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© 2025 Fintech Leaders
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Learn from today’s global leaders building the organizations that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.
188 Episodes
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Send us a text Miguel Armaza sits down with Nico Simko, CEO and co-founder of Clair, for an inside look at the journey, pivots, and insights behind one of the most innovative companies in earned wage access and embedded fintech. From his early days as a competitive fencer on the Swiss national team—where he learned the mental agility and resilience needed for entrepreneurship—to his high-impact stints at J.P. Morgan, Nico shares how his personal story shaped his approach to building and scali...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Alan Patricof and Howard Morgan, two of the most influential figures in the venture capital industry. From the early days of just 50 annual deals to today’s 10,000 opportunities, they’ve helped shape the industry’s explosive growth over the last five decades. In this episode, Alan and Howard share lessons from navigating multiple crises, their vision for the AI revolution and a future with humanoid robots, and why mentorship and legacy matter more than ...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Art Levy, Chief Business Officer of Brex. Brex has scaled to over $100 billion in processed transactions while becoming one of the most influential multibillion-dollar fintechs in the world. In this episode, Art shares the strategies behind Brex’s hypergrowth comeback, its extreme focus on three core products, and the culture that continues to produce founders of billion-dollar companies. Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders to...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews the CEO of Shift4. Shift4 has been at the forefront of the global payments industry for 26 years—and they’re only getting started. In this episode, CEO Taylor Lauber reveals the strategies that have kept the company ahead in a competitive, fast-moving market. Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today’s global leaders that will dominate the 21st...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews the CEO of Cashea. In a country where credit vanished, Cashea built a new system from scratch. CEO Pedro Vallenilla shares how they scaled BNPL to 3% of Venezuela’s GDP, through trust-based lending, merchant financing, and a bold vision for national impact. Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today’s global leaders that will dominate the 21st c...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Steve Stagner, CEO of Crete, an AI-powered roll-up deploying $500+ million to modernize the accounting industry. Backed by Thrive Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and others, Crete is acquiring US accounting firms and transforming them with OpenAI-powered tools. Steve brings battle-tested insights from building Mattress Firm from a single $1,300 franchise to a $3.8 billion Fortune 500 giant. In this episode, we discuss (1) Why "People, Process, Tec...
Send us a text [Original air date, April 9, 2024] Miguel Armaza interviews Jack Zhang, CEO & Co-Founder of Airwallex, a global payments and treasury giant that moves $7 billion in monthly transaction volume and serves 100,000+ clients, including Brex, Rippling, and SHEIN. Founded in Melbourne in 2015, Airwallex was last valued at $6.2 billion and has raised over a billion dollars from Sequoia, DST, Square Peg, Greenoaks, Mastercard, Tencent, Salesforce, and many more. In this epis...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Eynat Guez, CEO and Founder of Papaya Global. She has built an HR and payroll platform that has transformed how companies manage and operate global teams across 180 countries. After having faced over 1,000 rejections from VCs, Papaya has now grown to process $34 billion in payments annually and they've raised significant funding from Insight Partners, Bessemer, Greenoaks Capital, and more. We discuss why brutal honesty and direct leadership creates stro...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Chen Amit, CEO and Co-Founder of Tipalti, a global fintech platform processing billions in payments and serving over 4,000 mid-market companies worldwide. By focusing on the underserved mid-sized companies, Tipalti has achieved 99% gross revenue retention over 15 years and secured licenses across 50+ jurisdictions. We discuss: Navigating "once-in-a-decade" disruptions that now seem to happen every six monthsWhy customer intuition can override conflictin...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza sits down in NYC with Anré Williams, Senior Executive Advisor at American Express. Anré has spent over 35 years at Amex, rising from summer intern to, most recently, CEO of American Express National Bank (which represents ~60% of the company's revenues). Under his leadership, Amex transformed its banking business into a top 25 US bank by assets. Amex is one of the oldest financial services companies in the world. The company is 150 years old and in 2024, they repo...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza travels to Sao Paulo for an interview with Eduardo Chedid, CEO of PicPay, a Brazilian fintech giant that has quietly become one of the most important financial companies in Latin America. With 60 million customers and handling 11% of all Pix payments transactions in Brazil, PicPay has achieved profitability while maintaining hyper-growth—posting 61% revenue growth and 7× higher profits in 2024. In this episode, we discuss: How PicPay transformed from a digital wal...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza stops by the New York Stock Exchange to interview Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO & Co-founder of Alpaca, an API-first brokerage infrastructure company that has raised over $100 million to serve more than 200 financial institutions across 40 countries, with 5 million brokerage accounts on their platform. In this episode, we discuss: Balancing data-driven decisions with entrepreneurial instinctWhy Alpaca's self-clearing model slashes dependencies, cuts costs, and accelerat...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Daniel Vogel, CEO & Co-Founder of Bitso, one of Latin America's leading cryptocurrency platforms serving over 12 million customers across Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil. Bitso processes over 10% of the remittances flowing from the US to Mexico ($6 - $7 Billion), and is pioneering the use of stablecoins for cross-border transactions throughout Latin America. In this episode, we discuss: Why rate of learning is one of his core principles for ...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Bam Azizi, Co-Founder and CEO of Mesh Connect, a fintech infrastructure company that has transformed from a consumer-focus to a fast-growing B2B platform serving hundreds of corporate clients including Revolut, and Coinbase. After raising nearly $130 million, including a Series B closed in just one month, Mesh is now focusing on serving the stablecoin ecosystem. We discuss: The rollercoaster journey from B2C to B2B and the painful but necessary pivot de...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Johnny Ayers, CEO and Co-Founder of Socure, a leader in digital identity verification that has transformed the industry using machine learning and graph databases. From surviving a major risk event in 2014 to becoming a trusted partner for the largest financial institutions, consumer businesses, and government agencies, Socure now processes over 15 billion rows of data weekly and has verified more than 3 billion identities globally. In this episode, we ...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Shensi Ding, Co-Founder of Merge, an integrations infrastructure platform that has quickly grown from serving early-stage startups to powering integration layers for some of the largest financial services companies in the world including Revolut, Airwallex, Ramp, Brex and many more. They have raised a total of $75 million from great investors including NEA, Addition, and Accel. In this episode, we discuss: Building credibility with engineers and product...
Send us a text [Original air date, February 6, 2024] Miguel Armaza sits down with David Magerman, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Differential Ventures, an early-stage fund that invests in data-focused entrepreneurs building enterprise technology. In a past life, he spent 22 years in leadership roles at Renaissance Technologies (RenTech), a legendary hedge fund with over $100 billion in AUM and probably the most successful fund in history. David is also a contrarian thinker and a n...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Ryan Graciano, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Credit Karma, one of the most successful fintech companies serving over 130 million customers. Credit Karma was bought by Intuit for $7.1bn in 2020, marking one of fintech’s largest acquisitions ever. Ryan began his journey as CTO after a brief stint at IBM and helped build Credit Karma from the ground up since 2007. In this episode, we discuss: Key technical decisions that shaped Credit Karma's s...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza welcomes back Jackie Reses, CEO and Co-Founder of Lead Bank, a pioneering bank reimagining modern financial infrastructure and fintech partnerships. Jackie previously held leadership roles at Square and Yahoo, and served on the board of Alibaba, working alongside visionaries like Jack Dorsey and Jack Ma. In this episode, we discuss: How Lead Bank achieved instant product-market fit before even acquiring their bank charterWhy banking regulation needs a "first ...
Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews John Waldmann, Founder & CEO of Homebase, a company on a mission to help modernize local business teams in the US. Since launching in 2014, Homebase has grown to support over 150,000 businesses and 3.8 million workers, processing hundreds of millions of shifts annually. In this episode, we discuss: Why founders should have more courage and conviction in their early cultural choicesCreating a culture of ownership and high-velocity decision-makingThe ...
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