In Fintech, the Basics Still Matter: “We Answer the Phone”
4-17-2025
Congratulations to Payarc, winner of this year's ETA prestigious ISO of the Year award!
In an industry obsessed with cutting-edge technology, Payarc's CEO reveals an unexpectedly simple approach that helped the company process $8B annually and land on the Inc 5000 list.
The human factor:
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Back to basics – "It's not very sexy, but we answer the phone," CEO Zach Martinez told ETA's John Losh, challenging the notion that technology alone drives fintech success.
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Surprising hiring priority – While technical skills matter, Martinez ranks "nice people" as his most crucial hiring criterion, revealing how interpersonal qualities affect scaling.
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Culture vs. automation – As companies grow, maintaining personal touch becomes harder, highlighting a tension point for all scaling fintechs.
What AI is actually revealing:
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Analysis of 3,000+ data points showed pricing matters far less than most companies think – less than 20% of customer churn relates to cost.
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The bigger challenge isn't predicting who will leave (they've achieved 80% accuracy) but figuring out what to do with that knowledge.
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AI is shifting from predictive models to actionable intervention strategies.
Industry evolution:
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B2B payments quietly transforming – new technologies like push-to-card and RTP payments seeing increased adoption.
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Behind-the-scenes enablement becoming as valuable as consumer-facing innovation.
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Traditional banks increasingly adopting Visa and Mastercard direct products.
Between the lines: The conversation reveals how the payments industry – despite its technical complexity – still struggles with basic customer service challenges that most industries faced decades ago.
🎧 Listen now: For the full conversation including Payarc's innovative AI approaches and deeper insights on embedded payment trends, check out the complete interview on the Transaction Trending Podcast with John Losh.
About ETA
The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) is the world’s leading advocacy and trade association for the payments industry. Our members span the breadth of significant payments and fintech companies, from the largest incumbent players to the emerging disruptors in the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries around the world. ETA members make commerce possible by processing approximately $56.75 trillion annually in purchases and P2P payments worldwide and deploying payments innovation to merchants and consumers.
ETAs membership spans the breadth of the payments industry to include independent sales organizations (ISOs), payments networks, financial institutions, transaction processors, mobile payments products and services, payments technologies, and software providers (ISV) and hardware suppliers. For more information, visit electran.org.