Oban MacTavish of Spade on creating a real-time system of enhanced card merchant data

Fintech One•On•One

The core of the card payments system as we know it today has been around for many decades. This system has a number of major shortcomings, not least of which is the 45-character limited established by the ISO 8583 standard. That may have been enough characters back in the 1980s but it is severely limiting in today's complex world. But problems like these create opportunities for creative minds.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Oban MacTavish, the CEO and Co-Founder of Spade. They have built a system for real-time intelligence of card merchants which is impressive in and of itself. But what I found most fascinating is they have built one of the richest data sets in country on credit card merchants. With coverage that is second to none.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The realization about archaic card payments that led to the founding of Spade.
• How the card payments value chain works today.
• The main thing that really needs to improve with card payments.
• How Spade is able to add more context to card payments.
• The disparate data sources they use to feed their system.
• How they update their merchant data.
• Who buys their data.
• The enriched data they send back to their clients.
• The main use cases for their data.
• Why they are not working with personal financial management tools.
• How they are working with Corpay, the corporate payments company.
• How they can help merchant acquirers.
• Oban's vision for Spade.

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