Episode 19 - Stephane Dehaies
In this episode, I sit down with Stephane Dehaies, CEO of Spendesk Financial Services.
Guests
Show notes
In this episode, I sit down with Stephane Dehaies, CEO of Spendesk Financial Services.
Before leading Spendesk Financial Services, Stephane was previously partner at KPMG UK in the financial services practice, but also Deputy CEO and COO at Western Europe, Head of Integration & Separation at RBS / NatWest Group and ABN Amro, passing through experiences at Deloitte and KPMG US.
Now, he is building Spendesk Financial Services (SFS), a new payment system and infrastructure linked to the well known spend management software in Europe, and one of the most interesting new entries in the fintech market from a third party. Responsible for the SFS P&L and strategic partnerships, and leading teams across offices in Paris, London, Berlin and Madrid.
With him, we will talk about the evolution from a spend management system to a fintech service, the challenges behind the over regulation in Europe, but also the shift from a very well structured environment to a startup, and finally the importance of partnerships in fintech.
In this episode
Stéphane Dehaies, CEO of Spendesk Financial Services, explains why the spend-management company built its own regulated payments arm: to own the full customer experience, scale reliably and innovate faster. He sets out Spendesk's platforms and partners across Europe, the UK and the US, its international payments with Wise, and why B2B payments are becoming smarter, automated and real-time. He argues fintechs must now prove profitability and sustainable growth.
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Spendesk Financial Services
- 2:29From banks and consulting to a fintech
- 7:23Why Spendesk built its own payments arm
- 11:01Platforms and numbers
- 15:53International payments with Wise
- 20:40Europe, the UK and the US
- 24:08Where B2B payments are heading
- 29:49Local vs global payment players
- 34:12The state of fintech
- 40:19How Spendesk uses AI
Key facts
Stéphane is CEO of Spendesk Financial Services, the payments arm of Spendesk, and joined about 18 months earlier after seven years as a partner at KPMG.
Spendesk is a spend management and procurement platform for SMB and mid-market companies, a unicorn with hubs in Paris, London, Berlin and Spain.
Spendesk Financial Services is a regulated payment institution in Europe.
Spendesk has processed more than 30 billion in cumulative spend for its customers.
Spendesk serves more than 3,000 companies in over 35 countries, representing more than 200,000 users.
Spendesk runs three platforms: its own in Europe, a partner platform in the UK, and a US partnership with Marqeta for European customers with US operations.
Spendesk partners with Wise Platform to offer international payments to about 30 countries.
Spendesk is working with Dust to embed AI in every department.
Spendesk took payments in-house for customer experience, platform robustness and scalability, innovation, and access to global partners.
Payments are a growth and profitability lever for non-financial companies too.
B2B payments will become smarter, more automated and real-time, with more collaboration between banks and fintechs, especially in the UK.
Fintechs are now judged on profitability and sustainable growth rather than growth alone.
Questions and answers
Why build a payments arm inside a SaaS company?
Payment is the last step of the spend workflow; owning it improves the experience, robustness and speed of innovation.
Why partner with Wise?
Its track record with similar customers, footprint in the main countries and agility, plus competitive exchange rates.
How is Spendesk using AI?
In OCR from the start, and now across every department, including KYC and transaction monitoring.