"Assistant restaurant manager" at the supermarket chain Hy-Vee may not sound like a payments job, and it's not. But it's also not that far removed.
"I had some idea of the world behind accepting credit cards and reporting," said Vinny Crivaro, who for the past half year has been sales director at VizyPay, which offers a mix of in-store and digital payment technology for mostly small businesses. "When I left [Hy-Vee] and was looking for a job, I knew that payments could be a place where I could gain new knowledge."
While some firms in the payments industry are cutting staff — notably in the
VizyPay has added about 60 new staff members in the past few months, doubling its workforce. The company has made a concerted effort to expand its talent pool. More than 50% of the hires are minorities and 25% are women.
"The bulk of our employees do not have payment experience," said Frank Pagano, VizyPay's managing partner. "But how can we change the industry if we keep hiring people who do things the way they have always been done?"
VizyPay, which was founded in 2017, finishes its job applicant screening with an interview conducted by Pagano and Austin Mac Nab, the founder and CEO.
The interview seeks to determine the applicant's personal background and motivations that go beyond the payments industry. Mac Nab's past jobs included a stint as a store manager for GameStop, and Pagano previously worked in business development for Energy Masters Commercial, a firm that works with utility companies to save energy costs.
"The vast majority of the payments industry offers similar products," Pagano said. The company's attempt to reach small businesses includes employing staff with experience in small business, he said.
The culture has helped VizyPay expand quickly while earning accolades for its corporate culture. It was one of
"Payments interested me because of how fast-paced it is," said Andrew Utterback, solutions architect team lead at VizyPay. Utterback's background includes work at DHI Group, an employment placement firm; and a sales position at Decker Sports USA, which manufactures and sells team uniforms. "The future of credit cards is ever changing and I figured, why not jump at the chance to be part of an industry that is still at the beginning?"
Think different
Companies in the payments industry are looking outside of their traditional hiring pools as pressure builds in a challenging economy.
"Innovation comes from thinking about problems differently," said Sal Rehmetullah, president and co-founder of Stax, a payment technology firm and merchant acquirer.
But he also helped found and lead Burger Bar, a more traditional retail business.
In an earlier interview,
To meet the growing demand, banks are faced with a choice of hiring, reskilling or outsourcing.
"We have hired multiple executives down to front-line team members from different industries for the sole reason of bringing a fresh perspective," said Rehmetullah. "Having people ask the 'naive' question is generally a good thing. It forces us to ensure that we are asking the basic simple questions and constantly reminding ourselves to not let our processes get in the way."
Having a background that's decidedly outside of the financial services industry can also create a perspective that can inform the mission of a new company.
"What's going on now in the payments industry is 'skill proximity' in hiring," said Sean Hinton, CEO of SkyHive, a consultancy that helps find job applicants with the right skills. SkyHive tracks the evolution of the labor economy in more than 160 countries and has worked with clients such as the Canadian military on improving inclusion and diversity.
"In the past, firms relied on job titles and credentials to locate new staff. Now employers are trying to break away from job titles to look instead at skill sets," Hinton said.
Finding a purpose
In some cases, prior experience from other industries creates or informs a worldview that can be applied to financial technology.
"We think of credit cards as a tool to pay for things, but how can we vote with our credit cards? How do we use data to unlock insights about our own behaviors?" said Cathryn Peirce, CEO of Carbon Zero Financial, a fintech that measures the carbon footprint of payment transactions using an application programming interface to connect to banks, fintechs and other companies.
Carbon Zero, which was founded in 2021, recently partnered with Visa to power incentives that allow cards to allocate rewards points to carbon-offsetting projects that neutralize the cardholder's carbon footprint.
As a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Peirce worked on a project aimed at reducing sexual violence in fraternities and sports teams. She then backpacked through Africa, Europe and Asia. Peirce was also a Fulbright scholar, working in the Ivory Coast during a civil war on projects aimed at improving conditions for women.
"These experiences gave me the knowledge to ask how we take a system that's antiquated and change that system to meet certain goals," Peirce said. "Frankly, finance is ripe for that."
Sky Hive's Hinton says a yoga instructor or a small-business owner may have organization skills, or business management or budgeting skills, that are transferable to a fintech or digital payment company. The remaining gaps can be filled through training.
"Today we have a million-plus-person
