FintechTalks LIVE: Amanda Estiverne

Welcome to another episode of FinTech Talks. I'm Sanjeep Khalida, and I'm so happy to be here today at FinTech Meetup with my friend Amanda. Yes. Oh my gosh.

So excited to be here. Amanda, would you mind please introducing yourself? Of course, of course. I'm Amanda Estevern.

I head our payments practice at Proficient. It's been 20 plus years experience in financial services. And so payments is the thing that I geek out on. So I'm excited to be here at FinTech Meto.

It was my first time, Sanjeeb. I'm so excited that you're here. And would you mind like talking a little bit about your like your 20 years in financial services and sort of how you got to what you're doing now? Yeah.

Oh my goodness. It's been some time. I'm showing my age a little bit, huh? Right?

No. You know, I've uh started in asset management. Um, but you know, what where I really built my fintech expertise is when I worked at Synchrony Financial. That's where I really built uh my payments expertise because I got a chance to manage all the network relationships.

Um I managed, you know, MasterCard Visa Discover. But the last three years I've now ventured into more advising and consulting. Um, as I get a chance to now be on the other side helping banks and fintechs build really unique solutions. Um, I also get a chance to, I'm on the philanthropy side of it too, Sanjeep.

So I am a board member of an organization called NAFLE, National Alliance for Financial Literacy and Inclusion. And I get a chance to work with, you know, credit unions, community banks, fintechs, and we amplify, you know, financial education topics. So, you know, I'm thankful to be in, you know, this industry for such such a time, but doing the things that I really like to do, like literally, you know, being more passionate, being more passionate about the work that I'm putting out.

Yeah, yeah. No, I it it's that the like so much to potenti uh to ask about or potentially ask about there. And like I just remembered one one time like I saw a comment about like you know the lack of financial education in schools, and and as and and they're like, you know, I'm I'm I'm glad I'm I'm in, you know, this is like April 15th. They're like, oh, I'm glad I'm in like trigonometry season.

Yeah, because I know it, you know, it's so funny. Technology is moving so fast, yet our educational system is uh lacking, right? Um, you know, I I think about how you know my I have two kids, 12 and 14, and they know how to leverage my a digital wallet, they know how to embed some of these systems, they no longer look at cash, right? Cash used to be, you know, something that was held and you kind of understood that movement.

Now it's kind of it's digital, you don't see it. And so it's almost that behavior, you like how do you replace that in terms of educating our you know, our youth about how to manage money? Yeah. Um, I do think, you know, this is the time where a lot of these fintech organizations should amplify this.

Like, if we are building unique solutions, we need to educate our consumers on those solutions as well. Yeah, and and and uh I like what is um like you know the thinking about our you know kids' generation, like it's it's there's you know, cash we're we're heading into inclusion in the cashless society, right? Yeah, and and and uh at least for me, like when I was younger, like if I if I gave out cash, I knew that I did not have that cash. Right, right.

So so like how like how are they learning about it? I that this is where I I have major concerns. And and that's okay. You know, we're in a I don't want to say we're in a gamification society, but essentially, right?

It's almost like poker chips now. We don't necessarily have the actual cash. And so it's that's why it's important for our apps and um our e-commerce and the the solutions that we're building around uh financial products should embed education. And um, the interesting part is um next month I'm hosting a tech sprint with the consumer reports organization.

I I'm just thinking about that because we're building consumer-led solutions because that tackles that a bit, you know, tackles this concept of education and helping folks with their financial well-being and being transparent, right? And being inclusive. And so it's just very interesting to find financial products that aid in those efforts because, like you just said, you no longer have the cash to be able to, you know, count one, two, three dollars. Now it's, you know, I have an app and I just click and I, you know, I can tap to pay and I'm off.

So how does our youth now understand money? Yeah, right? They no longer have a scarcity mindset now, they have a different mindset. And like it's very interesting that it's uh a text print done by consumer reports because uh like are are there lessons that the financial services industry can learn from other consumer products?

Yeah, that's that's what we're hoping to do. You know, um, time and time, you know, I I I talk about this a lot, especially on my LinkedIn, about having this concept of human-centered design, right? And the exciting thing about this tech sprint is that's what we're doing. We're now bringing some industry experts, folks who are building the infrastructure, and we're co-collaborating with the consumers and really getting their point of view on, you know, is this clear in terms of, you know, um our disclosures?

Um, do you understand the credit decision that was made? Right. And so to me, that's what I'm most excited about. Getting a chance to partner with this organization to build something like this is I don't think most financial institutions get a chance to do this, right?

Maybe we're educating, but we're not working together to build the solution. And so we're trying this out to see if you know what can we pull from it, right? We're getting a chance to um, we've invited, sorry, we've invited financial institutions, fintech founders, policymakers as well. It's it's gonna be a really interesting event.

So so when when you're thinking about human-centered design, uh like how much of it is involved with like the brain and the intellectuality versus like emotion and you know, it's so funny, Sanjeep. I went uh to Davos this year. Uh I got a chance to sit in certain rooms that were talking about the brain economy. Yeah.

And it's this concept of us being exhausted with content, we're fatigued with technology, and as technology is moving much faster, we're kind of missing, you know, the cues or we're missing uh the very important points. And so that's why that's why we're also amplifying this concept of con you know human design in terms of our products. Because we it's not necessarily to dumb down, but it's to, you know, catch up to the speed of the con how consumers are ingesting information.

Yeah. Yeah. Ingesting information. It's it's like I I I I I feel like like my my belly's full, but although most of the time.

You know, I was it's the same, you know. I I don't know, everything is moving so much faster. And you know, that's fine. But it's making sure that we understand what's being moved.

Like one thing I'm really excited about is the digital assets uh part of the show that you guys are bringing in. Um, Nathalie's been a big supporter of blockchain technologies, digital currencies, and the reason is to educate the consumers, right? A lot of consumers are not adapting to some of these technologies because they just don't understand. So that's why education is important as well.

It's for the adoption. Consumer adoption leads to invest investments, right? So yeah. I um it it it's so like what uh how how long have you been in or what what got you interested in digital assets?

Uh oh my goodness. I I I'm a payments nerd. I can't I hope it's showing. I mean, I can't help it.

It it's this, you know, concept of this new technology when learning about crypto, to me it's it's opening up a new rail. A new rail means we're literally moving money in a different way. Yeah. Um, and I found it fascinating how it's outside of the typical financial institutions.

Like if you think about it, blockchain technology was like a rebellious part of um of our industry. And so now we're bringing that into our actual um our actual financial systems. Yeah. What is that gonna look like?

Yeah. I don't know. I I'm fascinated by it. Like a few weeks ago, I talked about crypto wallets at a payments conference, and we talked about the concept of the programmable payment and how it's contractual between the sender and the receiver.

Yeah. Something that we don't, you know, we have so many mediators that are that, you know, impact that part of the system. So I like I said, my geekness is showing, I can't help it. But um, I got into it a few years ago just to educate myself on what's happening.

Yeah. Um, and I'm just excited to see the developments as, you know, like I said, it's now coming into our our normal financial system. It's gonna be interesting to see how it actually operates. And did you get a chance to go to any of the sessions that uh digital assert?

I said, Jim, I've been in meetings. I was telling, you know, I I was as a first timer, I'm you know, very impressed by the entire intentionality of the meetings of fintech meetup. Yeah, um, I, you know, my schedule's been made for me even before I got here, and I love it. But I will be attending the sessions tomorrow.

I'm really excited about it. I'm excited about my session, Sanjeeb. Yeah, it's on Wednesday. Can you talk about that, please?

Yeah, I, you know, I'm so excited about it. I um it's almost like a payment expert is talking to a credit union, um, an infrastructure organization, an actual uh loyalty platform, and then um a service provider that, you know, focuses on um products for good. So we have Goodbye, we have Tillow, we have Stripe, uh, and we have MSU, uh Federal Credit Union. And it's gonna be fascinating to get their point of view on loyalty platforms and how are they competing in this day and age where there's so many loyalty programs?

How do you keep the consumers top of mind, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, and so they're gonna talk to us about their best practices and how they're leveraging AI for this technology, right? How are they building the foundation to not only aid consumers around personalization for their loyalty, but bringing the value-added services to that?

Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be exciting. It sounds like it. And and and and and uh I think it's like a nice di different like the some looking at it from very many different perspectives. I love it.

I love it. It's you know, I think it's the leaders that are joining the conversation um is really gonna be able to like, you know, speak from it from their point of view. And it's what I like about it is I'll try to see if I could speak to them as competing, but they won't compete. They all work in unison to provide us the best loyalty pro uh programs.

And so it's gonna be a really interesting uh conversation. And and uh how how does the the and how does blockchain fit into loyalty? Yeah, I you know, blah, it'll be interesting. I, you know, I to me, blockchain, especially around the digital currencies, I I'm fascinated about it because of the gig economy, the creator economy.

Yeah, right. And I, if you pay attention, this is an area of opportunity for a lot of organizations, for a lot of brands. And um I think it's gonna be interesting on how, you know, we're already exchanging money, but what does that look like in terms of loyalty points? There's we we've noticed a lot of um uh card companies that are now including uh crypto as a val prop, right?

And so to me, what I like about that is it goes back to the consumer adoption. The more friendlier you make this or seamless within their own systems, the more they'll adopt to this technology. So I think there's huge opportunities. I'm just curious to see how it'll end up.

Yeah. And and and one thing that like a a topic is also like when thinking about blockchain is in enterprise versus your retail. Like, wait, what's what's your any thoughts on that? Ah, it's gonna it's gonna be well, we also have to follow the rules.

So the rules of this this is so you know, as a payment expert, I am all about innovation, I'm all about creativity, but you know, I've been in rule rooms where they're building the rules to this, and we we have to be careful on how this is managed, right? So that we don't face any regulatory or compliant um issues. But, you know, I I'm curious to see how the enterprises will go about this. You know, I see organizations like Coinbase doing quite a few, not only community events, they're educating their consumers, um, they're creating crypto wallets to make it seamless.

And so that I think is a great example of an organization that that's tapping into this um this new product, and they're really trying to feed the consumers how they would digest their information the best. And and uh you know, since you know, digital assets are sort of more at the earlier stage versus like some of the more traditional payments things uh systems. Um and and the and now that you're able to see some of the shortcomings of the traditional, like are there things that need to be built into that digital assets that to avoid that?

Yeah, you know, I think the what I'm most excited about when it comes to digital currencies is the functionality that it aids in digital identity, right? Um I like I mentioned the programmable payments because I think there's a contractual aspect of it that protects the consumer sending and receiving the money. And these are things that we don't typically have in our legacy systems that I think is enhancements that we should be considering, right? I think it's going to test us to the point where we're going to now start.

Maybe we need to look at our old systems and revamp them and maybe include these types of functionality. We have pass keys for digital identity, right? We're we're getting there. I think it's just a test and learn.

Like we're it's testing us in our old ways of thinking. And and and uh, you know, we're we're we're getting towards the uh end of the our time here. But uh and and any any final words that like from your experience here at FinTech Meetup that you would like to share with our audience? Yeah, so I I didn't mention Sanjeeb.

I do um I have a substack called The Front Row where I do recap uh events that I get a chance to attend. Uh and I'm excited to, you know, I've been capturing pictures, I've been um um I got a chance to sit at my table, and I've met a few folks um throughout the scheduling, and I'm just so excited to be here. Um, the energy is amazing. Um, it's nice to uh find new friends and old friends.

And so I'm just happy, you know, as a first timer and so excited to be here. Well, we're so excited to see you, and thank you for making some time in this busy day to talk with us. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Amanda.