Leaders In Payments

This episode is sponsored by Citizens Pay. Designed to streamline the buying process, Citizens Pay is a leader in “Buy Now Pay Later” that provides merchants the security of a premier national bank on an omnichannel platform which drives sales and builds loyalty.

If you want to learn more about Citizens Pay, visit https://citizensbank.mvk.co/2hycr where you can find additional information about Citizens Pay’s buy now pay later financing solution.

What does a video game designer and avid Vietnamese art collector have to do with payments? A lot! Evvio Co-Founder Adrian Jones started his entrepreneurial career at 15 years old in the videogame design industry, only to find that his passion for technology and the impact it can have on the world around him would eventually propel his career into the ecommerce payments space.

For those of you who may not know, Evvio is an ecommerce technology company that provides opportunities for anyone, anywhere to participate in ecommerce. They specialize in person-to-person emerging ecommerce transactions and their technology adds tremendous value to exchange networks such as:

● Social commerce

● Super apps

● Online gaming

● And the metaverse!

Fluid commerce is probably one of the biggest buzzwords you’ll hear in this podcast, with Evvio driving this intention for their target audience. And one of their main objectives is to make ecommerce inclusive in that it doesn’t require a bank account or credit card to transact. As for their competitive advantage, the ability to earn and spend without value passing out of the e-commerce network is the first thing that Adrian points out, followed closely by fraud prevention capabilities that allow the seller and buyer to maintain a cryptographic agreement of services being used.

Tune in this week to hear Adrian talk about the future of our industry as it relates to the projected growth of person-to-person ecommerce, the demise of credit and debit card payments, and the social commerce exchange that will spike from $560 billion in 2020 to $2.9 trillion in 2026. As for what he projects beyond the next 10 years, he has this to say based on his own experience: “Much as we try to forecast what the world will be like in years ahead, there are just so many things we don’t see coming.” Don’t miss this one!

This is episode 48 of the Leaders in Payment podcast and this is also our third episode in our special series focused on Diversity and Inclusion.
In this series I will be talking with leaders in the payments industry (and maybe some experts from outside of the industry) about diversity and inclusion. It has been proven that a diverse workforce and diverse management team leads to increased creativity, better decision making, reduced employee turnover and increased profit – as well as many other benefits that we will be talking about.

This special series is brought to you by the Wnet and Paysafe.

Give yourself a present! Receive holiday coping strategies from the Wnet. Unwrap a Holiday COVID Survival Guide from the Atlanta Chapter on Wednesday, December 2. Celebrate mindfulness and reduce your stress with the North Texas Chapter on Thursday, December 3. Everyone is welcome to these free online LinkUps. Register at wnetonline.org on their events page.

Paysafe is a leading, global specialized payment provider. They’ve been driving innovation in and around payments for over 20 years all over the globe for both businesses and consumers. Paysafe believes Diversity and Inclusion is not just a checkbox, but rather a journey in which they are fully committed to being on around the world. Learn more at www.paysafe.com.

I’m honored to be joined on the third episode by Liz Pike.

Liz Pike is President of Green Rhino Recruitment, with offices in Phoenix, Atlanta, Seattle and Denver. She focuses her recruitment practice in the area of payment processing and fintech, with strong understanding of the payments ecosystem, players, and technology.

Liz grew up in southern Idaho and graduated from Arizona State University. She managed Sales Recruiting at Heartland and also worked for 2 years at TSYS in Corp Recruiting. In the middle of her recruiting career, she worked at an IPSP and an ISO to get hands-on experience and understand payments.

Liz is a Board Member of Wnet and currently lives in Phoenix with her husband.

This episode is sponsored by American Express. Cash flow shouldn't be a constant struggle. Yet for many mid-market companies, the path from invoice to payment is filled with unnecessary friction, manual processes, and frustrating delays that hurt both the bottom line and customer relationships.
Barrett Smith, Chief Payments and Customer Operations Officer at Versapay, reveals how accounts receivable automation is transforming finance operations for growing businesses. Drawing from his extensive background in payments and financial analytics, Smith shares practical insights on how automation creates measurable improvements in cash flow while elevating the finance department's strategic value.
The conversation tackles common pain points like the persistence of paper-based processes (imagine entire floors filled with invoice file cabinets), the challenges of managing increasing invoice volumes without proportional staffing increases, and the critical need for real-time financial visibility. Most compelling is how automation shifts finance teams from being perceived as back-office gatekeepers to becoming drivers of positive customer experiences.
Whether you're struggling with slow cash conversion, limited financial visibility, or simply want to free your finance team from manual data entry to focus on strategic initiatives, this episode provides a roadmap for leveraging AR automation to transform your business operations. The future of finance isn't just about counting money - it's about making it flow more efficiently through your organization.

My guest this week grew up on a small-town island in Canada but had to go all the way to Hong Kong before he finally realized that being a lawyer wasn’t his calling. When he returned, he had exchanged his passion for a “reputable career” for an obsession with technology. ZayZoon Co-founder and President Tate Hackert went from Meetups to mainstream via the tech startup path – and all on behalf of the employee/employer dynamic when it comes to payments.

For those of you who may not know, ZayZoon is a way for employees to get paid prior to their individually scheduled paycheck date. And for those of you wondering why this is so important, Tate will be the first to tell you that 80 million Americans live paycheck to paycheck. For this demographic, the capacity to access earned wages as needed significantly minimizes cash flow distress and the resulting predatory product scams and credit hits that can often come with it.

How does it work? In a nutshell, any employee at a participating location can go in and request their pay prior to their pay date and then once their paycheck clears, the funds are re-deposited back to ZayZoon. This includes the ability to send money directly to the employee bank account, as well as prepaid debit card options with automatic check deposit and the capacity to stream wages, and gift card options that offer a “coupon clipping on steroids” kind of benefit. With this product, employees benefit from the ability to save money, while employers can more than double their candidate pipeline and employee retention.

Tune in to hear Tate talk about his journey to the role of Co-founder and President, including where he sees the industry going in the next 2 to 3 years as it relates to real-time payments, interoperability, and the democratization of our payments ecosystem. We also talk about his “big hairy audacious goal” to save 10 million employees 10 billion dollars!