Why I made the leap from a bank to fintech
Transitioning from college to the real world is tough. You graduate and quickly discover that where you live, what you do and who you meet are not as controllable as you once thought. Where you land has as much to do with the prevailing wind as anything else.
As a kid I had a passion for numbers. It led me to complete a variety of math courses in college and fortunately get a job offer from First USA Bank (which was acquired into what is now Chase). The only thing I knew about the industry revolved around my silver Citibank credit card inside my ever-thin wallet, but they were offering me a path forward. Turns out First USA was the fastest growing credit card issuer at that time, and I was about to take a unique ride.
Fast forward 22 years, and I’m still in the credit card industry. I still love the process of turning vast amounts of numbers into insights. There may be no better industry for data analysis than banking. It’s also a tremendous responsibility. Customer privacy is of critical importance, as is recommending the products and features that balance the right value for customers, the bank, and its partners.
Along the way, I found I also like to build things and not just Lego stacks with my kids. The geek in me enjoys building applications with data that deliver simple business recommendations and customer experiences. After doing that for the past 13 years at Barclaycard and helping them grow from $2 billion in annual purchases to over $70 billion, I decided to take a leap and join the team at Blispay as the Head of Business Analytics.
I joined the Blispay team for three reasons:
1. The Team
The veteran team is excellent, with banking experience from MBNA, Bank of America, Bill Me Later and PayPal. In fact, most of the founding team spent their years before Blispay working on PayPal Credit after eBay (PayPal’s parent company at the time) acquired Bill Me Later in 2008 for nearly $1 billion. Beyond banking, the team has a unique blend of experience from companies like Zynga, Millennial Media, and Groupon.
2. The Product
A seasoned team is nothing without a great value proposition. Blispay has that too. They’ve launched an exciting product that creates value for both merchants and customers by virtually eliminating the friction typically associated with financing large purchases. Merchants can literally offer Blispay financing to customers the same day they sign up, and those customers can finance all purchases over $199 with the Blispay Visa credit
card. That means they can finance their first purchase using the instantly issued digital version of the card, and future purchases using the digital version or the physical plastic they’ll receive shortly after.
And its working. In just a few years the team launched this unique revolving credit product and quickly signed over 1,000 merchant partners, who have in turn sold thousands of their items to our new customers.
3. The Market
The market for retail financing is enormous. Over $450 billion of purchases suitable for financing have no financing offer available, according to a study by Vyze and First Annapolis. The same study found that only 17% of the remaining $1.3 trillion in purchases are actually financed.
There is significant friction in this space and Blispay is focused on reducing it for both merchants and customers.
Source: First Annapolis 2016 benchmarking study
Going forward at Blispay
Blispay is just getting started (read our initial launch post, 2016 recap, and our latest fundraising announcement) and like at any company, resources are finite. My role is to use the data we collect to help steer the direction of the those resources so that we can efficiently create value for merchants, customers and ultimately the company. That’s a mouthful, but it comes down to what I enjoyed as a kid — finding insights in numbers.
I look forward to sharing the impacts we’re seeing with our merchants and customers on this blog. Exactly what those stories will be I have no idea, but back when I was a young adult in college, I didn’t know what I was in for either. At least now I’ve got 22 years under my belt and know the value of removing friction, providing value and working with a great team — the key ingredients here at Blispay.
Want to learn more about Blispay?
Connect with me on LinkedIn, visit blispay.com to apply for the Blispay Visa card, or check out these Merchant Testimonials to learn how we can easily help businesses grow.
For Consumers | About Us | Press | For Merchants | Merchant Case Studies
