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Welcome back to our weekly fintech podcast!
This week, I had the chance to sit down with Sumant Shringari, the CEO and Co-Founder of Pontus, and Sandeep Sood, the Founder and CEO of Kunai.
Pontus was established in 2023 to automate the large, difficult, and often fragmented back-office operations critical to large enterprises – such as the Global 2,000 banks that they count as customers. It was interesting to hear Sumant's perspective from his time working with banks about the difficulty in automating regulated workflows and breaking down data silos. For all the hype around generative AI, the risk is real when it comes to financial services use cases, and it speaks to the necessity for strong partners that can provide dependable implementation.
It's worth taking a look through Pontus' outcomes library as well. Fintech founders will recognize a lot of the solutions here, such as Automated Account Reconciliation, Predictive Budget Forecasting, and Enterprise Risk Assessment. All of these functions today either require massive internal teams or significant vendor integration. Pontus' goal is to replace the need for both.
You can find both companies here:
https://www.pontus.so/https://kunaico.com/ -
KYB might not be the buzziest acronym in fintech—but maybe it should be. In this episode, we’re joined by Will Lawrence, CEO of Greenlite, and Kurt Ruppel, CTO and Co-founder of Middesk, two leaders rethinking how financial institutions identify and monitor business customers. We cover the evolution from manual checks to AI-powered automation, the difference between KYC and KYB, and why ongoing monitoring is the next big frontier. Plus, Will and Kurt share how they’re navigating risk, regulation, and real-world AI implementation—from OCC audits to sanctions alerts—and where they see the biggest opportunities for innovation in compliance and fraud prevention.
And thanks to our sponsors, Newline by Fifth Third and Wolf & Company!
Backed by a leading financial institution, Newline empowers enterprise companies to effortlessly launch and scale payment, card and deposit products directly with Fifth Third Bank. And if you're looking for a partner who really gets fintech, Wolf & Company is a national accounting & advisory firm with over 100 years of experience working with financial institutions and decades scaling tech companies from startup to IPO.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Welcome back to our weekly fintech podcast!
This week, I had the chance to sit down with Peter Hazlehurst, Co-Founder and CEO of Synctera, and Matt MacDonald Financial Technology Service Leader & IT Assurance Senior Manager at Wolf & Company.
The conversation was wide-ranging, starting with Wolf & Synctera's partnership to build a compliant bank-fintech partnership model that Synctera has scaled for their customers. We spent a lot of time talking about compliance and regulation not as a restraint, but as a strategy, and as a driver of growth. In light of the last couple years, in which the BaaS model has come under stress, we also spent some time talking about the future of the bank-fintech partnership model, and what changes Matt and Peter wish that startup founders would make.
Any fintech builders and founders will find the conversation interesting – I easily could have gone over the hour!
Before getting into it, here is a little more background on Wolf & Co. and Synctera themselves.
Wolf & Company P.C. is a national CPA and business consulting firm with a regional feel offering clients a wide range of services custom-tailored to suit their industry's unique needs. Since 1911, Wolf has provided clients with industry-leading assurance, tax, risk management, business consulting, and WolfPAC Integrated Risk Management services. They pride themselves on delivering customized solutions with deep involvement by their team of dedicated professionals and leaders.
Synctera’s platform gives companies of all sizes the technology infrastructure, sponsor bank connection, and compliance framework they need to launch FinTech or embedded banking products. With a single set of powerful APIs, companies are able to quickly launch and scale products such as debit cards, bank accounts, charge cards, lines of credit, and money movement. Whether you are a FinTech company or an established business wanting to embed banking into your existing product set, Synctera can help you bring your vision to life.
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In this episode, we sit down with Lukas Haffer, CEO and Co-founder of Casca, and Ryan Hildebrand, Chief Innovation Officer at Bankwell, to explore how AI is transforming small business lending—starting with SBA loans. They discuss the challenges of building on top of legacy banking systems, the stress-test of the COVID-19 PPP era, and how a human-in-the-loop approach is key to deploying AI responsibly in financial services.
You’ll hear how their partnership evolved from a small pilot into a full-stack platform that slashes loan processing times from 90 days to 3. We also dive into fraud prevention, the reality of deploying AI agents in banking, and why trust—not hype—is the foundation of true innovation.
Thanks to Fundbox for sponsoring this week's episode. With over a decade of experience, Fundbox delivers customizable credit solutions including invoice financing, lines of credit, term loans, payroll protection, and more.
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We hosted an insightful live conversation and podcast at New York Fintech Week, hosted by This Week in Fintech and PingPong.Key Topics:
Real-Time Payment Rails: Exploring the latest innovations in real-time payments and how they’re reshaping cross-border transactions.Cross-Border Money Movement: Analyzing the challenges and opportunities in facilitating smooth cross-border B2B payments.Speakers:
Nik Milanovic: Founder of This Week in FintechDavid Messenger: CEO, Global Businesses at PingPongAbout PingPong:PingPong was founded in New York in 2015 to solve the immense challenge of scaling enterprise businesses globally. Fast-forward to today, and PingPong has become one of the world’s leading global cross-border payments platforms, processing more than $250 billion USD. Our API-first cross-border payments solution integrates with enterprises to send, manage, and receive money faster on a global scale.PingPong currently has 37 offices in 15 countries and over 1,000 employees. Our international presence helps businesses solve complex payment needs in every major economy across all time zones.
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In today's episode, Ryan Zauk is joined by Art Levy, Chief Business Officer at Brex.
Brex is the modern finance platform that empowers growing companies to spend smarter and move faster in 120+ countries. Brex combines global corporate cards, expense management, banking, and travel. Their platform is trusted by 30k+ companies including ServiceTitan, DoorDash, ScaleAI, and Wiz.
In this episode, Art & Ryan discuss:
2:23 - The exact decision making framework he uses (and we all probably should) to assess career opportunities in tech, including the "Five F**k Ups Rule"
4:50 - The 3 things that gave him confidence in Brex after assessing hundreds of companies as a VC...and the role Michael Tannenbaum + Sam Blond played
8:29 - His definition of what a CBO does, how he tracks himself, and his 'CBO Role Model'
10:39 - Brex's specific positioning in this massive, ultra-competitive global market and the types of customers Brex serves
14:54 - How his team balances product decision-making tactics across building their own roadmap, responding to competitor products, and listening to customers
16:25 - His Partnership Playbook and why "Rabbits, Deer, and Elephants" help him focus. How to think about value maximization vs. long-term partnership.
23:56 - What it would take for Brex to buy (or partner with) your startup
30:48 – Brex, Pedro, and Henrique going 'Founder Mode' and why it was the perfect movement for Brex in 2024
35:20 - Filling your team with 'spikes'
36:48 - Why you must always get on the plane
39:18 - An all-time rapid fire round including who he would box, why he invested in Bridge.xyz (acq by Stripe), his favorite apps, Brex team shoutouts, and more.
Enjoy the show.
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Art Levy is the Chief Business Officer of Brex leading business development, strategic partnerships, and M&A. Over the past six years, Art has led Brex's key partnerships with companies like Navan, Coupa, Apple, AWS, Zoom, and JetBlue and its M&A deals across the US and EMEA. Arthur started his career at Centerview Partners in tech investment banking and has spent the last 15 years operating and investing. Art is a cum laude graduate of Princeton University.
Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor at OMERS Ventures, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area. You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.
Newline™ by Fifth Third - Are you ready to grow your fintech with scalable, API-enabled payments? Backed by a leading financial institution, Newline empowers enterprise companies to effortlessly launch and scale payment, card and deposit products directly with Fifth Third Bank. Drive your fintech forward with the embedded finance platform designed for enterprise fintech. Discover how Newline can transform your financial services. Learn more at Newline53.com.
Credit products are subject to credit approval and mutually acceptable documentation. Deposit and credit products offered by Fifth Third Bank, National Association. Member FDIC.Wolf & Co is a national accounting & advisory firm with over 100 years of experience working with financial institutions and decades scaling tech companies from startup to IPO. They take a risk-based approach to everything they do, focusing on what matters most at each stage of your growth journey. From assurance, advisory, and tax services to cybersecurity and data management, Wolf helps you scale smart and stay secure. They’re deeply involved in fintech, crypto and blockchain, and they’re trusted by banks throughout the country. Plus, they’re PCAOB registered – so when it’s time to navigate high-growth milestones, they’ve got you covered. If you’re ready to grow with confidence, check out Wolf & Company at wolfandco.com.
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In this episode of the This Week in Fintech podcast, hosts Julie and Jillian are joined by Rex Salisbury (Founder of Cambrian Ventures) and Erica Dorfman (Head of Financial Products at Brex) for a wide-ranging conversation that sits at the intersection of AI, fintech innovation, and practical applications across startups and scale-ups.
From agentic AI to OCR replacements, from startup go-to-market strategies to the rebundling of consumer financial services, Rex and Erica unpack the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence—what's hype, what's real, and what it means for operators, investors, and builders alike. Whether you're navigating new tools inside your fintech product or simply trying to keep up, this episode is full of sharp insights, tactical examples, and honest takes.
This Week in Fintech is brought to you by our friends at Solda.ai and Fundbox.
Putting your sales process on autopilot with AI phone agents that sound just like the real thing. Thanks to Solda.ai for supporting the show and helping leading FinTech teams drive revenue with smarter, scalable customer engagement.
And with over a decade of experience, Fundbox delivers customizable credit solutions including invoice financing, lines of credit, term loans, payroll protection, and more.
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TWIF host Nik Milanovic sat down with Prashant Fuloria, CEO, and Anchit Singh, CBO, of Fundbox, a pioneer in embedded finance for SMBs since 2013.
Fundbox has partnered with platforms like QuickBooks and FreshBooks to provide fast access to over $5 billion in capital to 125,000 small businesses.
Prashant, Anchit, and Nik discussed the evolution of embedded finance, emphasizing the importance of data integration and innovative underwriting methods, such as cash flow underwriting.
They also highlight the potential for future partnerships with banks and other platforms to enhance small business lending.
[This is a sponsored episode]
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Welcome back to the Fintech AI Series!
Today’s episode dives deep into one of the most critical topics in both Fintech and AI—Compliance. We’re joined by two amazing guests: Reggie Young, Chief of Staff at Lithic, and Jesse Reiss, CTO and Co-founder of Hummingbird.
Between Reggie’s legal background and Jesse’s technical expertise, this episode offers a unique and practical look at how regulated companies are approaching AI, from internal tooling to external regulation, and everything in between.
Whether you’re building in Fintech, managing risk, or just trying to make sense of your company’s AI policy, you’re going to get a ton out of this one. Don’t forget to rate, follow, and share wherever you get your podcasts. Let’s get into it!
Thanks to And thanks to Paddle and Fundbox for sponsoring this episode!
Paddle operate as the Merchant of Record (MoR) for digital products, managing payments localization, fraud prevention, retention logic, customer billing support, and complying with every local privacy law and sales tax rule on your behalf.
And with over a decade of experience, Fundbox delivers customizable credit solutions including invoice financing, lines of credit, term loans, payroll protection, and more.
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In March, we traveled to the inaugural HumanX conference in Las Vegas to meet founders, builders, and investors at the bleeding edge of AI. The conference was a great success, and we're excited for it to relocate to San Francisco next April.
While at the conference, I had the chance to sit down with Shannon Scott, SVP and Global Head of Product at Airwallex. Airwallex is the global payments and financial platform for modern businesses. Founded in Melbourne in 2015, Airwallex has become a dominant global player in financial infrastructure, serving some of the world's largest cross-border companies like Canva, Brex, Navan, Rippling, SHEIN, and more. Airwallex was last valued at $5.6Bn in 2022 and is backed by investors such as Sequoia, Index, Tencent, Salesforce Ventures, Lone Pine, Greenoaks, Mastercard, and more.
In this episode, Shannon and I discuss:
His transition from Palantir to Airwallex and lessons learned from Silicon Valley cultureAirwallex's global product suite and vision for building a global financial platform through products like multi-currency wallets and the new 'Airwallex Spend'Airwallex's use of AI in fraud management, customer onboarding, and process automationScaling great teams in fintechAnd much more. Enjoy the show.
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Airwallex is a leading global payments and financial platform for modern businesses, offering trusted solutions to manage everything from business accounts, payments, treasury, and spend management to embedded finance. With our proprietary infrastructure, Airwallex takes the friction out of global payments and financial operations, empowering businesses of all sizes to unlock new opportunities and grow beyond borders. Proudly founded in Melbourne, Airwallex supports over 150,000 businesses globally and is trusted by brands such as Brex, Canva, Rippling, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN and many more.
Shannon Scott is SVP, Global Head of Product at Airwallex. Shannon is responsible for product strategy and delivery across all Airwallex domains including card issuing, online payments, business accounts, and platform infrastructure. He was an early employee of Palantir Technologies, where he founded Palantir's international operations in both Australia-New Zealand and Europe. He was responsible for building out the initial business development and delivery teams in both regions, where clients spanned both government and large commercial enterprises. Shannon has a combined degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University or Melbourne and has focused on the intersection of software engineering and technical business development throughout his career, including in an advisory capacity to numerous Australian startups.
Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor at OMERS Ventures, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area. You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.
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In March, we traveled to the inaugural HumanX conference in Las Vegas to meet founders, builders, and investors at the bleeding edge of AI. The conference was a great gathering of AI leaders, and we're excited for it to relocate to San Francisco next April.
While at the conference, I had the chance to sit down with May Habib, Co-Founder and CEO of Writer. If you've been around AI x FS over the last few years, or drive the 101, you've likely come across Writer.
Writer is the leading Gen-AI platform for enterprises, and has been one of the few AI companies to find repeatable, scaled success with the enterprise. They help large enterprises deploy secure + reliable AI applications and agents that transform mission-critical workflows.
Writer’s platform is supported by Palmyra – Writer’s state-of-the-art family of LLMs – alongside its industry-leading graph-based RAG, customizable AI guardrails, and suite of development tools. Palmyra LLMs include one of the world’s highest-benchmarked frontier models, topping leaderboards for natural language understanding and generation, as well as top specialized models in finance and healthcare.
Their customer list speaks for itself, including household names like Vanguard, Salesforce, Qualcomm, Accenture, Franklin Templeton, Intuit, Dropbox, Hubspot, Prudential, L'Oreal, and the list goes on...
When you meet May, you can see why. She is a phenomenal leader, communicator, and executor who lays out why Writer's full-stack technology and deep appreciation for how large enterprises function allow them to have such success.
Writer is fresh off a $200M Series C valuing the company at $1.9Bn. They are supported by investors including ICONIQ, Radical, Premji Invest, Adobe Ventures, B Capital, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, Workday Ventures, Insight, Vanguard, and others...quite a long list of strategics.
Enjoy the show.
--May Habib is the CEO and co-founder of Writer, the full-stack generative AI platform delivering transformative ROI for the world’s leading enterprises. May is an expert in natural language processing and AI-driven language generation. She has led Writer to become one of the world’s fastest-growing generative AI companies, securing its position as a Forbes 50 AI company and inclusion in the World Economic Forum's Unicorn Community. May graduated with high honors in Economics from Harvard University. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, a Fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and a recipient of Inc.'s Female Founder Award.Writer is the full-stack generative AI platform delivering transformative ROI for the world’s leading enterprises. Its fully integrated solution makes it easy to deploy secure and reliable AI agents that automate mission-critical work. Writer’s suite of development tools is supported by Palmyra – Writer’s state-of-the-art family of LLMs – alongside its industry-leading graph-based RAG and customizable AI guardrails. Hundreds of customers like Accenture, Intuit, L’Oreal, Salesforce, Uber, and Vanguard trust Writer to transform the way they work. Founded in 2020, Writer is backed by world-leading investors, including Premji Invest, Radical Ventures, ICONIQ Growth, Insight Partners, Balderton, B Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, WndrCo, and others.
Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor at OMERS Ventures, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area.
You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.
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TWIF founder Nik Milanovic talks to Bits About Money writer Patrick McKenzie, on topics ranging from agentic payments, to generative AI-enabled fraud, to deposit insurance and the banking crisis of 2023, to the epistemology of synthetic IDs.
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The intersection of AI and traditional finance (TradFi) is an angle we haven't explored yet in our AI series. Today, we change that by taking a deep dive into how AI is transforming large financial institutions. Jillian and I are joined by two experts shaping the future of AI in finance:
Stevi Petrelli – Head of Blackstone Innovations Investments, where she leads early-stage strategic investments in cutting-edge financial technology.
John Nay – Founder & CEO of Norm Ai, a company pioneering the use of AI in regulatory compliance and policy automation.
Together, they discuss the real-world applications of AI in financial services, what it takes to successfully sell AI solutions to financial institutions, and why workflow integration, compliance, and data infrastructure are critical to adoption.
They also tackle common misconceptions, explore overhyped vs. underhyped AI trends, and share their insights on where the fintech and AI landscape is headed in 2025.
This is an episode you don’t want to miss. Let’s dive in!
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On March 4th, This Week in Fintech had their debut event in Canada, bringing together hundreds of people across the tech ecosystem for an evening of networking, food and drinks, panels from local leaders, and even a magician working the crowd. We had nearly 500 people register when it was all said and done, showing the enthusiasm and depth of the Toronto tech ecosystem.
We don’t know how it took us this long to get to Canada, but we’re glad we did. This will be the first of many…
This episode is the recorded version of our panel featuring Rasha Katabi, Founder & CEO of Brim Financial.
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Brim is a leading fintech infrastructure company transforming the credit card platform and payment automation space. Brim's modular platform and highly scalable product suite fully empowers financial institutions, fintechs, and large international brands to run / evolve their product platforms to meet their customer and market needs. Brim Financial is one of the fastest growing enterprise technology companies, according to Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 in North America. Brim's Credit-Card-as-a-Service platform has been recognized as best-in-class for product capabilities by Aite-Novarica Group in their analysis of global CCaaS providers.
Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor on the Ventures team at OMERS, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area.
You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.
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On March 4th, This Week in Fintech hosted their debut event in Canada, bringing together 150+ people across the tech ecosystem for an evening of networking, panels from local leaders, and even a magician working the crowd.
We had nearly 500 people register, showing the enthusiasm and depth of the Toronto tech ecosystem.
We don’t know how it took us this long to get to Canada, but we’re glad we did. This will be the first of many…
Headlining the event was a live podcast with Adyen’s Head of Canada, Sander Meijers, and Notch CEO Jordan Huck.
Sander, Jordan, and I discussed their rich product offerings for Canadian businesses, how Adyen’s platform has provided Notch with unique structural advantages, how each leader balances local and global perspectives when scaling teams, and more.
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Adyen is a global financial technology platform helping the world’s leading businesses achieve their ambitions faster. Since its founding in 2006, Adyen has built one of the world's leading platforms to help enterprises accept payments, protect revenue, and control their finances. Adyen processed ~$1Tn in transaction volume last year across for companies like Microsoft, McDonalds, Uber, Loreal, Spotify, eBay, Gap and more.
Notch is an accounts receivable automation software, designed to simplify managing invoices and payment collection. With Notch you can automate the entire AR process from invoice creation to payment processing speeding up payment collection (up to 3x faster) and improving cash flow.
Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor on the Ventures team at OMERS, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area.
You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.
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In my latest interview, I spent some time with North's SVP of Product, Preet Patel, to talk about his journey from Citi to AmEx to North, what's changed in the company since he joined (hint: they were previously known as NAB), and how he takes a consumer products mentality to his merchant payments product work at North.
Preet Patel has served as the Senior Vice President of Product Management at North since September 2019, after previously holding the position of Vice President of Product Management.
Prior to his tenure with North, Patel worked at Yapstone, where he led product strategy for significant marketplace partnerships, most notably with HomeAway, enhancing client relations in Austin, TX.
His career also includes high-profile roles with American Express, where Preet held the position of Senior Manager of Product Development, focusing on the development of consumer co-brand card relationships while leading partner negotiations. Additional prior employers also include Elavon and Citi.
Founded in 1992, North builds frictionless payment processing designed to simplify and grow business. They offer comprehensive solutions, from the front door to the back office, that include point of sale (POS) hardware, a fully integrated payment platform, and comprehensive merchant services to manage inventory, employees, and more.
North is re-imagining the payment experience. As a leading payment technology innovator, North has a diversified product platform that provides a modern end-to-end infrastructure to enable globally-preferred payment types. North’s superior solutions deliver seamless payments experiences in mobile, ecommerce, and in-store environments. Serving hundreds of thousands of businesses and with over $100 billion per year in electronic transaction volume, North delivers functional, feature-rich, and frictionless solutions for the evolving merchant economy.Enjoy the conversation!
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In this episode of our Fintech and AI series, Julie and Jillian dive into the evolving world of lending with two industry leaders shaping the space. Tim Li, CEO of LendAPI, and Justin Potts, CTO of Canopy Servicing, break down AI’s impact on everything from underwriting and fraud detection to loan servicing and borrower experience. They explore the regulatory shakeups affecting fintech, the rise of cash flow-based lending, and where AI is still underutilized in credit decisioning. Plus, they share insights on the future of lending, from data portability to fractionalized assets.
And thanks to Method Financial and Fundbox for sponsoring this episode!
Method is an account connectivity solution that powers seamless checkout and loyalty experiences. Visit methodfi.com to learn more!
And with over a decade of experience, Fundbox delivers customizable credit solutions including invoice financing, lines of credit, term loans, payroll protection, and more.
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In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with global fintech legend Oliver Hughes, Chief International Growth Officer at TBC Bank Group, a London-listed financial + banking services provider in Georgia in Uzbekistan.
Before TBC, Oliver was the CEO of Tinkoff and Head of Russia for Visa. He is also on the Board of Tabby, a leading shopping and financial services player in the Middle East that is allegedly eyeing an IPO after a $160M Series E.
After 25 years at the cutting edge of international fintech, Oliver is taking on what he hopes is his final fintech chapter - scaling TBC Bank Group internationally, starting with Uzbekistan.
I'm sure many of our readers + listeners may be scratching their heads...a fintech pioneer who could choose anywhere in the world to work...chose to dedicate the next decade of his life to TBC Bank Group and Central Asia?
However, as shown throughout his career, Oliver can spot and act on massive trends early. So what does he see here?
TBC Bank Group's momentum in recent years has been remarkable, and the market opportunity in Uzbekistan is much larger than it appears from afar.
Let's take a brief look at the company before getting to the episode:
TBC is the parent co of TBC Bank Georgia and TBC Uzbekistan (where Oliver focuses).
In Georgia, TBC is the leading financial services group, with almost 40% market share for customer loans and deposits.
Kind of like the traditional bank that helps fund the Uzbekistan story...
Uzbekistan is where the fintech story emerges. In just ~2 years since launch, TBC Uz has reached:
50% of the Uzbekistan population >100% loan portfolio growth for 2 straight years Strong profitability with $41M(!) in net income in 2 years (nearly unbelievable for US fintech) A rich product ecosystem (debit card, credit card, MSME banking, etc.) Eyes on a third market in the future Is fresh off a $37 million raise to continue its push into AI and new product development. The investment came just months after it raised $38.5 million in JulyThe profitable growth is stellar - one that you don't see replicated elsewhere.
What really interested me was a crude TAM comparison to another notable fintech in the region, Kaspi, which had a major US IPO on the NASDAQ in 2024.
Kaspi is a superapp from Kazakhstan and in 2024 produced roughly $4Bn in revenue growing 30% YoY with 40% net income margin. Those are numbers and scale few companies in the world can manage...and Kazakhstan is a country of only 20 million people.
Uzbekistan's population is nearly 40M people, and Georgia's around 11M - when combined are well over double Kazakhstan's.
As Oliver points out in the episode:
“I'm someone who believes in the thesis that there are overlooked, underloved countries that deserve a lot more attention - You can build viable, scalable businesses with the right execution. It's all down to execution. It's not down to the number of people in the country.”
I think the stage is set...I'll let Oliver share the rest.
Episode Highlights
3:48 Oliver's background and path from Visa to Tinkoff to TBC
6:41 The problems Tinkoff was solving, why it got so large, and the key lessons he learned from scaling it
8:50 An overview of TBC Bank Group: What it does, how it operates, and its key products
13:51 Why Uzbekistan has probably the greatest open banking system in the world, and a fun fact about Uzbekistan's most popular messaging app
20:19 The complementary nature of the 2 Uzbekistani apps: TBC Uz and PayMe
24:20 The near-unbelievably high NPV his team uses to underwrite projects and why it's so effective
27:03 His thoughts on the new wave of mobile sim card efforts / MVNOs by firms like Nubank and Revolut, and infrastructure players like Gigs
31:20 The "Fintech Perplexity" idea and other creative ways his team is experimenting with + deploying in AI
34:17 What their 3rd market might be, and what's ahead for his great team
37:15 Rapid fire round
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In this episode of our Fintech and AI series, Julie and Jillian sit down with two leading voices in fintech to explore how AI is revolutionizing the payments landscape. Alexis Zhu of Stripe and Yunyu Lin of Ramp break down AI’s role in fraud prevention, workflow automation, and financial decision-making. From personalized checkout experiences to the future of real-time payments, this episode is packed with insights on where fintech and AI are headed.
And thanks to Method Financial for sponsoring this episode! Method is an account connectivity solution that powers the checkout experience for e-commerce and loyalty-driven businesses. Visit methodfi.com to learn more!
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This week, I managed to grab some time in the (very busy!) schedule ofNeha Narkhede. Neha is an Indian American technology entrepreneur who is the founder & CEO of Oscilar, co-founder and former CTO, and current board member of Confluent (CFLT NASDAQ).
As a software engineer atLinkedIn, she helped develop the open-source messaging systemApache Kafka, now used by more than 80% of the Fortune 500. In 2014, she co-foundedConfluent, which helps organizations process large amounts of data to create transformative real-time products and was listed on the NASDAQ in 2021.
Neha has been listed as one of America’s Top Self-Made Women by Forbes, Forbes’s Top 50 Women In Tech, MIT Tech Review’s Innovators under 35, and Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People. Neha has a Master in Computer Science degree from Georgia Tech.
We talked about everything from the founders' journey to the rise of AI to building a multinational financial risk org atOscilar.
- Visa fler
