Episode 83: The future of payments and the disappearing “point of sale”

Transactions at the point of sale have been shifting for some time now withapps like Uber turning payments invisible and contactless. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed even more transactions online and consumers have begun to experiment with new ways of paying. Improved, innovative payment experiences will be in many more places in the years to come and as new companies outside of finance incorporate fintech and digital wallets gain prevalence. Up to this point, plugging in card numbers has been the default way to pay online. But physical cards weren’t built for a digital world, and they come with a steep cost for merchants. Now, embedded, invisible payments take off, that means more people will link a card, account, or wallet and pay from that on an ongoing basis - “card on file”. That creates an opportunity for account-to-account payments, made much easier by PSD2 and Open Banking, to take off as the predominant means of payment. More on our guests:Keith Grose is the Head of International for Plaid, an open finance platform and data network that powers the global digital financial ecosystem. In his role, Keith leads the strategy and operations for Plaid in the UK and Europe.Keith joined Plaid from Google, where he scaled hardware efforts with Pixel phones and Google Home speakers, and helped run business strategy for some of the company’s new technology bets, including Google Pay and virtual reality. Prior to Google, Keith began his career as a management consultant at Bain & Company.Linkedln: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithgrose/Plaid: plaid.com About PlaidPlaid is an open finance platform and data network that powers the digital financial ecosystem. Over 4,500 apps and services including Wise, Monzo, Coinbase, and Curve, and many of the largest banks use Plaid to make it easy for their customers to connect and pay from their financial accounts. Plaid connects with over 11,000 financial institutions across North America and Europe. The company was founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, US. Eric Lassus:Eric is a serial entrepreneur who began his carreer in the tech world at IBM, in 1988, where he acquired tech skills and knowledge. He stayed at IBM for about ten years before starting his very first company, in 1998. In 2004 he joined the ranks of Euroclear Bank, champion of securities dematerialization, in which he remained for three years. In2006 he co-founded his first fintech. In 2011, with his business partner, they released their first payment card program, and it is in 2014 that Treezor was officially incorporated. Treezor has been operating since 2016 when it received its approval from the French regulator and signed its two first clients, two of the other most succesful European fintechs. Treezor is now the leader of Banking-as-a-Service in France, with more than 40 clients. In 2019, as Treezor was acquired by the Societe Generale group, Eric remains the Managing Director. Since then he continues to lead the company towards new hights and through its internationalization.Linkedln: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-lassus-184b791b/Treezor: treezor.com/