Listen: Green Dot sees opportunity in gig economy, SMB

Two trends emerging as opportunities for banking-as-a-service (BaaS) are the growth of the gig economy and small businesses, and Green Dot , the fintech and holding company that powers services for Uber, Walmart, Amazon Flex and Intuit, is getting in on the action. Green Dot is currently focusing on those BaaS opportunities, Amit Parikh, executive vice president of BaaS at Green Dot, tells Bank Automation News in this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. “It's projected that 50% of the U.S. workforce will earn a 1099 income by 2028,” says Parikh. “That's 90 million workers.” There are also opportunities for BaaS in the small- and mid-size business space, which includes close to 50% of the gross domestic product in the U.S., he notes. “This space where a small business owner spends more than five hours a week worrying about money, there's so much opportunity to make it easier for everybody to be able to move money,” he tells BAN . “There's a long way, in my opinion, of continuing to make the experience easier and easier for our consumer.” Parikh also discusses Green Dot’s core shift to Temenos Banking Cloud, where the company is providing BaaS products, and the role microservices play in its business strategy. Bank Automation Summit Fall 2022, taking place Sept. 19-20 in Seattle, is a crucial event on automation and automation technology in banking. Learn more and register for Bank Automation Summit Fall 2022 . https://finainews.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=mailchimp-for-wp Subscribe to The Buzz Podcast on iTunes , Spotify , Google podcast , or download the episode .

The following is a transcript generated by AI technology that has been lightly edited but still contains errors. Loraine Lawson Good day and welcome to Bank Automation’s podcast series, The Buzz. I’m Loraine Lawson, and recently I spoke with Amit Parikh who leads banking as a service for the digital bank Green Dot. He explained the digital bank’s approach to banking as a service and what trends he sees emerging in the space. Amit Parikh Our company, you know, our goal breakouts goal is to give all people the power to bank seamlessly, affordably and with confidence. And so how do we do that? We have three main segments, we have our consumer business, we have our b2b business, and then we have our money movement business. And so our consumer business is our direct to consumer, which are we launched to a new digital bank called Go2 Bank in the beginning of last year. And then we also have our, where we started our retail business, within the consumer space. So that's like our large partnership with Walmart, where we run the Walmart money card, and then [we] worked with a bunch of other retailers also, then in our B2B business, is our payroll services business called Rapid that partners with 6000 partners across the US to be able to provide payroll services. And it includes the BaaS business, which we'll come to in a minute. And in our BaaS business, that's where we have the privilege of working with some of the world's best brands and partners, like Intuit, Apple, and Amazon. And then we have a money movement business, which is our tax processing business, which is called TPG [Tax Products Group]. And they service over 12 million refunds in a year at with with partnering with over 20,000 physical locations. And then we do money movement — so instant funds out. You know, and our GDN [Green Dot Network], our cash retail network, which has, which does over 40 million cash transfers and has over 90,000 locations. So that's overall. Green Dot was founded in 1999. We have around 1200 employees. And essentially, we have a direct business and a partnership business. And I run our BaaS business here at Green Dot. That's all I'll pause there are interested, give us a setting and then we can go into any any conversations we'd like to. Loraine Lawson Yeah, so you've been banking as a service for a while it sounds like. What are the trends are you seeing today, though, in terms of banking as a service? Are more banks entering that space? Amit Parikh You know, it's so interesting. More, there are more platforms entering and more banks entering. And now, it seems like there's larger banks entering this space. And I think, overall, that's great. You know, if you think about what we're trying to accomplish, it's to provide a consumer better convenience, and a better visibility into their cash flow. And so that's why I'm so excited about banking as a service or embedded finance or whatever we want to call it, is that you're allowing a customer to move their money in a contextual experience. So let's give a great example. Apple cash, that's sending money as easy as sending a text message. So then on the iPhone, you can send money. And you it can be in within the throttle of of a conversation you're hopping, right there, you can send someone money. So it's in context of that conversation you're having. Hey, my daughter, I have a 14 year old, and a six year old, so six year old doesn't have a phone yet, which is a whole other discussion. But the 14 year old, you know, she will send me a text saying, ‘Hey, I'm going down to the yogurt shack can you send me 10 bucks, and I write that I'm able to send her money. Green Dot powers that money movement, between, between, in this example, my daughter, and myself. And when Lily, my 14 year old goes and uses that money at the yogurt shack that's a small business. And Green Dot powers QuickBooks checking, which is, you know, providing better cash flow and convenience to the small business. And then lastly, when they get, you know, gets home, and there's packages on our account on our doorstep, that was delivered by an Amazon Flex driver. And we power the banking services for the Amazon Flex driver. And so there's a lot of there's, there's a lot of great experiences that are being formed, and a lot more platforms and a lot more banks coming into the space. And that makes sense. Because, you know, there's there's a lot of opportunity. And there's a long way, in my opinion, of continuing to make the experience easier and easier for our consumer. Loraine Lawson So when you talk about being a banking as a service platform, are there platforms that you use to support your services? Are? Can you tell us a little bit about the technology at play here? Like, are you deploying micro services? Do you use a platform to do that? Like what's going on? Under the hood? Amit Parikh It's such a great question. Because I think that's some of the confusion of what's in banking as a service. What does it actually mean? The way I simplify this, is there's banks that provide in sponsorship, there's providers that provide the platform. And then there's people who provide program management. So think about the back office like supply chain, and fraud and customer service. And Green Dot is, one of the few full stack BaaS providers, we own a bank, we are undergoing a technology transformation, where we are embedding our own core banking platform and our own card management system. And we've had, we provide customer service, we provide fraud, we provide all those tools. So if you think about those three of the bank, the platform and a program management, we do it all, in in BaaS, but in the BaaS space, there are a lot of companies that are are the bank, and that's it, and they'll partner with a platform provider. And then a lot of times what happens is a partner does down the road, like oh, now I need to do the customer service, or I need to find a provider do customer service to provide fraud to to do the supply chain, getting the cards, you know, to the customer. And so, you know, there's a few, not many people out there that are doing the full stack BaaS services. And that's what Green Dot does. And that's why I believe, you know, we've been early in this BaaS space. And we've we've continued to evolve. And I believe, because we are the full stack. That's why our value proposition is compelling to some of these very, very large brands, where they want to focus on their business, and they want to provide convenience to their customers, and they can come to us and we can provide that. Like the trends are amazing. Right? We do. Just thinking about Amazon Flex and and small business in particular. There is a 35% growth between ‘20 and ‘21 of the US independent workforce between 2000 to 2021 —excuse me, and it's projected that 50% of the US workforce will earn a 1099 income by 2028. That's 90 million workers. So I'll give you a great example. If you ask someone, you know, if you're ever an Uber or Lyft, and you start asking them, a lot of people, you know, this is their could be their full time job or their side gig. And that rise and being able to work when they want to, to get that extra cash flow, because it's so convenient, is just increasing. So how do you provide those companies or that customer a super easy to use financial services product. And so you know, that's one trend. The other trend is for in the SMB space, you know, SMB is equal close to 50% of the GDP in the US. And the number of, of small business licenses is growing year over year. And so, you know, this space where a small business owner spends more than five hours a week worrying about money, there's so much opportunity to make it easier for for everybody to be able to move money. Loraine Lawson Since you're a platform, do you work with banks at all to to help embed their services? Or would that be competition? How does that work? Amit Parikh Yeah, we, because we own a bank, we were on this journey. So we had worked, we've done a bunch of acquisitions in the past, and we had multiple banks and multiple platforms that we were all integrated with, we are now focused on our bank, and our platform. And if you think about it, when there's all these different hops along the chain, there's a lot of opportunity for there to be a disruption to the customer, which is what we're when a consumer is using a product they want, they just want it to work. And so how do we make all those different hops? How do we reduce those and make it way more seamless, so that the feature benefit to the, to the end customer is as seamless as possible? You know, that's, that's what when we talked about, we give all the people the power to bank seamlessly, affordably with confidence, you have to be seamlessly, when there's less providers, you know, there's a lot of mouths to feed. So it's you can provide it way more affordably and then with more confidence, because the reliability Loraine Lawson Are there embedded spaces that you don't play in, yet that you're looking to, or maybe you just have no interest in either one. Amit Parikh I mean, it's, you we, we look, essentially at everything. That doesn't mean we do everything. One of the big differences between how we go to market versus some others, is that we essentially provide white glove service. So on my team, we have someone who I would consider to be badged as our partner, right, he or she is the advocate for that partner, and is trying to drive everything so that we can exceed our partners expectations. And so when we look at opportunities, we have to make sure that we can actually add some value both on the on the technology side with the bank and the platform and the program management, but also, from the people side from the human side. And if we can't really add value, if we don't have that expertise, then are we really going to be the best partner. And so that's how we, how we look at it. So we've gone really, really focused in money movement, which is like Apple cash, small business, like QuickBooks, wealth and investing like a company called Wealthfront. And then gig like Amazon Flex. And so that's where we've been focused. But that doesn't mean that's our only focus, we continue to look at opportunities because of the speed of change. You know, the speed of innovation is just, it's so quick. And then there's these three huge trends that I that I believe are, that I've talked about since I took this job over a year ago. And I think we'll continue to talk about, which is to continue war on cash or the digitization of money. Number two, the increase in cloud computing, because you're able to innovate faster, only 10% of global IT spend is in the cloud right now. And so, you know, that's going to continue to increase, I believe. And then last is the is the is the rise and the adoption of e-commerce. The president of Shopify recently said that their view about e-commerce is that, you know, people talk about baseball games of what inning you're in his comment was, we're still at the hotel, we haven't even left to go to the ballpark. So it's not even the first inning because of that convenience. And so I look at these trends and say, wow, there's going to be such great experiences that we're going to create, and that partners are going to create and then combined, it's even better. And so we are looking at those trends. And we're keeping our eyes very, very open of, of how a full stack bass provider, along with our other assets are taxed business, our payroll business, our direct to consumer business, and our cash network can help a partner provide a way better solution. Loraine Lawson It's hard to imagine how e-commerce I mean, I guess, I guess you can never see the future from where you are. But it's hard to imagine how that might take off more. Amit Parikh I mean, I don't know about you, but like, I always not a get the grocery delivered person before COVID, I wanted to go in, and, you know, pick the veggies and the fruits. And now, you know, we've we've chosen time over and the convenience that we're going to the grocery store. And so, in now, you take a picture of the fruit or vegetable that's that's either too ripe or, or damage, and they remove it off your bill. And so I, I think that there's still going to be so much more innovation of things that. Yeah, let me give you an example. Outside of payments, yeah. I love music. And, you know, the trends of music is 2030 years ago, bands would tour to sell their record. And now, through streaming services, music is going out. That then funds the tours, it's like it's changed the dynamic. And so what was first first in the past has been physical, and I don't think physical is going away. By the way, I just believe it's going to become very, very blurred. And whatever's convenient at that time for the consumer. If it's Oh, I'm driving past your store, I'm gonna run out and grab it. Because I don't want to wait the two hours for it to get processed. Or is it hey, I'm gonna stop by that store, whatever it is, I'm gonna buy online, pick up in store, or on find a way to day or two hours. And it's going to show up to my doorstep. But at the end of the day, that's all a remote transaction that's occurring. If you take another example, think about the credit card space where it was like these knuckle busters that used to be in in in locations, then it went to a point of sale term, this is where you put a piece of carbon paper and the piece of plastic would go in and they would pull a lever to make a copy of your card like that was they would call knuckle busters back in the day, that went to an actual payment terminal than we had a square terminal. And now Apple announced that you don't even need a terminal that you can just you don't need a dongle, you don't need a terminal, you can take payments onto the iPhone or on the iPad. It's just the digitization of everything. I think we're still early. And that's where you still need to move money in a responsible and regulated way, you know the bank is is the way that you get access to the financial system. And so that's why I'm so excited about that we have this fully integrated solution and that we're going to continue to see more and more if it's ecommerce but convenient solutions that come out in the market. Loraine Lawson I wondered, you hear a lot about microservices. Now, a lot of talk about micro services, is that central to embedded finance or banking as a service. Are there other ways to achieve that goal technologically speaking? Amit Parikh Well, you know, I think the question is, what is what are micro services trying to enable? And I think that if you if you ask people about microservices, they most people will have there's technologist answer, and then there's a business person's answer. At the end of the day, the question is, is how quickly can you either build your own services to deploy? Or how easy Can you ingest someone else's services than to deploy to a partner? I that's my perspective, in the BaaS space. And so easily configurable solutions are where we want to go, and that's where we're heading. And so, in the past people have talked about bespoke solutions or customized solutions. Now, everything's being architected so that it's very rare. reconfigurable because that drives away faster time to market, which this morning, I got an email saying, Hey, here's a possible partner, and they want to be up in the fourth quarter. Without the right technology and infrastructure that's flexible. You know, in the past, there's no way you would be able to get someone up. But, you know, essentially in the next three months, but now the market has gone from being able to board partners from six months, down to three months. You know, and I'm sure it's gonna get pressured even further. But the big question here is, how do you make sure that you're vetting the relationships properly? And so that you're doing everything that's from a safe and secure manner? Loraine Lawson Recently, Green Dot announced it Lebert leverage Temenos banking cloud to streamline banking and payment services. I wondered what that has allowed you to do and how that is working out for you. Amit Parikh Great question. So we're in the process of that implementation. In the past, we had used, we didn't own our own infrastructure. We used to we use partners where it was, it was essentially housed in their environments versus ours. And so when our when Dan Henry, who's our CEO joined two years ago, he has a past history and in a long history and payments, and one of his key things is you have to own your own platform, and your own infrastructure, in the payments in the payment space. And so we made a decision. I wasn't here yet. But the company made a decision to to embed our own core banking, Temenos, and card management system via ACI. And so what that allows us to do, is allows us to move much, much faster, because number one, it's within our own environment. Number two, it is one platform, we came from a situation where we had multiple platforms. So Lorraine, if I was trying to deploy something for one partner, because it was on this platform, and then I want to extend it to another partner, we just spin up extra engineering resources to get that done, and had to be reliant on a partner in certain cases. And so what Temenos does is, it's cloud based. It is a modern core banking platform, and allows us a faster time to market. And when we want to innovate on top of that platform, we are starting from a base that's already been created. And we are accustomed, we are configuring on top of the terminals platform. So long story short, this is about us owning our own infrastructure, reducing our costs, and faster speed to revenue because of the innovation. Loraine Lawson So can you give us a peek in the future? what's ahead for green dot? Amit Parikh I mean, what's that for green dots. So we are when I talk about we have this direct business and we have this partner business. So we have a, we have an expertise. And being able to connect with our our direct to consumer customers, or low to moderate income is our is, is where our focus is on the on the direct side. And we really understand that space, we understand how critical a path to credit is for this consumer. And so you're gonna see us continuing to deploy responsible products, that allows that customer to continue to stretch their dollar, because we believe that access is not a privilege. And so that's really, really important. And so on the dark side, you're going to continue to see us innovate, to provide better, better financial wellness, in that space. On the partner side, I guess is an amazing number. You know, between our payroll business, our tax business and the bass business, we support, you know, over 100,000 locations across the US between our retail network and our in our tax processing business. In our payroll business, we have over 6000 partners. We have over we have hundreds of partners that use our cash retail network. So in our partner business, we're continuing to ensure that we're building the right products and features to connect people to their money in a very convenient way. That allows them to see the view of their cash flow. And what you're going to see from us is a lot more announcements with new partners. And a keen focus on some of the areas we talked about, which is investment, SMB investment, SMB, and and gig. And so, you know, I think the big thing you're going to hear from us is our progress on our technology transformation, which is overall business transformation. And how we are becoming much more developer friendly for partners to integrate with us. And so that is more to come from us. Loraine Lawson: You’ve been listening to the Buzz, a Bank Automation News podcast. Thank you for your time, and be sure to visit us at Bank automation news.com for more automation news. You can also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Please don’t hesitate to rate this podcast on your podcast platform of choice.

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