Bobby Tzekin of Wisetack On The Future of Money and Banking

Insatiable desire to learn more. Products evolve very quickly, as do regulations, and so do the ancillary products in the ecosystem that can make your technology better. Consequently, competition evolves quickly too, and so do market changes — if you don’t have the desire to immerse yourself in these changes day to day, it’ll be hard to keep up. We’ve moved very quickly by staying on top of products in the market that help power our business.

The way we bank has changed dramatically over the last decade. It was not too long ago when you had to wait in line in a bank to deposit money. Today things are totally different. You can do your banking without ever walking into a bank. In addition, the whole concept of money has changed. In the recent past, money usually meant bills and coins. But today, the concept of money has expanded to include digital currency and NFTs. What other innovations should we expect to see in banking in the short and medium term?

To address this, we are talking to leaders in the banking, finance, and fintech worlds, to discuss the future of banking and money over the next few years. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bobby Tzekin, co-founder and CEO, Wisetack.

Wisetack CEO Bobby Tzekin has 18 years of experience with fast-growing, innovative financial technology businesses. He has built successful global products and led great teams at both early stage and public companies including Mosaic, Lending Club, YapStone and PayPal.

Bobby realized a white space in the BNPL market, which traditionally served the ecommerce industry. He saw an opportunity to introduce flexible, pay-over-time lending solutions for merchants offering in person services across a variety of industries.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started in this industry?

I grew up in Bulgaria and didn’t even know the internet existed until I came to the US for college. So ending up as an executive of a technology company was far from preordained. And I got into fintech before it was called “fintech.” When I was in business school in 2004 I ran into a friend who asked me if I wanted to apply for a summer internship at PayPal. Back then PayPal was much smaller and just a cool internet company, not the payments juggernaut it is today. I ended up staying there for 7 years. Using that experience, I went on to lead product at several other fintech companies, and all of that accumulated knowledge eventually got channeled into building Wisetack.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Does it count if I say that I raised $45 million dollars while sitting in sweatpants at my computer? If that one’s too easy, I have another fundraising story. I was belatedly watching the show “Silicon Valley” in 2019 when we were raising our series A. And it so happened that during the most heated week of the fundraise I was right at the episode where they’re also fundraising. And the show was both hilarious and spot on with what I was going through! It made things easier because if someone can satirize your life so well it’s hard to take any of the problems seriously.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

The one I’ve been thinking and talking about recently is from F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” I bring it up as I say that for us as a company two opposite-sounding things are very true: we are doing incredibly well as a business, and there are also a lot of things we can vastly improve, and that constitutes the massive opportunity ahead of us.

Ok wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now?

Two very interesting parts to what we do are: one, that we take a complex process to make a loan and make it incredibly simple, easy, and instant for our customers. The second is that we make our products very accessible to small businesses who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to offer something like this because it would be too expensive or time consuming. We accomplish both of these things via data, and it’s what helps us create a seamless experience. We’re using the large data sets we’ve built to keep making the product and experience better and cheaper, so the key to what we do, and the most interesting parts of our business are the various initiatives we have around using our data to constantly innovate on our financial products, risk management, and customer experience.

It’s expensive and complicated to serve lots of small businesses, which is why others don’t do what we do. A plumber or HVAC tech isn’t interested in dealing with complicated financial products, and we make it a no-brainer for them to offer financing while they are out in someone’s home.

How do you think this might change the world?

The most important thing we do for people is helping them afford expenses for the everyday, unexpected, essential needs. When we do that well, there’s this amazing glow — people feel a tremendous sense of relief, and that glow extends to the small businesses we work with. So much of the feedback we hear is comments like “thanks for the help when I needed it” or “you made a difficult time easier.” We had someone write in and tell us that their electrical panel blew out on Thanksgiving and almost set the house on fire. Apparently, the only way they were able to afford the emergency repair that day was via our loan. So they wrote in thanking us for saving their family holiday and telling us how much they loved our process.

Similar benefits extend to the small businesses we work with, many of whom feel they’ve been underserved (or even screwed) by financial services companies. They trust that our process is simple, and the payment happens promptly — this means they can stop spending extra hours chasing down unpaid invoices, and get to their kids’ Little League game on time.

When you then scale these experiences via technology, you’re truly changing the world and improving people’s lives.

What most excites you about the banking or payments industry as it is today? Can you explain what you mean?

There’s a popular quote from a VC who said a few years ago, “everything is going to be a fintech”. We’re bullish on embedded fintech accelerating this, given how simple we have made it for SaaS companies to embed financial products into their software.

At the same time, businesses who used to run on pen and paper — many of the HVACs and plumbers we serve are great examples of this — are adopting this SaaS, which becomes the operating system for everything they do — including accessing financial services. It’s amazing to see that software companies and fintech startups are partnering to make important products more accessible and better for these small businesses, who historically have not had great access to top notch financial products.

What most concerns you about the banking or payments industry as it is today? What would you suggest needs to be done to address that?

There are a lot of exciting new financial products — from crypto to pay in four options — many of which are helping democratize access to better financial management. It’s a noble cause for companies to improve access, but it’s not without risks. Celebrities are telling people that they should invest in things few understand, and that’s worrying.

Regulators see this and are responding. The risk here is that regulations become even more confusing or even contradictory, where you have different state and federal rules, and multiple governing bodies with inconsistent rules. This already exists in spades in consumer lending, where we operate. And every time a new type of product gets popular, there are more patchwork regulations, which makes rules more complicated, and that makes things slow and expensive for companies looking to innovate. But it’s also happening for a reason, so it’s not completely unfounded. The challenge for our regulators and legislators is to go back and simplify the rules, keeping the needed consumer protections, but eliminating the confusion and contradictions.

How would you articulate how the concept of money has changed in recent times? Is it really a change? How is it still the same? Can you explain what you mean?

I am not sure the concept has changed. What has changed, however, is that the costs to transact with money have gone way down. It’s far easier today to take all sorts of payment methods in various currencies quickly and easily vs what it was like 30 years ago. And that’s fueling more business activity and economic growth. Wisetack’s products fit exactly in this framework: we make it easier for consumers and businesses to transact, lowering costs and enabling additional business.

Based on your vantage point as an insider in the finance industry, what innovations should we expect to see in banking in the short and medium term?

We’re seeing the emergence of very specific point solutions that bring great technology — fast, seamless customer experiences — partnering with banks who bring low cost of capital and large customer bases. These days all my mobile banking apps are really good; banks didn’t build that technology, though — they got it from partners. Another example is the more integrated providers like challenger banks — they use great technology and risk management tools and also partner with traditional banks to create a seamless offering. These are really great end products for consumers that were built very quickly. In this new ecosystem, everyone plays to their strengths and the pieces stack together like building blocks to create new offerings.

How has the pandemic changed the way banks interact and engage with their customers?

The pandemic accelerated what was already becoming a trend in banking and payments: minimizing in-person transactions. The rapid adoption of digital payments has been well-documented, and we saw that up close with the pandemic. All of a sudden, we saw spend move away from card readers and over to payment links on invoices that a customer could receive via email to minimize in-person interactions.

Banks adapted similarly, finding ways to provide the same services in a physically distant environment, where customers were hesitant to leave the house, let alone touch surfaces. We all probably now interact with our banks more through a mobile app than through any other mechanism (desktop, retail locations, physical cards).

In your particular experience, how has the pandemic changed the way you interact with, and engage your customers?

Our growth really picked up during the pandemic. From the beginning, everything was remote-first for us. We learned how to communicate with and engage our customers almost entirely through digital means, including SMS and email communications, as well as phone calls, and Zooms for more in-depth conversations. Unlike larger companies who seek to minimize the time their agents spend with customers, we leaned into talking to customers as a way to learn more about them, empathize with them, and get their feedback. That fueled our growth.

Now that we’re emerging from the pandemic, we’re excited about opportunities to finally meet our customers in-person, through site visits, in-person events, and all the experiences that weren’t possible before.

I’m very interested in the importance of user experience. How much of your interactions have moved to digital such as chatbots, encrypted messaging apps, phone, or video calls? How has this shift impacted the user and customer experience? What challenges do these apps present when used as a customer engagement tool?

I always say, “let’s meet the customers where they are”. Many of our clients don’t work behind desks: they are in their customers’ homes; underneath the hood of a car; or caring for a patient; we’ve even had calls where halfway through we learn the customer is literally on a homeowner’s roof! We staff our support team so when someone calls, we always pick up very quickly. There is no complicated IVR or long hold time with bad music. Text messages can be an effective and simple way to reach customers too. Customers can also text us with questions. But more than that, our embedded approach means we prefer to embed our customer comms into the tools we integrate with. If the technician is updating a job within their field service management app, we want to reach them there instead of making them open an email or a separate, Wisetack-specific app.

If you could design the perfect communication feature or system to help your business, what would it be?

We would completely lean into our embedded approach. Our clients would never have to look at another report, email notification, or app to understand the status of their customers who choose to pay with Wisetack. If you use Wisetack through Housecall Pro, every touchpoint — from the “Welcome” message to the settlement alert — would be there, and incredibly easy to find. We’re pretty close to that today, but not with every partner.

Fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Modern Finance, Banking and Fintech industries? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Insatiable desire to learn more. Products evolve very quickly, as do regulations, and so do the ancillary products in the ecosystem that can make your technology better. Consequently, competition evolves quickly too, and so do market changes — if you don’t have the desire to immerse yourself in these changes day to day, it’ll be hard to keep up. We’ve moved very quickly by staying on top of products in the market that help power our business.
2. Vision. You need to have a thesis on what unique value you bring to customers. What problems do they have and how are you helping to solve them in a better way? You need to be clear about what you stand for and the brand you want to build. This is the hardest lesson to learn — I think you only learn it when you fail to have a vision, or when you think you have one but it’s not clear to your team, or to customers.
3. Customer focus. You don’t build a strong vision without a deep understanding of your customers. So much of our vision and ideas come from understanding our customers. The vision behind Wisetack came from talking to customers — both vertical SaaS companies wanting to add fintech, as well as small businesses who had previously been burned by financial services companies.
4. Pursuit of excellence. Financial products have no margin for error. You’re talking about people’s money and lots of regulatory oversight, and you can’t tolerate a dollar amount not adding up, or a payment not landing in a customer’s bank account on time. Any fintech who has had just one of these mistakes has lost a customer. And in many cases, that customer feels so wronged that they get pretty vocal in complaints.
5. Experience. This last one may be controversial, since there are plenty of founders who’ve been incredibly successful without much experience. That said, when you build a business in a regulated space or a capital-intensive business, it’s much easier to get the fundamentals working well out the gate if you have the credibility and knowledge you get from experience.

This was key as we set up our initial bank relationships when we were getting the business started. Along with my 15+ years in payments and lending, several senior people on our team came with similar length of experience that gave our partners more confidence that we knew what we were doing.

The important thing is to marry the experience with the ability to innovate and still have a fresh perspective on how to make things way better than they’ve been before.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think most of the serious issues we have on this planet, from systemic conflicts, poverty, climate change and so on, stem from how people can trap their minds with flawed perceptions and narratives. And a good way to gain perspective is to exercise your mind in mindfulness and awareness. If everyone could have the mental and emotional skills of an experienced meditator most of our problems would get solved very quickly, given how much technical knowledge humanity already has. So a mass mindfulness movement is what I’d want to inspire.

Thank you so much for the time you spent doing this interview. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success.