Beyond the Balance Sheet Podcast
Episode 3 | The Future of Payments – and Why Trust Still Matters. PayTech Trust – Leading change with integrity.
Overview
In Episode 3 of FVCbank’s Beyond the Balance Sheet podcast, hosts Vince Coglianese and Patricia Ferrick speak with Matt Clyne, founder and CEO of PayTech Trust, about the evolving landscape of payment processing. Clyne shares how his company emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic to address inefficiencies in business-to-business payments, particularly the reliance on paper checks. He emphasizes the importance of combining cutting-edge fintech solutions with personalized, local customer service, a model that sets PayTech Trust apart from both large banks and tech-only competitors. The conversation highlights success stories in fraud prevention, ERP integrations, and industry-specific innovations in healthcare, education, and manufacturing. Clyne also reflects on the company’s rapid growth, its commitment to trust and transparency, and the importance of investing in the next generation of employees. The episode highlights the importance of trust, both in technology and relationships, in achieving sustainable business success.
Prefer reading over listening? You can read the full transcript of the episode below.
FVCbank’s Beyond the Balance Sheet Podcast – Episode 3 – PayTech Trust
Vince Coglianese (0:03): Welcome to Beyond the Balance Sheet, the podcast from FVCbank, where we spotlight entrepreneurs, organizations, and change makers who are redefining what it means to lead with purpose. I’m Vince Coglianese.
Patricia Ferrick (0:16): And I’m Patricia Ferrick, president of FVCbank. Today we’re talking about trust, technology, and the future of payments with someone who’s reshaping how businesses get paid. Matt Clyne, founder and CEO of PayTech Trust.
Vince Coglianese (0:31): Matt’s built a company that combines cutting-edge fintech with a deep commitment to client service. Whether it’s fraud prevention, simplifying transactions, or staying ahead of payment trends, PayTech Trust is helping businesses operate smarter and safer.
Patricia Ferrick (0:46): We’re excited to hear Matt’s story, his insights on the future of payment processing, and how trust is more than a value. It’s a business model.
Origin and Purpose of PayTech Trust
Vince Coglianese (0:54): All right, and let’s get started. Matt, take us back. What led you to start PayTech Trust and what problem were you trying to solve?
Matt Clyne (1:02): So when we started this company, it was really at the genesis of COVID. And there was a lot of challenges for businesses, particularly businesses that were accepting remittances to get paid. What we saw was an opportunity to help electronify a lot of those payments, speed up those payments, simplify how they were getting paid, and reduce the overall inefficiencies, cost, but also friction while looking at security, data security, and really an edge to help them integrate these processes into their business processes like software or other things that may be important to them.
Challenges in the B2B Payment Landscape
Patricia Ferrick (1:38): Was there a defining moment when the traditional payments model needed to be changed in your view?
Matt Clyne (1:44): Yeah, absolutely. So it it really is primarily surprisingly in the business-to-business environment, paper, primarily remittances, paper checks, are still one of the most dominant forms of payments. This is how hospitals get paid, this is how universities get paid, wholesalers, manufacturers, distributors, government contractors. There’s a huge amount of paper in the system. It’s inefficient, it’s slow, it’s expensive, and the electronification of that is what created this sort of new wave of transition into the future of how people are getting paid. Now with that comes complexity, comes security, data security requirements, uh, and that’s where our company really excels. We do very well in complex payment scenarios. We help clients sort of streamline those processes.
Vince Coglianese (2:34): Yeah. Well, when you want when you’re like trying to get paid, you sort of want the money right away. You know? And when the money’s finally there, then you can use it for something else. So the faster money moves, the more you can put it to good use for your company.
Matt Clyne (2:46): Absolutely.
What Sets PayTech Trust Apart
Vince Coglianese (2:47): Okay, so tell me what distinguishes PayTech Trust from other payment processors or fintechs?
Matt Clyne (2:52): So the competitive landscape is really built around large, for example, banks, maybe national banks, and they don’t have the ability to be flexible. They can’t really meet the client’s needs where the client is. And while they have a big brand name, maybe, they aren’t really able to take the phone call on a live operator, you know, manage the processes of complicated technology innovation. The other types of competitors, which are the software companies, they’re great at the technology side, but they don’t have you can’t call them, you can’t you can’t meet with them face to face. They may be offshore, you’re probably talking to somebody in another country. We felt like if you could merge those two things, the cutting-edge technology and the local face-to-face community trust of, and that’s primarily our relationship with FVCbank, that local community touch, but bringing these technology solutions, it gave us a big advantage, and it’s why we’ve grown so fast.
Balancing Technology and Human Touch
Vince Coglianese (3:46): So like fast, secure service, but available human beings to help you address these problems?
Matt Clyne (3:52): We will answer every call with a live operator. And it will be a U.S.-based employee and it will be somebody probably sitting in the same city that you’re sitting in who shops at the same place as you shop and understands all of the same challenges that these businesses have.
Patricia Ferrick (4:06): Is it difficult to balance the cutting-edge technology with a personalized customer service?
Matt Clyne (4:11): Boy, if I had a nickel for every time I got asked that it is. It is the crux of our story. If we could get and we do spend a huge amount of time and effort and money on that exact question. As we perfect that, we will continue to grow at the rates that we’ve seen. Because that’s the challenge. How do we bring the newest, best technology, make it affordable, and do it in a way that makes the client feel really important, holding their hand, because that’s just not available. It’s not possible to do that at scale in the national banks. And that’s why we’re doing it locally, and that’s why we’re succeeding, I think.
Patricia Ferrick (4:51): Well, our partners love you, our customers.
Client Success Stories and ERP Integration
Vince Coglianese (4:54): Can you walk us through a success story where you feel like you’ve really made a difference for your client and in what you’ve just described, this unique service that you provide?
Matt Clyne (5:03): So, for example, we were talking about data security a little bit earlier, and that’s become a huge challenge for a lot of these businesses. They don’t understand it. It’s what they don’t it’s hard to keep their arms around the nature of that risk. And it’s constantly evolving. And particularly for larger clients where they have a lot of transactional uh risk. Uh and we’ve seen it over and over and over where you can’t only solve that problem with technology. You’ve got to also have processes, procedures, business practices. And so we had a case where the large restaurant chain was starting to see a lot of fraud in their delivery. And it was very hard for them to diagnose. Why is this happening? Why is it growing so fast? Why are we having all these losses? And what we were able to do was take all the data from all these different transaction data speeds, boil it down, and we discovered it wasn’t really a problem at all their stores. It wasn’t really a problem of just delivery, it was a problem at one or two of their particular stores and one or two particular types of transactions. Then it was easy to root out the problem. We always say, you know, how do you find a needle in a haystack? Well, you get a magnet. It’s a simple approach, but it required a lot of technology, uh innovation for us to bring that to the client. And what really where the magic occurred was understanding their problem from their perspective in a customized, unique way. Nothing off the shelf was going to solve that problem for that client. And they’re going to stay loyal to us now. And they was the CEO of that company called me up the first week and he said, Matt, I want you to take it all over. I want you guys to run it all. And we’ve had him as a client for I guess it’s about five years, and it’s been a great relationship. We’ve solved other other issues, but it was an example on data security, taking the time and the energy to take merge the technology with the human interaction to understand the problem, diagnose it, and then solve it. And we’ve probably saved that client thousands of dollars, maybe hundreds of thousands over the five years because we’ve eliminated a lot of that fraud.
Patricia Ferrick (6:53): You work across a wide range of industries. What are some of the most exciting use cases?
Matt Clyne (6:59): So we’ve recently been heavily focused on ERP integrations. These are software products that clients are using to run their business, maybe business processes, so their warehouse management system, their inventory control, their internal processes. And by forming deep integrations to those ERP software companies, we’ve done very, very well. And what we’ve seen is a resurgence of wholesalers, manufacturers, distributors, especially as supply chain disruptions that occurred during COVID and now with tariffs. Those types of companies are looking for efficiencies and they’re looking for streamlining these processes. And really that has been a big growth area. And it sort of crosses over into the healthcare distribution. And so we’ve done well in healthcare recently. We’ve done very well in education. Large universities are looking for inefficient for their inefficiencies that we’re able to resolve by shedding light on these challenges and bringing them better solutions.
The Future of Payments
Vince Coglianese (7:53): Tell me about the world of payments and how we’ve already seen it change. You’ve just described how much has changed just in the last couple of years. How do you think the next few years are going to change the world of payments, your business?
Matt Clyne (8:03): It’s interesting. In a certain way, the United States is behind a lot of the rest of the world. Most of the rest of the world doesn’t have they never had paper checks. We still have a huge amount of paper in our businesses. We still process a lot of paper checks. Not consumer payments, but during government payments, education, healthcare, again, manufacturing. These are still law firms. Five years ago, a law firm took the vast majority of its payments in paper checks. Today they’re getting paid electronically through ACH or through uh other forms of remittance. That’s gonna continue, it’s gonna accelerate. In fact, that’s accelerating faster than almost any other thing I’ve seen. The speed of taking that paper out of the uh out of the payment process is everybody’s highly focused on it. It’s inefficient, it’s not very secure. You know, I’d like to say something exciting like crypto. I just don’t think it’s ready yet. It’s not probably gonna be the next year or two where that’s gonna disintermediate the traditional payment methods. Uh, but there is a lot of focus and a lot of investment uh in in those types of systems, and I think that that will be the next wave as the as the electronification processes continue.
Vince Coglianese (9:09): Okay. So I should hold on to all my crypto, is what you’re saying?
Matt Clyne (9:12): I think when they get that to be used, it’ll be worth a lot more than it is today if it ever gets to the point where it could be used as a means of exchange.
Supporting Business Transitions
Patricia Ferrick (9:20): Well, what kind of role do you play in helping them transition from what they’re used to to this more updated technology?
Matt Clyne (9:28): Pay Tech Trust has been around for 30 years. Our staff, our team, our you know, this is our fourth company. So this group has been together for a long time. We’ve seen what happened in the late 90s, we saw the 2010s, 2020s. And so with that comes a little bit of a perspective on what these businesses have, you know, a lot of these companies have been doing it the same way for a really long time. And what they’re looking for is a company that can come in, talk to them about what they’re doing now, how it could be better. It’s not just about cheaper. Of course it’s got to be at least as cheap as they have now. We say to them, look, it’s not just about cost, we’ll certainly reduce your cost. But what about the inefficiencies? What about the fact that your system at the retail point of sale isn’t talking to your inventory management system, that your e-commerce website and you make a sale there can’t talk to the point of sale system at the register at the counter? How do you tie those two customers together and know that the same client is buying from you in two different channels? These are the types of things where our team, having been together as long as we have, it really works in a way that we can deliver a really customized solution to that client in a way that just large national players aren’t going to be able to do.
Lessons from Building a Fintech Company
Vince Coglianese (10:35): What kind of things have you learned over your time leading this in terms of building a fast-growing company in a very competitive and very it is very highly regulated space? What have you learned from all of this?
Matt Clyne (10:46): Businesses will pay a premium for loyalty, customer service, answering the phone, local live operators. People are willing when they understand the difference, for example, with a community bank versus a national bank, they understand that there’s value in walking into the bank and the people knowing you on a first name basis. That to me, I’ve always known that there was something there, but it’s different to know it intuitively and to see it in a balance sheet or in a PL and see that those clients stick around a lot longer, they’re happier, they generally have less uh when they have concerns, it’s they’re much more open and easily solved because they’re willing to call us and say, hey, we have a problem we need to get resolved. We want that. We want to know when they’re unhappy.
Patricia Ferrick (11:28): Get a lot of referrals from your existing customers?
Matt Clyne (11:31): We do. I would say more than half our clients were referred to us by other clients. It’s very we do very little proactive outbound marketing, which is unique. It’s really a factor of uh, you know, if somebody has an affinity relationship with us, they’re willing to refer us clients. It’s funny, next week I’m supposed to be at a trade show. We’re invited by one of our existing clients. He’s asked me to be there with him because he’s set up several lunches at meetings and lunches, but he wants me to meet with other clients in his industry. And we’re not of course we’re gonna go and we’re gonna spend the time to do it, but we we we didn’t ask him for any of that. He wanted us to be there, and we’re happy to be there. And he’s so happy with what we’ve done for him in his case.
Patricia Ferrick (12:10): That’s great. So, Matt, what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs who are looking to build something meaningful?
Matt Clyne (12:16): You know, one time when I first started my first business, someone, one of my mentors, said to me, You know, Matt, are you prepared to do what it takes to go big? And I thought I understood what he said, and I really didn’t. And I would just say that you gotta believe and you gotta be willing to put the time in. You know, you you would think after having done this as many times as I have, that we wouldn’t have made the same number of mistakes. There’s just a lot of different ways that you’ve gotta grind through the setbacks. You know, right after we started COVID hit, and we had other issues and and the supply chain issues and you know, disruption in the you know, interest rates going up, which affected our industry. And it just I would say if you’re starting out now, don’t give up. If you can get through the third four years, five years, six years in, you’ll find that you’ll get momentum and then you’ll have some success with that what we call predictable success, the flywheel effect, which is what’s happened to PayT ech Trust. And it’s why, you know, the last two years we made the Inc. 5,000, grew at 70% last year, will be a 50% growth this year. Um, you know, the company in five years has gone from zero to a hundred employees, all of them local, and it’s a story that was built on literally just grinding it out through all of these setbacks.
Trust as a Core Value
Vince Coglianese (13:27): As you built this, uh you included trust in the company’s name. And you obviously did that on purpose. So why is that word so central to the company’s identity?
Matt Clyne (13:38): I just think when people are trusting us with the vast majority of the money they have. For example, if it’s a restaurant and we’re settling all the transactions from the previous day’s business, that’s like the majority of their income. Yeah. There’s a lot of trust. And it’s true in the bank, you know. We we put all of our money in the bank because we trust the bank and we trust them to take care of us. And so we started this business with the idea that we were going to be different than all the other processors. We were gonna be a company that you could trust. That you if we told you your rate was gonna be 1%, that that’s your rate, that it wouldn’t be 1.1%, and that we would fix it if it was wrong and we would refund you the money, and we will in a minute. We will absolutely stand by that over and over and over, even if it’s cost us a lot of money, because we are adamant that we want to be a different type of company that doesn’t uh take our clients’ business uh for granted.
Legacy and Preparing the Next Generation
Patricia Ferrick (14:27): What kind of legacy are you hoping PayTech Trust leaves in the fintech world and beyond?
Matt Clyne (14:33): It’s hard to say. I never really think about legacy. Uh I think it’s more about the people in the company. This go-around, and and and we’ve had some success in previous companies that we were able to build up. This particular go-around is about the next generation. So we have a whole group of folks that work for us that have just come out of college or they’re in their early parts of their career, and we put a huge amount of attention in saying this is theirs to take to the next, the next generation has to, they’re gonna have a lot of challenges. They’re gonna have to figure out, you know, over the next decade, how do we take this to the, you know, how do we take this to the next batch of businesses that will be starting in five years or in ten years. What is the future gonna look like? I I don’t know. I tell them, they’re gonna invent it. Those folks that work for us. And so when you talk about what’s our legacy, it’s hard for me to predict the future. All I can say is those people in our company that are the ones that I hope are the ones running this business, call it 10, 20 years from now, whenever that is, uh, that we’re preparing them for what comes next. With AI and the speed of change and the speed of all the things that are going to happen in the next decade, whatever we’ve experienced in business, particularly in technology, is gonna change so rapidly that what I hope we’re giving these I call them kids, but they’re really not always just younger in their career, that they’ll be prepared to be able to address it and somehow navigate it without bankrupting the business, which which is a big challenge for them, not for me. I I hope 20 years from now I’m not still doing it.
Vince Coglianese (16:01): By the way, that’s a commentary on what people can expect when they deal with your company. If you’re setting up your own employees for success no matter what they choose to do in life, it is kind of a sign of what kind of quality people are working with you right now. Absolutely.
Matt Clyne (16:13): We invest in them. I insist, for example, we have we have kids that didn’t finish college. I insist that they go take some classes. Just keep moving forward. We are so committed to their success, because this is the thing. You know, I don’t think I can know every one of our customers. We’re just I personally cannot be the man on the phone with every customer we have. But what I do know is they are on the phone with those customers. They are the ones making those decisions. And if we put them in the position to succeed and we give them the tools to succeed, they’ll take care of our customers and our customers will be fine. And I see it over and over and over.
Patricia Ferrick (16:47): That was such a thoughtful conversation. Matt, you’re reminding us that in a world of constant innovation, trust is still the most valuable currency.
Vince Coglianese (16:56): That’s right. And from helping small businesses streamline payments to building relationships that last. PayTech Trust is a great example of how technology and human service can thrive together.
Patricia Ferrick (17:06): Matt, before we let you go, anything you’d like to add?
Matt Clyne (17:09): I just want to thank FVCbank. When I came to FVCbank as a new client with a new business, with literally not a lot of revenue, not a lot of we didn’t, it was me and one other employee. And I walked in the door and I met with you and with David and the senior leadership team. You believed in us and you gave us the ability to build what we’ve built. And we will be loyal to you forever because of that. Because you guys took a bet on us when we didn’t really we hadn’t figured it out. We hadn’t yet gotten to the point where I could say, hey, we’ve got something real, we’ve got a big business now. And so because of that, I will I will tell you that if you’re looking for a community bank locally, there is no other bank that’s going to take the time and the energy to understand your business the way that I feel FVCbank has treated us.
Patricia Ferrick (17:53): Thank you, Matt. That means a lot to us. You’ve been a great partner.
Vince Coglianese (17:57): That’s a nice message, and that’s great. And if you’d like to learn more about PayTech Trust, you can visit PayTechTrust.com.
Patricia Ferrick (18:04): And if you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to follow or subscribe to Beyond the Balance Sheet on your favorite podcast platform.
Vince Coglianese (18:12): Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
