Melissa Widner, CEO of Lighter Capital, on revenue-based financing

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There are many options for raising growth capital for established startups. With all the attention paid to venture capital, we sometimes forget that the vast majority of companies are not funded that way. Revenue-based financing has been around for more than a decade and it is a good alternative for certain types of companies.

Melissa Widner, CEO of Lighter Capital

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One Podcast is Melissa Widner, the CEO of Lighter Capital, a pioneer in the revenue-based financing space. We learn about how this space works, what types of companies it works best for and how Lighter Capital has become one of the market leaders.

In this podcast you will learn:

  • How she first got involved with Lighter Capital.
  • What attracted her to the CEO role.
  • What it is like running a fintech company from Australia.
  • The different countries where they are set up to lend.
  • How revenue-based financing works (that was pioneered by Lighter).
  • The types of companies that are in their sweet spot.
  • The size and terms of their financing.
  • How their underwriting works.
  • Why most revenue-based financing lenders are not really doing revenue-based finance.
  • The impact of the venture capital downturn on Lighter Capital.
  • How the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank impacted demand for capital.
  • Their historical loss rate.
  • How loan demand has been overall in 2023.
  • What it was like renewing their credit facility in the summer.
  • Melissa’s vision for the future of Lighter Capital.

Read a transcript of our conversation below.

Peter Renton  00:01

Welcome to the Fintech One-on-One podcast. This is Peter Renton, Chairman and Co-founder of Fintech Nexus. I’ve been doing this show since 2013, which makes this the longest running one on one interview show in all of fintech. Thank you for joining me on this journey. If you liked this podcast, you should check out our sister shows The Fintech Blueprint with Lex Sokolin and Fintech Coffee Break with Isabelle Castro, or listen to everything we produce, by subscribing to the Fintech Nexus podcast channel.

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Peter Renton  01:21

 Today on the show, I’m delighted to welcome Melissa Widner. She is the CEO of Lighter Capital. So I wanted to get Melissa on the show because Lighter have been around for a long time, they basically invented revenue based financing, and I’ve never had them on the show, so I wanted to get Melissa on. We obviously talk about the company and their history, we talk a little bit about how Melissa became involved. We obviously talk about the types of companies they work with, the type of financing they do. We talk about the impact of the pullback in venture capital and even more importantly, the impact of Silicon Valley Bank and how that changed their business. We talk about loss rates, credit facilities, and much more. It was a fascinating discussion. Hope you enjoy the show.

Peter Renton  02:15

Welcome to the podcast, Melissa.

Melissa Widner  02:17

Thanks, Peter. It’s great to be here.

Peter Renton  02:19

Great to see you. Why don’t we get started by giving the listeners a little bit of background about yourself. Tell us some of the highlights of your career before Lighter Capital?

Melissa Widner  02:30

Okay, well, I would consider myself first and foremost an entrepreneur. I ran a, and started a couple of companies that both had good exits. And then I became a venture capitalist and I was working in the US in a venture, in a venture capital firm. And then in 2009, I moved to Australia with an Australian husband, and ended up helping launch and was the managing partner for NAB Ventures National Australia Bank’s venture fund. We did all fintech investments, most of the ones, most of the investments that I worked on directly were in US companies. And in 2018, we invested along with Silicon Valley Bank in Lighter, and I went on their board, and in 2020, I became Lighter Capital CEO.

Peter Renton  03:14

Okay, and so you you’re actually in Sydney right now, I know that we were…

Melissa Widner  03:19

I’m in Sydney right now, which is rare. I’ve been in the US mostly in the last six months, but I’m in Sydney.

Peter Renton  03:24

You happen to be in the suburb next to where I used to live. Mosman, for those people who know Sydney, it’s a lovely, lovely part of the city. So tell us a little bit about how you kind of first got involved with Lighter and what what led to you taking on the CEO?

Melissa Widner  03:43

So I we first got involved in Lighter when NAB, National Australia Bank, made a venture investment into the company in 2018. Lighter Capital started in 2009. And the business model really resonated with me, because I was an entrepreneur, also an angel investor, and a venture capitalist. And there’s such a need for this alternative form of financing. And I, you know, I experienced that and saw that up close, as we know venture capitalists fund a really small percentage of businesses. The figure that’s thrown out the most often is 1%, in terms of 1% of technology businesses, but it’s what gets all the press. So if you’re starting a company in the tech space, a lot of times people assume that their only path to funding is venture, but in reality venture funds such a small percentage of companies. So the business model of funding these, these companies with revenue that need growth capital that maybe aren’t ready yet for venture or will never want to do venture, it really resonated with me. So National Australia Bank and Silicon Valley Bank invested in 2018. I, you know, liked the company even more after investing and getting more involved on the board side than I did pre-investment which sometimes isn’t always the case when you’re in venture and you get involved in the company. I’d never been involved in a company whose customers love them this much. And it’s actually easy to be loved when you’re providing financing. And it’s so easy to obtain compared to going, you know, down a typical capital raising path that can take months or years. I became the CEO in 2020. We had to bring in a new CEO, we had a CEO who was there for a pretty short time who came in in 2019. Really good guy, didn’t have a lending background, though. And we needed to replace the CEO. And in 2020, I just love the company and applied for the role and moved from board member to CEO, so I’ve been there for a little over three years in that capacity.

Peter Renton  05:44

So what’s it like running an American fintech company from Australia?

Melissa Widner  05:50

Yeah, well, it’s interesting, because if it hadn’t been like the middle of COVID, I would never would have thought this was possible. And pre COVID, Seattle was very much or Lighter Capital was very much a pre COVID company, in terms of the workforce was all in one office, they’d hire somebody from New York, to run New York and require that they moved to Seattle to do it. So, you know, there was the thought that you everybody had to come into an office and work together every day for the company to be effective. And we figured out after COVID hit, that’s not the case. That said, I spend close to half my time in the US. But you know, not necessarily in Seattle, we have investment directors all over. So typically, when I’m in the US, I’m not even in Seattle, and at this point Lighter Capital has team members in nine different countries.

Peter Renton  06:37

Wow. Wow. And do you? I mean, I think I was reading somewhere you actually have operations in Australia now. Are you lending to Australian businesses?

Melissa Widner  06:44

Yeah, we launched in 2021. So it’s been almost three years that we’ve been funding companies in Australia.

Peter Renton  06:52

Okay. And so is it, Australia, the US? Is there any other? Canada as well?

Melissa Widner  06:57

And Canada.

Peter Renton  06:58

Yep. Okay.

Melissa Widner  06:59

In Canada, and then we also will look at companies from New Zealand, a lot of the companies, as long as they have operations in one of the countries where we are set up to lend, which is Australia, Canada and the US, then we can fund them. So a lot of the companies that we fund, their headquarters might be based in one of those areas, but their operations are somewhere else.

Peter Renton  07:20

Well, maybe you could explain the product and how how the financing works, just so we can all kind of be clear about what Lighter Capital does exactly.

Melissa Widner  07:29

Yeah. So we do revenue based financing, Lighter Capital is the pioneer in this space. Since 2009, we’ve done over 1000 rounds of financing, supported over 500 companies. Most companies take multiple rounds from us, but the way it works, it’s a very simple application process. I’ll start with, you know, the the minimum requirements for a company to receive our funding is that they have at least $200,000 in annual recurring revenue. And we like to see that from a variety of different customers. So there’s not customer concentration. It’s typically recurring revenue, it doesn’t, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s contracted revenue, but it’s very predictable and coming from, you know, the same customers who are buying the product over and over again. The actual application process is pretty simple. It takes about 10 minutes to fill out our application. Well, our pre-qualification application takes 45 seconds, see if you might be a fit, and that’s on Lighter Capital.com/apply. But our application takes 10 to 15 minutes, you know, and we connect to the bank account, the accounting platform, and the billing platform for customers using one, and we we basically make our credit decisioning based on the data. So you know, compared to, I was in venture, I pitched to venture. That can take months, it’s kind of a black box, you don’t know if you’re gonna get funded. This is very simple, you can get an answer, usually within a couple of days. And funding within a couple of weeks.

Peter Renton  09:00

So then what kinds of companies, the way you describe it there that’s pretty broad, and there’s lots of companies that have $200,000 or more in recurring revenue. What types of companies, what types of industries are you mostly focused on?

Melissa Widner  09:13

We’re not industry specific, most but not all of our companies are B2B SaaS companies.

Peter Renton  09:19

Okay, what kinds of companies are not a good fit? I mean, do you…like they might have the recurring revenue but for whatever reason, they don’t pass your your underwriting test is this sort of a sweet spot for who is the best fit?

Melissa Widner  09:31

Um, the sweet spot are typically technology companies, like I said, B2B SaaS,. In terms of who wouldn’t be a fit, um, it’s more if a company doesn’t have runway, we’ll get companies coming to us when they have two weeks or a month of cash left and that’s typically not a fit. We want to see longer runway, we want to see you know, even with our capital, we want to see longer runway, companies that have one customer, you know, one or two customers aren’t a fit, because we’re relying on revenue to be paid back. So the way that our product works, we have two products, we have a standard term loan. And we also have a revenue based financing product. And our revenue based financing product, it works where a company pays us a percentage of their cash collected revenue until the loan is paid off. So they don’t pay, they have a fixed amount that they’re going to pay us back. But the rate at which they pay us back is dependent on how quickly they grow. So if they grow faster, they don’t pay us back more of it, we get paid back faster, which is great for us, because then we have a higher IRR, and that ends up being more profitable. And if they grow slower, or they go out of business, we maybe don’t even recover the money that we put out the door. But so we look for companies that have a variety of customers and low churn. But that said, you know, some of the companies we find have really high churn, but they’re good at replacing it.

Peter Renton  10:59

Okay, what about the the typical financing terms? Like what’s the size of the funding raised, what’s the average kind of payback time period, and the interest rate?

Melissa Widner  11:05

We will fund anywhere from $50,000, all the way up to $4 million. And in terms of sizing, we will typically go up to, for smaller companies, and we would call a smaller company, a company with under $3 million in annual recurring revenue, we could fund a third of their revenue. So think of a company doing say a million dollars, we could find $350,000 – 400,000. And as they grow, they can take more. So if their revenue grows to $2 million, you know, they can they can qualify for up to $600,000 or $700,000. And when they’re over $3 million in revenue, we can fund up to half of their recurring revenue. So company doing $4 million could access $2 million in capital. In terms of the terms, we can do short term, which is typically one year, up to longer term, which might be 3/4+ years. Companies, depending on their cash needs, if it’s just a bridging need, they might be looking for short term. And the pricing is based on the risk of the company. So if a company sort of sits in an average risk scenario, and they’re looking for funding for, say, a year, that would typically be around a 1.1. So I give you $1. Peter, you’re going to pay me back $1.10. If it’s over a year, if it’s over three years, you know, it might be worth $1.30 to $1.40.

Peter Renton  12:29

When it comes to your underwriting then, I presume you have, you’re looking at all the data that you talked about the accounting data, the bank account data, that sort of thing. How wide is your underwriting box? And how strict are, like I’m just kind of trying to get a sense of that process of underwriting. How do you go about that?

Melissa Widner  12:48

Well, for companies that are typical B2B, SaaS, it’s pretty straightforward. We have a, we have technology that we’ve built, the algorithm has been perfected over the last decade plus, where we’re taking in all the data. Some of it’s from the application, but most of it’s from the banking info and the accounting info and the billing info. And that produces a risk rating score. And, and that’s pretty straightforward. Now, there’s a lot of companies that don’t neatly fit into the box. And then in that scenario, our underwriters might, with our investment directors, who are our people who work directly with the companies, might dig in a little bit more to say this, you know, this doesn’t fit neatly into our credit box. But you know, can we get? Can we understand the business a little bit more, so we can maybe figure out if it’s something we could fund?

Peter Renton  13:39

So then, I think you said like, Lighter Capital really was the first kind of revenue based financing, fintech lender, and we’ve had the founder speak at our events over the years, but these days, it seems like there’s quite a few revenue based financing companies out there, do people understand the concept now? Do you have to explain it every time? I mean, the term loan people get that, do your customers, and your investors for that matter, does everyone get it now?

Melissa Widner  14:08

Well, a lot of companies call themselves revenue based financing, that aren’t necessarily revenue based financing, where if a payment is fixed, which is most of the companies in our space that call themselves revenue based financing, they have a fixed payment. And that’s not what we would call revenue based financing. Revenue based financing, the payment is based on the revenue, the cash collected revenue, and why that’s really beneficial to a company is that if your cash is lumpy, your cash collections take a dip. For some reason. You’ve got that downside protection, you don’t have an onerous, you know, loan payment to make in a month where you’re not collecting a lot of cash. And we saw that really come into play in COVID. Where, you know, we had some companies whose revenue literally overnight, you know, declined 70/80, even 90%. We had a company in the food delivery business for corporate. So they would, you know, provide lunch, you know, think of Google. Google has their own cafeteria, think of companies that don’t have their own cafeteria and they provide lunch. So you imagine what happened to that company during COVID, their revenues declined 90%. Well the amount they were paying us declined 90%. So they were able to get through that time. We had another company that was a ticketing company, same thing, they’re, they’re a great company, they were growing like a rocket ship and COVID hit. Their revenues are a percentage of ticket sales for events, their customers are event venues, their revenues declined a lot during COVID. They’re back on that rocket ship again. But they didn’t, you know, they weren’t burdened by this big, you know, loan payment, because it was dependent on their cash collected revenue.

Peter Renton  15:57

So then, you know, it’s no secret that venture capital has been tight, much more tight than it has been in the 2020-2021 timeframe. And I but I’m curious about the fact that because venture capital money has been so tight, has that been a good thing for you guys? Or is that, how has that impact you if at all?

Melissa Widner  16:19

We’re seeing a lot more in the last year than we’ve ever seen in the, you know, 13/14 year history of Lighter Capital, of venture backed companies coming to us. Typically a lot of times our companies will go on and get venture backing. In fact, we spend a lot of time helping our companies do that. A lot of our direct investors are venture capitalists, a lot of our networks are venture capitalists, so we actually spend a lot of time with our companies who want to go down that path, helping them with their pitch decks, and then helping them with warm introductions to investors. So I don’t want to I don’t want to give the impression that this is an either or, because it’s not the case. But what we’re seeing more than we have in the past, typically, if a company was on that venture path, you know, they’re sort of done with revenue based financing, they’re now going on that path where okay, it’s, we’re going to increase our sales and raise the next round at a higher valuation, increase sales, raise the next round at a higher valuation, and they’re on a very different path. But what we’ve seen in the last year is companies that had raised venture financing, still are growing , but because they maybe raised it in 2021, when valuations were much higher than they are today, they’re coming back. And they’re coming to us and doing a revenue based financing round because they don’t want to, they don’t want to do a priced round in this environment. So that’s the that’s the real difference is seeing more venture backed companies looking at this alternative.

Peter Renton  17:40

So I want to talk about Silicon Valley Bank. And it was kind of funny, I remember we had lunch in San Francisco on the Thursday when this whole thing was going down and with our good friends, Rob Frohwein and Kathryn Petralia.

Melissa Widner  17:53

And you know where I was going right after that meeting, Peter, I was running late from our lunch to go to a meeting at Silicon Valley Bank at their San Francisco headquarters.

Peter Renton  18:02

Right. Right. So that would have been an interesting meeting I’m sure. So then, you know, clearly they were a big provider of capital to the technology space. And I know that Silicon Valley Bank still does exist under its new owners. But I’m curious about like, I’m sure for you. I think you said you had your bank accounts at Silicon Valley Bank, well one of them.

Peter Renton  18:25

So I’m sure it was a major crisis for Lighter Capital in the short term. But now, you know, obviously, we all got through those terrible four or five days where we didn’t know what was gonna happen. How has that impacted you guys, particularly I am interested on the demand side?

Melissa Widner  18:25

Yeah.

Melissa Widner  18:40

Yeah, well, it’s interesting. Our chairman, Mark Verissimo, is ex-SVP, Silicon Valley Bank, and in fact, he was there for 24 years, and held almost every C level position during his time there other than CEO, and his last job when he retired in 2016, was Chief Risk Officer. So he had a lot to say, in fact, I have a podcast, a Lighter Capital podcast, where we mostly interview our Lighter Capital customers. But in this case, we did one with Mark shortly after SVB collapsed. And in fact, we’re doing another one in the next week to say sort of eight months on what’s happening in the banking industry. So so this is fresh on my mind right now. In terms of how it’s impacted us, those the four days were really stressful obviously, because we banked there. SVB is an equity investor in Lighter, so that didn’t really have an effect on us. They’re an equity investor. Luckily, they weren’t the provider of our capital. So our funding comes from a warehouse facility which is provided in the US by Apollo. And so luckily, it wasn’t SVB or that would have been doubly stressful. It’s pretty much back to BAU. You know, they play in a different space than we do, that’s really bank venture debt. They’re looking at companies that are venture backed and looking at funding, along with the venture round. So it’s never been a competitor to Lighter. It’s been really complimentary. In fact, we refer a lot of deals to those types of companies and vice versa. You know, they’ll see a lot of companies that are too early for their investment for what they’ll lend to, and they’ll, they’ll refer them to Lighter. But in terms of the market in general, that market has become really competitive. So when SVB blew up, and you know, now they’re back to normal and seem to be operating, you know, the same way they did before, before March, under First Citizens. But there’s a lot of other companies that moved into the space. HSBC took a lot of ex-SVB people. Stifel took a lot of ex-SVB people, JP Morgan has been in this space for a while. First Ctizens with SVB is still really active. So what I’ve heard from my friends in that space is that it’s just a dogfight. Very competitive.

Peter Renton  20:55

Right. Interesting. Interesting. So then, looking at your your business now, they’re running in three different geographies, is the core offering the same? Or do you kind of tailor your offerings for you know is it different in Canada and Australia than what it is in the US?

Melissa Widner  21:12

No, B2B SaaS companies have the same needs in Australia as they do in the US. And it was interesting. We have to have a separate warehouse facility provider here than than our US one. And, you know, the US facility wanted to see, okay, let’s see if Australia really works the same way as the US. And you know, it turns out, it does.

Peter Renton  21:35

That’s good to hear. Good to hear. Okay, so then I want to talk about losses. And, you know, clearly you’ve been doing this for a while. So you’ve got a fairly long track record, you’ve also done it through some tumultuous times. But can you give us a sense of sort of the typical loss rate that your portfolio undergoes?

Melissa Widner  21:59

Lighter Capital has a 1.6% historical loss rate.

Peter Renton  22:03

Wow, that’s really low. You should be more aggressive when you lend?

Melissa Widner  22:07

Well, that’s the question, right? Yeah.

Peter Renton  22:11

How did that change during the pandemic?

Melissa Widner  22:14

Well, COVID actually had the, if you look at the the loss rate during COVID, it was almost nothing. And that is because we would we do model in losses, that we will have losses. What we saw in COVID, is that companies, and typically when we have losses is when a company goes out of business, so you know, just doesn’t work for whatever reason, they’re out of business. And what happened, and remember we’re not with these companies forever. We’re with them for a year. I mean, a lot of companies take multiple rounds. So we have examples of where we were with them for, you know, eight plus years. But, you know, our typical loan duration is three years. So what happened during COVID is companies that maybe were not doing well before COVID hit, and you know, wouldn’t have gotten the next round of financing didn’t have enough funding to survive. They got these PPP loans and other government grants. And, and they ended up surviving. So we actually had, which is bizarrely lower, much lower loss rates during COVID. And it was one thing, it’s interesting, we were just, you know, we put together a pitch deck, sort of at the beginning of this year and talking to some investors, our losses for 2021 was like $2,000. And then you’re showing our projected losses for the year, because we had, you know, we had recoveries, and you’ll write something off and then recover, you know, but we’re showing projected losses that are normal historical rates going forward. And we have investors saying why are losses going to go up so much? We had $2,000 in that year, it just, so it was, it had you know, the opposite happened then what we thought would happen. We thought when COVID hit, that it would, that losses would really be a lot higher than we had historically.

Peter Renton  24:04

Right. So then what about demand? I mean B2B SaaS seems to be a really healthy sector. We’re coming towards the end of 2023. What’s demand been like this year compared to previous years?

Melissa Widner  24:18

So this year, the first half of this year compared to last year, was lower, and what we, we’re money that you would take to grow. So it’s much less expensive than equity, but it’s still expensive. You know, you’re taking debt, you’re paying back more than you’re borrowing. So it’s super cheap compared to equity, compared to selling equity. But if you’re not going to take that money to grow, it doesn’t make sense. So there was a lot of uncertainty. I mean, there’s still uncertainty. There was a lot of uncertainty in the first half of the year and I’ve seen and going into Q3, we’re seeing a huge pickup in this quarter. But the first half of the year was slower than last year. And I think that, you know, we look at why our typical customer comes to us, you know, we don’t fund companies who need money to survive, they’re going to die because they can’t make payroll, you know, they’re not going to qualify for our funding. We’re funding companies that you know, have a strong customer base, low churn, and they maybe want to hire, put on some more salespeople, they want to develop a new product, or there’s something, there’s some money they’re seeking in order to grow. So when there’s uncertainty around growth, companies, you know, naturally sort of pull back as you know, the good ones naturally sort of pull back and say, Okay, let’s figure out what’s going to happen here. Let’s see what’s happening in the market. And I think we saw that in the first half of the year.

Peter Renton  25:43

You mentioned your credit facility, and Apollo, obviously a pretty big name in the space. And I’m curious if this was, I read about it in August, I don’t know when that actually when you closed it, but how was that process of raising the new facility? And I mean, is this something that, like, I noticed that there’s no banks that looks like in the credit facility that, according to the article I read, so tell us a little bit about the process, and who’s sort of participating in that credit facility?

Melissa Widner  26:14

So we’re funded by a division of Apollo that, that’s their business, is to provide credit facilities to alternative lenders, they were the same provider we had before we renewed in July. So we’ve been with them now, about two and a half years. And I would say, it was a, we have a long track record and a really good track record. So that’s helpful, because when you’re going out to raise a facility, especially in a tighter market like this, that’s all that matters. You know, they’re not interested in the story, they’re interested in your data –  show us what you’ve done. You know, it’s a whole, it’s much different due diligence process than, say, raising venture capital, because it’s all backward looking, almost. I would say 98% is backward looking versus forward looking. And they’re looking for a long track record. So from that standpoint, you know, it was relatively easy. But that said, it was a much different market than it was two years ago in 2021, just because there’s a lot of, you know, especially if you think of the time that we were renewing our facility was in Q2, because the renewal was up in July, or the renewal time was in July, that was a terrible time in the market for credit. SVB had just collapsed. So it was not the best time to be out there, probably. I would have liked to have had more funds competing for it that way. But with that said, we have um, Apollo has been an incredible partner to work with. We’re really lucky because that partnership is so important. I think until you run a credit fund, you don’t appreciate a credit, a lending company, you don’t appreciate how important that relationship. It’s a much deeper relationship than most companies would have with, say, their venture provider, because they’re essentially providing our product.

Peter Renton  27:59

Yeah.

Melissa Widner  27:59

We don’t have a product if we don’t have that. Yeah, it is the product.

Peter Renton  28:03

Yes, indeed. Okay. So last question, then, what’s your vision for the future of Lighter Capital? Where are you taking this?

Melissa Widner  28:10

Like I said earlier, you know, Lighter has a really strong relationship with the customers. We say we’re more than money. And we really are more than money. This is, you know, this is not where you’re going just to get money to fund your business. But it’s to join a community of other CEOs we have. We funded over we’ve done over 1100 rounds of financing, we have a community of hundreds of B2B SaaS CEOs, and a lot of them are in the same boat. So this is the place to come to find out what’s going on in B2B SaaS to you know, build your community around others, you know, B2B SaaS CEOs, we have CEO groups, we have our CEO Summit, we have a bunch of other perks that are available for our companies. And we also are, we’ve just launched something that’s pretty exciting called Lighter Analytics in our servicing portal. You know, we have all the data on all of our companies, because we’re plugged into their accounting platform and their banking platform, and their billing systems. So we’re now giving them back their data in a way that they can use it.

Peter Renton  29:12

Interesting. Okay, Melissa, great to chat with you. Really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Melissa Widner  29:18

Yeah. Thank you, Peter. Great to be here.

Peter Renton  29:22

Well, I hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you so much for listening. Please go ahead and give the show a review on the podcast platform of your choice and go tell your friends and colleagues about it. Anyway, on that note, I will sign off I very much appreciate you listening, and I’ll catch you next time. Bye.

  • Peter RentonPeter Renton

    Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of Fintech Nexus, the world’s largest digital media company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series.

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