Best API Academy Podcasts (2025)

1
Vince Passione, CEO of LendKey, on digital network lending 35:38

7d ago35:38

35:38

One of the big challenges for community banks and credit unions is that they often have a very concentrated base of customers. The vast majority of their accounts could be with people and businesses within a 100-mile radius. While setting up digital tools can allow these banks and credit unions to expand beyond their home base, this comes with a lo…

1
Shensi Ding, CEO of Merge, on building the leading unified API platform 30:48

14d ago30:48

30:48

Most fintech companies, and increasingly banks, rely on API integrations to run their business. Yet, building and maintaining these integrations can be time consuming and complex, particularly when it is only a part of what an engineering team does. Today, you can outsource these integrations to companies that specialize in this type of connectivit…

1
Fintech Revealed: Earned Wage Access with Clair and Gusto 41:09

17d ago41:09

41:09

Welcome back to the occasional series on the podcast called Fintech Revealed. This is a sponsored show where we take a deep dive on one topic with a couple of industry experts. Today, we have Nico Simko, CEO and Co-Founder of Clair and Dan Loomis, the General Manager and Head of Product for the Money Group at Gusto. The topic we are doing a deep di…

1
John Mitchell, CEO of Episode Six, on next generation payments infrastructure 32:27

21d ago32:27

32:27

There are not many US-based fintech companies that are global from day one. Nearly every company starts in the domestic market, gets established and after a few years starts looking at overseas markets. That was not the case for today's podcast guest. My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is John Mitchell, the CEO and Co-Founder of Episod…

1
Simon Taylor, Head of Strategy & Content at Sardine, on a framework for AI Agents 38:12

24d ago38:12

38:12

Most of us have heard the term "AI agent" but it is only the minority of banks and fintechs that have done any kind of implementation. This is partly because it is not a trivial task and there are real risks to getting this wrong. What is needed is some kind of framework that helps reduce these risks and provides best practices for implementing AI …

1
Andrew Jamison, CEO of Extend, on building a more flexible spend management platform 37:58

28d ago37:58

37:58

Many of us have used virtual credit or debit cards and haven't given them a second thought. In today's world of contactless payments, there is no difference between a virtual and physical card. But a virtual card is actually a piece of software and as such it can be programmed to act in very specific ways. My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One po…

1
Jerry Tylman, Founder of the Fraud Red Team, on the gaps in fraud detection systems 35:36

1M ago35:36

35:36

Every bank and fintech company has a suite of anti-fraud tools that they use to keep the bad guys out. Few tools are 100% effective, however, and often the implementation of these tools, along with their interfaces with other system leave gaps. And the fraudsters will exploit these gaps. So, how do you get a holistic view of your anti-fraud arsenal…

1
Sophia Goldberg, CEO of Ansa, on building a stored value wallet as a service 31:37

1M ago31:37

31:37

Everyone in fintech knows about the Starbucks reloadable wallet. It has become wildly successful for Starbucks, to the extent that they now have over $1.6 billion in balances on these wallets. Now, Starbucks has unique scale that made this kind of tech investment feasible. But I have been wondering for many years why so few corporations have copied…

1
Mike Butler, CEO of Grasshopper Bank, on growing a BaaS and digital bank 34:23

2M ago34:23

34:23

Every bank that decides to get into the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) space already has an existing legacy business. Most of those legacy businesses have very little crossover with fintech and BaaS, so internally at the bank, there is a completely new skill set that needs to be developed. But then there are those banks that were born digital and for …

1
Gaurav Sharma, CEO of Capitalize, on making retirement savings easier 35:48

2M ago35:48

35:48

If you have ever tried to rollover a 401(k) from a previous job you know what a painful process that can be. Another big problem with 401(k)s is that many people will move jobs and ultimately forget about their old 401(k). Both of these problems are hurting people trying to maximize their wealth in retirement. Enter Capitalize. My next guest on the…

1
Jason Mikula of Fintech Business Weekly on the development of banking-as-a-service 43:12

2M ago43:12

43:12

In the last year I don't think there is any area of fintech that has received more attention than the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) space. And it is not just the Synapse debacle, it is all the consent orders that have come out of the bank regulators. We have a banking system that pretty much demands that fintech companies partner with banks and we ar…

1
David Baxter, CEO of Solutions by Text, on the growth of integrated text payments 33:58

2M ago33:58

33:58

While text is a big part of our daily communications most corporations, particularly those in financial services, use it sparingly. Why is that when texting gets many times the engagement of email? We explain why in this interview. But this is all changing, in large part due to the work of my next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast. Dave Baxte…

1
Daragh Murphy, CEO of Imprint, on creating a new tech stack for co-branded cards 38:02

3M ago38:02

38:02

The co-branded credit card space is a mature market. Chase and American Express have large deals with airlines and hotels as well as the likes of Amazon and Disney. These are typically huge programs with not just millions but tens of millions of customers. But what about those Fortune 500 companies that are not big enough for Chase or Amex but stil…

1
Karen G. Mills of Harvard Business School on the state of U.S. small business 36:35

3M ago36:35

36:35

Despite the challenges and the obvious risk of failure, Americans are starting small businesses in record numbers. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well but the difference today is that the tools have become so much better. And they are going to continue to improve, particularly as small business owners start taking advantage of the latest A…

1
Nelson Chu, CEO of Percent, on riding the private credit wave 35:54

3M ago35:54

35:54

In an article last year, the International Monetary Fund said that the global private credit market topped $2.1 trillion globally in 2023, with 75% of that in the U.S. That number has been rising rapidly for many years as more companies look beyond banks and the public debt markets to raise capital. Along with this rise in private credit, some fint…

1
Alex Bradford, CEO of Rain, on why earned wage access is becoming a must-have 37:22

3M ago37:22

37:22

The earned wage access (EWA) space is maturing and now has some players that are getting real scale. In many industries, it has gone from a curiosity to a must-have for employers. As the space scales, there are bigger questions in play. How can we ensure that all salaried workers have access to this innovative product, so they don't need to provide…

1
Don Muir, CEO of Arc, on bringing technology to debt markets 32:08

4M ago32:08

32:08

Technology has impacted so many areas of lending but one niche that has remained a manual, human-powered process is middle market lending, where deals are typically $5 million to $100 million. These deals have been consummated on the golf course or at expensive dinners after often months of analysis and negotiation. That is not an efficient way to …

1
Adrian Nazari, CEO of Credit Sesame, on giving consumers deep insights into credit behavior 34:25

4M ago34:25

34:25

If there is one thing that the last decade of fintech innovation has achieved, it is more awareness around consumer credit scores. The majority of the population know their approximate score and even teenagers are talking about it. For better or worse (I think it almost uniformly positive) consumers look at the score as a measure, maybe even the me…

1
Kyle Mack, CEO of Middesk, on creating a modern business identity platform 33:44

4M ago33:44

33:44

Small business data is very different to consumer data. When a person is born, they don't need to go and open a bank account, obtain a line of credit or apply for some kind of permit. But a business may be three days old and want all those things. This creates a data challenge. This new business has little to no digital footprint and so the availab…

1
Carlo Kobe, CEO of Fizz, on building a great financial app for college students 35:18

5M ago35:18

35:18

[Editor's note: This is our last podcast of 2024. We are taking two weeks off and will be back on January 9. Happy Holidays everyone!] The 20 million college students in the US today, while a vast market that is somewhat homogenous, has not been a focus for many banks or fintechs. Since the Card Act in 2010, credit card issuers have not been able t…

1
Yaacov Martin, CEO of Jifiti, on building embedded lending programs for banks 34:06

5M ago34:06

34:06

When it comes to embedded lending, point of sale is really where the action is at. We have seen the explosion of BNPL volume over the last decade, but not every point-of-sale transaction is suitable for those platforms. Then we have banks, who have missed out on the credit card volume that has been lost to BNPL. Ideally, they would like to embed a …

1
Romi Savova, CEO of PensionBee, on bringing innovation to retirement savings 35:05

5M ago35:05

35:05

There is a looming retirement crisis in the US and in many other countries for that matter. A large portion of the population has no retirement savings at all and will have to rely primarily on social security for their retirement income, and the future of that program is shaky at best. In fintech, not a lot of attention has been paid to this huge …

1
Fintech Revealed: Cash Flow Underwriting with Kevin Moss and Alex Johnson 54:45

5M ago54:45

54:45

Welcome to a new occasional series we are doing on the podcast called Fintech Revealed. This is where we take a deep dive into one specific topic with a couple of industry experts. In our first episode we are focused on one of my favorite topics: cash flow underwriting. I invited two of the leading credit experts, Kevin Moss and Alex Johnson, to pr…

1
Armen Meyer on the impact of the new Trump Administration on fintech and banking 39:42

5M ago39:42

39:42

[Editor's note: This interview was recorded on November 13 and in the fast-moving transition to a new administration, some items discussed here as possible or unlikely have already come to pass.] The new Trump Administration is going to have a dramatic impact on leadership at Federal banking regulators as well as on the new rules impacting fintech.…

1
Veetahl Eilat-Raichel of Sorbet on creating a lending business built around Paid Time Off 34:51

6M ago34:51

34:51

The consumer lending space has seen a great deal of innovation in the past decade or more. But the number of completely new lending concepts that cross my desk has reduced to a trickle in the past couple of years. That is why I was excited to see an idea that was completely original and compelling. My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is…

1
Zack Miller of Tearsheet on creating a leading fintech media company 34:39

6M ago34:39

34:39

When you have been covering fintech as long as I have you get to know others in the space doing similar things. Zack Miller, the founder and managing editor of Tearsheet, was writing about fintech and interviewing people as I was getting serious about fintech lending back in 2012. Since I no longer own a fintech media company, we are no longer comp…

1
Michael Praeger of AvidXchange on building the leading accounts payable automation platform 38:56

6M ago38:56

38:56

Account payable automation software is one of those areas of fintech that doesn't get as much coverage as it should. Creating an efficient accounts payable system is a pain point for pretty much every company, but particularly for those businesses occupying the middle market. This is the opportunity that our guest today seized upon when starting hi…

1
Zuben Mathews of Brigit on building sustainable financial health at scale 30:22

6M ago30:22

30:22

While there are tens of millions of Americans still struggling with their financial health the reality is that fintech is starting to have a significant impact here. Some companies are reaching scale and are helping those people living paycheck to paycheck save huge amounts of money in aggregate particularly when it comes to punitive bank fees. My …

1
Roberto Salcedo of Baubap on providing short term unsecured loans in Mexico profitably 29:21

7M ago29:21

29:21

Imagine serving unsecured consumer loans to a population that has no credit file and no banking activity whatsoever. This population primarily uses cash and operates outside of the traditional financial system. Is it even possible to serve this population with short-term loans profitably? My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Roberto S…

1
Christian Widhalm of Bloom Credit on building new credit data infrastructure 34:09

7M ago34:09

34:09

Despite all the advances in fintech lending, the way data has been furnished to the credit bureaus has remained largely unchanged for several decades. We still operate on a 30-day payment cycle with no allowance for real time data. Not to mention all the recent credit innovations such as BNPL and short-term cash advances. This is about to change. M…

1
Sarah Biller of Fintech Sandbox on the critical importance of data access for fintech startups 31:20

7M ago31:20

31:20

When you think about it, most, if not all, fintech innovation comes via the analysis and application of data. And financial services is more data-dependent now than at any time in its history. But this creates a challenge for brand new startups. How do you get access to data when all you have is an idea? Enter Fintech Sandbox. My next guest on the …

1
Stuart Wall of Setpoint on automating the capital markets back office 29:34

7M ago29:34

29:34

Today, the back office for many lenders and originators is still very manual and human-intensive. We are talking lots of emails, reading contracts and processing Excel files. In some cases these processes have been in place, pretty much unchanged since the 1990s. That is because there has never been a comprehensive solution available to automate th…

1
John Sun of Spring Labs on building products (and an event!) for AI in financial services 28:20

7M ago28:20

28:20

"AI is probably the most talked about and least understood topic within financial services today," said John Sun, the CEO and Co-Founder of Spring Labs (previously, I had another co-founder of Spring Labs, Adam Jiwan, on the show back in 2020). The company is at the cutting edge of AI innovation in financial services with several interesting use ca…

1
Rodger Desai of Prove on the key to success in ID verification and authentication 30:49

8M ago30:49

30:49

There is no faster-moving space in finance right now than the anti-fraud space. With all the advances in Generative AI, the fraudsters are more difficult to catch than ever. But there is one place where fintechs and banks can focus that has real promise: authenticating the mobile phone. My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Rodger Desa…

1
Episode 500: Gilles Gade, CEO & Founder of Cross River Bank, fintech pioneer 29:51

8M ago29:51

29:51

Today's show is our special 500th episode of the Fintech One-on-One podcast. Rather than do a retrospective or a look back at some highlights from the last 11 years of interviews what I decided was to do my regular interview but with a fintech pioneer. I wanted a big name so I was delighted when the CEO and Founder of Cross River Bank, Gilles Gade,…

1
Ricardo Pero of SellersFi on building a fintech lender focused on e-commerce merchants 28:14

8M ago28:14

28:14

An e-commerce merchant is a unique type of business. They are built on top of a platform like Amazon, eBay or Shopify and as such there is a great deal of empirical data about their business. Which means that there is rich data available for lenders to feed into their underwriting models. My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Ricardo P…

1
Wayne Slavin of Sure on building the technology rails to make insurance fully digital 33:23

8M ago33:23

33:23

People often say that technology in insurance is just five years behind other areas of finance. But the reality is the technology rails that have been built for payments, lending and deposits have taken decades of evolution. Insurance is different. There is no Plaid, Stripe or even ACH for insurance, and so we have a product that still relies on a …

1
JB Orecchia of SavvyMoney on building credit score solutions for banks, credit unions and fintechs 34:24

9M ago34:24

34:24

The humble credit score has come a long way. Consumers, particularly younger consumers, are more aware of their credit score today than ever before. Historically, banks and credit unions have been the gatekeepers of our financial lives so it makes sense that they would want to provide information and context around credit scores. At the same time d…

1
Emmanuel Daniel of TAB Global on the new building blocks needed to succeed in the future of finance 41:50

9M ago41:50

41:50

The financial system has become so much more complex over the last couple of decades that it is difficult to know what current trends will have staying power. How will the future financial system organize itself and will it look that much different to what we have today? I put these questions to one of the global thought leaders in fintech. My next…

1
Oban MacTavish of Spade on creating a real-time system of enhanced card merchant data 32:32

9M ago32:32

32:32

The core of the card payments system as we know it today has been around for many decades. This system has a number of major shortcomings, not least of which is the 45-character limited established by the ISO 8583 standard. That may have been enough characters back in the 1980s but it is severely limiting in today's complex world. But problems like…

1
Ryan Rosett of Credibly on using Generative AI for underwriting small business loans 34:17

9M ago34:17

34:17

The Generative AI hype is not dying down. But where are the use cases in fintech beyond the basic chatbot? Particularly in fintech lending where AI has been used in underwriting for more than a decade. But not Generative AI. That is why I was very interested to chat with today's guest who has created a patent-pending Gen AI use case. My next guest …

1
Arjuna Costa of Flourish Ventures on venture capital for a fair financial system 35:33

10M ago35:33

35:33

It is the big challenge for fintech: making the financial lives better for the those who are underserved. We have come a long way in the past decade but there is still so much more that has to be done. And one of the people who has been at the center of this fintech transformation is Arjuna Costa, Managing Partner at Flourish Ventures. He is someon…

1
Neal Desai of Kafene on building a category leader in lease-to-own financing 30:48

10M ago30:48

30:48

While BNPL has gathered all the attention these past few years, there is another point-of-sale financing category that has been around for decades: lease-to-own, sometimes called rent-to-own. It has historically been full of unscrupulous actors charging excessive fees and it is not an area that has received much attention from fintech companies. My…

1
Misha Esipov of Nova Credit on building the next generation of credit infrastructure 29:52

10M ago29:52

29:52

The resources that consumer lenders have to work with today are better than ever before. Gone are the days when risk officers could just pull a bureau file and have access to the best data about a potential borrower. The credit infrastructure tools today are more sophisticated and predictive, allowing lenders to serve more borrowers without expandi…

1
David Metz of Prizeout on blending adtech with fintech for credit unions 31:37

10M ago31:37

31:37

There is a shift that is beginning to happen in financial services: using purchase history to provide more personalized offers from merchants. There is no richer data for advertisers than knowing how we actually spend our money. This is one of the reasons behind the huge growth of BNPL but today, there are some credit unions that are on the cutting…

1
Carolyn Rodz of Hello Alice on supporting small business owners 36:07

11M ago36:07

36:07

The journey of the small business owner is often a lonely one. For many people, particularly first-time entrepreneurs, starting a small business can be overwhelming. But today, with the tools available, there has never been a better time to start a business. Having said that, most new small businesses don't make it to five years. What we need is a …

1
Rory O'Reilly of Knot on connecting cardholders to merchants 28:32

11M ago28:32

28:32

It is a simple problem that every card issuer has. You have issued a credit or debit card to a new customer, so how do you get them to actually use it? More than that, how do you encourage this customer to make this new card their primary payment card. My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Rory O'Reilly, the CEO and Co-Founder of Knot.…

1
Nico Simko of Clair on a different approach to earned wage access 30:29

11M ago30:29

30:29

I have made no secret of my affection for earned wage access (EWA) as a product. It has been growing rapidly, particularly the last couple of years, as more consumers realize what a great tool it is. There have been several different approaches to implementing EWA from the major players in the space but no one has approached it the same way as Clai…

1
Jane Larimer of Nacha on operating the largest payments network 31:20

11M ago31:20

31:20

The largest payments network, by volume, is the ACH network. A dollar value of several times US GDP flows through the network each quarter. It is a 50-year-old network that is reliable, ubiquitous, and still growing. While several shiny new payment rails have been developed, the workhorse of the economy remains ACH and will remain so for some time.…

1
Anthony Sharett of Pathward on how to do banking-as-a-service right 33:29

11M ago33:29

33:29

[Editor's note: This interview was recorded on April 16, six days before the news of the Synapse bankruptcy and several weeks before any of the major problems that came to light at fintechs that were working with Synapse.] To say the banking-as-a-service space is having a moment is an understatement. But many banks have been doing this successfully…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

API Academy Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Quick Reference Guide