Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together - 'It's a no brainer to add a virtual card into the travel product': TripActions' Michael Sindicich

'It's a no brainer to add a virtual card into the travel product': TripActions' Michael Sindicich

04/07/21 • 20 min

Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. Embedded finance is a recurring theme in our coverage on Tearsheet on here, on the podcast. With APIs and banking as a service platforms, firms in all kinds of industries are getting into finance. That’s the story line here. TripActions is an innovate business travel & expense platform that continues to evolve to serve its customers. That meant launching its own travel agency. And it also meant launching Liquid (https://tripactions.com/uk/liquid), TripActions’ own payments solution that ties employee spending in to its software and includes corporate cards. Michael Sindicich is the general manager of TripActions Liquid and was one of the first employees in the company. Michael joins me on the podcast to discuss the firm’s growth trajectory and how that impacted why the firm launched a payment solution. We also discuss the uptake of TripActions Liquid and where the firm is headed in the future with its fintech aspirations. Michale Sindicich is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

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'You're best having a cannabis banking program, not a project': The ins and outs of banking cannabis

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller. Even as more states legalize marijuana, banking cannabis customers is still a major undertaking. Regent Bank is a small bank with 5 branches in Oklahoma and Springfield, MO. As Regent sensed an opportunity to work with cannabis customers in its communities, it tapped Keri Cain to build out its program. Keri has a background in retail and moved to OK after a stint directing store operations at The Gap’s headquarters in San Francisco. She also has muscular dystrophy and has used cannabis to manage her pain in the past and will likely need to do so in the future. She’s passionate about working with cannabis because of the medical benefits it can provide. To launch and manage its cannabis program, Regent worked with Green Check, a firm that works with banks to service customers in the cannabis industry. Green Check founder and CEO Kevin Hart joins Regent’s Keri Cain with me on the podcast to talk about cannabis banking, how to start up a program, and what banks need to be successful working with this new industry.

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Behind the creation of the Q2 Marketplace with Greg Varnell

I’m Zack Miller, editor in chief of Tearsheet. The following was produced by Tearsheet Studios. We worked with fintech software provider Autobooks to create a four part podcast series on the evolution of business banking and how banks can better service SMBs through a changing mindset, partnerships and integrations. We’ve moved beyond the paradigm of banks versus fintechs. Banks are partnering with top technology companies in a way that plays to both parties’ strengths. But these partnerships are resource-heavy and hard: hard to get to contract, hard to integrate, and hard to slot into changing priorities. Q2 is a banking software firm in Austin, Texas. 400 banks and credit unions use its software to power digital banking. I spoke with Greg Varnell, vice president of product and development in the innovation Studio at Q2. Greg describes the Q2 Marketplace and how fintechs and banks are using it as a way to more closely and quickly partner.