Mid-market financial institutions have enormously strong relationships with their banking customers. But their size makes home grown IT difficult because it is simply too hard, and too costly, to meet all the B2B finance needs of their enterprise customers.

The answer, of course, is deeper integration to third party software systems like SAP, Oracle, JDA and the growing set of fintech providers brining point solutions to these institutions.

But that’s no simple task. These FIs often run on legacy systems, generally provided by a large bank processor. Integrating software built before the cloud and APIs and these modern point applications is not easy.

Into that gap is a new company called FI Span. Led by founder and CEO Lisa Shields, the company value proposition is to act as an API orchestration platform for banks. In other words, FI Span proposes to be the glue that connects legacy code or a processor’s banking platform to the growing base of fintech point solutions in the market.

The goal of becoming a one-stop shop for new tools for these B2B-focused banks will take time and focus. Connecting up nextgen software and data to older systems demands clever approaches and a lot of spade work. Maintenance of a growing set of evolving API interfaces is non-trivial, too.

A fintech startup serving fintech startups, incumbent bank processors, and mid-tier banks has a lot of work to do. Lisa is no stranger to the start-up world; she also founded Hyperwallet. Take a listen to this conversation about the technical challenges, the business model, and the goals Lisa has for her customers and for her company.

Direct download: FI.SPAN_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:54pm EDT

“Digital cash” has been a dream of the internet age for, well, almost the entire internet age. That goal requires instant payment settlement. It’s more than just sending a message that a payment has happened; it means the money has actually moved.

In this wide ranging conversation with Laurence Cooke, founder and CEO of nanopay, he discusses the platform his firm has built to move value between parties in both real-time and, when necessary, offline modes. More distributed than blockchain systems, nanopay is designed for multiple uses cases including B2B payments using ISO 20022 representation of the payment data.

If you’re at all curious about payment security, blockchains, distributed ledgers, or the instant payment systems now being deployed, take a listen to this conversation between Laurence and Glenbrook’s George Peabody. It’s quite a story and we touch a lot of bases.

Direct download: nanopay_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:28pm EDT

1