Write Access* PAYMENTS FMRelated episodes* Open Banking and Pay-by-Bank with Anubhav Pradhan, ShiftMate — Open Banking and Pay-by-Bank with Anubhav Pradhan, ShiftMate. SubscribePAYMENTS FM covers how payments work in practice for merchants, platforms, and product teams. Subscribe for conversations with people working on financial products and infrastructure.PAYMENTS FM is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to PAYMENTS FM at payments.fm/subscribe
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    17 min
  • Building a Payments Business For Your Software Platform: Emi Keshler, Payabli

    Building a Payments Business For Your Software Platform: Emi Keshler, Payabli
    Sep 12 2026
    In this episode, I spoke with Emi Keshler, Director of Partner Development at Payabli. We talked about what a successful embedded payments program looks like. We discussed buyer experience, merchant experience and everything in between.State of Payments survey: It takes about four minutes, anonymous responses are welcome, and we will publish the results at the end of the year.What a successful payments program means to you?Success is having control over the program: reliable metrics, a forecast for the next quarter, and operational processes that support the payment volume.For a first-year program, she suggests about 40% merchant attachment rate and 30–40 basis points of transaction margin as starting assumptions. The margin figure also needs a clear definition. In Emi’s example, charging 2.9% against processing costs of 2.5% leaves a spread of 0.4 percentage points, or 40 basis points, on processed volume. A platform still needs to account for its own operating costs when evaluating the business case.How to succeed with merchant onboardingTrack the merchant journey in enough detail to see where progress stops. A single onboarding completion rate will not show all of the important stages. An approved merchant can still need help before processing successful payments.* Onboarding applications started. Identify merchants who began the application and have not completed it. Give the team a defined follow-up process.* Underwriting pending. Watch which applications are waiting for approval and what information is missing.* Approved but not processing. Check whether the merchant has the equipment, configuration, migrated tokens, and training needed to begin.* Testing and early use. Separate small test transactions and occasional payments from regular processing.* Fully activated merchants. Define what business-as-usual usage looks like for the vertical, then measure it.* Dormant accounts. Continue monitoring merchants after activation so the team can investigate declining usage.What it means for your teamEmi breaks the experience into three groups, each with a different reason to care about payments.* Buyers. They need appropriate payment methods and a straightforward way to pay. Repeated data entry, disconnected systems, and difficult service after the payment can affect whether they return.* Merchants. They need to take payments, issue refunds, and reconcile without unnecessary manual work. The number of clicks, training time, and movement between systems affect both efficiency and employee experience.* Back-office and finance teams. They need to understand the economics and the value to the business. Their questions concern the return on investment, the books, and the operating model.The administrative experience deserves particular attention. Emi describes a veterinary practice employee finishing a long shift and then spending another hour looking for a small reconciliation discrepancy. Her suggestion is to sit down and reconcile a day of activity the way an end user would. Include the payment methods they actually accept, such as cash, checks, ACH, and cards, and see where someone has to leave the workflow to find an answer.What to do next* Walk through the full onboarding journey. Pre-fill information the platform already has, and account for the handoff between the person completing the application and the authorized signatory.* Explain the information request. Give merchants a short FAQ covering what is being collected, why it is needed, and what happens next.* Involve risk and underwriting early. Help the team understand the platform’s typical merchants before applications arrive, so it can recognize expected activity and investigate exceptions.* Prepare for activation. Start token migrations early, configure tools, and arrange training that fits the merchant’s environment. Card-present businesses may also need hands-on hardware setup.* Test the daily workflow. Check reliability under real working conditions and reconcile a representative day of transactions. Make sure the team understands refunds and other routine operations.* Assign payments ownership. Designate someone accountable for adoption, economics, and ongoing performance. Emi notes that a large platform with an existing merchant base may need a dedicated payments leader sooner than a new startup.Questions to ask internally* Who owns payments performance after the integration launches?* How many approved merchants have reached regular processing?* Where does onboarding stop, and who follows up at each stage?* Can an employee reconcile a full day without manually combining information from several systems?* Can support demonstrate the features we sell and explain their value for the customer’s industry?* Does our business case include pay-in and payout costs, staffing, and the work required to increase adoption?* When a merchant prefers an off-platform method, have we measured the administrative work and reconciliation it adds?...
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    47 min
  • The Business of Payments for Software Platforms with Jo Phillips & Will Corbera, Payabli

    The Business of Payments for Software Platforms with Jo Phillips & Will Corbera, Payabli
    Aug 28 2026

    Jo Phillips and Will Corbera, co-founders of Payabli, joined PAYMENTS FM to talk about why vertical software platforms are becoming payments companies, how they think about risk and pricing, and what separates a payments program that works from one that fails.

    Why this matters

    Vertical software platforms have been adding payments for close to a decade. Companies like ServiceTitan, Mindbody, and Toast did it early, moving off legacy processors and generic gateways into something built for their own industry.

    The decision is easy to state and hard to execute. A platform has to decide how much of the payments business to own, how to price it, which risk model to use, and which of its industries actually need something more specialized than an off-the-shelf provider.

    Jo Phillips and Will Corbera built the payments business at ServiceTitan before starting Payabli. Jo led sales there; Will had already built one of the industry’s first payment facilitators, focused on property management. Together, they turned ServiceTitan’s payments into a large revenue driver and a better customer experience, and that work is what led them to start Payabli.

    Payments can be 20 percent or more of a platform’s revenue, but that number is not automatic. It depends on pricing, on the vertical, and on whether the platform built a genuinely embedded experience or just added a link to a third-party checkout.

    Most platforms will not need to become a full payment facilitator. Understanding the referral, managed, and full PayFac options, and knowing which one fits, is one of the more consequential decisions a platform makes.



    Get full access to PAYMENTS FM at payments.fm/subscribe
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    44 min
  • Demystifying Open Banking and Pay-by-Bank with Anubhav Pradhan, ShiftMate

    Demystifying Open Banking and Pay-by-Bank with Anubhav Pradhan, ShiftMate
    May 11 2026

    Today we talked to Anubhav Pradhan, co-founder of ShiftMate. We discussed the future of open banking and Pay-by-Bank.

    Discover how these technologies empower consumers with data control and offer new growth opportunities for financial institutions.

    Key Topics

    • Differences between open banking and Pay-by-Bank
    • Regulatory impacts on data ownership and consent
    • Leveraging data for customer relationship management
    • Real-time payments and their industry impact

    Timestamps:

    • 01:10 - Pay-by-Bank explained
    • 02:17 - Consumer data aggregation
    • 03:11 - Payment methods and trends
    • 05:10 - Building trust through open banking
    • 06:08 - Adoption statistics
    • 07:02 - Role of platforms like Plaid
    • 08:10 - Institutional challenges
    • 10:23 - Infrastructure and compliance
    • 11:16 - US adoption nuances
    • 12:30 - Strategic advantages
    • 14:48 - Data ownership debates
    • 15:21 - Marketplace fees
    • 16:41 - Consumer rights and regulations
    • 18:03 - Infrastructure costs
    • 19:02 - Open banking as a growth driver
    • 20:01 - Merchant data access risks
    • 21:22 - Regulatory safeguards
    • 22:48 - Preventing data misuse
    • 23:33 - Potential for data abuse
    • 26:08 - Successful strategies
    • 30:48 - Motivations for small banks
    • 33:36 - Practical advice
    • 35:00 - Foundational data work
    • 37:48 - Payment challenges

    Connect with Anubhav:

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/anubhav-pradhan-27b96583/



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    41 min
  • How AI Analytics Transforming E-Commerce Businesses with Andrei Rebrov, Finsi

    How AI Analytics Transforming E-Commerce Businesses with Andrei Rebrov, Finsi
    Mar 16 2026

    In this episode, we explore how subscription and e-commerce companies can harness data, AI, and innovative payment strategies to boost growth and improve customer engagement. Andrei Rebrov, co-founder of Finsi and former CTO of Scentbird, shares practical insights on building effective analytics systems and integrating AI for smarter decision-making.


    In this episode:

    00:00 - Increasing e-commerce conversions through customer payment options

    00:26 - Andrei Rebrov introduces his background and current focus in data analytics

    01:54 - The problem of blind decision-making in subscription and retail businesses

    02:24 - The rise of data-driven approaches in subscription companies like Scentbird

    03:59 - Defining what analytics really means for business insights

    04:42 - Moving beyond dashboards to actionable knowledge for executives

    06:38 - The technique of asking "five whys" to drill down into data anomalies

    08:21 - Challenges of connecting multiple disconnected data sources

    08:50 - The importance of clean, stitched data for effective AI analysis

    10:17 - How AI can rapidly analyze correlations across multiple data points

    11:54 - Real-world examples of anomaly detection and



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    47 min
  • Agentic Commerce with Colin Luce, CEO Basis Theory

    Agentic Commerce with Colin Luce, CEO Basis Theory
    Dec 20 2025

    Agentic commerce was one of the loudest e-commerce trends of 2025 — but is it real demand or mostly hype + incentives?


    In this episode of Payments FM, Nikita sits down with Colin Luce, Founder & CEO of Basis Theory, to unpack what’s actually happening in agentic commerce and agentic payments right now, what merchants should do today, and why trust + tokenization might decide how this all plays out.


    We cover:


    • The real blocker: messy merchant data and product availability

    • Embedded checkout vs “true agents transacting on your behalf”

    • Why virtual cards would be a bad end-state for the ecosystem

    • ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol), platform incentives, and “who owns the customer?”

    • Where agentic payments may show real near-term value (hint: not the sexy B2C stuff)



    Subscribe on YouTube / Spotify / Apple Podcasts, and for future episodes go to payments.fm.


    Join the community Slack:

    https://payments.fm/p/slack


    Chapters

    01:36 Welcome Colin Luce (Basis Theory)

    02:23 FOMO, hype, and incentives driving adoption

    06:04 What merchants should do first (traffic, data, readiness)

    12:36 Payments realities: embedded checkout vs true agent payments

    19:37 Are today’s demos “magic”? (disappointing discovery, data quality)

    23:50 Best use cases + where agentic commerce really helps

    34:26 Protocols, ACP momentum, and merchant voice

    41:31 Who should store the payment credential? (trust + tokenization)

    44:59 Chargebacks & liability in an agent-driven world

    46:23 Cybersecurity risks in the rush to ship

    49:49 Biggest blocker in payments: behavior change

    54:01 One elevator tip to improve payment performance


    #payments #ecommerce #fintech #tokenization #agenticcommerce #ai



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    56 min
  • Solving Payroll and Cashflow Challenges for Small Businesses, Dan Loomis, Gusto

    Solving Payroll and Cashflow Challenges for Small Businesses, Dan Loomis, Gusto
    Dec 12 2025

    In this episode of Payments FM, we sit down with Dan Loomis from Gusto to discuss the world of payroll and cashflow management for small and medium businesses.

    Dan sheds light on the common financial headaches like cashflow volatility, lack of control and confidence, and how Gusto Money aims to solve these through innovative solutions.

    We explore the challenges small businesses face such as managing payables, accelerating receivables, and the unique issues arising from bill payments and invoicing.

    Dan also discusses the new integrations and features of Gusto Money, including the Payroll Bridge, financing options, and using stable coins for international payments. Learn how Gusto is transforming payroll management and providing flexible financial solutions to help small businesses thrive.


    00:38 Guest Introduction: Dan Loomis from Gusto

    01:12 Common Payroll Challenges for Small Businesses

    05:02 Gusto Money: Addressing Payroll Pain Points

    08:11 Invoicing Solutions and Market Competition

    14:11 Bill Pay Solutions and Payment Methods

    19:45 Same Day Payroll: How It Works

    25:19 Financing Solutions: Payroll Bridge

    35:04 Stable Coins for International Payments

    38:26 Future of Payments and Final Thoughts



    Get full access to PAYMENTS FM at payments.fm/subscribe
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    43 min
  • International Payments: Viktoria Soltesz, PSP Angels

    International Payments: Viktoria Soltesz, PSP Angels
    Nov 6 2025

    In this episode, we explore the intricate world of payments and banking with Victoria Soltesz, founder and CEO of PSP Angels.

    We cover essential topics including international payments, high-risk merchants, crypto in payments, and the gaming industry. Victoria shares her mission to create a more ethical and transparent payment industry, emphasizing the need for proper education and strategic planning.

    Learn practical advice on streamlining your payment processes, understanding the latest in FinTech, and optimizing your fees and customer journey.01:59 International Payments11:36 High-Risk Merchants21:34 Crypto in Payments25:38 Stablecoins and Tokenization27:33 The Complexities of iGaming Payments33:29 Offshore Entities and Tax Optimization39:57 Navigating Payment Systems and Banking42:39 The Future of Payments and Banking



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    46 min