Guardrails For The Fintech FastLane

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Wrestling Payments, host Joe Casali sits down with Travis Dulaney, CEO and Co-founder of BalancedTrust, to unpack the ongoing friction between fintech startups and their bank partners. From missing compliance standards to misunderstandings around regulatory risk, Travis explains why so many good ideas hit a wall.

Travis shares lessons from his time launching and selling PayFi, where inconsistent feedback from sponsor banks highlighted a significant problem: no standard process for compliance approval. That frustration led to the birth of BalancedTrust, a platform helping fintechs and banks align risk tolerance, automate onboarding, and scale safely.

They also discuss why early-stage fintechs often fail to prioritize compliance—and how Travis's team offers a free tool to change that. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to grow responsibly in today's complex financial environment.

GUEST-AT-A-GLANCE
Travis Dulaney
CEO and Co-founder
BalancedTrust
LinkedIn 
Noteworthy: 25+ years in fintech, building scalable, compliant solutions for banks and startups

KEY INSIGHTS

Lack of Standardization Is Slowing Fintech Growth

Compliance challenges aren't just technical—they're human. One of the biggest bottlenecks for fintechs trying to scale is the lack of standardization in how sponsor banks evaluate risk and onboard new partners. As Travis explains, different banks—and even individual BSA officers—interpret and apply compliance rules inconsistently. This leads to wildly different outcomes for the same applicant, creating confusion and wasted effort. The core issue isn't always regulation but the subjective way it's enforced. Fintechs often get rejected not because they're too risky but because they don't speak the bank's language or follow an expected format. This inconsistency drags innovation, limits access, and leaves founders guessing how to move forward. A more structured, transparent process would benefit banks and startups by aligning expectations and removing friction.

Compliance Isn't Optional—It's a Growth Enabler

In the startup world, speed often wins. However, regarding financial services, speed without compliance leads to dead ends. Travis argues that compliance isn't a box to check—infrastructure helps fintechs grow. Too many early-stage companies treat risk management like a burden rather than a foundation. That mindset leads to breakdowns when securing a sponsor bank or raising capital. BalancedTrust was built to address this gap by giving fintechs a more precise roadmap: show where the risk lies, understand the rules that apply and know what actions to take. Travis points out that banks won't tell you how to fix your gaps—they're not liable for your mistakes. That's why having a structured, proactive compliance plan helps startups build trust, gain partnerships, and move faster with fewer surprises.

Stablecoins - The Missing Link in Cross-Border Payments?
While stablecoins are often discussed through the lens of crypto speculation, Travis highlights a more practical role: solving the long-standing pain point of the international money movement. Stablecoins, backed by fiat and supported by wallets on both ends, offer a fast, transparent, and secure alternative. They can bridge traditional banking and decentralized finance, creating a unified standard for moving value across jurisdictions. But Travis emphasizes that the real value isn't just technical—it's compliance-driven. If regulators and banks can confidently trace the source and destination of funds, then stablecoins will become more than a crypto

Transcript

NEACH - Wrestling Payments 

- Travis Dulaney
 Season 3, episode 8

[00:00:00] Travis Dulaney: There's laws and there's regulation. By the way, there is a difference of that. You can have a regulation and it's not a law. And you can have a, a law that follows a regulation, but it's more specific in the law and it's by state, so it gets very complicated. Right. And but those tie down to and connect exactly what a bank is doing, their charter or their state, where they're at, what kind of program they're doing, whether payroll, crypto, or whatever.

[00:00:52] Joe Casali: Oh my God, I can't wait. This is gonna be a super interesting episode. Welcome to Wrestling Payments. Um, uh, as you know, I'm a wrestling fan and. Our guest today, Travis Delaney, is gonna talk about the good guys, the good guys with what he's doing, and, and I'm gonna just kind of sit back, prompt a question from now time to time, but let him go.

[00:01:13] Joe Casali: And my first question is, you know, we ask this to everyone, did you, when you were a kid, did you plan on growing up in, in being in banking or financial in services?

[00:01:23] Travis Dulaney: Does anybody? Um, I, you know, it's funny because I have a, growing up I don't never kind of wanted to be in banking or payments. It, it kind of, you know. There's a saying in TaeKwonDo, actually, first you get into TaeKwonDo and it gets into you and it's kind of like payments, right? It's kind of a, um, a little bit of a curse that when you get in you just can't get out.

[00:01:42] Travis Dulaney: And so I think that's what happened with me. Uh, but I have some fond memories that, that, um, make me focus around community banking a lot. Um, and so that's, that's one of the things I did grow up in a small town, uh, with community banks were the anchor. And so I've, I've got a, a passion for trying to help them.

[00:02:00] Joe Casali: And, uh, excellent. Do you, and you know, before we get too deep, um. This is, you know, kind of a take on wrestling, professional wrestling and payments. Did you, uh, growing up, or even now, do you have a favorite wrestler?

[00:02:14] Travis Dulaney: Well, growing up it was more, probably more of the bad guys like Rick Flair or, or junkyard dogs, right. So, um, that was probably more my flavor at the time, but you know, I was probably 16 at the time too.

[00:02:24] Joe Casali: Excellent. Excellent. That's, that's okay. It's all good. We're all 16 at heart somewhere. Um, but so, uh, we were just doing the, the, the pre-interview part and, um, it was such a great story. I had to stop and say, let's. Start rolling. So I'd love to start, um, when you first got into to financial services, where were you, and then jump if you could jump to the most, sort of the most recent history.

[00:02:48] Joe Casali: Love to hear. This is a great, everyone, you're gonna love this story,

[00:02:52] Travis Dulaney: All right. Well thank you Joe. I appreciate it. So I got started in, um, early days of prepaid, right? And so it was 1999. Um, and, uh, I got started with a little company called Walker Systems, and we were the inventor of what we know is prepaid today. And, um, you know, and I was the project manager, uh, when I started with them.

[00:03:09] Travis Dulaney: And we had just kind of. Started a new, um, effort, our initiative to work with Visa, Latin America, and, and trying to do stuff that was cross border back then and things that were, you know, really farfetched, you know, in that day and time. Keep in mind that there was no PCI and, and 128 bid encryption was like just new, right?

[00:03:28] Travis Dulaney: And so we're talking, you know, ancient here where I'm chronologically gifting, uh, gifted here a little bit, but, you know, um. I, I'd work in the, I get in the weeds, I get into the details and I understood what was going on. And so I remember going home to my wife and going, God, and it's gracious. This good thing is I'm a good person, that I'm not like crooked.

[00:03:46] Travis Dulaney: 'cause otherwise, like they're so easy to steal money from people. It's like the Superman theory Kingdom mind, right? Or you take just a penny and nobody notices, right? It was so easy to cipher money and that you would never even know it. And so. Um, you know, that was then, that was 1999. A lot has changed.

[00:04:02] Travis Dulaney: You know, PCI did come along A lot has changed since then, but unfortunately, um, you know, I've always had that mentality. I have this strong, um, effort about ju, about lack of judgment, about, um, integrity. Um, and also doing the right thing. Right. And so I think our industry has done a, a great job at that because since that time we still really haven't had a lot of big deal is issues that happened in banking or payments or anything like that until, you know, basically the last couple years.

[00:04:29] Travis Dulaney: Right? And so, uh, I think that our industry was, had high I integrities, um, companies I worked were with FIS, Fiserv, they. They, they had a certain level of respect because, you know, they did the job right. They did the right thing. And so nowadays that as we're growing and getting more innovative and, and the market's getting more splendid and there are more people in it, we're getting a little, few bad actors in, in the place, right?

[00:04:54] Travis Dulaney: And so it does kind of, kind of draw into how we got to this point and how I got to the point where we started a venture called balanced trust, which is trying not to really enforce. This, this, uh, level of integrity a little bit in the industry?

[00:05:10] Joe Casali: And, uh, balance trust. When were you established and, you know, if you had a, if we were in an elevator together, what's the, the elevator speech?

[00:05:18] Travis Dulaney: Well, the elevator speech is kinda, um, it, it kind of depends a little bit who you are, but I. Um, we've built a platform ultimately to manage compliance task, um, that, and, and reduce all the administrative costs associated across banks and fintechs. So, you know, there's so many, so I almost have to go back and tell you a quick story here, Bennett, and that is, I.

[00:05:39] Travis Dulaney: So when I, um, my previous startup was called Pay Fi. Um, it started as push payments. We ended up as pay fi and we sold in 2020, and I exited it in that year. But, um, one, one of the challenges that we had was that we were working hard to add more and more customers, right? And, um, and during that time we, like, we had one, we had three sponsor banks, and then each of those sponsor banks would have.

[00:06:05] Travis Dulaney: Pretty much the same risk tolerances, right? The same, you know, things that they wanted or didn't want, you know, as far as customers are concerned. So we were really tailored ar around that, but we found a extreme difference in what was approved and what it wasn't. And so we were trying to scratching our head, going, what's, what's wrong here?

[00:06:22] Travis Dulaney: How can we do this better? Right? So we knew how to package a deal, we knew how to, to point out the risk and what needed to be resolved. You know, of course they gotta do their own due diligence, but, but we found some, just some oddity. So after I. Sold a company. I was sitting there, why couldn't we grow faster?

[00:06:38] Travis Dulaney: Why couldn't we have grown bigger? And what was our limitations to that? And a lot of that came down to the BSA officers and some of the way that the standardization or the lack thereof and the BSA onboarding and a ML and that area. So you have, yes.

[00:06:55] Joe Casali: Can just, uh, just in case the regular audience isn't, uh, uh, as versed in, in the just definitions the sponsor. Banks are banks. That would be the issuers of cards for your customers.

[00:07:08] Travis Dulaney: Oh, this is, this is excellent. So yeah, there's a, there's a whole dynamic when it comes to, between fintechs and, and banks and so forth, so. Fintechs need banks. Banks are the requirement across the board. By law, they have to be involved. Unless you have a money transfer license yourself. Most people don't go get MTLS money transfer licenses because it's cost prohibited.

[00:07:33] Travis Dulaney: It takes a long time. $2 million, two years minimum. Right. And 'cause you go to every single state. 'cause in our country we don't have a single license. There is no e-money license. Like in Europe, there is only individual states that do it. And this goes back to the. Horse and buggy days of Wells Fargo.

[00:07:50] Travis Dulaney: Right? Um, and so the states want us leave that control so they won't give it up. So there we've got this disparity. And then people in lending know this very well. People in cannabis know this very well. There's two levels of it. And because one of 'em says no, the others can say yes, but it doesn't necessarily mean everybody will say yes, right?

[00:08:08] Travis Dulaney: And so sponsorship's kind of a tricky thing. And um, and it also depends on when I say risk tolerances. What banks, what, what kind of businesses they want. Right. Do, do they like crypto? Do they like cannabis? I mean, there's no, I just want plain Jane loans, or I just wanna do payroll companies. That's it.

[00:08:23] Travis Dulaney: Right. Okay. Well, as a payment provider, you have to tailor that. And controls and alerts, KPIs and metrics and, and things that you allow and don't allow based on that, right? And so that is what you call a compliance structure or the risk management risk tolerance that the bank has. So a bank will go set up a program that says, I only want payroll.

[00:08:48] Travis Dulaney: So then all the controls should be tailored to that. But unfortunately today that doesn't really happen too much, which is kind of what part of what we're solving for, um, is that, you know, regulation says you got all these laws, these rules, and, and you have, um, even rules that are network rules. We'll say Visa are MasterCard rules, right?

[00:09:05] Travis Dulaney: There's laws and there's regulation. By the way, there is a difference of that. You can have a regulation and it's not a law. And you can have a, a law that follows a regulation, but it's more specific in the law and it's by state, so it gets very complicated. Right. And but those tie down to and connect exactly what a bank is doing, their charter or their state, where they're at, what kind of program they're doing, whether payroll, crypto, or whatever.

[00:09:29] Travis Dulaney: And so obviously when it's vague and we don't know what's, the risks are like a crypto, that's why those become high risk or that they have some systemic ability to cause problem to the bank. Right. And, and the, we'll say the financial security of the banker, stability of the bank. So, so that structure is so critical and this is why most people get no all the time 'cause they don't understand it first and second.

[00:09:55] Travis Dulaney: They don't know what they need to do to plug in. So, you know, it's like having, you know, a um, USB and A-U-S-B-C. Right. It don't work. And so that's what happens with sponsorship, right? So what we've decided to do and what we saw these problems were is that there, um, actually since there's no pure definition and no alignment across any banks, no structural, no standard, um, basically banks do whatever they wanna do.

[00:10:23] Travis Dulaney: And it really depends on the person that's in that seat doing it. Normally it's a BSA officer. And that's the person making the decisions. So if that person has a personal bias or if they don't know what they don't know, or let's say they're brand new and that happens to be their first or second job, right?

[00:10:39] Travis Dulaney: Then they just don't understand. And then how many people do we know that went work for a bank and been there all their life a lot. Just like government, right? And then that's what happens is then you become sheltered within that world and you really don't understand what real capital businesses are about.

[00:10:54] Travis Dulaney: And you don't understand business models, you don't understand why they do certain things. So if you don't understand that, how do you understand the risk? Right? And so here you're making decisions on stuff that you just don't know. Again, what we're trying to solve for is solving for things that you don't know.

[00:11:09] Travis Dulaney: We are bringing the structure to say. What you, you know, help, you know what you don't know. Right? And that's the hardest thing to do, right? And so that's, that's the challenges you run into this relationship between fintechs and banking. So what, what had happened to go back to your original question. Um, so I was reflecting back on our, uh, startup of pay five.

[00:11:30] Travis Dulaney: And I was seeing this, this disparage kind of decisioning between the different banks and there's no consistency. And I had, uh, um, it's a kind of funny story, sad, but for true, um, I had, we had one BSA officer and was proud and was like excited to tell me one time that he absolutely loved right conspiracy theory and American greed.

[00:11:53] Travis Dulaney: And every weekend he would binge watch it every weekend. Just loved it, right? And of course, on Monday morning, guess what? I got decline, decline, decline, decline on every application, right? So, and I'm not exaggerating in any bit. If anything, I'm probably underestimating. We had over 480 applications submitted to this entity, this bank, and about 36 of 'em approved over a two year period decline.

[00:12:16] Travis Dulaney: Right? And so that gives you an idea. Now I could take that same four 80 applications and I could go to another bank and they'll, they might approve 300 of them. Right. But if I'm also not matching their risk tolerance, I would prove none of 'em. I wouldn't get in the door the first time. Right. If they're doing their suitability checks.

[00:12:34] Travis Dulaney: Right. So that's the kind of environment that we've got, and what we realize is there is in the end, there's no standardization around this. Everybody's just kind of doing whatever they think they should be doing. Right. Which is all personal bias aspect of it. So. So about that time, this is after I ended up, um, taking on, um, two CCO roles, um, chief compliance officer roles with two, um, fintechs that were working with me as my previous, they were, they basically came to me and go, can you help me get a bank sponsor?

[00:13:03] Travis Dulaney: Sure. Okay, well show me your compliance, uh, rigor. Show me what you've got in place. And they had nothing. And I'm like, oh, no wonder you're not getting a bank sponsor, right? Because they're looking at you going, uh, this guy don't know what he's doing. Go away.

[00:13:17] Joe Casali: can we pause there just for a second? So, um, I imagine this was back in 2020 where five years later I, I know that, well, I guess I'm gonna guess in 2020 there are a lot of fintechs who could. Do magic with the computer, but when it came to compliance and bank compliance, uh, they would probably say, well, what do you need to me to what?

[00:13:39] Joe Casali: Do you need me to code? I'll code it. What do you need me to code? Is that, was that the case? Is it still the case? I.

[00:13:47] Travis Dulaney: Yes, and yes. I mean, so the problem is, is, is understanding the dynamic between what an entrepreneur's job is and what they're really trying to do and what a bank their, their opposites, right? And so. If you're a CEO of a, of a FinTech startup, your job, your job is to get customers and get more of 'em and more of 'em.

[00:14:10] Travis Dulaney: And if you're VC backed, especially they get faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, right? Period. This is why there's morality breaks. This is why people lie on how many customers they have. Right, because they're trying to get where they need to go and they're being, and some of this, I blame the VC world, right?

[00:14:27] Travis Dulaney: Um, investments are not necessarily a good thing. People think they need investment money and most of the time they don't. They haven't figured out what they're doing yet. What they need money for is scale. Once you found your your market, but unless you've got there, then you're wasting your time. People don't realize about entrepreneurship also is the way they operate typically, especially if you're a serial entrepreneur, is that you, you might go three, four or five years without any income at all, right?

[00:14:54] Travis Dulaney: And then you start an income and it doesn't like pop, like, you know, making a bunch of it. You make it a little bit. So the mentality is so different. It's survival, it's, it's scrapping, right? And so. As a CEO, your last thing is, oh, you're annoying me. It is. Like, I don't, I can't pay attention to that because the only thing I can pay attention is creating revenue.

[00:15:14] Travis Dulaney: And so that's all the time you have in the day. So you have to have the right staff, the right people that are gonna help those things right now, who can afford, you know, a hundred fifty, two hundred, two hundred $50,000 Chief Compliance Officer when you're scrapping and you can't even pay your own personal bill.

[00:15:30] Travis Dulaney: Right. So the it, when you start looking at that dynamic going, what the heck? That's, how do you do that? Only way is people get so much capital, they just get lucky and they throw enough money at it that they get some kind of, uh, lift and enough customer base they can get somewhere, right? And so that's why you only have 1% that actually ever do anything, go back in time.

[00:15:50] Travis Dulaney: Look at all the ones that we've ever talked about, all the top 10 and top 20. Fintechs, most of 'em don't exist anymore. And if they have been sold, sold fire sales, most of them. Right. And so, and I would say like, I didn't bring mine to a unicorn level. I saw what was happening and so I was strategic enough to know what I needed to do for my timing on what's going on in the market, right?

[00:16:13] Travis Dulaney: And so that's just being a smart business person. But you know, a lot, most of 'em are out of school just coming outta white Combinator and they're just hungry, you know? And so that's, that's the challenge. It's a very different world. So there are two different kind of players there, right? And so we saw this, this, this disparity of what's happening and I actually ran into, um, one of my co-founders now, which is basically a, a former OCC regulator.

[00:16:40] Travis Dulaney: So this, this woman is like the cast meow, right? And so, and I'll tell you why, because she not only helped co-authored the BSA, um, manual for them, but she was a field examiner trainer for seven years. She knows her stuff, right? So I ran into her. I'm going, I'm seeing all this. What's up? Why isn't this better?

[00:17:00] Travis Dulaney: And, and we kind of hit it off and we have, you know, a good agreement with that kind of, Hey, we need to fix this. We can fix this, we can do it. And so. We looked at how to align, um, taking the, not only the regulations, but the laws, and then we basically started simply enough, um, a matrix of how to, you know, if this one, then this, if it's a deposit account, you need this.

[00:17:24] Travis Dulaney: If it's a consumer account, you need these things, right? And so we put this on together, and that's part of the engine that we have in our platform is that, you know. What you need to do is take all that legwork out and that guesswork out of the road because it is pretty simple. It's pretty simple to say straightforward, and a lot of times you've got regulations and things that are gray.

[00:17:43] Travis Dulaney: But this doesn't, this, this is not a gray area. This

[00:17:47] Joe Casali: So I, I've had that conversation before with the idea. It literally, the story you just told is, you know, uh, when you have, for example, a financial institution that decides, uh, I know that's a law, and I know that's a rule, but it's getting in the way, so we're just gonna, we're gonna bypass that for a little while.

[00:18:05] Joe Casali: They're all written, it's all established. It's not like. The law is a mystery. Uh, they just decide to go, you know, bypass it. So, uh, I, I, you're, you're, uh, that's why I'm so excited about this story because it's, it's, you know, exactly where I would point people to, um, as they were trying to, trying to catch on.

[00:18:23] Joe Casali: I.

[00:18:24] Travis Dulaney: Yeah. And so many things like that is because they don't understand it. Most of the solutions aren't hard. It's not something that you gotta do, and there is a way of going around things, meaning not around, um, but rather tier work towards it, right? Nobody has to be there right away. Right. The only thing that are, are blatant are things that, you know, let's say you have on your website that you're selling, uh, cannabis, but you're really sending them to a crypto thing that converts it and you're not telling anybody.

[00:18:56] Travis Dulaney: So that's manipulative, right? That is clear. Like lawsuit land, but, but. Most things aren't like that. Most of 'em are small things, and I go back to what I'm saying most are because people just didn't know or they don't know how to do that. So what we try to do is build a framework, you know, and I kind of refer to it as seat belts and guardrails because hey, the job of a entrepreneur is to get hooked in, get a bank sponsor, and grow fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast.

[00:19:23] Travis Dulaney: Okay, so when we build the fast lane, but if we're gonna build the fast lane, put some guardrails on it for the guy doesn't run off the road, or the guy, excuse me.

[00:19:30] Joe Casali: Do you, do you find, um, 'cause you know exactly what you said, uh, during this episode, you know, they grow, grow, grow fast, fast, fast. How do you get the seatbelt on 'em? Is it, is it hard?

[00:19:47] Travis Dulaney: So. Not really. It depends on where you catch in the stage. So I'm gonna be very blunt and nobody's, I don't think ever accused me and I'm not being, you know, um, to the point, um, to my own detriment even. Um, so, you know, the more success breeds. Confidence, but it also brings ego if you're not self-aware enough to know what's going on.

[00:20:10] Travis Dulaney: So I run into a lot of ego-centric people that I got it, I know what I'm doing, and, and most of them are actually more of a defense mechanism called, they really don't, and they're scared to hell of what you just told 'em. Um, and they don't want to open the kimona and, and share what's, what's really there, right?

[00:20:25] Travis Dulaney: Because they afraid it would hurt them. So honesty and transparency is half the battle, right? You gotta learn to be vulnerable. And you gotta learn to go help me. Let the village raise the child. It, we will. Right? And so that's part of our mission is that, look, if we don't fix this, and we're talking about stuff where you're flat out lying and making $173 million because you upped your customer list.

[00:20:49] Travis Dulaney: Or, or they, oh, I found there's a problem. 'cause I spent $60 million. Let me grab an extra 20 and run to Greece and file for bankruptcy. I don't have to name names. Everybody kind of figures out what that is, right? But those things are happening in this day and time. What are we Nuts? We're gonna kill our entire industry.

[00:21:05] Travis Dulaney: There won't need to be a money 2020 or Meetup 'cause it won't have any fintechs. 'cause it'll just be gone. Because if we let the bad actors come in and do that, then it's our fault 'cause we let it happen. I'm just not one to stand by and let that happen. And so I know how to fix this. So the seatbelt isn't hard to put on.

[00:21:23] Travis Dulaney: Uh, in the beginning it's actually comforting 'cause you won't fly through the windshield. So it makes you more confident that you've got it. I'm got, I got, I'm good here. Right? One of the things we do is we provide, um, a scoring mechanism so that you can, you know, quantifiably understand, like, so we take a look at your business model, the way you're structured, your customers, your products, where they geographically located.

[00:21:47] Travis Dulaney: All these factors and roll it all up in a inherent risk score. And then on top of that we'll turn around and tell you where your gaps are, what you need to put in there that you didn't. 'cause a bank won't do that, that's a liability for them. They're not gonna tell you go, what is the FinTech? Well, they told me to do that.

[00:22:02] Travis Dulaney: Right. So, so, you know, it's a, it's this weird balancing act between the two, between the bank and the fintechs and any, and that includes merchants and processors that're all the same. Right? And we have these huge long contracts with all these things we gotta fulfill. And how many sign it and never look at it again.

[00:22:18] Travis Dulaney: Right? And so that's kind of what it meant. Oh, I gotta do this one thing so I can get this launched. And that's what they do, right? So.

[00:22:24] Joe Casali: yeah, no, that's, it's, it's an, uh, that's excellent because you know as much as you're talking about the, the entrepreneur. You know, I gotta defend the banker a little. Got a whole, you know, bookshelf of laws they have to follow, and regulators that wanna make sure that they don't do anything. They shouldn't get regulated, you know, just trying to stay outta trouble themselves.

[00:22:45] Joe Casali: Um, and I, I, I don't, I hope I didn't interrupt you, but how long have, how long has, have you been running as balanced trust?

[00:22:54] Travis Dulaney: So balanced trust is, has been active for about a year, right? And so we, I was incubating it for a good two years before that. Um, so we probably interviewed close to 120 some odd risk managers and, and understanding their pains and, and, you know, what do they do on a daily basis and what should they not be doing in that type of thing.

[00:23:12] Travis Dulaney: So we we're trying to eliminate all the administrative burdens and the task in between, right? Because we found people running. They're vast programs and emails and they had separate emails for every customer and then a spreadsheet for each one of the task lists of things image like. And that's, that's ridiculous.

[00:23:27] Travis Dulaney: Right? And so, so we've only been, you know, we've been out there for a year. Our product, um, is coming to the market now, which our software product. Um, and, um, software product that actually supports both the FinTech and the bank side from a risk standpoint or from the compliance testing standpoint. Right.

[00:23:44] Travis Dulaney: So, uh, we're gonna be, next month we're gonna be rolling out a free service for fintechs and crypto companies, um, that allow them to give them a roadmap of this is what you need to do to be compliant. And so all they gotta do is upload it to the right bucket in the folders, right? That's what it amounts to.

[00:23:58] Travis Dulaney: It's a free service. You can keep it in and then they can share it with banks so that banks can, can get it in the way they're expecting to see it. Remember, you guys talk two different languages, right? And so you need to have a translator most of the time. That's why most people get a consultant or somebody else to kind of work with them.

[00:24:14] Travis Dulaney: But you don't need to do that if you know we're gonna trying to give you the roadmap of how to say it, what to do, and, and show you your gaps so you can identify them as to fix that. Us, right? And then ultimately you end up with a performance score on how well your compliance is actually managing that inherent risk that you have as a model.

[00:24:32] Travis Dulaney: And so that helps the bank to make a better decision, right? So the better job you do on that, the more easy path you've got on, um, growing and scaling. So in kind of in short, we help everybody scale their programs.

[00:24:44] Joe Casali: Yeah, no, that's, it's, it's excellent. I, I asked that question, um, 'cause I wanted to know if along the line anyone's ripped off the, the, um, seatbelt and said, I got this now. Um, if they haven't,

[00:24:55] Travis Dulaney: not after the fact. Um, most have been confident because the seatbelt was there or that the, that the guardrail was there because it creates a level of confidence that, hey, I'm not gonna run off that ledge that I see is on foot drop. Right? And so banks in that. Have a, um, to go back to your point and defend on the bank side.

[00:25:15] Travis Dulaney: Um, you know, I, this was a little slighted to explain some of the dynamics that's going on, but at the same time, you know, banks have a rough road. People don't realize it, and there's a small margin there that they're working on. And, um, and at the drop of a hat, they could literally kill a hundred year old business.

[00:25:30] Travis Dulaney: That's a family business that's been around forever. Right. And those, those banks are so critical, especially the community banks to those neighborhoods and the communities they live in. That is their only source of getting money in and out. And most of these people grew up with them, went to high school with them, got their first mortgages, put their kids through college.

[00:25:47] Travis Dulaney: I mean, this is a family business, right? And so it's different. It's not big corporations. It's not like Bank of America and all the big guys. That's a different thing. It's cold. It's very business centric. But these are small businesses that live in these communities and they, and they're not. Also used to some of these dynamics that come in from the big city, for lack of another way to put it.

[00:26:06] Travis Dulaney: Right. And so what we're trying to do is protect them at the same time so that they can prove to the regulator, look, this is everything I've got. I'm, I'm checking everything like I should be. And you know what the biggest failures are, and this is what it was in every single consent order. And this is why n just coming down with third party risk too, is that's, that is third party risk management.

[00:26:27] Travis Dulaney: Because what happened is crypto came along. And they didn't have legacies to plug into, right? So in the payment world, legacy world, we just, we'd plug into an existing rail or something, right? They didn't have that. So they, three or four of 'em would get together and go, I'll do this, I'll do this and I'll do this.

[00:26:43] Travis Dulaney: So it became a conglomerate that's doing the business, and nobody did diligence. They were just happy to find a partner. And

[00:26:50] Joe Casali: works.

[00:26:50] Travis Dulaney: and it worked. And then one got customers, one moved the money, right? And so guess what? That's called nested processing And the regulator viewpoint. Because it's, uh, it's actually processing for somebody else that you don't know is available.

[00:27:04] Travis Dulaney: And so when that comes together, you know, we ran into this and this is part of our kind of claim to fame. We got started, we got pulled into the, some of the highest risk crazy stuff. Our, one of our, um, customers was a Lithuanian crypto bank that Visa wanted us to kind of fix, 'cause they were doing good, but they were not doing it right.

[00:27:24] Travis Dulaney: And so we had to fix 'em. So we did. Right. And so everybody's happy, right? Uh, and there was a couple parties in between that chain there a little bit, right? But, um, so that's the ecosystem, right? 'cause if you talk, think about the network, the banks, the processors, and this was a merchant processing account.

[00:27:41] Travis Dulaney: This wasn't even like a FinTech relationship, right? So, you know, merchant account, uh, merchant acquiring FinTech relationships, you know, where you have that direct relationship in a CH and so forth. So payments as a service, banking as a service. All those labels we put on 'em today. That's the, that's the arena all this can happen in, and so that's where we're trying to just keep you on the road so you can grow and make some money.

[00:28:04] Joe Casali: Yeah, no, this, you know, uh, we got introduced and I, I asked you a few questions. What a great story. Uh, I love what you do. Uh, I think the industry wants it and needs it. Uh, and if they don't know. They need it. They need it. Uh, I mean, we, we've uh, we've run into so many stories of fintechs who had, you know, maybe had a great idea, didn't know that connection, didn't know compliance, didn't know risk management.

[00:28:26] Joe Casali: They just knew their product worked. Um, so you, you would be super helpful for them. Um, any, you know, off topic, we didn't, we didn't talk about this beforehand. Any, um, comment on the rise of stable coins in the us the, the. Energy being put to that.

[00:28:44] Travis Dulaney: So. I will only preface it with this piece of it, 'cause political stuff aside, right? Because that's getting a lot of attention 'cause media likes to sensationalize anyway. But um, so, um, I actually think it's a good idea because this is why so stablecoin to me, you know, in the crypto world, it's really like the money marketing of the stock buying.

[00:29:07] Travis Dulaney: Right. So if you think about it, if you were buying your, you know, it's where you put your money when you don't want to have it at risk, right? And so that's kind of what it is in that world. So, but if you think about that, isn't that the same as, as, you know, okay, I've got a mon, a stabilized account that the value doesn't adjust so much that it's not so volatile.

[00:29:29] Travis Dulaney: That. So wouldn't that make sense? I can transfer those over. Those are digital assets as we call 'em, right. And say as it's referred to. And so if it's gonna be viewed as a, a true statement of stored value, because that's ultimately what we've come to right, is to me, I think that what we're, we're moving on the cusp of is where it'll be normal for banks to take deposits and USD or.

[00:29:54] Travis Dulaney: Form of digital assets, stable coins, right? Why not? It's the same as having a deposit of USD cash, right? And so only thing that's different is this digital and it's then backed and supported. So, you know, that's that to me, that's why there's some value to it. And some of 'em actually do, you know, depending on which one you're talking about.

[00:30:14] Travis Dulaney: Um, peg them to, you know, certain assets like we started in our USD. If you go back and look at the history of money, you know, the gold standard and stuff that we actually don't all have anymore. You know, I think Ford administration or somebody released it, or Carter, I can't remember. But, um, but that's, that's the, um, to me it's very similar.

[00:30:30] Travis Dulaney: I look at correlations and how things make. Behave the same, like the whole story. It looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then maybe it's a duck. Right? And so to me, stablecoin I think is a good leeway. And it's also to me, the, um, the olive branch or, you know, the, the initial thing that allows crypto and legacy finance to start blending.

[00:30:50] Travis Dulaney: Um. To me, that's where, you know, I think there's a lot of positives there. I do know, and I, we work with a few, uh, companies that do that. They started doing stable corn as deposits. They're pure custodial type of digital asset banks. Um, not to be confused with custodial bank, um, but, um, and so really they operate just like a bank.

[00:31:09] Travis Dulaney: Right. So I worked with them. We've done some things for them, and they, they're a bank for all intents and purpose. They're a bank. The only thing is different is the indicator's. Not a USD. It's, it's a stable coin or it's, it's something different, but it's always normalized at the bank level. Right. The exchange and stuff is out.

[00:31:27] Travis Dulaney: Right. So it's kind of like they're a bank of stable corn in a way. Because it's all that exchange of value at that basic non-risk level, right? So what's different than every bank being able to say, well, I want to add a program to start taking, you know, um, stable coins or uscs. Um, why not? What is it gonna hurt?

[00:31:47] Travis Dulaney: You know? And so then the key thing is, like anything else, risk is not bad. It just needs to be managed.

[00:31:53] Joe Casali: I managed. Yeah. Excellent. Alright. I have a super advanced question for you that I've never asked anyone else before, but I think you, you have the background for it. So we spend at niche, we spend an awful lot of time talking about faster payments, RTP and Fed. Now I'm sure you know about them and the conversation always goes like this.

[00:32:14] Joe Casali: Oh, fed now really good. RTP really good. Oh, they're based on an ISO system. ISO is an international standard. How come we can't send international payments? But from a card perspective, a us, uh, DC uh, perspective, stable coin. You, you, and you've, I imagine have done international. You talked about Lithuania. Does it solve the international problem with a stablecoin?

[00:32:39] Travis Dulaney: Oh, I think stablecoin will be the cross border standard. There's a reason why. There's a reason why Swift is moving to it too. Right. They are the standard today and they, they've just adopted it.

[00:32:51] Joe Casali: And from my understanding, all you need is the wallet on both sides, right.

[00:32:57] Travis Dulaney: Well, you need any point. So, you know, when you say all you need, you know, obviously I gotta speak from the risk and compliance standpoint. So, um, remember something from a bank viewpoint, the two main things you gotta realize and any kind of movement of money, right? And, and the first one is source of funds.

[00:33:11] Travis Dulaney: Where's it coming from? Normally they're less worried about where it's going to, but that's because the a CH and stuff, the way it worked, it was just more worried about where it came from. Like, is it terrorist money? Is it dirty money? What is it? Right? But the two matters too now, right? So this become higher in the importance level.

[00:33:29] Travis Dulaney: But you ju that's why what I talked about before is when you look at a FinTech, right? You go on, what products and service are you offering? Is it a deposit, is it a wallet? Um, is it a prepaid type of problem? Is it, are you just moving money from left to right? Are you holding it? Are you sending it immediately?

[00:33:45] Travis Dulaney: All these factors matter, right? And so the source of funds is about where's that money coming from, right? And you're supposed to back up through all the BS till you get to a c if there is one. To the top B, that's where the nest thing can come in, and that's where the third party systemic risk comes in.

[00:34:03] Travis Dulaney: Right. But, and then the sending down is, you know, we also don't wanna be, you know, uh, you have an institution that's sending money to Arcata, uh, I, um, for some terrorist activity, um, you know that too, because the front, you couldn't identify, but the end was one, then it should have raised the flag. Right.

[00:34:18] Travis Dulaney: That's why it's becoming more important because we're in this interconnected world now. And so, and we gotta be aware of that and not be so naive in our little bubble thinking that, you know, things don't happen. Do you realize I was in a risk assessment and this was the most disturbing thing I think I ever set in.

[00:34:32] Travis Dulaney: So, um, I was in a risk assessment thing when I was part of the secure, um, secure payments when, uh, the faster payment task force, right? I was part of that and a secure payment task force. And we're sitting there listening to, uh, risk assessment. How many times our phones are high. It, and according to them, your phone is being hacked over 8,000 times a day and you don't even know it.

[00:34:54] Travis Dulaney: So that's the systems today, that's just standard bots. There's not a person, these are just bots. So if you think about it, and this is, I keep going back to this and people, you know, you kind of laugh about it because we all do this, but the matrix is a lot more truer than it seems like, right? Um, because they're the sentinels and the bots are real, right?

[00:35:12] Travis Dulaney: And so they're always attacking, always attacking. You just don't know it because there's tons of defenses. So we get naive a lot and we don't realize that we're in the middle and we're being a target of something and then when it happens, they go, oh, I didn't know. Well, because you're not paying attention, just be more aware.

[00:35:30] Travis Dulaney: Right? And we see it now, how many texts do you get from, hi, you were I I'll enjoy the drink last night, or can we get coffee in the morning? I've got so many they get creative in the, in the questions anymore, right?

[00:35:41] Joe Casali: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:42] Travis Dulaney: so my phone number's out there like crazy, so I probably get about 15 of those a day.

[00:35:46] Travis Dulaney: Not to mention the other spec. Right on my text, right? So I even moved out the FBI and, and, um, a lot of comp, a lot of the organizations said start using other ones and then, then here signal gets hacked last week, right? So,

[00:35:59] Joe Casali: Right, right.

[00:36:00] Travis Dulaney: no, you can't, you can run, but you can't hide. That's the problem, right? So we gotta start thinking about how we manage things.

[00:36:06] Travis Dulaney: 'cause eventually every one of us will be, um, touched in some way, in a negative way from the interconnectivity. So we just gotta know what to do, right? That's how.

[00:36:16] Joe Casali: Uh, Travis, this has been excellent. Um, is, is the, the, uh, free service, something easy to say because I'll, I'll get the link afterwards and definitely put it in my show notes. Um, is it easy to say, you wanna say it?

[00:36:27] Travis Dulaney: Yeah, so control scale, right? Uh, control scale is, is meant to help you scale your controls, your compliance controls faster. Um, you know, our first, um, offering has basically given you a. We'll call it a free Dropbox for compliance. Basically, it is a way you can upload and get it all organized in a way, and you can share it with banks got a shareable link that's associated with it.

[00:36:48] Travis Dulaney: Um, and we're also gonna be able to, if you enter it and completely fill it out, we're gonna tell you the laws and the rules that comply to what you are doing, and that's all for free. And so we're. We'll be adding, you know, some other services. If you want to look at your policies and you want us to do a gap analysis on 'em, or, or we want to do a risk assessment on your company.

[00:37:07] Travis Dulaney: 'cause that way you kind of understand what your risk really is when you go in to negotiate with a bank or an investor for that matter. You know, know where you stand, right? What's the old age that they tell you on, um, on, was it Shark Tank? Um, that, um, know your numbers. Know your numbers, right? Compliance is part of those numbers.

[00:37:23] Joe Casali: That's awesome. Excellent. Uh, well thanks for joining me. We need to talk again maybe in six months 'cause, uh, this is really what a, what a, a great solution for a problem that really exists. And, uh, you know, I don't, I don't, I haven't heard of another, uh, group.

[00:37:38] Joe Casali: Attacking it like this. I hear a lot of, educate them. They need to be educated, which is great. You know, here's, here's the, you know, the rules. Um, but, but having a solution. Very cool.

[00:37:48] Travis Dulaney: You know, you can educate, but most people wanna learn anyway. But you have to guide and help them understand where they're going. Contacts matters, right? And so that's what we try to bring. And one of the things that we actually do to kind of leave you with one thing is we have a part of a service that that is embedded in our application.

[00:38:10] Travis Dulaney: That is a lifeline service, so if you get stuck, you can call, call your lifeline and you'll get us and we have a, a frontline support desk that will answer your questions for you.

[00:38:21] Joe Casali: Awesome. Very nice. Um, so we're gonna end it here. Thanks for joining us. Your, your information will be in the, the, uh, show notes below. Everyone. Click like, uh, send a question if you want. And we definitely have to get together in another six months easily. Alright,

[00:38:35] Travis Dulaney: Sounds good. Thanks Joe. I really appreciate you having me.

[00:38:37] Joe Casali: Yeah, no, thank you.