Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: EarnUp CEO Matthew Cooper and President Nadim Homsany (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: It’s a bit misleading to say that you are helping consumers get out of debt. It sounds like you are paying off their debt. Now that I understand what you’re doing, you’re basically managing the payments in a software environment.

Matthew Cooper: That’s the whole point of the application. Today, we have over $10 billion in loans that are managed on the platform. What we have been excited to see is that over 30% of consumers show reduction in missed payments.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: EarnUp CEO Matthew Cooper and President Nadim Homsany (Part 1)

100 million consumers live paycheck to paycheck and are loaded with debt. EarnUp offers a solution to help them ease their debt burden.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing yourselves as well as EarnUp.

Matthew Cooper: Nadim and I are the two co-founders of EarnUp. I’m currently the CEO and Nadim is the CFO. EarnUp is an award-winning platform that intelligently automates loan payments for the 200 million indebted Americans. We make it easy for consumers to stay on track with their payments.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: When you have a very competitive market, people figure out innovative ways to differentiate. What I was probing for is, have you figured anything out that offers that kind of differentiation?

Todd Ablowitz: There is some interesting stuff, but it gets pretty obtuse. You can take data about these merchants. When you have enough of that data, you may be able to get insight or analytics to help them make good business decisions.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: This industry is very crowded and competitive.

Todd Ablowitz: It’s interesting that you say that because what we see is, when you combine a vertically-focused offering with payments and value-added services, you have the least competition and the most margin.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The lending trend is everywhere. I know that Square is offering small business financing. There are FinTech companies that are focused on giving loans.

Intuit, for instance, is offering both payment and financing. What other examples do you have of the small business financing being offered by payment processors?

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You provide Escrow-type of service?

Todd Ablowitz: We provide just SaaS tools. Our customers can send us the transaction information. We don’t process the transaction. We don’t get into the chain. We teach them how to do it. We enable it and make it better, but we don’t compete with our customers. We don’t get a percentage of the transaction.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about some customers who have become payment facilitators on top of your platform. Focus on use cases and customers that are interesting. Talk about the before and the after.

Todd Ablowitz: One of the most interesting customers is FiveStars. FiveStars is a loyalty tablet that goes on the counter of your local nail salon or restaurant. You simply put your phone number in, and they provide offers to you via text.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 2)

Todd Ablowitz: Then in 2009, Jack Dorsey started Square. He scratched that itch that I always had – more like 15 questions in 45 seconds to sign up a merchant. I loved what he was doing except I knew enough to know that what they were doing was breaking the rules at that time. Ten years earlier, PayPal was in a similar situation and the rules changed. I knew that was a possibility, and I was hopeful.