Leaders In Payments

Greg Myers
  • 5.0 (15)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

Hear directly from C-level executives in payments/fintech about industry trends, successful strategies, products, services, and what the future holds for the payments/fintech industry. We cover the entire industry from merchant acquiring, payment processing, ISOs, payfacs, fraud, security, issuing, b2b, fintech, to start-ups, if it goes on in payments we will be talking about it.

  1. 1d ago

    Women Leaders in Payments: The Future is Human with Alexandra Dolia, Akurateco | Episode 503

    A failed payment is never just a technical error. It’s a customer stuck at checkout, a merchant losing revenue, and a moment where trust is either reinforced or broken. We sit down with Alexandra Dolia, co-founder and COO of Akurateco, to talk about what payments leadership looks like when you refuse to treat the industry like a black box and you build teams that can explain what’s happening end to end. Alexandra shares her path from Ukraine to a formative year in the United States as a teenage exchange student, then into fintech almost by accident through a contact center role. That early frontline experience shaped how she thinks about customer support, payment failures, and operational details that quietly define the client experience. We also unpack the leadership philosophy that came from working in a culture where knowledge is shared, not guarded, and how she’s applied it by developing people through structured internal education. From there, we get practical about the future of payments: embedded checkout, automation, and why “the future is human” isn’t anti-technology. It’s a reminder that technology should sharpen judgment, not replace it. Alexandra breaks down how companies earn trust through transparency, honesty when things go wrong, and consistency over time, then points to a major shift reshaping global commerce: the fast-growing mix of alternative payment methods, from wallets to account-to-account and local rails, and the rising need for payment orchestration.

    23 min

  2. 3d ago

    Women Leaders in Payments: The Future is Human with Alex McCandless, Payroc | Episode 502

    Payments look instant and invisible until something goes wrong. That’s when you find out whether you’re working with a faceless system or a team you can actually trust. We sit down with Alex McCandless, EVP of Marketing and Training at Payroc, to get specific about what “people powered” really means in fintech and why transparency and access to real decision makers still matter in a world of automated transactions.  Alex shares her career journey from the agency world into payment processing, plus what she learned scaling from a scrappy startup environment into a platform shaped by 27 acquisitions. We talk about the challenge of bringing many brands under one Payroc umbrella without forcing a one-size-fits-all playbook, and how culture integration requires real discovery, humility, and a willingness to borrow the best tools and processes from every team.  We also dig into the future of payments and the role of AI in fintech. Alex makes the case for AI-assisted operations, not AI-powered relationships, and connects that to embedded finance, SaaS, and the push toward more holistic experiences across card-present and card-not-present payments. On trust and security, she explains why “secure” should be baseline, why trust is earned one transaction at a time, and how the 1% edge cases can define your reputation. We close with what she’s watching next, including agentic commerce, machine-to-machine payments, and how marketing teams are adapting for LLM search and more qualified inbound leads.

    20 min

  3. 5d ago

    Women Leaders in Payments: The Future is Human with Gunita Bindra, Bottomline | Episode 501

    Payments are getting smarter, faster, and more automated, but the stakes are still deeply human. I sit down with Gunita Bindra, CRO of Paymode New Business Development at Bottomline, to talk about what it takes to lead in fintech when AI is reshaping how decisions get made and how money moves.  Along the way, Ganita shares her path from computer science in India to roles in software engineering, solution consulting, product management, and now leading sales and partnerships in the B2B payments world.  We explore what “the future is human” means when technology can feel like it’s in the driver’s seat. Gunita lays out why leaders in payments need to embrace change while building for enduring excellence, not just short-term success. We also get practical about the customer experience behind every transaction: how product-minded empathy shows up in sales conversations, why understanding small business payment pain matters, and how transparency turns into trust when your platform can clearly explain where a payment is, why it’s there, and what happens next.  Then we look forward at agentic commerce and the idea of payments that can route themselves with humans still in the loop. Gunita offers a grounded take on job evolution, the skills that stay valuable, and the mindset shift leaders need right now. We close with direct advice for women entering payments and fintech: network early, ask for what you want, build a business case, and learn negotiation without apology.

    22 min

  4. Jun 30

    The State of Payments: Shifts, Friction & The Road Ahead | Episode 500

    In this milestone 500th episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast, I bring together seven respected leaders from across the payments ecosystem for a special look at the state of the industry. Rather than a traditional one-on-one interview, this episode features perspectives from Jim Oberman, CEO of Payroc; Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore, President of SoFi Tech Solutions at SoFi; Greg Cohen, CEO of Fortis; Alex Shtilman, CEO and Co-Founder of Rapyd; Steve Pinado, CEO of NMI; Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect; and Derek Dean, CEO of Flute. Each guest shares their view on three important questions: what shift they are seeing in payments right now, what is still harder than it should be, and what the industry should be preparing for over the next three to five years. The conversation covers the continued rise of embedded payments, the role of software in reshaping distribution, the growing importance of stablecoins and real-time money movement, the impact of AI and agentic commerce, and the ongoing need to simplify the merchant experience. Guests also discuss the friction that still exists behind the scenes, from onboarding and reconciliation to fraud, false declines, global commerce, regulation, and legacy infrastructure. Episode 500 is both a celebration of the first 500 conversations on the podcast and a forward-looking discussion about where payments is headed. It reflects how much the industry has changed, how much complexity still needs to be solved, and how much opportunity remains ahead for payments leaders, fintech innovators, software platforms, banks, and the broader commerce ecosystem. A special "thank you" to all who have listened, watched and participated over the last 5+ years. And now on to the next 500!

    35 min

  5. Jun 25

    What Would It Take For Insurers To Go Fully Digital? with Ian Drysdale, CEO of One Inc. | Episode 499

    Checks still power a shocking amount of insurance money movement, and that single fact creates slow claims, higher operating costs, and an open door for fraud. Greg Myers sits down with Ian Drysdale, CEO of One Inc, to talk about what it really takes to drag property and casualty insurance payments into a modern digital payments era without breaking the workflows carriers rely on. We unpack how One Inc handles both sides of the insurance payments stack: premium payments (inbound merchant acquiring) and claims payouts (outbound disbursements). Ian shares what “scale” looks like in this vertical, from a huge vendor network that already includes the auto body shops, doctors, and lawyers insurers pay every day, to the complex edge cases that traditional payment processors rarely touch. Think mortgage endorsements after major home damage, lienholder payoffs on total-loss auto claims, and the growing need for insurer-to-insurer settlement use cases like subrogation. Fraud is a different beast in insurance, too. The risks aren’t about someone buying a TV with a stolen card; they’re about claims fraud, identity fraud, account takeovers, and payments getting intercepted or redirected. Ian explains how data, controls, and hands-on investigation work together to make sure claims payouts land with the right person or business, especially when payouts can run through PayPal, Venmo, push to debit, Visa Direct, and Mastercard Send. We also zoom in on the premium payment experience gap. Policyholders, especially younger ones, expect Apple Pay, Google Pay, flexible billing dates, and a frictionless mobile flow, and network tokens help reduce failed payments by keeping card credentials current behind the scenes. You’ll leave with one blunt question Ian wants the industry to face: when will insurers write their last check?

    18 min

  6. Jun 23

    The Financial Connectivity Layer with Jose Bethancourt, Co-Founder & CEO of Method | Episode 498

    Mailing checks to pay off a credit card in 2026 sounds like a joke, but it is still a real debt consolidation workflow at scale. Greg Myers sits down with Jose Bethancourt, Co-Founder and CEO of Method, to unpack why liability payments are uniquely messy and what it takes to make them feel as seamless as modern fintech promises. Jose shares his path from growing up in South Texas near the Mexico border to building products at UT Austin, then turning a personal problem into a company. GradJoy started as a way to help new graduates understand student loan debt, interest rates, and payoff strategies, but it quickly revealed a deeper issue: people often cannot even locate their liabilities, and credential-based financial data access is brittle. Method tackles that with an identity-based financial connectivity API that, with consent, can find student loans, credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, and personal loans, then enable two-way flows that support both reading data and sending payments to creditors. We also get into what this unlocks for underwriting, personalization, and better customer outcomes, plus how it can reduce errors and fraud compared to manual PAN entry and back-office check operations.  Jose lays out a forward-looking view of AI in payments, agentic payments, and a world where an AI agent can securely analyze your debt, shop for a better APR, and execute payoffs. Finally, we step back to discuss consumer demand for speed, why ACH still shapes reality, and how RTP and FedNow may push expectations even further.

    29 min

  7. Jun 19

    Fighting Fraud with Tamas Kadar, Co-Founder & CEO of SEON | Episode 497

    Fraud doesn’t usually announce itself with a flashing warning sign. It shows up as a chargeback, a fake account that looks “normal,” or an account takeover that slips through the exact same checkout flow your best customers use. Greg Myers sits down with Tamas Kadar, Co-Founder and CEO of SEON, to unpack how modern fraud actually works and how digital businesses can protect revenue without burying users under friction. Tamas shares the origin story that started with a real loss: a crypto checkout experiment that got hit by fraud almost immediately. That experience turned into years of studying how fraudsters operate and, eventually, into SEON’s mission: help businesses prevent fraud, verify identities, and stay compliant in real time using the minimum data points companies already collect, like an email address or phone number, plus hard-to-fake device and digital footprint signals. We dig into when step-up verification makes sense, how to reduce false positives, and why trust and safety teams deserve to be seen as revenue drivers, not cost centers. The conversation goes deep on AI in fraud prevention beyond the buzzwords. Tamas explains where classic machine learning helps, where it breaks, and how LLMs can speed up investigations by summarizing cases, surfacing patterns earlier, and reducing the “five tabs per investigation” problem. We also explore the shift toward headless software, where analysts can ask questions in natural language and get answers from the system of record without clicking through a UI, while still keeping decisions explainable with human-readable rules. We close with what’s next: synthetic identities, deepfakes, account takeover, stablecoins and changing payment rails, plus the rise of agentic commerce where good agents and bad bots can blend into the same traffic.

    35 min

  8. Jun 17

    Merchants Can Get Paid Instantly While Cutting Fraud with CEO, Marshall Greenwald, IoniaPay | Episode 496

    A “successful” card payment can still leave merchants waiting days to actually access their money, paying layers of fees along the way, and carrying fraud risk that never truly goes away. That gap between authorization and settlement is where cash flow gets squeezed, reconciliation gets messy, and margins get quietly taxed, especially as more commerce shifts to e-commerce and other card-not-present channels. We sit down with Marshall Greenwald, Founder and CEO of IoniaPay, to talk about changing the infrastructure behind merchant payments. Marshall walks us through how IoniaPay moves funds from a consumer’s card to a merchant’s bank account in real time, why that matters more than ever, and how collapsing a fragmented chain of 6 to 10 parties can reduce cost and complexity. He also explains the fraud angle: instead of relying on tools that “guess,” merchants want stronger certainty that a transaction is truly authorized by the cardholder. We also get practical about where this fits best right now. Marshall shares why iGaming, travel, and healthcare see outsized value, how instant settlement can unlock meaningful working capital that would otherwise sit in float, and how the company goes to market through a mix of direct enterprise relationships and a broad reseller network. From there, we zoom out to the future of payments: multi-channel commerce, orchestration, interoperability challenges across a massive US ecosystem, and the broader shift from top-layer UX innovation to foundational payment infrastructure. If you care about real-time payments, merchant cash flow, fraud prevention, and what “modern rails” should actually look like for everyday commerce, this conversation will give you a few sharp questions to bring back to your team.

    23 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
15 Ratings

About

Hear directly from C-level executives in payments/fintech about industry trends, successful strategies, products, services, and what the future holds for the payments/fintech industry. We cover the entire industry from merchant acquiring, payment processing, ISOs, payfacs, fraud, security, issuing, b2b, fintech, to start-ups, if it goes on in payments we will be talking about it.

Information

  • Creator
    Greg Myers
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    504
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Leaders In Payments
  • Show Website
    Leaders In Payments

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