Unlocking Career Growth in Payments with NEACH U

Episode Summary
In this episode of Wrestling Payments, host Joe Casali sits down with Mark Dixon, the Vice President of Education at NEACH. Mark dives into his journey in the banking and payment sector, highlighting his passion for the industry and the intersections of technology, disruption, and the future of banking. He emphasizes the importance of payments in various business sectors and the excitement of navigating the ever-evolving landscape.

Mark introduces "NEACH U," a reimagined educational platform designed to cater to various professionals in the payment space. From operational roles to treasury management, compliance, and risk management, NEACH U aims to provide individualized learning paths for all. The platform's goal is twofold: to benefit organizations by enhancing their employees' knowledge and to foster professional development for individuals.

Set to launch in 2024, NEACH U promises to be a transformative tool for payment professionals, guiding them towards the next steps in their careers and offering valuable insights into the world of payments.

Guest-at-a-Glance
Guest: Mark DIxon
What he does: VP of Education
Company: NEACH
Noteworthy: Mark Dixon: Vice President of Education at NEACH, passionate about payment evolution.
Where to find Mark: LinkedIn 

Key Insights
Mark Dixon's Passionate Journey in Payments

Mark Dixon's professional trajectory in the banking and payment sector is both intriguing and inspiring. Starting his career in banking, he didn't initially envision a future in the sector. However, as he dived deeper, especially into electronic banking, he discovered a fervent passion for payments. Mark's enthusiasm is not just about the technicalities of payments but also about understanding their intersection with various business sectors and the role of technology. 

Headline: Introduction of NEACH U: A Game-Changer in Payment Education

NEACH U is Mark's ambitious project, aiming to revolutionize payment education. This platform is not just another educational tool; it's designed to offer individualized learning paths for professionals in the payment space. Whether one is in operational roles, treasury management, compliance, or risk management, NEACH U promises a tailored learning experience. 

NEACH U's Vision: Individual Growth and Organizational Excellence

Mark emphasizes that NEACH U is more than just a learning platform; it's a roadmap for professional growth. Recognizing the diverse paths in the payment space, from operational to strategic roles, NEACH U is designed to guide professionals based on their unique needs and aspirations. The platform will not only serve as a knowledge hub but also as a catalyst for career advancement. 

Contact: info@wrestlingpayments.com

Transcript

Unlocking Career Growth in Payments with NEACH U

season 1 Episode 12

Mark Dixon: [00:00:00] if you're somebody else that's looking to maybe level up into a supervisor or manager role, that's what the School of Payment Management is supposed to do. So the idea there is that you start learning and looking at payments from a higher level. So what are the metrics I need to To understand how to make business decisions here.

How do I manage the products management aspect of it? Making sure these products are actually being designed effectively and serving the purposes. We're trying to accomplish.

Joe Casali: [00:01:00] Hi, welcome to Wrestling Payments. I'm your host, Joe Casali. I think we're going to have a great, great episode today. The, the, it's an exciting, um, topic. Today we are wrestling with the challenges of, uh, talent development and learning. And today my special guest is Mark Dixon. Mark, can you introduce yourself?

Actually,

Mark Dixon: Yes. Hi, everyone. I'm Mark Dixon. I am the vice president of education here at NEACH. Excited to get chatting with you on this topic.

Joe Casali: going to be great. Uh, so this is... This is a wrestling topic. This is a something folks are wrestling with. Um, let's, let's dig a little bit more into, um, your role here. So you said vice president of education. And what is that detail? What is, what do you, what do you do for the association? Um, what do you develop for the, for the members?

Mark Dixon: Yeah, absolutely. So in my role, I work on our [00:02:00] educational department and offerings. Um, so what that involves is developing educational programs, delivering different sessions and different topics, um, to our members and to different audiences that we serve, finding ways to deliver the content in new and exciting ways that meet the needs of an adult learner and different people that have different types of.

Learning styles. Um, so it's anything education. It's all about taking the, all these fun and exciting things that are happening in the payment space, all the things that you're required to know from a regulatory and compliance standpoint, and then finding the things you want to know about, too, and turning that into something that our members can gain value

Joe Casali: And I think, Okay. I think if I go back, the first time I met you, it was in Orlando. You were attending, or maybe you speaking, at a NACHA conference? You were, you doing the...

Mark Dixon: sorry. Oh, I'm sorry about that.

Joe Casali: No, no, go ahead.

Mark Dixon: Yeah, so actually, yeah, so I had gotten that into [00:03:00] payments back in 2015, and I actually attended all of NICHA's stuff. I did all the, um, AAP boot camps, the on demand sessions. That's what kind of ignited my passion for the payment side of things. I hadn't been in banking for, um, oh, geez.

It's probably a good 10 years prior to that, though, worked in different roles, like retail, frontline, moved into back office positions. But when I finally landed in the more operational area, which was electronic banking, I found a real passion for the payment side of things from going through the process that my institution required me to do of getting my AAP.

So, from there, um, I did, I started to really want to dive deeper into it, um, and I made connections with the NEACH staff. Sandy had reached out to me, Sandy Hortons, um, about potentially doing a, uh, co presentation of a session on ACH at the NACHA Payments Conference in Orlando, um, and I went ahead and did that.

It was outside my comfort zone at the time, but it was a really exciting time.

Joe Casali: So, [00:04:00] let's fast forward a little bit, because you just said that was outside your comfort zone, and I know a little bit of a fact about you and training. Um, when did, when did your professorship, or, or, um, your, your, uh, did you call it a professorship?

Mark Dixon: I'm an instructor for Southern New Hampshire University as well, which is actually the school I got both my bachelor's and master's at.

Joe Casali: So it seems like, uh... Somewhere in, in between being a, uh, uh, an instructor and training at a, a, a NACHA payments conference, something, you know, really changed.

Mark Dixon: Yeah, I would say that it was just finding areas that I was really passionate about. So, I personally find that my personal passion in this space is I do like banking. And I, it's from growing up in it. I spent most of my professional career, career growing up in the baking industry. I wouldn't say that I ever really dreamed of being a banker when I was a kid.[00:05:00] 

Um, but I did think that once I got into it, that I was like, this is a really. Crucial part of the, uh, the business sector. serves a lot of different areas from a New England perspective. We have a lot of mutual savings, banks, credit unions that all serve local markets and do a lot of really good things for communities.

So I found that that banking piece really became my, you know, my focal point as to, you know, this is the, the broader industry that I enjoy being a part of. Payments themselves, though, were, was an area where I was like, this is really interesting, exciting, there's a lot going on with it. The more I've gotten into payments, I start see the intersection between different business areas and different business sects.

And there's so much that, money movement is so crucial, and yet we kind of integrate it into all these different areas and really don't focus on it. On top of that, you have all the technology considerations well. So my intersection I would say is, you know, technology disruption, you know, what's going on in the future of the industry and banking and payments.

And that's [00:06:00] kind of where I landed. And that's what brings me a lot of excitement in this particular industry and what I want to do as far as helping others in the industry. So when I started working for niche and becoming a part of the payment association world, it was great because I found a way for.

To further that knowledge and the excitement that I have and impart that in other people. That's why I enjoy being a part of the education area of NEACH. It's why I enjoy being an instructor for Southern New Hampshire University as well. I like the idea of being able to drive forward the future of the next generation professionals.

And that's what I think is really exciting about being in the education space.

Joe Casali: And that, that is a great segue, because that's really what we're here to talk about today. What, you've been working on something really interesting, really different. Do you want to talk about what you've been working on and, and maybe when's it coming?

Mark Dixon: Yeah, sure. So [00:07:00] we, um, when I started it back with NEACH, um, last June, Sandy and I had started talking about how we wanted to redesign our education. We wanted to change kind of the, with the educational approach, um, find new ways to provide materials. So, we started developing the whole concept of NEACH U, and NEACH U is basically a reimagined education, but there's a lot of different components to it.

There's the traditional, you know, I'm a one off learner, I just want to take courses that I'm interested in. That still exists with NEACH U, but a bigger part of what NEACH U is designed to do is be an individual learning path. So... If you are a financial services professional that's operating in the payment space, there's a lot of different paths and different ways that you can go.

So, NEACH U is designed to help you get there. What we're hoping to do is have a path for our traditional operational audience. The folks that are, you know, [00:08:00] I'm working in operational roles, I want to learn more about payments. I want to understand what I need do in order to get my job accomplished, but I want to be a I want to be a resource for my organization.

That's a big part of what we're doing in meet you. But we also recognize there's other areas. There's things like treasury management where you're operating more in the business space. You're dealing with businesses that have cash cash flow They. They speak a different language than we do on the traditional payment side.

They're speaking in treasury, they're speaking in how is this money working for my organization and how I'm maximizing that and what are those treasury solutions that we have on the banking side. We're going to have a learning path for you to actually learn more about that and why that matters and what you can do to translate that into how you work with your business customers or members. There's other areas, too, like compliance, risk management. Those are always real hot topics. Well, they're embedded into our traditional educational offerings. But [00:09:00] with Me Too, we're going to target and focus in on those specific topics as they grow in payment. And then also for the folks that are interested in what's happening in the future, modernization, strategy.

Those are areas we're diving into. If you're an emerging manager, we have a track for you there. In addition, we're also looking at how can we serve Businesses, because NEACH does have an audience where we're actually, um, they're members of Niche, but they're business organizations, not financial institutions.

So what do they need to know about payments? How does it translate for them? And how can we serve them there? So we have all these different tracks to find. On top of this with NEACH U, we also wanted to reimagine our Niche membership benefits. So we understand that, you know, we value you as our members, and we really want to make sure that our members have resources that are Quality for them.

So there's a whole track of general payments. It's just a level set. Let's get you really started in payments. What do you need to know? What are legal frameworks? What are the basic requirements and [00:10:00] process flows with returns and forward movement? That's all going to be a part of just you being in each member benefit.

You're able to use our school of general payments for that. So to answer your question, Joe, what I've been working on is building out this whole framework with our team, engaging the entire team in process. Getting different feedback, um, we're, we have a starting point that's going to be launching in 2024, which is the core of the school.

So the schools I was talking about, those will be launched in 2024. We're going to work on refining them, further developing them over time, but really, the main goal is to have that individual learner path, the way to help you as a payments professional in your organizatia specialized role in yourenefit for your organization because now they have more that they can rely on you for.

You're going to be a better source of knowledge and resource within that organization. But on top of that, you know, the other side of that is we want you to be able to professionally develop too. these are some, the goal here is to have these skills be [00:11:00] designed in a way in which you can translate that into next steps in your career.

Whatever that looks like, whether that's moving into a specialized role in your organization, stepping up into a leader role. If you have a different organization or a different place you want to go, we want to help you guide you in that direction as well. So we want it to be twofold benefit having the organizations and the individuals benefit from NEACH U.

Joe Casali: Alright, that was a lot. Um, very, very well done. Um, but a lot. Um, I have two big, um, different questions. So, one is exactly on what you talked about, the other is, um, why? Why, why is, is it just, you know, is it just a, what do they call that, uh, dressing? Or did you need to change the way education is delivered or education is offered?

I mean, what's, why, why this new approach?[00:12:00] 

Mark Dixon: So I think it's more about leveling it up. I think traditionally, NEACH has always done a great job with our education. We've always had great feedback from our members. Um, I think we are meeting a core need of what they want from us, as far as, you know, the logistics and how I need to operate, and even providing them more things about what's happening in the future.

Um, what do I need to know as far as things coming down the pike, like FedNow and RTP and how they impact me. But it's more about really just taking it up to the next level. We still want to serve all those needs. So that's why the whole idea of if you're a one off learner, and you want to pick topics here and there, that's still an approach.

We want to continue to serve because we know that you like that as our members and need it. But on top of that, we want to be able to say, okay, well, those folks that are really looking for professional development, that Are interested in the payment space because we are in a specializedindustry. This is a niche market..

You can't go to college right now and get a in payment. [00:13:00] It's just not something that exists. There's areas thatas that are kind of related, but you're not going to get a specialized. Here. I am. I'm a payments professional, but that's what we're hoping to have here with you is that. If you're a professional development person like me, you know, and I know you, Joe, are also interested in being a lifelong learner, if you're looking to continually level yourself up, increase your skill set and make yourself more valuable in the industry, NEACH U is the idea is to have that be your partner there.

So NEACH U can come to us, we'll be your professional partner in developing you, and we'll get you to that next step.

Joe Casali: Excellent. I, I, I forgot my original second question, but there are a lot of folks that do education on payments, on a piece of payments, on, you know, uh, vendors and, and, you know, organizations. I know the Fed's doing training, auditors are doing training, um, uh, you know, when you [00:14:00] think about the, like the School of Treasury Management, so that's, that's something, I mean, NEACH hasn't traditionally trained on treasury management, have we?

Mark Dixon: No, not directly. We've probably touched on it in different areas, but not as a full focus.

Joe Casali: Um, so as you think of that, as you think of the fact that, you know, really, you can't go to a college and say, oh, I want to learn about payments. Even, even from a, I just want to learn a little bit about payments. It's, it's like a big vacuum. Um, it seems very apprenticey. That's the word I wanted to remember yesterday.

Apprenticey as far as you come into an operation, you start to learn, um, the back end stuff. And like you, you, you become passionate about it and being better and looking at other channels and, and today there are so many channels. Um, can you, can you imagine a, a track through this? Now, we have a lot of members who, um, [00:15:00] this general payment school, uh, it's, I mean, it's good.

It's going to give you all the basics, but we have a lot of members that are, you know, advanced beyond that. Um, Any recommendations? I've been say I've been in training and in operations for, um, uh, 10 years and I'm close to, um, I'm close. I'm not the lead. I'm not in charge of the operations. I'm not the officer.

Um, what, what could some of the, the tracks be, or the, the universities, or the, sorry, the schools be for someone who wanted to expand, uh, their expertise in payments?

Mark Dixon: Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. And you touched a little bit, I think, on the community aspect, which I think we should also visit as part of this conversation. But, um, to answer your question, so it's kind of, it's a matter of where you're looking to go. So if you think about it as, you know, I'm interested in the business payment space.[00:16:00] 

I love business payments, uh, B2B, everything that's happening from a cash management platform perspective. Um, I'd love to learn more about that. That's the School of Treasury Management. That's the goal there is to help you get into those types of, um, topics and understandings so that you could potentially use that as a way to say, Hey, uh, you know.

Sally Supervisor. I'd like to work towards becoming a Treasury Services Officer or a Treasury Services Consultant. There's a lot of different directions you can go in that particular realm. But that's what the school is supposed to do there. that track a school is going to help you figure out if that's an area you want to dive into.

Now, if you're somebody else that's looking to maybe level up into a supervisor or manager role, that's what the School of Payment Management is supposed to do. So the idea there is that you start learning and looking at payments from a higher level. So what are the metrics I need to To understand how to make business decisions here.

How do I manage the [00:17:00] products management aspect of it? Making sure these products are actually being designed effectively and serving the purposes. We're trying to accomplish. How am I going to use all this information to create governance and policy? That's what that track is all doing. So it's. It's bringing in the concept of payments and building upon what you've already learned, but bringing up to a different level and perspective.

Um, in addition, if you're somebody that's like, I really like all the cool, modern, everything new, that's what the payment modernization one designed to do. That's, um, it's going to have the faster payments. Certificate. So we are supporting that in 2024. So if you're looking to be, you know, have a service certificate showing that you've demonstrated strong knowledge in the modernization space.

So, that now, RTP, what's happening technologies, APIs, all that kind of stuff. That's where you can focus in there. So, to answer your great broader question, I think it's just a matter of, if I want to level up and get to that, that next position, or if I want to just build [00:18:00] my skills and. focus on the areas that interest me.

That's what we're hoping to accomplish with the different NEACH U school tracks. Over time, we also hope that they'll get, they'll deepen, so maybe it's not just a one treasury services track, but there's multiple different places within treasury that you could go. Maybe there's one that's focused on sales, one that's focused more on the analytical side and the operational piece or risk management.

We are hoping to have NEACH U become very complex and meet the needs of all of the individual learning path.

Joe Casali: Um, great. And I'm, you know, I'm on the team as well, but I wanted Mark to do a really, uh, Demonstration is it's been his work the for the year. I have two more questions. This is certainly not a full reveal of NEACH U it really just sends a what are you thinking? Why why is thing? Why are things changing?

So I two more questions And there's a [00:19:00] you know, if you've listened for a while, you know, I go off script These are off script questions if you know, I think you consider yourself a payment geek I consider myself a payment geek are there are there classes for The others, you know, are there other parts of the bank or credit union or fintech that would be interested in a school?

Um, you know, it's, it's how do we explain, you have passion, you've, you've stated you have passion. How do you explain to the people who aren't passionate about payments, um, some of these topics that they do need to know, even though they're not passionate about payments, outsiders, any, any comments on that?

Mark Dixon: Yeah, I think it's a great point. Um, so, you know, that's from a value proposition from NEACH is that we want to make sure we're helping you as organizations be able to accomplish that kind of training as well. So what do they need to know? One area that we've often heard is that people in the front line, you know, they need to know certain things.

About payments. And obviously they need to know a lot [00:20:00] about everything. Um, so they're, they're not, they're more generalized. So they're not going to dive into all the details of payments, but we do have a school of retail banking slated to be included in NEACH U you that would actually meet some of those training.

So what does they need to know as a frontline person? So we're not going to dive super deep into payments. Like we would somebody that's a payment nerd that really is excited about it. Um, but we are going to dive into it enough so that they understand what they need know. Okay. And then the School of Risk Management and School of Compliance, in my mind, accomplish two things.

So for payments folks that really want to understand the compliance implications and the risk management implications, those are areas where you can dive into as a payments professional and gain more knowledge. But the idea behind those also is that folks in your compliance areas and risk management areas could come in as well and be able to start learning more about how What are the compliance considerations and implications of payments and in addition, what are the risk [00:21:00] management aspects that they need to know, because it's a little bit more specialized, giving them that kind of lens that they can focus in on.

But those schools really accomplish those 2 things. We can help the payments professionals and then the other areas in organizations, and we only plan to expand that further. So, if we find other areas that can dive into, we'll certainly start diving into those more.

Joe Casali: And so one, the last question. No, the last question. I'm not going to ask you right now. The last question is, do you have anything else? But this is the really unfair Super surprise question comes from the Department of I love all my children Is there a particular course school? group of courses you you're Really excited about is there something that you can't actually wait to see how it's received in the marketplace

Mark Dixon: Yes, so the School of Treasury Management is, it was my pet child. So I'm actually, I'm going through the process of studying for [00:22:00] the Certified Treasury Professional, CTP Accreditation. Um, it's an area that dives into the treasury aspect of businesses. So it's not really hyper focused on the banking world, but it is in some ways because it's indirectly related.

But it's more focused on, as a business, how do they manage their cash flows, how do they make that money work effectively, and how do they... Shorten their accounts receivables, make sure they're maximizing accounts payables, all that kind of stuff. So the School of Treasury Management though, helps financial institutions translate that into something when working with your business clients.

Because it's a whole area of an opportunity for a lot of financial institutions to build out their business services. A lot of you are likely looking at that if you are in that banking space. So this school is just a way to kind of help level set that and build some skills with the staff that are actually working directly with those clients because it's a specialized skill.

You can't speak to them in ACH speak, they're not going to understand what you're talking about. And quite frankly, they [00:23:00] probably don't care either because it only really matters to them how they're managing their business cash flows and making that money work for them. So this school is a way to kind of help build in some of the things that I've been learning about, but also an area to help kind of.

Spread that knowledge out to our members and enhance it. And it's an area we've recognized as, as NEACH, too, as being a market that you're interested in, too, from a member perspective, because we know a lot of you are building out cash management areas or treasury management areas. Um, so I'm very excited about the implications of that school.

And even just having this conversation today, I already have more ideas on ways could enhance and grow that school forward.

Joe Casali: Nice, nice. Um, so again, this is not a full reveal of the school. It was just kind of a picking Mark's brain to see what's, what's, what we're planning and, and how we're wrestling with the idea of career development, uh, skill development, staff development, and how it's changed in recent years. Uh, with that, you get the final word.

[00:24:00] Anything else you want to say, even generally about wrestling? Oh, did you ever have, we had, we asked this before. Do you have a favorite wrestler?

Mark Dixon: No, I don't. I, I did watch it when I was a kid, but honestly, I don't remember. Okay.

Joe Casali: anything, anything you want to say.

Mark Dixon: Yeah, actually there's two things. Um, so the first one is the community aspect. So we didn't really delve into this either. But you touched on it with the idea of like mentorship and apprentices and all that. We also recognize that in this industry, we're a small group.

We're a group of specialized experts that really get excited about payments. We see that when our members come to our PMC conference, you're excited about it. You enjoy it because it's an area that that you're passionate about, but it's also a time for you to meet with others that are just as passionate as you are. So meet you has a whole community aspect to that. We're building into it. So we want to create those opportunities for you to work with others that are interested [00:25:00] in these topics. Make those connections. I went to the, uh, the, the, the banking schools in New England. Um, a few years back, the Northern New England School of Banking and then the School of Financial Studies.

I made a lot of connections there, and you build camaraderie. But it also helps create a network for you to tap, tap into when you have questions or you want to talk about things. Or maybe in the future there's an opportunity to do work together. That's the same goal here for NEACH U, is to have an aspect of that where you're able to build in the community aspect.

And work with others, um, and get to know them and build those connections moving forward.

Joe Casali: And you'll have to be enrolled in a class to get that?

Mark Dixon: Yeah, so NEACH, uh, the community aspect is going to be a part of the NEACH U aspect. It's not part of the School of General Payments because that, that school is kind of a little bit different. Um, but the other schools... If you are enrolled in, you know, the School of Daily Operations or School of Treasury Management, you'll be able to become a [00:26:00] part of our community, um, which is going to give you a lot of opportunities to really network.

And we have a lot of fun things planned for future conferences, uh, members meetings, things like that, so we want to make sure everybody keeps an eye out for what we're thinking about there.

Joe Casali: All right. I'm, I'm as, as excited as I was before we started recording about all of this. And do you have one last thing to say or are you, uh, are you, you,

Mark Dixon: Yeah, I was trying, I think, I can't, it actually went right out of my head, though. What was the other thing? What

Joe Casali: It happens all the time. Yeah.

Mark Dixon: other thing I wanted to bring up? Um.

Joe Casali: staff development, career development.

Mark Dixon: Yeah, I think it. Oh, yes, I'm sorry. That was the thing I wanted to bring up. So you were talking Joe about the whole idea of different approaches as well and different needs of learners and we kind of talked a little bit about that earlier, but that is an area that we want to continue to make sure we're focused on to as part of meet you is that delivery aspect.

Um, so. While, [00:27:00] you know, initial courses, you know, may look similar to what you've seen from us in today's environment, the content is going to be definitely a lot different. But the delivery mechanisms as we move forward with NEACH U over time, you're likely going to see different mediums come into play. We'll find ways of delivering content and materials and self learner options and self paced, uh, micro type learning. So all of those different components are on the roadmap that's part of NEACH U. So we're really excited about it. I think you're going to be excited to see what we offer in January. Um, or our members will be excited to see what we offer in January.

But I think even more so as refinement of NEACH U comes into play over time, it's going to get more and more exciting and more and more value is to come from it. Thank

Joe Casali: I agree. I agree. I, you know, I'm just seeing the, the baby steps. It's good. All right. Thank you for joining me and thanks for listening folks. Comments are welcome. Info at WrestlingPayments. [00:28:00] com. If you have any ideas for the show, you have any questions, happy to answer them. Thanks for tuning in.

Mark Dixon: Thank you.

Joe Casali: Thanks, Mark.

Mark Dixon: Yeah, you're welcome.