Trust is the hidden advantage that decides which payments companies earn bigger merchants, stronger partners, and more room to innovate. Greg Myers sits down with Darrel Anderson, Senior Vice President of Compliance at Payroc, to get specific about how trust is built in a world of constant audits, card brand rules, bank expectations, and fast-moving fraud. We share why “perfect security” is easy if you lock everything down, and why the real craft is building a compliance framework that protects the business while still enabling growth.

We dig into what trust looks like operationally: transactions that keep flowing, the right data showing up consistently, and issues getting caught before they become fines or sanctions. Darrel explains how experienced compliance teams don’t just say no, they help product and sales teams find a safe path to yes, and that credibility extends beyond merchants to regulators, card networks, and partner banks. We also talk about speed, including a simple test for reckless launches: if you cannot clearly explain the risk and controls back to someone else, you are moving too fast.

When incidents happen, we focus on what preserves customer confidence: frank communication, involving customers in the solution, and taking ownership until resolution is complete. Darrel also shares leadership frameworks like the red balloon theory and “smoke detectors versus fire extinguishers” to push teams toward prevention over reaction. Finally, we tackle AI in payments compliance and fraud: how it can remove repetitive work and sharpen detection, and why criminals using AI means the arms race is just getting started.

This episode is part of our Embedded Finance Podcast Series, exploring the strategies, opportunities and challenges shaping the future of embedded finance. The series is leading up to Embedify ’26, the Embedded Finance Summit for vertical SaaS leaders, taking place October 13 in Lehi, Utah. To learn more visit embedify2026.com.

Payments don’t fail because the API is hard. They fail because the experience is forgettable and customers never adopt it. We talk with John Badovinac, SVP of Embedded Commerce at Flute, about what vertical SaaS leaders can do differently when they want to own the payments experience and turn it into a real line of business.

We get practical on the building blocks: how to model profitability, pick a pricing policy that matches your go-to-market, and design onboarding that feels native inside your product. John explains why “launching” is only the start and how the best platforms drive payment adoption by placing invoicing, text-to-pay, stored credentials, and checkout moments directly inside the workflow users already live in.

Then we look forward. John shares how AI dev tools can cut integration timelines from weeks to days, lowering the barrier to embedded payments and embedded finance. He also lays out a compelling next step: embedded intelligence, where AI helps surface working capital, instant payouts, and other financial products at the right time for the right customer. We close with what to avoid, what to demand from a payments partner, and why urgency and long-term alignment matter as you scale.

Your LinkedIn feed will be full of “great to see you” posts after WSAA 2026, but the real value happens before the photos, in the hallways and late-night conversations where partnerships actually start. I’m joined by Amanda Beam, Vice President of Partner Relations at Exectras and a member of the WSAA Board of Directors, to give you a clear preview of what to expect September 15th through 17th in Palm Springs, California and why this conference continues to be a must-attend for the acquiring and merchant services community.

We dig into what’s being expanded this year, including a heavier focus on education, technology exposure, and structured opportunities to collaborate with leaders across the payments ecosystem. Amanda shares what it takes to make the event feel seamless, from the online registration process to the on-site experience and the mobile app, and why those details matter when you’re trying to maximize meetings and make every conversation count.

We also talk about what makes WSAA networking so effective: the density of decision makers, the mix of settings beyond the showroom floor, and the momentum that comes from being in the same place for three full days of connections.

On the content side, expect two full days of conference programming covering emerging payment technologies, business growth strategies, and the evolving needs of merchants and consumers, plus updates from card brands and eight and a half hours of focused exhibitor time to evaluate solutions and spot trends quickly.

If you want to stay informed, build real relationships, and avoid missing the conversations that shape next year’s deals, make sure you’re part of WSAA 2026.

Insurance payments are one of the last places you’d expect to still see mountains of paper checks and yet that’s exactly what Todd Greenbaum says is happening across large parts of the industry. We sit down with the President and CEO of Input1 to unpack a simple idea with big consequences: moving money is often the easiest part, while reconciliation, allocation, reporting, and clean data flow are what decide whether billing feels modern or painful.

We talk through how premium payments really work in property and casualty insurance, including pay-in-full, installment billing, and premium financing. Todd explains why it’s so hard for carriers, MGAs, and brokers to stitch together separate tools without creating friction for policyholders, and how endorsements can change premiums mid-term in ways that break “simple” payment setups. We also explore what a better customer experience looks like, from feature-rich portals to timely reminders and confirmations that make customers feel seen rather than silently debited.

Then we look ahead: the ongoing digitization of insurance payments, the rise of embedded payments and micro-insurance transactions, and why real-time payments can matter for something as basic as whether coverage is active when it counts. Todd also shares a thoughtful take on AI in insurance operations using it to reduce fraud and improve workflows while being careful about pushing AI to the front lines before customers are ready.

If you care about insurance billing modernization, payment reconciliation, premium finance, and the future of insurtech payments, this episode is for you.

Payments is full of “after-the-fact” reporting, but we want a world where the system warns you before the damage is done. I’m joined by Ankita Chowdhry, AI Product Lead at Payabli, to break down where AI is genuinely making a difference in payments right now and where it’s still mostly experimentation. We get specific about risk queues, underwriting reviews, compliance workflows, and why modern reasoning models can reduce manual work without sacrificing safety.

We also dig into what embedded finance changes for vertical SaaS platforms. When you combine financial data with operational data, you can move beyond simple scoring and start adding context: what the business actually does, how customers behave, and what patterns usually lead to disputes or stalled activation. Ankita shares how that opens the door to proactive payments operations, like detecting elevated chargeback risk early and recommending actions before a merchant gets into trouble.

Then we tackle the practical questions builders are asking in 2026: what AI should you build vs buy, what makes production AI harder than a demo, and why Payabli is embedding AI directly into payments infrastructure instead of treating it like a separate tool. If you’re building embedded payments, embedded finance, or a vertical SaaS platform, this is a roadmap for what to automate first and how to do it responsibly.

Legacy payments platforms do not usually fail with a dramatic outage. They fail by slowing every change request, inflating every integration, and turning “simple” upgrades like ISO 20022 into a stress test. Greg Myers sits down with Vijay Oddiraju, CEO and Co-founder of Volante Technologies, to talk about what banks are learning as real-time payments expand and modernization becomes unavoidable.

We dig into how Volante started with a focus on automating financial data exchange, then found its center of gravity in payments. Vijay shares the moment that accelerated their payments journey: helping enable a record-setting real-time payments milestone in the US. From there, we unpack the biggest customer challenges today, including legacy constraints, time-to-market pressure, performance demands, and the need for resilience as regulations and rails keep changing.

Vijay also lays out where he sees the growth opportunities next: ACH replacement projects, multi-rail payment platforms that can orchestrate across RTP, ACH, wires, and emerging options like stablecoin, plus cloud-native architecture that supports modular microservices and even multi-cloud disaster recovery. We close with a practical lens on AI in payments, especially for exception handling and operations, and the decision criteria that matter when choosing a payments vendor you can trust for the long haul.

Payments can be your second or third biggest cost line and one of your biggest levers for growth, yet most companies still treat payment performance like an afterthought until revenue dips. Greg Myers sits down with Klas Back,, CEO and Co-founder of Pagos, to unpack why enterprises keep “leaving money on the table” through avoidable declines, misconfigured vendors, outdated card network programs, and fragmented reporting that hides what is really happening.

We get practical about what payment optimization looks like when you operate globally: approval rates, authentication friction, dispute and chargeback signals, and the compounding impact of a bad first purchase experience. Klas explains why the hard part is often not strategy, it’s payment data. When information lives in silos across PSPs, acquirers, orchestration, fraud tools, and 3D Secure providers, teams spend weeks normalizing spreadsheets before they can even diagnose a problem. Pagos approaches this as a payments data platform, focused on aggregation, normalization, monitoring, and surfacing opportunities teams can act on.

From there, we dig into how AI changes payment operations. Klas shares how automation can shrink the manual workload, improve detection, and apply a huge knowledge base from card networks like Visa and Mastercard to real merchant data. We also explore emerging forces like agentic fraud and agentic commerce, plus why benchmarking and “time to detection” should be core KPIs for modern payments teams.

If you care about enterprise payments, payment analytics, and building a smarter payments stack with fewer resources, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share the episode with a payments leader, and leave a review so more teams can find it.

Embedded finance is booming, but most platforms miss the point: customers do not want more financial products, they want fewer steps. We sit down with Marni Mullikin, Director of Platform Growth at Maverick Payments, to unpack how vertical SaaS companies can embed payments in a way that actually improves workflow, increases engagement, and creates durable revenue.

We dig into why embedded payments is usually the smartest first move, from faster revenue collection and better cash flow to the long-term upside of deeper platform usage and better data. Marni walks through the strategy questions teams should answer before they ever pick a provider, including what success looks like, which ownership model fits, and how to align leadership, product, sales, and customer success so launch does not stall.

We also get specific about what software companies should own (the customer relationship, brand, and product experience) versus what a payments partner should take on (underwriting, compliance, risk management, and regulatory complexity). That conversation matters even more when supporting higher risk merchants like CBD or hemp, smoke shops, firearms, gaming, and certain government payment flows with large ticket sizes. We close with the practical reality that go live is only step one, and adoption is where the real value shows up, driven by simple onboarding and messaging that sells outcomes, not features.

If you’re building embedded payments, embedded finance, or a payments-led growth strategy for vertical SaaS, subscribe, share this with a builder on your team, and leave a review so more operators can find the show.