In case you missed out on the February episodes of the Voice of FinTech podcast, here is the monthly summary! You can listen to all the episodes on the Episodes pages of this website or when you subscribe to your favorite podcast apps under Subscribe.

Finally getting rid of cash in 2021?

Will Graylin is a former US nuclear submarine officer, a serial entrepreneur with exits to Samsung, Oracle and others, former co-GM of Samsung Pay and Chairman and CEO of OVLoop, Inc., USA, his latest FinTech venture. Hosted by Rudolf Falat, founder of Voice of FinTech podcast.

We talk about:

How did Will get to do what he does today?
What has attracted Will to be an entrepreneur instead of being an employee? What were Will's favorite entrepreneurial moments?
What are the pros and cons of going more digital and how far can we go?
OV Loop - what’s the company about? What is the problem you are trying to solve? What does it mean, "everywhere commerce"?
Who are its key clients?
Digital payments are already a fairly crowded space. How are you better than your competitors? What’s your edge?
It seems that COVID loves e-commerce. Have you noticed a spike in demand driven by the pandemic? Where exactly?
Your favorite business book you have read recently?
Where can interested parties find out more about you?

Americas Series with David Yakobovitch: Socure - identity verification and security for financial transactions in a Digital First Society

David Yakobovitch discussed with Johnny Ayers, CEO and Founder of Socure, about the rise of identity verification and security for financial transactions in a Digital First Society. This episode featured a conversation on leading FinTech startups that are enabled by technology at Socure and similar exciting Finance ventures such as Public, Stash and Robinhood.

Topics included uncovering the powerful technology that Socure has built for identity fraud, anti-money laundering, and end-to-end predictive analytics. Notable startups discussed on the episode included Brigit, EarnIn, and Dave.com.

With its focus on binary classification and over 9 billion rows of weekly data, Socure has built three new, industry-changing solutions: Intelligent KYC, DocV and Sigma Synthetic Fraud.
Socure announced in the second half of 2020 a funding round of $35 million (here), and recently has entered the online gaming industry (here).
Socure is solving for the first ML model to verify 100% of good IDs and completely eliminate identity fraud on the Internet.
Johnny Ayers’ 2021 trend predictions on fraud include a part 1 and part 2.

Essentials of Entrepreneurial Finance

Jana Kovacovska, the founder at Tiny CFO, providing advisory services to start-ups focused on entrepreneurial finance in the tech, consumer, and media space. Ex-VC and McKinsey. An enthusiastic supporter of new-ish entrepreneurs and small businesses. Hosted by Rudolf Falat, founder of Voice of FinTech podcast.

Here is what we talked about:

Background on Tiny CFO and Jana
What made you start Tiny CFO?
What do you think founders need to focus on with regards to their finances from the start?
Is there a difference between a startup and a small business? Why does it matter?
Which issues do you witness in entrepreneurial finance?
Why not just leave all this to the accountant?
What do you think the best practice finance function for startups looks like?
Do you think forecasts still cannot be automated?
Can the founders do all of this – manage their whole finance function – on their own?
When should they hire a CFO and what to expect?
How do you collaborate with others in the ecosystem?
What's the best way to reach out?

Asia Pacific Series with Chia Jeng Yang 谢征阳: Banking for SMEs in India with Open's Vaibhav Garg

In this episode of Voice of FinTech: Asia Pacific Series, Chia Jeng Yang, Principal of Saison Capital based in Singapore, speaks to Vaibhav Garg, Head of Business Strategy for Open, an Indian SME focused neobanking platform. Vaibhav is the Head of Business Strategy at Open and was a founder of multiple companies (Boro, Zopper and IndieHaat), ex-Dalberg Global Advisors consultant and an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay graduate.

Open is an SME-focused business banking platform, founded by serial entrepreneurs Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko and Ajeesh Achuthan, along with ex TaxiforSure CFO Deena Jacob.

Founded in 2017, Open is one of the world’s fastest-growing SME-focused business banking platforms with over 800,000 SMEs, processing over USD 24 billion in transaction processing volume annually and adding 50,000 new SMEs every month. Open is backed by leading global investors like Tiger Global, Speedinvest, Beenext, raising $37 million in funding, and was recently featured among the top 100 fintech companies globally in the 2019 Fintech 100 Report by KPMG and H2 Ventures.

We talk about:

Open and its founding story
Key events and nuances in the Indian fintech scene and how it compares to other FinTech markets
Opportunities in the SME open banking space
Regulatory oversight and its role in embedded finance
Overlooked factors for investing and building in India Fintech

The status and prospects of CBDCs and more with Ripple

James Wallis is Vice President RippleX, Central Bank Engagements and CBDCs at Ripple. Hosted by Rudolf Falat, founder of Voice of FinTech podcast. Here is what they talked about:

James, you have had a long and distinguished career at IBM. What drove you to the world of blockchain?
What are your predictions for blockchain and its use cases?
I know you focus on CBDCs – some countries are more supportive than others. Recently, the Swiss central bank representatives stated that they see no benefits of CBDCs over the currency as we know it today? What would be your answer to that?
What are the critical success factors that need to be fulfilled, so CBDCs take off?
What’s the interplay between CBDCs, Ripple and enterprise blockchain? What’s the problem you are solving?
Has your focus shifted as you have been building Ripple?
How does the world of blockchain look like now from Ripple’s perspective?
Who are your key clients?
What’s in store for you this year?
Ray Dalio from Bridgewater says governments will kill bitcoin. Is he right?
Your favorite business book you have read recently?
What’s the best way to reach out and find out more about Ripple?

Africa Series with Stacey Japhta: Empowering emerging market entrepreneurs

Stacey Japhta, Head of Strategic FinTech Partnerships at Talent in the cloud, emerging markets FinTech executive search firm and host of Talking success podcast, talks to Buhle Goslar, Africa CEO at Jumo, a company providing financial services technologies to empower emerging market entrepreneurs, both based in South Africa.

Buhle learnt about being an entrepreneur at the age of 23 when she built the business division of a Travel Tech company in China from scratch. In this episode, Buhle touches on the steps to take to successfully build something from the ground up.
Her MBA paper dives into why we do not see the full benefits of financial inclusion in South Africa and how that ties into the emerging markets not creating innovative products. Buhle shares the reason for this and how we can solve the problem.
Then we chat about a controversial topic - focusing on gender diversity & pay equity. How do we move away from pay secrecy?

Get smarter about your life insurance

Michael Klien, co-founder of Safeside talks to Rudolf Falat, founder of the Voice of FinTech podcast about how to get life insurance more easily and intelligently.

More specifically, here is what they talked about:

Michael, how and why have you decided to start your own company?
What is SafeSide? How does it work? Why now?
What is your unique advantage? How are you different from comparison sites or brokers?
How do you make money?
Who are your target customers?
How have you started with your venture?
Where are you on your journey in terms of product development, geographic reach, funding, hiring? What’s the ultimate plan?
What are the next steps for you this year and beyond?
Michael's favorite business book: Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade
The best way to reach out

Asia Pacific Series with Angela Conroy: How to use your credit card even where you can't? Ask CardUp

In this episode of the Asia Pacific Series, Angela Conroy, co-founder and CEO at Notarum, an awesome RegTech based in Singapore, talks to Nicki Ramsey. Nicki is the founder and CEO of CardUp, also based in Singapore. CardUp is a credit card enablement platform that enables payment or collection of significant expenses using a credit card in places where cards are not accepted today.

Nicki and Angela talk about:

The 'great leap of faith' when moving from corporate to star-tup
The importance of a strong founding team
How non-tech founders can get comfortable with the tech world
Why finding the win-win is key to success

If you have suggestions for topics or guests on the show or have ideas about how to make this podcast better for you, please e-mail us at info@voiceoffintech.com. You can also leave feedback using a quick form here: https://www.voiceoffintech.com/feedback. Alternatively, you can also leave a voicemail here.

Keep safe!

Sincerely,

Rudolf Falat