Rick Fletcher, Group President of Corpay | Episode 324

In an era where financial transactions and corporate expense management are undergoing revolutionary changes, it's critical to stay ahead of the curve. Our latest podcast episode features Rick Fletcher, Group President of Corpay Payables, who shares his extensive knowledge and insights into mastering global expense management and embracing payment innovations.

Rick discusses the complexities of managing corporate expenses, particularly for middle-market companies. He points out that while larger banks might overlook these businesses, Corpay thrives by offering comprehensive services tailored to their needs. This approach not only empowers companies to make better financial decisions but also ensures policy compliance through customized financial tools.

As the market for financial outflows and payment solutions becomes more dynamic, Rick emphasizes the importance of fusing technology with human-driven processes. This blend is pivotal for creating specialized card programs that complement broader expense management strategies. Furthermore, the efficiency of back-office operations is crucial for executing payments, managing working capital, and preventing fraud.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast, where we talk to C-level leaders from across the payments landscape. We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments. We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.

Speaker 2: 0:18

Really, what I'd say in all the things that Corpay does not just in my business unit, but all of them is help companies make better decisions, get visibility into those decisions, adhere to their policies whatever those policies may be and we can customize to their particular needs, but do that in an efficient way.

Speaker 3: 0:50

That was Rick Fletcher, Group President of Corpay Payables, and he is my special guest on this episode, episode 324 of the Leaders in Payments podcast, and I'm your host, Greg Myers. Corpay is a global S&P 500 corporate payments company that helps businesses and consumers manage and pay expenses in a simple, controlled manner. Rick and I talk about what makes Corpay unique in the marketplace and how they help customers better manage vehicle-related expenses like fueling and parking, travel expenses like hotel bookings, and accounts payable. We've got a great episode ahead, so let's get started. Hi, Rick, Thank you for being here and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:29

Thanks for having me, greg, excited no-transcript. I was born and raised in the Cleveland Browns, as they say, and I went to school at Miami University, which is in Ohio the Miami of Ohio and Northwestern and again, those first 25, 30 years of my life were in the Midwest, so I like to think that I have those Midwestern sensibilities that were formed in me. Currently, though, I live in Nashville, tennessee, which is a great place, and I raised my family, I got a wife and two kids here, and we've been here for about nine years, and I'm on my way to moving down to my natural habitat, which is somewhere with palm trees. So I haven't made it quite there yet, but I'm on my way.

Speaker 3: 2:31

You're moving that direction. Yes, well, great. Well, let's talk about Corpay. So tell the audience what Corpay does.

Speaker 2: 2:37

Sure, well, corpay is a public company, so we're on the S&P 500.

Speaker 2: 2:41

People can learn a lot about us through all of those materials that we provide to investors, but at a high level.

Speaker 2: 2:48

What Corpay does is help companies manage their business expenses and we do that in a variety of different ways all across the globe in a lot of different spend categories that we call vehicle and mobility services, which would include fleet and fuel tolls, electronic vehicles, any way to help companies manage their business and their expenses out in the field. And to give you some context, we're the global fleet card company. We help manage over 8 billion gallons of fuel which, when I do the math, means that I could fill my personal vehicle up 400 plus million times in a year. So we manage a lot of expense, a lot of vehicles for a lot of different companies. We also have a lodging division, which helps commercial folks find lodging and hotels in the right place in an affordable way and helps place them and get cheaper rates. And then, finally, we have a corporate payments division and helps the back office in accounts payable, purchasing cards, t&e and cross-border. So we help manage payments both domestically and internationally and manage hundreds of billions of dollars for thousands of clients there.

Speaker 2: 4:09

So overall a very good company, sizable in some very good markets and TAMs and it's been a really good growth story for Origins that date nearly 50 years. So great company, happy to be a part of it.

Speaker 3: 4:24

Okay, and you're the group president of the payables group.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Yeah, that's right. So my remit and focus is in that accounts payable space. So what I really do is help companies manage expenses. That's beyond our specialized services like cross-border and fleet fuel and really purchasing cards, t&e, virtual cards, one-time use, check replacement, what we call full AP, where we take possession of funds and make payments for all the back office, whether it's a check, an ACH or a card. And then we also have software services like expense management and invoice management that help those companies with the process, not just the payment execution but how they make decisions, how they reconcile and how they approve those payments.

Speaker 3: 5:12

Okay, and is there a certain size company that you focus on more than others?

Speaker 2: 5:17

It really does run the gamut and we have different platforms that are designed for all the categories SMB, lower middle market, the middle market and even enterprise. So there's a lot of different ways. I'd say probably, if I were to put one place that we've excelled above the rest, would be the middle market. Some company that's really sizable has a lot of complexity that has been traditionally underserved by traditional banks, who do a better job the larger the company is. But that middle market segment from regional banks and other players has not really had a full set of services that really are required for the complexity that they've become, and I think we've made and set ourselves apart in that segment above all else.

Speaker 3: 6:05

Okay, so just clarification. So obviously you mentioned the fleet and fuel as a vertical and lodging, but on your side the companies you serve don't necessarily have to be in those verticals. They could be basically any vertical.

Speaker 2: 6:19

Yeah, that's right. I mean we do have an over-rotation or indexing in those segments because it was our heritage. We have a lot of cross-sell. Our products work very well with those products. So there's certainly an aspect where that's a point of leverage, both distribution and product-wise, where our clients have just made sense to buy more things from us. But you're correct, I'm the most generalist of all the different categories and pretty much any company that's out, there is a prospect or we have a service where I always tell our salespeople it's tough to kick us out because we have a pretty big bag of services that we provide. And if you do really good discovery with clients, you start getting into their challenges and where they may be suboptimized, typically, we've got a set of tools and products that can solve those needs.

Speaker 3: 7:12

So in your group, do you lead with a certain product, or is it more you have the conversation, learn their pain points and then have the solution?

Speaker 2: 7:20

Yeah, I think we typically cut it into two different primary categories. Yeah, I think we typically cut it into two different primary categories Again, this concept of field expenses that are made out of and admin to approve. So it's employee driven first, admin and manager approval second, and so we've got expense management. We've got different types of cards at different profiles. This is where the fleet and the fuel really does go hand in hand, because there's specialized cards that we can have, or we can have cards that we call multi-cards, that are doing multiple things, and so that field and fuel orientation is one way to go to market.

Speaker 2: 8:16

And then the second is the back office.

Speaker 2: 8:18

It's kind of the opposite. It's where the decisions to make payments through purchase orders and invoices have taken place, but that the payment execution happens in a very contained or limited way, centrally through the accounts payable department, making really large payments across strategic suppliers. We're doing a lot with how we handle working capital, visibility, reconciliation and avoiding fraud and the perils that can happen in the back office, because a lot of those expenses are a really big target. I mean really what I'd say in all the things that Corpay does not just in my business unit, but all of them is help companies make better decisions, get visibility into those decisions, adhere to their policies whatever those policies may be and we can customize to their particular needs but do that in an efficient way. We want to put people back to work and not have payments in the process of approving and making payments overly cumbersome and then handling things like fraud mitigation whether that be internal or external, and really just moving money in a way that's efficient and reliable. So there's central themes that cut across everything that we do.

Speaker 3: 9:45

Well, what would you say? Differentiates Corpay from your competitors out there.

Speaker 2: 9:49

Yeah. So since we do so much, the competitive landscape is diverse. There's a lot of companies that would consider me a competitor or Corpay a competitor, but wouldn't consider each other a competitor. So, if I talk broadly, the largest group of competitors that we have are banks. Not surprisingly, the origins of a payment is to actually have the liquidity, or the cash and the money, and banks are clearly an important supplier of software and process and controls that help manage the process and the reporting and the tech beyond just the money movement. And because we do that all of our lives and we never get bored of it and it's the most important thing we do and we've been doing it for decades we can typically do a better job than just a traditional bank at managing the program.

Speaker 2: 10:55

The other big category would be startups or software, or fintechs as it's sometimes called, where they're specialized in a payment category. They're providing tools and tech for a spend category or a particular industry or a particular ERP, and so we compete against those guys in that we do a lot of that as well. So we have very good tools ourselves and the breadth of our tools is bigger. So we have specialization in certain categories, but it works with other specialized things that we do, so we can solve a broader set of needs and we do have some of those elements that a bank has. So we're actually moving money.

Speaker 2: 11:42

We've got huge networks that we're moving money. We do compliance things and have money transmitters and have a lot of that infrastructure that people rely on like a bank, but with the tech. So I like to refer to ourselves as kind of a true FinTech, in that we're not just providing the software and the tools, but we're doing it in a way that looks like a bank, and there's very few companies that really represent that, in part because that takes a lot of assets to be able to do what I'm talking about. That need to be accumulated over some set of time, which we've done both organically and inorganically. Our company has bought over 120 different entities over the last 20 years, which is a pretty acquisitive organization, and so through that we've created a lot of infrastructure and assets to be able to do what I'm saying and solve a broader set of needs.

Speaker 3: 12:39

Yeah, it seems like sitting in the chair of the controller or the CFO. If I'm going to have, I need these five or six solutions and I can go to five or six companies or I could go to one. It seems like it would make a lot of sense to be able to go to one company that can solve them all.

Speaker 2: 12:55

Right, and what we want to do, though, is that we want what we say is the food to taste good. We don't want to go to the buffet and have well it's just okay pizza and okay fried chicken, and just okay. We have been born from really robust point solutions that stand on their own and are very deep, and we're very specialized, and we organize around that with people who run those segments with decades of experience and a lot of focus, and so they're really good in their own right, but when you bring them together, that's just really powerful, and it's something that we're uniquely positioned to do.

Speaker 3: 13:37

Well, where do you see the payments industry headed, say, in the next three to five years?

Speaker 2: 13:42

Sure, I mean, I think there's a lot of the traditional things that a lot of people would probably point out. I see a big shift from paper processes to electronic. That's happened and will continue to happen. I think we are still going through the rationalization of the different types of ways that companies are operating in the post-COVID world. I mentioned how many organizations are running in a hybrid fashion, and so the back office, which was really before a physical office where the majority of people worked and where those processes could be run down through walking down the hallways or through paper, have been eliminated as companies are working more transient and remote, and so tools that support that type of world and all of the imperfections that can come up and how they get remediated, I think is a big shift. So, just like people are operating, tools like Zoom that we would have never thought or considered to do five or six years ago, with webinars, different tools to manage the back office process and to digitize paper, to route approvals, to get visibility All of those things that people may have known about but really didn't lean into are proliferating, and so I see a lot of that continuing to happen, I think see, over time, more consolidation.

Speaker 2: 15:18

I think there's a lot of really good companies that are out there but are subscale or not fully formed, and so the environment which was a little bit more apt to running those business before interest rates rose, is tightening up, and so I think we'll see more consolidation, more capabilities and more delivery happening from some centralized players. You know, again, we've been leading that, but I like our ability to continue to do that. So those are some of the things that I see here in the short term.

Speaker 3: 15:50

Do you see I talked to several people about this recently where Gen Z, or now that whole demographic, is starting to move into companies and have jobs and obviously they have a certain expectation about the way the world works. Right. So, very mobile first, very used to things being frictionless. They don't even know what a checking account is. Are you seeing yet the influence of those type of people within these companies, or do you feel it's still a little too early for that?

Speaker 2: 16:20

100%. When I started in my career and we had certain software applications, we spent a lot of time on documentation and user manuals and this very how to train people to use things, and it was very fundamental. It almost seems silly upon reflection but look, it was purposeful and requirement at the time. But today one there's the expectation that what you do is intuitive and that it doesn't really require that user manual, that a simple amount of curiosity and intuition can teach you to do it, and that's a generation and that's a workforce that is highly apt to do that, they're not afraid and they can get into it. And there's also an expectation, and so I think that has definitely accelerated what we do.

Speaker 2: 17:18

And, let's face it, it's also just a different environment with that group.

Speaker 2: 17:21

They're a little bit more apt to moving on from different roles and so there's a lot more turnover and things that happens in companies that maybe happened in 20 years. And so how you build software that you can get people up to speed, how you can support an organization and their different, ever-changing topography of organizational changes and new employees, just that type of organizational churn is, quite frankly, one of the impediments for companies using different types of tools is. It just seems too hard for them, and it becomes too big a project for them to chase how everybody is up to speed on policies and up to speed on the user hierarchies and approvals, and so it either just falls dead on being a good idea that's not taken on and implemented, or they try to do it but they lose steam through fatigue, and so that's an area that we spend a lot of time and focus on is how can we get people up and fast, how can we do the work for them and how can we build tools that are just really intuitive.

Speaker 3: 18:33

So let's switch gears a little bit and talk about you. So tell us about your career journey up to where you are today as the group. President of the Payables Group.

Speaker 2: 18:41

Well, it's been a good ride. It's been quite organic. I mean, I'm reminded of a silly story with my daughter years ago. She was young and she was trying to dream of what she'd do when she got older and she was brainstorming some ideas. And she said you know, dad, when did you decide that you were going to get into corporate payments? And it had a tone of that I would have been very young, you know. It was like, basically I'm nine and it's an astronaut, a baseball player or corporate payments were my choices and I chose corporate payments. But I kind of shared the story of you know, I started working and got involved with GEs, where I started my career, and some leadership that I worked really well with moved over to the company that I'm at today and sort of brought me over.

Speaker 2: 19:29

And it was just a very initially consultant type strategic role that really organically meandered into me now operating a division that's got a thousand plus people and multi-billion dollar valuation. And it started with an idea. Really, at the time that I started it was a company focused on fleet and fuel and I saw great potential in the products and the services that we were starting to build and me and a couple of people had the idea that we really should create a separate division, one that had focus, one that could be invested in and one that could be grown, and so I like to consider myself the first employee number one of what is now a multi-billion dollar revenue organization. And that happened a little bit at a time one organization at a time, one product at a time, one acquisition at a time. So it's been a build over the last 15 years, but it's been a really good run.

Speaker 3: 20:35

Okay, well, what are some things you're passionate about? So, maybe one work-related passion and one personal passion.

Speaker 2: 20:40

Well, I spend a lot of time working, so I would say that's a lot of.

Speaker 2: 20:45

Where I spend my time and is my primary passion would be growing a business, Having done what I've done, from that employee one to now, what we are today. When you do and take a moment to reflect which we don't do often enough and I personally don't do that much but when you do and you just remember where the organization came from or where certain clients, when you met them 12 years ago and you're still working closely together, where certain employees that have grown and thrived and gotten multiple opportunities and who now themselves are running large functions or organizations, I mean there's a lot of pride in that and there's a lot of excitement and gratification. So I love that part of the passion. And on the personal side, I mean it's cliche, Greg, but I'm a family man and any amount of time that I can get I'm spending taxiing two young teenagers around to dance and basketball and I try to play a little golf myself in between that, but I like spending time with my family.

Speaker 3: 21:55

Yeah, I was talking to someone about the same topic and they said they have become a chauffeur and a spectator and that's for their kids and that's what they love and that's their passion. So I think all of us with kids can agree that that's pretty much, once they get into their, what they're passionate about. That's what we love to do, right Is, we take them and we watch and we enjoy seeing them enjoy their activities.

Speaker 2: 22:18

It really is. I mean, and it's just, it's another place of gratification to just see them grow and develop and to be a part of that, but also to know at a certain point you're not a part of it as much anymore. They're doing it on their own or there's other influences in their life, and so it's a good time for sure.

Speaker 3: 22:37

Absolutely so. One final question If someone's coming out of college maybe you know they've taken some fintech courses or were. I think some colleges now may be even offering it as a degree and they look at fintech or payments as a career option and they want to get a job and build a career in payments. And they came to you and they said hey, rick, I want to do this. Obviously you have experience in this industry. What would you tell them they need to do to be successful?

Speaker 2: 23:02

Well, the first thing I'd say is embrace it. I think it's a great category. I love the idea that payments are really at the epicenter of how commerce gets done and it's a really important, vital thing. That's never really going out of style and I say that now, after having done it but I'll tell you I didn't always feel that way.

Speaker 2: 23:23

When I first started off, I took some great pride in being a generalist in consulting and strategy and it didn't really matter to me what industry it was or what the company did. I liked just going in and trying to solve problems and organizing and being fast paced and doing the next thing and just figuring out things, without a whole lot of subject matter expertise really required, I guess. And over time I started doing that stuff. But within the payments world, and particularly the corporate payments world, I would refer to myself as a generalist. And then somebody you know went by and pointed out and said you're not a generalist anymore, you've been doing this quite a while, and not only that, you know a lot of these categories like really really deep. You're one of the foremost experts in certain areas. And I thought about that and I said, wow, I never really considered that and I embraced it and now I am fully a payments card carrying member, and so I'd say to anybody who is just starting off, embrace it.

Speaker 2: 24:31

I think it's a great place to make a career and it's very diverse.

Speaker 2: 24:34

By the way, there's a lot of texture and payments that you can live in that ecosystem and work with a variety of different organizations solving different problems and have some transferability. That doesn't feel repetitive to you. And then my advice to those people is make it less academic and abstract. Get with whatever you're doing. Really try to understand the problems that the customers and the constituents that you're working with are facing, and the more that you can acutely understand what they're up against, the better you can utilize payments and the things around it to solve those problems. And at times I feel like people in the payment space can live, because it is so complex and it's got a big ecosystem or supply chain that you can understand your area really well and maybe the area is adjacent to you, but not understand the full picture or the last mile. And I would just challenge people to try to understand that last mile and what the end user's going through, and I think you'll do a much better job and it'll be that much more rewarding.

Speaker 3: 25:49

Yeah, I think that's some great advice. I would agree with you there. So, rick, we've covered a lot of ground about the company and yourself, and a little about the industry. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up the conversation?

Speaker 2: 26:01

No, I really do appreciate your time and what you do and if anybody's interested in learning more about this, you can go to corpaycom and we've got a lot of good information, white papers and that type of thing. But we'd love to have somebody talk with you live and get a better understanding of what your needs are, and we'd be happy to help.

Speaker 3: 26:20

Okay, great. Well, rick, thank you so much for being on the show today. I know your time's very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.

Speaker 2: 26:26

Thanks, greg, take care, talk soon.

Speaker 3: 26:28

You too, and to all you listeners out there.

Speaker 1: 26:36

I thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments podcast. Make sure you visit our website at leadersinpaymentscom, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes. If you enjoyed listening, please share on your social channels as well.