The Fintech OG Series: Neetika Bansal and Shivani Siroya

Hosts Julie VerHage-Greenberg and Lauren Crossett sit down with Neetika Bansal, Business Lead at Stripe, and Shivani Siroya, CEO & Founder of Tala, to explore what’s really changing in fintech and payments infrastructure.

From alternative data underwriting and AI-powered credit models to cross-border payments, stablecoins, embedded finance, and the future of money movement, this conversation dives into how companies are rebuilding financial systems for a global, AI-driven economy.

Neetika shares Stripe’s evolution from payments to financial infrastructure, while Shivani explains how Tala uses behavioral data and AI to expand access to credit and financial resilience worldwide.

Subscribe for more conversations with operators building the future of financial services.

This episode is sponsored by Granola. Try it free for 3 months at granola.ai/thisweekinfintech using code THISWEEKINFINTECH.

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Julie VerHage-Greenberg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-verhage-greenberg-1748801b

Lauren Crossett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-crossett-b3752126

Neetika Bansal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neetika-bansal/

Shivani Siroya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shivanisiroya/

About The Fintech OGs

Former Bloomberg Fintech reporter Julie VerHage-Greenberg leads panels of the people who’ve taken Fintech from a hashtag to an industry through discussions on where we see the industry moving, what it takes to stay on top of the enormous changes that are still gripping the financial services industry,  and what they have learned as the best leaders in the field.  

Listen for the best up-to-date know-how from leaders in banking, payments, venture capital, fintech entrepreneurs, and all of those that have recreated financial services, and are still at it.

Transcript

Intro

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 0:04

Everyone, even in 2026, when fintech can spin up cards and minutes and move money across borders in real time, it's still hard to decipher transactions. That's why financial institutions turn to Spade. Spade is the data and AI platform that turns messy transaction streams into structured, verified records in real time. To learn more, head to spade.com. That's S P A D E.com. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of FinTech OGs. I'm here with my co-host Lauren Crossett of Spade, and we have two, I mean another all female episode. I love this for, and we have one more on the docket too. This is great. Um so we have Neetika Bansal, who is at Stripe, and then Shivani Siroya, who is the founder of Tala, um, both very much in the payment space, stablecoins, all the things. So I'm sure this episode will stir a little bit more that way. Whereas like last one was more lending. We've had other ones that were more consumer behavior and everything. So I'm glad we're we're getting a full spectrum here. And who there's so much going on in payments today and every day. So I'm really excited to have you guys here. Um, Natika, why don't you give us a quick background on you, and then Shivani will have you do the same.

Neetika Bansal 1:13

Hi, super excited to be here. Thanks for having me. My name is Neetika. I've been at Stripe for the past eight years, and in my current role, I'm a business lead for Kinect and money management. So, what that means is that I manage manage product engineering operations strategy, basically responsible for two of our key businesses. One is Connect, that serves the largest platforms or marketplaces in the world. Think like a Shopify or Dodash. You know, these are users with really critical money movement needs around the world globally. And I also manage our money management business. So these are these this is the entire infrastructure

Meet Stripe And Tala Leaders

Neetika Bansal 1:50

at Stripe that moves money to many different countries in many different currencies and does it cheaply and effectively. And also all the products that we build on top of it. So our banking products, our products to do card issuing, our products to do financing. I'm excited to chat with you, Shivani, about that. And and then also I'm responsible for our crypto offering, which is now, you know, in this in this year, crypto is how money moves. So just that's that's my remit. Excited to be here.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 2:19

Yeah, especially internationally and stuff too. Did you guys know each other before we organized this episode or no? No? Well, it's about time that you guys met then. So I'm glad we did this.

Shivani Siroya 2:29

I know. I I think our teams would have made us meet uh probably in the next week. So this is kind of amazing.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 2:34

Amazing. Well, Shivani, I'll let you give your background too. You you started tall of what? It's been, I want to say it's like 12 or 13 years now. It makes me feel really old.

Shivani Siroya 2:42

Uh we actually just crossed our 10-year mark. Congratulations. Thank you.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 2:48

Yeah. Yeah. Um I don't feel as old anymore. 10's better than 13. So thank you.

Shivani Siroya 2:54

Well, and I think sometimes, you know, I think, especially when thinking about the opportunity we're going after and what I think of as like, you know, I think Neetika and I can probably agree on this. I think the structural um kind of complexity of this and how a lot of what we've all had to be doing for the last 10 years is really building that kind of foundational infrastructure. It's like, okay, now we're at that inflection point where all of this actually becomes possible to unlock. Um, so I'm super psyched actually to kind of be at that milestone 10 years in because I think the hard work is paying off. So on my end, um my background uh started Tala 10 years ago and really started it to solve a problem. Um, the problem we're solving is affecting at least four billion people around the world. Because I actually think that, you know, when we think about access to credit, it is not only centered on the underserved customer anymore. And it's really about, you know, how do we offer again the right credit product at the right time to individuals all around the world in any experience that they're in. So prior to starting Tala, I worked across uh two investment banking experiences on the equity research and mergers and acquisition side, um, studied data science and econometrics, went to go work at the UN Population Fund, and um over that five-year period got very close to this problem that we're solving and interviewed about 3,500 individuals in person and really got to, in some ways, become like a walk in QuickBooks, shadowing how they used money, how they made money, and what those mental decisions were. Um, and then realized, okay, this is where they feel stuck. This is where the purchasing power is. And so, how do we really use daily life data, which I think puts us all on the same playing field to actually create a new kind of credit score or decision engine, as we like to call it, um, that anybody can use. And I think that simplicity is what has enabled us to now work across eight countries and serve 14 million customers and deploy close to about $9 billion in access to unsecured credit to a customer base that's been largely overlooked.

Lauren Crossett 5:12

That's amazing. And when you mentioned that you feel like you're at this like inflection point or moment 10 years later, um, we'd love to hear more about that. And and if like, is there a specific tailwind that you think is is changing the situation right now that's that's evolved over the last 10 years? Like certainly, you know, at Spade, we we think a lot about data and how now that's like a valuable asset. And so maybe that's one of the tailwinds that you're you're seeing as well, is that there's this openness to consider alternative alternative data. But I'd love to hear your perspective.

Shivani Siroya 5:51

Yeah, I can start. And then I think Neetika, um, I think even on the I think so much of what I'll say is the data actually always existed. And um, I think some of this is how do we capture that data? Um, and you know, 10 years ago, I think the insight that I had was, you know, systems uh like Android, they were open, open platforms. And if we start to think again, not about the more macro databases and what you know traditional data is, but instead put the power in consumers' hands, I think we open up actually what's possible. And so that was that first insight, and that existed. So I started to see that customers were moving from feature

Alternative Data And Modern Underwriting

Shivani Siroya 6:33

phones to smartphones. Um, and then that kind of behavioral data and how we could think about cash flow in a different way and actually think about okay, when I think of a credit score, right, my credit score is made up of two things, or actually just you know, credit worthiness is do I have the capacity today to make that payment? Um, or in the future, will I have it? The second is do I have a willingness or kind of character aspect that has shown consistency? And so I am likely to repay that. And I think that's where we started thinking about okay, could we use cell phone data in terms of how someone might even use a cell phone plan as a proxy for how they use income? Um, and I think having those kinds of insights, that's enabled us to really think about contextual data and not, you know, build, I would say, static models, but actually now building, you know, what everyone's calling kind of world models or more the causal inference models. Um, so I think we all have new terms for it, but I think the data has always existed. And then I think the second piece I think that you're alluding to is on the infrastructure side, I think a few things have really changed. I think one, um, the deployment of infrastructure in terms of the similarity across geographies is now there. And so um, when we look at opening up, you know, multiple markets in LADAM, we can actually use the same global infrastructure. And it's not always as bespoke. I think on the cash rail side, it's still somewhat you know customized. Um, but doing identity, doing kind of again the underwriting, we've actually seen there's a lot more structural similarities. Um and then the last piece is on the currency side, stable coins on the back end are becoming something that all of us are much more comfortable with.

Neetika Bansal 8:23

So we've seen a similar, um, I would say, you know, the if we have to describe the 10-year arc at Stripe and what we've seen there. I've all also almost been there for a decade. So we're we're giving you decade stories here. Um so Stripe's Stripe now builds global financial infrastructure. And if you if if you look at our mission, it's to increase the global GDP of the internet. And in that, in those in that last decade, we've seen this happen via you know, like these like seminal moments. So the first one is um if you remember how Stripe started, we started with serving the startups. You know, we started with giving them an API to accept payments on the internet. It was a very simple I think the beauty of the product was that it was very simple. It was like seven lines of code, anybody could insert it in their, you know, in their app and start accepting payments. And that was the discovery of the problem. And then and then you look at the second trend, which is SaaS became really big. And so we started working with all of these platforms that I described. You know, we have 70,000 of these platforms and Stripe serving 11 million businesses. And and they're in Shivani, I think they're serving a lot of these like small SMB businesses that we would not serve directly. And so Stripe started building infrastructure for these platforms that were enabling these SMBs to a great scale. And and also almost like every corner of the economy is impacted by these platforms that are serving these SMBs, you know, whether it's travel, whether it's healthcare, whether it's spa businesses and whatnot. And then I think the, and then and I think the next phase that we

Stripe’s Decade Of Platform Shifts

Neetika Bansal 9:56

all saw was the rise of fintech, if you all remember, where like now everybody was becoming a fintech company. Everybody was uh sort of uh embedding financial services in their app. And then this last last just in the last six months to a year, we are seeing the rise of the AI economy. So we are building the economic infrastructure for AI companies, which means you know we're accelerating the growth of um the AI companies. So something like almost every company on the AI, Forbes AI hundred list is on trade, which is which is fascinating. And these companies are changing what they need from us and changing our roadmap. So, for example, all of these AI companies tend to be global from day one. So they have great need for, you know, like if you look at a lovable, they are they are selling to something like 150 different countries. And it's just so fascinating that their products are far more digital than than the than what has come before, and they can be sold to anyone. And so they have great demands of being global from day one. So something like stable coins uh that you mentioned are a really critical way of how money is now moving cross-border. Or if you look at uh a bunch of these uh these companies, they have need of running their operations globally. So, how do you move money cross-border is meaningfully changing with and accelerating with uh stable coins, with having this technology which is instant free and um uh sorry, instant cheap and um uh talent. Cut out the feel uh and work unfortunate talent. Uh right. So I think I think just that these are like AI and stable coins are two fundamental shifts in this industry that have happened just in the last year. It feels crazy crazy to say this, but just in the last year, they always existed, but just in the last year, the the ramp has gone uh from like this to this, which is which is pretty incredible.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 11:52

Yeah, one thing, I mean, spade isn't a global company as of now, and Tala obviously does do lending and stuff around the world. What's the difference in different countries and whatnot? Just about how easy it is to digest the data. Because I think what Lauren was referring to is that Spade has made it a lot easier to like clean up the data and really make true, accurate decisions based on what you're seeing. Um the data has technically always been there, but it might not be the easiest thing to read through and make decisions off of.

Shivani Siroya 12:21

True. Um, I would still argue, though, that I think when you, you know, we've been working with alternative data since the very beginning. And so to your point, the data has always been noisy. Um I think maybe what I would say is I think you're right in that, okay, there's more tools to clean up the data and speed that up. Um so even our speed of decisioning has increased in terms of how fast we can actually approve a customer. It's like in seconds at this point. Um, I would say the second piece is actually adding in uh adding in multiple data sources. So I think in the very beginning, we really thought of it as, okay, there's our own kind of application and our proprietary data, and then there's this kind of information that we can gather behaviorally from our customers from the device. Um, what's kind of sped up is now our ability to

Cleaner Data And Faster Decisions

Shivani Siroya 13:14

integrate and actually bring in, again, using AI, new unstructured data. Um so that can be things like video, it can be voice memos, it can be uh pictures of a store, it can be anything. And so your ability again to underwrite um in a very dynamic manner across a spectrum has also increased. And I think that's the aspect of um just the availability, I wouldn't say the availability, but the actual ability to ingest and then use it very quickly in uh decisioning.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 13:46

Totally, totally. Question for you guys. So like what why stay in fintech? Obviously, Shivani, you've founded a company in this space. Um, but Neetika and Shivani both, like what makes you excited to work in this space every single day? And like, do you still think if you were just starting out fresh today, you'd still choose fintech, or do you think there's something else out there that might be more exciting? Obviously, there's so much going on in AI. Stablecoins I'll still consider fintech, but not all of AI is fintech. Um, so I would love your thoughts there. So we we get some younger folks that are watching the podcast too.

Neetika Bansal 14:20

I have a um super embarrassing journey about how I landed in fintech. So I'll start there and then I'll tell you why I've stayed.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 14:27

I feel like most journeys are a little embarrassing though. Like something random got you into it, and then you just sort of like stayed.

Neetika Bansal 14:33

Totally. So I was uh before this, I was at Google and I was doing consumer, and so it was just completely different than what I do today. And uh I remember interviewing with Stripe when it was like 500 people, you know, it was not it was not small, but it wasn't, it wasn't the 11,000 company that we are today. And um I remember interviewing with them, I really enjoyed my interviews and had like no idea what they did. You know, I was just like it's a company to be with. And and my husband was uh, or back then, he was a huge fan because they had this excellent engineering reputation. They've

Why Fintech Still Feels Worth It

Neetika Bansal 15:07

always had this like excellent engineering reputation. So that was one reason. And and then the second reason was um uh just the mission really deeply resonated with me because I was like, oh yeah, like the the like fundamental concept of economy is that somebody's selling and somebody's buying, and that means that money needs to move, and that's what Tripe does. So even as like a complete fintech noob, I was like, okay, I can understand why this needs to exist in the world. And and I think that mission resonated with me. And um, and again, to continue the embarrassing story a little bit, I joined Tripe, and my first question was, what is ACH? And then I learned uh, you know, money moves via fires, and I was like, oh my god, I've made a mistake, but here I am, eight years later. And then to your question on why I have stayed, I think this is the most dynamic industry that's out there. It's just, it's I I love it. Every year something changes, every year, um, you know, it's it's like a especially payments. If you look at it, I describe it as like a forever optimization problem. You can't you have uh you can go through the entire stack. There are new ways of payments coming out. Uh almost, you know, the the pace of innovation there has accelerated. There are more buyers coming online around the world, there are more merchants going online around the world. And so I just think it's like the most dynamic space to be in. Every year, something new happens that makes me sort of recommit to the space. And again, as I mentioned just in the last year, uh, the fact that uh you get to play a part in building infrastructure for agents and even sort of conceiving of this world that doesn't exist yet, right? Like just look at this thing. Um, an agent, we believe that agents will become primary actors on the internet of how money is spent. And we believe that uh that's that's sort of the buying side. And then we believe that on the on the selling side, you really have to figure out how to like safely sell to these new economic actors. I think it's just super fascinating. So the fact you get to play like all of these different hats and roles as part of fintech is uh just it like deeply resonates with me.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 17:15

Totally. And Shivani, even though you're a founder, you could still find a way to leave fintech if you really wanted to. So what keeps you doing what you do every day?

Shivani Siroya 17:23

Um, well, I think actually similar to Nithika, I mean, I didn't start, I mean, I started, of course, in investment banking, so maybe financial services broadly. Um, but I would say, you know, I really I studied um, I studied public health. And that was really what I thought I was gonna do with my data science and econometrics background was I was gonna go get a PhD in economics and stay focused on, okay, how do we actually from a public health standpoint, how do we help can individuals, the global majority, anyone, actually um spend money on preventative health? Um, and that was really what I think I I got stuck in, where I realized, okay, well, how is anyone to actually spend money on their health or um, you know, go and actually have adherence to um, you know, malaria prevention or HIV and AIDS medicine when they don't have money. And I think it kind of I think it shocked me not only to understand the magnitude of that and to realize, okay, we have billions of dollars going into these social, you know, programs, whether it's education, whether it's healthcare. Um, and at the end of the day, we can continue to deploy money that way at the NGO nonprofit level, or we could also think about how do we fix the system to make it possible for individuals to actually be able to have increased purchasing power, improve their businesses, improve their quality of life. You know, I think right now we estimate that the kind of market opportunity in terms of purchasing our power to unlock is about $5.7 trillion. Um, and so it's a massive, I think, opportunity and problem that still hasn't been solved. So I came at it from really saying, I mean, I was as a naive founder, I was like, well, I really want to work on fixing public health issues. So I guess I better go fix the financial system first. Um, I was really naive in that I just really looked at it as saying, I need to go do this thing. And so I guess I have to go fix, you know, credit first. And then that kind of led me on that journey. I think along the way, what's made me stay is one I still believe, again, to Neetika's point, access to customized financial products that are fair and flexible is the underpinning of our entire society, right? Um, the ability to not always have to, you know, be in emergency or in shocks. Um, we need these instruments. And I think, again, with where we're going, um, I think it gets so exciting when agents can actually help you make better decisions as well. Um, and so there's that aspect of it in terms of the innovation space, is just like so awesome. The last thing I'll say that I think touched me along the way is when we again think about money, it is such an emotional thing. And when I think about the customers I've interviewed or our own customers we've served, one of the things we've seen change the most and us seeing or measuring our impact has been this aspect of financial confidence and decision making. And we've really seen that, you know, customers report, over 80% of customers report, you know, that improved financial decision making. And more than 70 people, 70% of people report the ability to now withstand shocks. And so for me, I think that's that aspect of it ties back to public health for me, of saying, at the end of the day, if we can move people, even if this might sound woo-woo, from scarcity mindset into this ability to actually have choice and control over their financial life. Um, that's ultimately what's really made me stay.

Neetika Bansal 21:13

This point really heavily resonates with me, Shivani. It's this concept of, you know, whether it's via financing as you're doing, or you know, via stable coins where we're enabling money movement broadly, just this fact that you're empowering individuals and entrepreneurs and all of these geographies to participate in the economy is just such a huge deal.

Shivani Siroya 21:32

Yeah. And I think, you know, I think it's so interesting because the word that we use internally at Tala is agency, right? And that's why I think it's so cool to now start to think about how do we ma last mile again through infrastructure, the ability for anyone to have an agent that is much much smarter and I think capable of um you know of helping them kind of further that that financial life.

Lauren Crossett 21:57

Yeah, and we spent A lot of time getting different perspectives on this podcast, especially about like your career story. And so one of the things that I'm really curious, uh, Neetika, you you mentioned that like um, you know, every year you kind of like recommit. I don't know if that was just uh phrasing or if that is how you think about it, but it resonated a lot with me. Like I know that's kind of I I think in chunks and like sprints. Um and I'd love to hear if like if that's been remained consistent for you and maybe you know how that approach has helped your longevity at Stripe even.

Neetika Bansal 22:36

Yeah. Um, I think one of the things I would describe in um you know the decisions I've made in my career at Stripe, or you know, most of it has been at Stripe, so at Stripe, is um I I think it's just so critical to work on something that you're passionate about. So I'd say that. So, you know, like it is it is just so important to um make sure that the problem resonates with you, that you you wanna uh and the way it happens, in my opinion, is by and I think Shimani's said this uh a few times now, is by spending time with users. You know, it's like really trying to deeply assess their problems and understand the root of those problems, and

Career Longevity Through User Obsession

Neetika Bansal 23:19

uh and try to great at this. Uh so I take no credit, but uh but but even beyond just talking to users, we have like three or four uh different ways in which we gather feedback from our users, you know, because we are we are a large company now, and even at the size we're at, uh our founders interview a user every week. And as a leadership team, we then look at uh our use, we we also, in addition to that, interview users every two weeks as a leadership group to just understand the like you know thematic problems or thematic opportunities. And then we also, uh, you know, this is one of my favorite things. We we have customer advisory boards where we bring our users together and then we understand um what problems they're facing. So the reason I describe that is because I think that's where the longevity comes from, where you have to care about the problems and you have to care about what do the users want from you. And and the thing that I've found is like every year, I'm like, there's so much more to be done. You know, we're not done yet. There's so much more to be done. There's a phrase that stripes repeat very often, which is we've not won yet. And we truly believe that, which is uh there is so many problems to be solved, and there's just so much demand every year that that we that we have to focus on. And then from a career career perspective, I feel um I think one of the the things that has been really important for me is um just I find Stripe has leaders that have pushed me into roles that have pushed me into opportunities that I did not feel ready for, and then have supported me to do them. You know, and I think that's some there's something really wonderful about that. Uh like I I I take this um example where I came back from my MAT leave, and um I was uh, you know, for a couple of reasons, I uh my manager and my manager's manager were leaving at the same time, and and they were like, here's the payments engineering orc, uh thousand people that we think you're the best person to manage now. And I was, you know, you know, you're coming back from Mat Leave, I don't even have like child care figured out yet. And so it's just just just going through an intense period of um, okay, how do I do this? And and then having people who sort of supported me, uh, and and just fintech is like a multiplayer game. So you sort of get support from not just like your product engineering leaders, but then also your cross-functional partners, but just like having that crew around you has been really valuable.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 25:46

Yeah, I mean, I think if you would have started there and like the team hadn't been as welcoming and willing to answer what ACH was and stuff, I don't know that you would still have the desire to work in fintech anymore if you had this connotation now, like, oh, these people are so mean, they don't like me. I'm so like, this isn't for me type thing. So I I I do think that has a big impact.

Neetika Bansal 26:06

It's a huge impact. You know, curiosity is encouraged. So that is great.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 26:11

Very cool. One one other thing I want to ask, both of you seem very passionate about what you're doing. And I wonder if there's something from your childhood that you think kind of like helped bring you towards this path. Um, you know, what what you were interested in. Obviously, Shivani, you said that you thought you were gonna go into public health, but this is this is a form of public health, just a different, it's a financial health versus uh medical health.

Shivani Siroya 26:37

Totally. Uh I totally resonate with the idea that it is financial health. And again, like I said, that idea of like the confidence, right? And how we think about the mindset of the consumer. Um, I would say, you know, my background or my childhood, you know, I grew up between India and New York City. And I think I was exposed to, you know, I think populations that didn't have access to the same opportunities very early on. I think the other thing, you know, maybe I'll say is um I'm an only child, but I have 27 first cousins. And I think there's another aspect of, again, as I think, you know, founders or the resiliency or whatever you want to call it, um, similar to what Neetika said, I honestly believed anything was possible. I don't know. There was this aspect that nobody ever really kind of sugarcoated it or kind

Resilience, Agency, And Cockroach Mentality

Shivani Siroya 27:32

of hand-holded, and but they all just kind of made it so that whether it was a thing I wanted to do, you know, starting like a magazine or, you know, helping people um update their resumes, you know, it was a random kind of job I had for a while, and I was like, you know, 10 years old helping 30-year-olds. Um, but it was sort of this aspect of like, you know, if you really have something you want to go do, there's a way to go do it. Um, and I think I say that because what I realized was I believe that. And that was because of, you know, the environment I was raised in, you know, both from an income as well as the people around me. But not everybody had that. And that's that piece of I think what I always come back to is, you know, what I hear from our customers is it's not just about the access to credit. It's about dignity, it's about agency. You know, we've we've heard from our customers, hey, this is the Kenya we want. And so it's it's cool to be part of something where you feel like you're fundamentally changing the culture of a system.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 28:36

There's a couple of things that resonate with me there. And I'm I'm tying it into, you know, not just how you became a founder, but how you've survived as a founder too. Because it's not just like easy every single day. In fact, 99% of days are not easy. So the fact that you were always taught anything is possible both makes it so when you're pitching investors that you're like, you're very sold on this day idea. And if an investor says no, you're like, okay, you're lost. Like, I'm gonna go to the next one. And two, anytime something bad happens, it's like, well, it's still like, let's just get through it. How look, everything is figure outable. Let's figure out how to get through this patch and we'll keep going on that upward just with the downs in there as well. So I'd love your your your thoughts on that.

Shivani Siroya 29:19

I I describe it as you've kind of got to be a cockroach. Um, I think the greatest, no, honestly, right? Like I had an investor who um is on our cap table and he was like, gosh, you guys, you I mean, it is, you know, and he was the greatest compliment that he gave our team was one, this idea of like we're a force of nature, right? And cockroaches can withstand even nuclear attacks.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 29:43

And so it reminds me, isn't it Despicable Me Four that the villain is a cockroach and like they can't defeat him because cockroaches are indestructible?

Shivani Siroya 29:51

It's exactly like no no, that's exactly it. And so during COVID, you know, we we worked already globally at that point, right? And it was this moment of just like, oh my God, we have to rethink everything. We rebuilt our infrastructure, we rebuilt all our models because we needed to now think about different different data if no one's moving, right? Um, and you know, we did all of that in a span of two weeks. And I think it was we, you know, we had a Slack channel that was called Cockroach Mentality. Um, and it was just all about what could we do to one get back up and running, but also what could we do to build in that further resiliency to prepare us for a whole new future. Um, and I and I think it goes back to what are you doing it for? And then also to your point, what are what were you exposed to early that kind of gives you that um that maybe the the real value and your why?

Neetika Bansal 30:47

And Shivani, you mentioned something really important there, which is that you did it in two weeks. I feel like that's that's that's one sprint. One sprint. It's an overlooked point where you know, speed matters, speed really matters, and and you know, Stripe's a much bigger company, but I think we have the same philosophy that uh the speed with which you move matters, and it matters even more with the speed with which our entire, you know, broader industry is moving. We're seeing so much change happen with AI and and to be able to even capitalize on all of these opportunities or create new opportunities, you just have to put things out there with speed. That's a beautiful thing.

Shivani Siroya 31:25

And I'm curious if you agree with this, and I'm I'm sure other industries are like this, but I think you know, in fintech right now, um, you know, this this like aspect of everything coming together, um, whether it's AI, whether it's stable coins, whether it's, you know, the um the agent side of things, uh the rails, et cetera, I have been just amazed at the collaboration um across the ecosystem. And it doesn't feel like we're in this moment of not to say, of course, everyone wants their competitive, they're driven, those things, but it really feels like everyone is like, hey, let's go realize the opportunity. Um, and and in that sense, really being willing to partner and bring different things to the table.

Neetika Bansal 32:11

Yeah, a thousand percent. I have actually a great example here that that stands out to me, where um we we just had our industry conference sessions, um, I want to say two weeks back. And two of my favorite moments from from that were you know, we announced this uh work that Meta is doing with Stripe, where they are paying their creators using stable coins. And to your point, Shivani, it's like with Stripe, and they're using tempo as a uh as a chain. And so just like there are so many use cases that were not possible without the collaboration

Collaboration, Stablecoins, And New Business Models

Neetika Bansal 32:45

that's happening right now, which is pretty awesome. And I think the second one I would highlight is um it just there is there is so much, um, so many things to our original point of um how it's taken decades worth of infrastructure to get us to this point. Now you have all of these, again, new business models emerging where uh because the the marginal cost of tokens is not zero, then like if if all of these AI companies are charging VR tokens, can you we we demoed this thing where you can pay down that with streaming payments using micropayments and stable coins? So again, there's just this economic model was perhaps not possible without actually having an instrument that would let you do real-time micropayments. And so just I think it's like collaboration is happening and there is a lot of net new use cases that are possible now that were just not possible, even a year back.

Shivani Siroya 33:38

Yeah, I would totally agree with that. I I feel like um it really resonates for me because I think the next step for us is we've actually asked ourselves um that same question of if it's not our app, how would we actually move faster? And so this idea of I don't know what it they say, um kind of if you I think that question of like if you killed yourself, how do you like go faster? I don't know. The the there's something about that, right? Um, whatever that involves. Let's not use that, sorry. Um but essentially, you know, we've really we what we've done in the last quarter, again, with the speed of innovation and what's capable of what we're all capable of now is you know, we've productized our infrastructure. Um, and you know, going back to an inspir, you know, the stripe inspiration for us was how do we make that something that is so simple that any ecosystem that wants to offer access to credit in any form to their customers can actually just take. Um, and so we actually just launched that uh live last week with a stablecoin wallet that focuses across Latin America on digital workers. And, you know, they have an account, they have a payment mechanism, but what they don't have is the ability to underwrite the risk of the consumer. And so we said, well, we don't care about our brand. We actually just care about solving this problem. And I think that's that piece of again, if we if we start to think differently and not have it all be, you know, on us, um, I think one, we get faster at solving the problem, but again, it it presents, I think, the best of all um stakeholders.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 35:20

Uh Nidika, I wanted to ask you, um, thinking through a career low, and I'm just thinking through like timing and stuff. You've seen a lot happen in payments and Stripe since you joined less than a decade ago. Because you were like, you went through COVID, which was, you know, crazy in a good way for Stripe in many ways, because so much spending shifted online. Mom and Pops had to use Stripe, but I'm sure it was also a lot of like, I don't, you didn't have a cockroach Slack channel, but a lot of all hands on deck to just manage this increase in volume, figure things out. Um, so I'd love to hear more about your journey there and maybe um a low, and then we can end on career highs as well.

Neetika Bansal 35:58

Uh I would say definitely, definitely was um, you know, eventually great for uh just how quickly e-commerce came. I I think I think it pulled forward a decade worth of growth in one year, COVID, if I remember. I remember the starts from that time, but that's not how it started. You know, it started with everybody panicking and like not knowing where this is going. And so I think we just went through an intense period of uh all hands on deck, all like figuring out how do we move through this. And also I remember, you know, again, like there, there it's just so nice. There are so many similar themes, Shivani. I remember this period where um, in in a period of four weeks, new products needed to be built because our users did not know

Career Lows, Career Highs, And What’s Next

Neetika Bansal 36:41

how to deal with all the increase in demand, or they did not know how to deal with increase in risk as well in that time period. And so we had to build like three or four net new products in a constrained time period and ship it out there. We had to ship out support articles and functions for our users in a way that you you need to run your business in this intense period of growth and change. And so I think that that was a very interesting time period. And I think I think something similar at a grander scale is happening with AI and how fast the economy is evolving there. Um, I think from a uh career low perspective, um not to give you like an HR answer, you know, where you like interview in your when you give an answer in your interviews and the like weakness is actually a strength, but like you I truly believe that I think my like career lows have been the big periods of transition because I feel like you go through you go through this like loss in identity, you know. You like you were doing this job and you were doing it well, and now you took over this new job and and and you not you're not doing it well because it's A, it's a new ACH is.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 37:44

I shouldn't tell you that. Now I do. Now I do. Uh now you could probably write a book on how painting e-commerce works, so you're good.

Neetika Bansal 37:52

No, but it's like even you know, like the first transition period I went through was like going from being a line manager to like managing uh uh other leaders, then the next transition period I went through is like, okay, now I'm managing our payments engineering org. And then the next transition period I've recently gone through is uh I've I've grown as an engineer and now I uh I sort of became a business leader slash a general manager of uh Stripes businesses. And so the way you think, the way you partner with the sales teams, the way you partner with cross-functional teams is all very different. And and again, I would say that uh like I love this job, but then you know the the first period is uh period of intense doubt of whether can you whether you can even like survive the change, you know, and then the way you're working, the way you're operating has to completely change from day one. Like you I think my the the lesson that I've gone back to, and again, it takes me a while, every transition, but the lesson I've gone back to is like you have to understand it's a different job. You have to understand that you're going to suck at it, and then you have to find your people that will help you. Again, I come back to this. I think I'm I am uh deeply grateful to the people that I'm surrounded with at Stripe who go out of their ways to make sure that you know you're successful in your job. And um, and yeah, that's you know, that's what I would describe as where I've felt the intense period of doubts.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 39:13

Even though HR people always like you always want to give an answer where like a weakness is a strength. I feel like most of the time weaknesses do turn into strengths, you know, which is the framing of it. That's where growth comes from. That's how I would describe it. Totally.

Lauren Crossett 39:26

Yeah, has to be uncomfortable.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 39:28

All right. So let's end on a high note. Career high. What like if you're thinking back to like an amazing moment in this space, what would that have been? It might be launching a new product in the like many new products in the four weeks in such a short time frame, and you hadn't even been there that long yet. Could be a new funding round or a new partner or a new global expansion. Um, what's what's something that comes to mind first? And um describe that moment a little bit, what it felt like.

Neetika Bansal 39:55

Yeah, so I would I would say I'm in it. I'm living in it, which is nice. So um Stripe, easy to remember. So Stripe's been a payments company, you know, that's how we think of Stripe. And now we're getting to build this business, which is money management, which is, you know, okay, you process your payments, it's not passed through, you can do more with your with your money. You we essentially are becoming a financial operating system for our users. You can send funds, you can, we also have our financing product capital, you can uh you can uh borrow money. And then I love the stat, Shivani. Um users that on average accept a loan from Stripe, we see 27% increase in their payments revenue. Isn't that wonderful? Like it's uh it's like you know, they're growing, they're truly growing with the with the uh with the financing that they're getting. And so, how do you move money? How do you give them cards? And and this is a pretty meaningful shift and in the set of capabilities that we can provide to our users. And the fun part is that it's not that we're just doing this in the US, we are doing this in a large number of geographies from day one, US, UK, Europe, Australia, Singapore, Canada. And so the fact that we're able to do this, it's built on again, a lot of work has gone into building the right infrastructure, building the right, you know, across fiat and stable coins, building infrastructure that can support this geo expansion. And I think it's just it feels like a great time to build the sets ray. Yeah, totally. Shivani, what about you?

Shivani Siroya 41:22

I would say uh similar. Um, I would say the last six months has probably um just been kind of the pinnacle. Um, at the same time, I think it took 10 years building across um, you know, the globe, three continents, um, to get here. So, of course, I do think about the impact we've had, the infrastructure we've built. But in the last six months, we've now opened up um five new countries and we have no footprint in the markets. Um, and again, you know, while it might seem like, okay, that's not a big deal, it's to the customer we're serving, nobody has been able to move at that speed. Because now 80% of our infrastructure is deployable without any customization. And so it's really software-led. And so I think proving that we could open Panama and India in the same week, that was something that for our team was a big deal, you know, um, because I think again, regulatory, um, you know, data security, some of those things, right? It's, I think we had to completely change our thinking and really push the bounds on saying, well, no, we're gonna go do it, you know, and how do we make this something that is so simple to do that it's turnkey? And now this idea of which market no longer becomes the question because you can operate anywhere. Then the second piece I would say is this idea that I think similar to what Neetika is saying, around, you know, we've always believed in agency is really about access, choice, and control. And we need to help customers with the money they had yesterday, which is really again savings, um, protecting that money. The second piece is around payments, and then the third piece is around opportunity. And, you know, we are excited now to partner with um others that are already doing those other products. And then again, thinking about the feedback loop around that. Um, and so this new approach around saying, hey, can we embed ourselves into a privy or be on tempo so that any of the family of apps that are actually working on those platforms can just use us, right? And I think that's where you know, some of what we are now starting to launch in Q2 becomes really, I think, that next trajectory for us of saying um we can be anywhere where that customer, that transaction um needs to move from you know the money you earned yesterday into now thinking about your future self and giving customers choice and control.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 43:58

Yeah, they'll want to stay once we hit stock. Recording, they'll want to stay on and have a conversation.

Shivani Siroya 44:03

Oh, yeah. We are actually having one. I need to talk to you back.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 44:08

Oh, too funny. Uh this week in fintech, constantly bringing people together. I love it. Uh well, Lauren, I love this episode. I learned so much, and I I love hearing the background stories and everything too. I always find them so fascinating because we often like you see the headlines about companies doing news and stuff too, but knowing the people behind all of that news is is fascinating.

Lauren Crossett 44:28

Yeah, and then when it's two women who are going to continue to do great work together after this, even better.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 44:36

There we go. There we go. I agree. Uh well, thank you so much, you guys, for joining us. Um, I appreciate it. Um, and I'm excited for people to hear this episode. I think they will they will share Lauren and my sentiment.

Shivani Siroya 44:48

Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you.