Fintech One-On-One

Peter Renton
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Fintech is eating the world. Join Peter Renton, Co-Founder of Fintech Nexus and now an independent fintech media and events consultant, every week as he interviews the fintech leaders who are leading the transformation of financial services. If you want to understand what the future will look like for lending, payments, digital banking and more, tune in to Fintech One-On-One.

  1. 3d ago

    Why Fintech 2.0 Means One Platform for Every Aspect of Your Money With Omer Ismail, CEO of OnePay

    Omer Ismail is the CEO of OnePay, the consumer fintech majority-owned by Walmart and backed by Ribbit Capital, which now serves more than 7.5 million customers. He was last on the show in 2017, when he was running Marcus at Goldman Sachs. A lot has changed since then: we talk about why he left Goldman to start again from scratch, how OnePay turns Walmart shoppers and associates into banking customers, and why he thinks the next chapter of fintech belongs to platforms that can manage a customer's whole financial life. What We Covered The 2019 dinner that started OnePayWhy Omer left Goldman SachsThree lessons from MarcusThe rabbit in the New York office and what it says about cultureFintech 1.0 versus fintech 2.0The front door products: digital banking and creditHow OnePay acquires customers inside WalmartWhy more than 80% of banking spend happens outside WalmartHiring a first CMO and taking the playbook to UKG, Workday and ADPApple Pay and the checkoutWhy OnePay has no plans for a bank charterPenny, the AI financial assistantThe new teen banking productKey Takeaways Distribution and structure are the two things Marcus did not have. Omer says customer access is "incredibly hard and incredibly expensive." OnePay gets customers through Walmart at effectively zero acquisition cost, but it sits outside Walmart's four walls, so it can hire, incentivize and move like a startup.Fintech 2.0 is about single platforms, not single products. Fintech 1.0 companies each did one thing. Omer argues customers do not want to manage 15, 20 or 30 financial relationships, so OnePay acquires through high TAM, high engagement products (digital banking and credit) and then offers the next best product.A Walmart customer is not a Walmart-only customer. Only around 17% to 18% of OnePay banking card spend happens at Walmart. The goal is to be the primary financial relationship and top of wallet everywhere, which is why the company has hired its first CMO and is now acquiring through HR platforms and direct channels.AI changes personal financial management only when it can act. Mint stopped at insights. Omer's case is that a platform with both the customer's data and the products can complete the action for the customer, and that the winner will be whoever customers trust to do that.About Omer Ismail Omer Ismail is the CEO of OnePay, a role he took on in 2021 when the joint venture between Walmart and Ribbit Capital was being formed. Before that he had a long career at Goldman Sachs, where he ran the consumer business that included Marcus. He moved to the US at 18 and has spoken about how that shaped his interest in helping people build healthy financial habits early. Connect with Fintech One-on-One: Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

    Why Fintech 2.0 Means One Platform for Every Aspect of Your Money With Omer Ismail, CEO of OnePay

  2. Oct 1

    Why LendingClub Became Happen Bank and What the Bank Charter Made Possible With CEO Scott Sanborn

    Scott Sanborn is the CEO of Happen Bank, the company known until this summer as LendingClub. He is the first guest to appear on the show four times, and each visit has caught the company at a turning point. This time it is the rebrand: we talk about why the LendingClub name no longer fit, what six years of running a chartered bank has taught him, and how he is preparing for a world where AI agents shop for financial products on a consumer's behalf. What We Covered Ten years as CEO and why it has never been the same jobWhy the LendingClub name no longer fit the businessThe customer research behind the Happen Bank brandHow they will measure whether the rebrand is workingWhat it took to get a bank charter six years agoShepherds, not sheriffs: building the risk and governance teamLevelUp Savings, LevelUp Checking and DebtIQInnovating on the loan product with their own balance sheetThe balance sheet and marketplace mixThe switch to fair value accountingHow AI is changing operations and discoveryGetting ready for AI agents that shop on consumers' behalfHome improvement lending and home equityKey Takeaways A brand is a promise, and the old name could not carry it. Customers told the company two things: they did not know it was a bank, and they did not want the word "lending" on a debit card that holds their own money. The rebrand waited until the product suite, and the financial returns, were there to back it up.The charter let them innovate more, not less. With its own balance sheet and a direct line to regulators, the company can test new loan terms and features like TopUp on its own portfolio, then bring investors the results a year later. It holds about 40% of originations on balance sheet.Simple incentives drive engagement. LevelUp Savings pays a 100 basis point rate kicker for depositing $250 a month. It has gathered billions in deposits, 20% of accounts come from borrowers, and borrowers who have paid off their loan hold an average balance of around $19,000 to $20,000.Agentic shopping favors lenders who already compete on value. Most Happen Bank customers already arrive through comparison sites, so Scott sees agents hunting for the best deal as a tailwind. The open questions are legal, such as what happens when an agent signs a loan disclosure.About Scott Sanborn Scott Sanborn has been CEO of Happen Bank, formerly LendingClub, since 2016, having joined the company in 2010 as Chief Marketing Officer. He led the acquisition of Radius Bank, the first time a fintech bought a chartered bank, and the 2026 rebrand to Happen Bank. Before LendingClub he held senior marketing and revenue roles at eHealth, RedEnvelope and the Home Shopping Network. Connect with Fintech One-on-One: Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

    Why LendingClub Became Happen Bank and What the Bank Charter Made Possible With CEO Scott Sanborn

  3. Sep 24

    Mastering the Future of Finance With Michelle Beyo, CEO of Finavator

    Michelle Beyo is the founder and CEO of Finavator, a consultancy that helps banks, fintechs, and corporates step into the future of finance. Her new book, Mastering the Future of Finance, just published this week by Wiley, breaks the industry into nine elements across data, trust, and technology. We talk about why she wrote it, why she believes there should be a human data right, and how she kept the AI chapter current in a market that moves every month. What We Covered Michelle's path from telco and online shopping to prepaid infrastructure at InCommPiloting one of the first WeChat top-up tests at 7-Eleven in 2017Why she concluded the future of finance was being built in AsiaSurviving crypto winter at a blockchain startupWinning Money20/20 RiseUp and starting Finavator in 2019How Finavator works with banks, fintechs, and corporatesThe masterclass that led to a Wiley book dealThe nine elements of the future of finance across data, trust, and technologyOpen banking, open finance, and open data explainedThe case for a human data rightKeeping the AI chapter relevant as agentic payments took offEnding each chapter with a subject matter expert interviewKey Takeaways Number portability is the template for open data. Your phone number was the first piece of data you could take with you when you switched providers. Michelle sees open banking, open finance, and eventually open data as the same right extended to your financial life, and she wants it codified as a human data right at the ISO level, including the right to delete consented data.Trust is the core layer. In Michelle's framework, open data, digital identity, and cybersecurity with AML compliance sit at the center. Get that trust layer right and fintech, BaaS, and embedded finance can accelerate on top of it.Agentic payments are moving faster than the internet ever did. Memory, auditability, liability, and returns are still open questions. Until credential tokenization matures, Michelle suggests giving AI agents prepaid credentials rather than your core credential.Frameworks outlast specifics. Michelle finished writing in May and agentic payments had already moved by publication. The nine elements are built to hold up even as individual examples date.About Michelle Beyo Michelle Beyo is the founder and CEO of Finavator, which she started in 2019 after winning Money20/20 RiseUp. Before that, she spent six years in telco, eight years running online shopping and affiliate marketing programs for major airlines, led sales, marketing, distribution, and innovation for InComm Canada, and worked at a blockchain startup focused on digital identity and consent. She is the author of Mastering the Future of Finance: How Data, Trust, and Technology Are Reshaping the Global Economy (Wiley). Connect with Fintech One-on-One: Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

    Mastering the Future of Finance With Michelle Beyo, CEO of Finavator

  4. Sep 17

    The Layer Underneath Payments, Treasury and FX with Vroon Modgill, CEO of Sokin

    Vroon Modgill spent two decades in payments as an accountant, finance director and CFO before founding Sokin in 2019. The company launched as a subscription-based consumer remittance app and is now a B2B payments and treasury platform running across 170 countries and 70 currencies, growing 100% a year while staying profitable. We talk about the pivot out of consumer, where stablecoins actually earn their place, and why he thinks the moat in agentic finance sits in the regulated plumbing rather than in the agent. What We Covered Twenty years in payments before founding SokinWatching his father fill out the same compliance forms on every remittanceWhy a consumer subscription app was the wrong business to be inThe 2021 decision to go all in on B2BSitting underneath the payments, treasury and FX providersOne integration across 170 countries and 70 currenciesEnterprise direct versus the embedded partner channelEmbedded going from zero to 40% of projected US revenue in a yearWhy most of the world is not card firstOwning the stablecoin stack instead of renting itThe MCP connector and agent-prepared, human-approved paymentsNine dollars of revenue for every dollar of net cash burnedThe Series B, the Oxford Finance debt facility and the licensing build-outWhat the Manchester United partnership actually deliversKey Takeaways The defensible layer in agentic finance is not the model. An agent that decides to fund payroll still needs an account, a license and a rail, which is why the licensing build-out matters more than the AI demo.Stablecoins work best treated as a rail rather than a religion. Sokin bought the engineering DNA, runs fiat and stable through the same licensed infrastructure, and lets the route decide.Consumer remittance is a price and marketing game. Being right about the problem does not make it the right business, and the enterprise version of the same friction is where the money is.Profitable growth is a capital strategy, not just discipline. It let Sokin raise equity into strength and add debt at a lower cost than dilution.About Vroon Modgill Vroon Modgill is the founder and CEO of Sokin, a global business payments and treasury platform he launched in 2019. He trained as an accountant and spent roughly 20 years in payments and finance leadership roles, including finance director positions at startups and, from 2017 to 2019, North America CEO and global CFO of a crypto payments company. Sokin closed a Series B led by Prysm Capital with Morgan Stanley returning, followed by a debt facility from Oxford Finance, and is the official payments partner of Manchester United. Connect with Fintech One-on-One: Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

    The Layer Underneath Payments, Treasury and FX with Vroon Modgill, CEO of Sokin

  5. Sep 10

    Why Upstart Is Building a Bank From Scratch Instead of Buying One With CEO Paul Gu

    Paul Gu dropped out of Yale in 2010 to join the first class of Thiel Fellows, spent time at the quant fund D.E. Shaw, and then co-founded Upstart on a simple premise: the techniques Wall Street uses to price corporate risk should work at least as well on consumer credit. Fourteen years later, he took over as CEO from co-founder Dave Girouard, and six weeks after that, the OCC granted conditional approval for Upstart Bank. This conversation covers what has actually changed at the top of the company, why Upstart went for a full de novo national charter rather than buying an existing bank, and where AI is reshaping the parts of lending that nobody talks about. What We Covered Dropping out of Yale for the first Thiel Fellowship classWhat D.E. Shaw taught him about applying quant techniques to personal financeThe income share agreement idea that brought the co-founders togetherWhat changed when he took over as CEO on May 1Losing the balance of a three-founder culture, for better and worseThe core personal loan business and the future prime borrowerThe trifecta of growth, profitability and credit performanceAuto and home, and the race to contribution margin positiveWhat conditional approval from the OCC actually meansWhy a de novo charter rather than acquiring a bankWhere the existing bank and credit union partners land after Upstart Bank opensAI in loan verification and servicing, beyond the underwriting modelWhat happens when AI agents start applying for loans on people's behalfNinety-one percent automation and whether 100% is reachableThe case that fixing the cost of credit makes most Americans 10% wealthierKey Takeaways Upstart went de novo rather than buying a bank because acquiring one means inheriting someone else's loan book, underwriting practices and operational history, and the whole pitch depends on being able to stand behind every decision inside the bank when a regulator asks.The bank changes who originates, not who funds. Upstart Bank will become the principal originator, but Gu is explicit that the company is not becoming a large, equity intensive balance sheet business, and the bank and credit union partners keep buying the assets.The next AI wins are in verification rather than underwriting. A HELOC can carry several thousand dollars of human verification cost because county property records are non-standard and non-deterministic, which is exactly the kind of work a generalized reasoning agent is suited to.Gu welcomes a world where AI agents apply for loans on borrowers' behalf, because agents have unlimited time to search and no brand loyalty to defend, which favors the lender with the best rate rather than the biggest marketing budget.About Paul Gu Paul Gu is co-founder and CEO of Upstart, the AI lending platform he started in 2012 after dropping out of Yale as one of the first Thiel Fellows and spending time at the quantitative hedge fund D.E. Shaw. He spent most of his career as the technical half of the founding partnership, running product, engineering and machine learning before taking general management of the auto and home businesses. He succeeded co-founder Dave Girouard as CEO on May 1, 2026. Connect with Fintech One-on-One: Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

    Why Upstart Is Building a Bank From Scratch Instead of Buying One With CEO Paul Gu

  6. Sep 3

    What is Missing From Instant Bank Payments With Arpit Goel, CEO of Root

    Arpit Goel built his first company, Gamma, on a simple pitch: legacy data-loss-prevention tools took nine months to show value, and Gamma got customers there in two weeks. Palo Alto Networks acquired Gamma in 2021. Now Goel is running the same play in a completely different industry. Root is a payments orchestration layer that lets enterprises move money bank-to-bank in about five seconds, with no intermediary ever holding the cash. In this conversation, Arpit explains why he thinks the US is finally close to a tipping point on instant payments, why Root never takes custody of the money it moves, and how the company handles banks that can't yet receive instant payments. What We Covered Growing up in India, and the ADHD diagnosis that pushed him toward IIT DelhiWhy he calls himself an "ignorant" founder rather than an experienced oneThe nine-months-to-two-weeks wedge that built Gamma, and why Root uses the same oneDiscovering the payments inefficiency by reading through ADP's 10-KWhy 40% of US SMBs don't accept cards, and it isn't about the feesThe dual pressure of RTP and FedNow that made 2024 the right moment to start RootThe heart, arteries, and capillaries analogy for how Root fits into the banking systemWhat actually happens to money in the five seconds between sender and receiverWhy reliability, not transaction scale, is the hard engineering problem in paymentsHow Root handles banks that can't receive RTP or FedNowWhere stablecoins fit into a bank-rail-agnostic platformWhy Root wants to be the pipes underneath the industry, not the brandKey Takeaways SMBs refuse cards mostly because of settlement delay, not fees — restaurants earning their week's cash on a Saturday night don't see it until Tuesday, right when they need it most to restock.Root never takes custody of funds. Money moves directly between the sender's and recipient's own bank accounts, and Root charges a fee on top rather than earning float.Reliability, not transaction volume, is the hard engineering problem — Root has built retry and fault-tolerance systems, using the workflow engine Temporal, so a bank outage doesn't have to mean a failed payment.Arpit sees instant payments as a market that hasn't tipped yet but is close — RTP and FedNow now operating together create sustained pressure that neither rail created alone.About Arpit Goel Arpit Goel is the founder and CEO of Root. He holds a computer science degree from IIT Delhi and a PhD from Stanford, and previously founded Gamma, a data-security company acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2021, where he went on to lead product for the data-security business. Connect with Fintech One-on-One: Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

    What is Missing From Instant Bank Payments With Arpit Goel, CEO of Root

  7. Aug 27

    Acquiring Banks and Creating an Underwriting Moat in Mexico With René Saúl, CEO of Kapital

    René Saúl spent seven years running an offline agricultural lending business in Mexico before selling it and pouring the proceeds into Kapital, a bet that the future of B2B fintech in Latin America belonged to companies willing to become regulated banks. Today Kapital is the largest B2B fintech in the region, and René is the only founder in the space who has bought not one but two banks, one of the deals agreed to on a napkin. What We Covered Why the future of fintech is regulated, and why that was a contrarian call in 2021René's seven years running an offline agricultural lending business in MexicoThe founding thesis behind Kapital's one-stop B2B banking ecosystemHow Mexico's electronic invoicing system became Kapital's underwriting moatThe "red car theory" of spotting opportunities before they arriveBuying Banco Autofin on a napkin, and growing its deposits from $150 million to $400 million in three monthsAcquiring the banking, brokerage and payments assets of Grupo Financiero IntercamBuilding instant, 24/7 cross-border payment rails on top of SWIFTClosing the small business financing gap with AI-native underwritingWhy Mexico is becoming a cornerstone of America's AI manufacturing boomThe limits of banking an economy that still runs largely on cashKapital's growth numbers and its path to a dual listing in New York and MexicoKey Takeaways Mexico's electronic invoicing mandate hands Kapital more than 50,000 data points per customer, a seven-year head start on underwriting that competitors using third-party providers cannot easily close.For large enterprises and cash-strapped SMBs alike, a banking license, not a slicker app, is what earns the trust needed to hold their money and their cash flow.Opportunities have to be hunted, not waited for. Kapital tracked potential bank acquisitions for years so it could move in days when the Autofin deal appeared.Staying liquid and profitable before either acquisition is what let Kapital move fast when the opportunity came, rather than scrambling to raise capital under pressure.About René Saúl René Saúl is the co-founder and CEO of Kapital, which he built after selling an offline agricultural lending business that financed berry and avocado exporters in Mexico and Peru. Under his leadership, Kapital has grown into a licensed financial group serving more than 300,000 customers across Latin America, with more than $5.3 billion in assets and two bank acquisitions behind it. Connect with Fintech One-on-One: Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

    Acquiring Banks and Creating an Underwriting Moat in Mexico With René Saúl, CEO of Kapital

  8. Aug 20

    Why Enova Wants a Bank Charter, Not Just Cheap Deposits with CEO Steve Cunningham

    Enova International has spent two decades using machine learning underwriting to serve consumers and small businesses who sit outside prime bank criteria, and its pending $369 million acquisition of Grasshopper Bank would give it a national charter for the first time. Steve Cunningham became CEO in January 2026 after nearly a decade as the company's CFO, following earlier stops as a bank regulator at the FDIC and as chief risk officer at Discover. He joins the show to explain what a fully digital lender looks for in a nonprime borrower, why credit quality looks solid in his portfolio right now, and how he's answering the senators and state attorneys general who want regulators to block the Grasshopper deal. What We Covered Steve's path from FDIC regulator to Capital One, Harley-Davidson, and DiscoverMoving from the CFO chair to the CEO chair six months inEnova's brand portfolio: CashNet, NetCredit, and OnDeckUnderwriting nonprime and near-prime consumers versus underwriting small businessesThe lift Enova's proprietary models get over a plain FICO or VantageScoreWhy all their products use different underwriting modelsWhat Enova's weekly vintage data shows about the health of the consumerWhy gas prices matter less to consumer spending than headlines suggestHow Enova is using generative and agentic AI across the businessThe real thesis behind the Grasshopper Bank acquisition (see my podcast with CEO Mike Butler)Steve's response to the senators and state attorneys general opposing the dealWhat banking-as-a-service adds to Enova's roadmapWhere Enova wants to be by 2030Key Takeaways Enova's NetCredit yields and losses aren't outliers when benchmarked against what banks themselves report to the FDIC each quarter, Cunningham argues, pushing back on the "predatory" framing critics apply to the company.The Grasshopper deal is primarily about simplifying a patchwork of direct state licenses and bank partnership arrangements, not chasing cheap deposits, though the deposit base is a welcome bonus.Because Enova's consumer loans repay every two weeks or faster, the company sees shifts in borrower behavior in its own vintage data well before those shifts show up in macro statistics.Small business underwriting at Enova is built around the health of roughly 900 different industry codes rather than a borrower's personal credit, making it a fundamentally different discipline than consumer underwriting.About Steve Cunningham Steve Cunningham is CEO of Enova International, a role he took on in January 2026 after nearly a decade as the company's CFO. He previously served as chief risk officer and treasurer at Discover, CFO of Harley-Davidson Financial Services, held senior finance roles at Capital One, and began his career as a bank regulator at the FDIC. Connect with Fintech One-on-One: Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

    Why Enova Wants a Bank Charter, Not Just Cheap Deposits with CEO Steve Cunningham
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About

Fintech is eating the world. Join Peter Renton, Co-Founder of Fintech Nexus and now an independent fintech media and events consultant, every week as he interviews the fintech leaders who are leading the transformation of financial services. If you want to understand what the future will look like for lending, payments, digital banking and more, tune in to Fintech One-On-One.

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  • Creator
    Peter Renton
  • Years Active
    2013 - 2026
  • Episodes
    653
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 © 2025 Renton & Co. LLC
  • Show Website
    Fintech One-On-One

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