This week on Commerce Code we speak with Christian Widhalm, Chief Executive Officer of Bloom Credit. Bloom Credit's goal is to help everyone from startups to established banks easily access and furnish accurate credit data. The goal is to support the creation of accessible, unique financial products for everyone. Today, we are talking about a new product Bloom has developed that makes it easy for consumers to permission access to their payments data in a way that can dramatically improve credit file accuracy and access to credit for consumers ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Joe Fitzgerald, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Dfinitiv. Dfinitiv has introduced a new platform they call SmartOffers, focused on significantly improving CLO benefits for FIs, merchants and consumers. Today we are talking about: The growing gap between app-based consumer experiences - especially what Gen Z is most used to - and what CLOs currently deliver The big forces reshaping the CLO environment - and how that may or may not fix the "stuck flywheel" of CLO What is a CLO anyway ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Jeff Richardson, Senior Vice President & Head of Marketing at VantageScore, and host of The Score podcast, a source for credit score related news and analysis. VantageScore's mission is to innovate to deliver more predictive, innovative and inclusive credit score models for the US market. Today we are talking about: The most recent VantageScore market adoption study, and what it tells us about the state of credit risk Lenders' attitudes towards 2024, as we come out of a bit of a rough year in 2023 Innovations that are changing the market for consum ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Ingrid Wilson, Head of Partnerships & Client Growth at Olive. Olive builds digital commerce platforms for fintechs - and those platforms offer consumers fundraising, financial wellness, and membership and loyalty solutions. Today we are talking about: The buy vs. build decision fintechs are making as they create customer-facing capabilities Risks that change that buy vs. build decision - and other factors like speed and cost The talent market - and the size of fintech in the global scheme of things ..read more

This week on Commerce Code, we speak with Alex Adelman, CEO & Co-Founder of Lolli. Lolli is a cashback and bitcoin rewards platform that lets users earn rewards at over 25,000 leading stores and brands. Lolli is based in New York City and founded in 2018 by Alex. In the interview, we talk about: Lolli’s bank-integrated card-linked offer platform bitcoin-driven loyalty rewards rich transactional data used to create compelling experiences and offers for consumers, and there are a few detours into psychology, history, finance and technology to boot ..read more

This week on Commerce Code, we speak with Kelli Hobbs, VP, Head of US Business Development at Valuedynamx, and Paras Joshi, Strategy & Development Officer at Valuedynamx. Valuedynamx is a leading global provider of purchase rewards, and they are a part of Collinson, which provides a leading global travel ecosystem.   We are talking about: Challenges in the increasingly competitive loyalty space Ways to maintain or enhance engagement among loyalty program members How to increase value to consumers and merchants by making program points redeemable where consumers most want to redeem th ..read more

This week on Commerce Code, Dan is coming back from a conference on Web3 at the University of Chicago - he was there to interview Ryne Miller, the former General Counsel of FTX U.S. They had a fascinating conversation and Dan is reflecting on some of his takeaways from the conference overall:   Scandals and whether they have anything to do with Web3 or innovation Risk and innovation - and different kinds of risk Global markets and innovation   Stay tuned as we creep up and look over the precipice of the volcano at the risks and possibilities of Web3 and cryptocurrencies ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Debby Lee, Senior Director of Partnerships at Cartera, A Rakuten Company. As a division of Rakuten, Cartera is the largest source of Shop & Earn offers in the U.S. and Canada. And as we found out in the interview, Rakuten means “optimism” in Japanese. Indeed it’s an optimistic episode this week as we’re talking about the consumer in 2024 and holiday shopping as we round out 2023. We hit: Changes in consumer behavior - “the great trade-down” to more affordable brands Persistent spending among affluent consumers How this impacts loyalty program plann ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Jeff Mankoff, Founder & CEO of vPromos. We're talking about current challenges with the CLO ecosystem and business models, as well as process and technology simplification as a potential disruptor in CLO and fintech more broadly ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Jeremy Frick, Amy Mullins and Natali Ryzhikova from BN, an Augeo Company. We're talking AI, humans, paid media and organic media. Brand Networks describes itself as pioneers in AI-driven social technologies that revolutionize global audience engagement—empowering organizations to deliver unrivaled brand experiences through authentic, scalable solutions that define the social landscape through technology innovation. We’re going to unpack that in the interview - What does that mean in practice? What’s the role for human expertise? Where does AI fit in? H ..read more