Fintech Layer Cake

What if millions of Americans had already proven they could handle a mortgage payment — and the system simply refused to count it? Reggie sits down with Suhas Reddy, Head of Product at Pathward Bank, to unpack what it really means to build product inside the most regulated corners of financial services. Suhas was among the early product leaders at Fannie Mae, driving the Lighthouse Project that later transformed one of the world's largest secondary mortgage institutions into a customer-centri...

What if every dormant account in your fintech is a ticking compliance clock — and you didn't know the timer started three years ago? Host Reggie Young sits down with Allen Osgood, CEO and co-founder of Eisen, the company modernising escheatment — the process by which dormant accounts and abandoned funds get transferred to state governments. It's an obscure corner of financial compliance that touches every bank, fintech, brokerage, and increasingly every crypto platform. More than one in seven...

In this episode of Fintech Layer Cake, host Reggie Young sits down with Will Lawrence, Co-Founder and CEO of Greenlite AI, to explore how AI is transforming background checks and employment verification. Will shares how his team is building a platform that makes identity verification faster, smarter, and more reliable, from parsing unstructured data to detecting fraud in real time. Along the way, they discuss the challenges of scaling AI in high-stakes industries, the balance between automat...

In this episode of Fintech Layer Cake, Reggie Young sits down with Max Eber, Co-Founder of Taktile, to explore how modern fintechs are rethinking risk infrastructure. Max shares insights from building a flexible decision engine used by leading lenders and fintechs around the world. They dive into what it really takes to customize underwriting, how Taktile is approaching AI and LLMs in production, and why success often hinges on enabling teams, not just engineers, to iterate faster. Whether yo...

In this episode of Fintech Layer Cake, host Reggie Young speaks with Matt Brown, early-stage investor at Matrix Partners and former product leader at Afterpay. Matt dives into the evolving landscape of vertical SaaS, why embedded fintech still has massive untapped potential, and how PE and VC are converging to create new opportunities. He also shares lessons from founding Bonsai, including counterintuitive insights about customer feedback and learning rate. They cover founder-investor dynamic...

In this episode of FinTech Layer Cake, host Reggie Young welcomes back Simon Taylor—fintech thought leader, writer of Fintech Brainfood, and Head of Strategy & Content at Sardine. They explore the rapidly emerging world of agentic payments and what Visa’s new tokenization framework means for AI-driven commerce. Simon also unpacks real-world use cases, from “vibe shopping” to automated business purchasing, and what hurdles—like consumer trust and fraud—still stand in the way. The conversat...

In this episode of FinTech Layer Cake, host Reggie Young speaks with Cato Pastoll (Co-founder & CEO) and Nik Nampalli (Head of Strategic Projects) of Loop—Canada’s #1 business banking platform. Loop offers multi-currency credit cards, global payment tools, and financial services that save SMBs thousands each year. Cato and Nik break down how Loop evolved into a fintech solution for Canadian businesses with cross-border needs, why multi-currency capabilities matter, and what makes Canada’...