Leaders In Payments

Jacob Olins, SVP & GM, Fintech at Workwave | Episode 393

• Greg Myers • Season 6 • Episode 393

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Ever wondered how pest control, landscaping, and janitorial companies are being transformed through innovative financial technology? Jacob Olins, SVP & GM of Fintech at WorkWave, takes us deep into the world where field service management software meets cutting-edge financial services.

WorkWave has positioned itself as the operating system for field service businesses, providing everything from customer acquisition tools to mobile apps for technicians. But what truly sets their platform apart is how they've revolutionized payments and financial services within these traditional industries. Olins walks us through their journey from payment reseller to full Payment Facilitator, giving them complete control over the customer experience and unlocking new revenue opportunities.

The most fascinating aspect of our conversation reveals how embedded financial services are solving real business problems. For companies struggling with customer retention, WorkWave's card-on-file and subscription capabilities have helped transform one-off service calls into recurring revenue streams. Their consumer financing partnerships make large emergency services affordable for homeowners. Perhaps most impressive, their earned wage access feature has increased employee retention by over 30% by allowing hourly workers to access earned wages before payday.

Ready to understand how the $13 trillion banking industry is being reshaped by innovative software platforms? Listen now and discover insights that might forever change how you view the intersection of software and financial services.

Speaker 1:

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.

Greg Myers:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast. I'm your host, greg Myers, and on today's episode we have a very special guest, jacob Olins, the VP of FinTech at WorkWave. So, jacob, welcome to the show.

Jacob Olins:

Hey, greg, it's a pleasure to be here.

Greg Myers:

Well, why don't we start out by having you talk a little bit about yourself, maybe where you grew up, where you went to school, where you currently live, a few things like that?

Jacob Olins:

Yeah, I would love to and yeah. So I grew up in brookline, massachusetts, went to university in in new york, moved to new york city after college. Like a lot of people do, I sort of lucked into payments innovation role at city bank, having, like you know, absolutely no idea what the payments industry was at that time. But it was super cool and just absolutely set me on a path to be in fintech and everything that fintech has become over the past 15 or so years. So that was Citibank's reaction to PayPal and eBay merging and a lot of institutional clients being like, hey, what is that all about and how do we do something similar to that really like high level big picture strategy. What's going on? What is the new world of the internet mean for payments and payments? Technology? Gave me a bug about payments. Gave me a bug about product management and yeah, and so set me on a path.

Jacob Olins:

I spent a few years after Citibank at Verifone, a big payment terminal manufacturer. I spent a few years at JPMorgan Chase, also doing fintech and payments innovation more on the accounts payable side, and kind of the common thread throughout this was just seeing more and more examples of payments getting deeper and more embedded into business applications and so, seeing that, loving some of the examples of those use cases, I worked my way over to a company called EPOS now, which is a point-of-sale company, to help launch their foray into payments and ultimately a whole suite of embedded financial services. And now I'm at WorkWave and we are a leader in field service management software. We're really like the operating system for businesses that specialize in landscape, pest control, security, janitorial, and so scaling out our payment services and looking to all sorts of other opportunities where we can add value to our clients through fintech offerings.

Greg Myers:

Okay, well, let's talk a little more about WorkWave. So tell our audience a little more. Obviously you kind of gave the 50,000 foot level, but maybe a little more detail around the company, maybe the size, the different products and services, different audiences, a few things like that.

Jacob Olins:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. Workwave is. We're about a thousand people in our company. You know we're primarily focused on North America, but we do have a presence in EMEA and Australia as well, and our bread and butter is building software that helps field service businesses.

Jacob Olins:

And I get the. The. Really the real common thread is like is your business run a fleet of service professionals, technicians, that go into the field, either to commercial properties or residential properties, and perform service there? And so the industry verticals that we are really the market leaders in pest control, lawn care and landscape cleaning, like janitorial, commercial janitorial and security, and in every one of these cases there's a truck or a fleet that's bringing technicians out to a place to perform a service, and that might be mowing a lawn, it might be performing like a termite prevention, it might be security guarding a stadium for a big concert or an event, it might be the nightly cleaning operation that's happening at a big office building, and so, like the biggest customers in these areas use our software.

Jacob Olins:

But we really scale from very small businesses to the largest companies in these industries and I say we're not super focused on the micro merchants, the brand new businesses. That's not really our bread and butter. But once you get to an established small business and maybe you're doing half a million in revenue a year, that's when customers really start looking for a more sophisticated offering. And, yeah, those are really our target customers and the customers who find the most value with all of the services that we can offer them.

Greg Myers:

Okay. And then those services obviously they use it for scheduling, for communication, I mean, what are all the kind of? I always describe Vertical SaaS as kind of the operating system for the small business, right? So maybe just discuss real quick some of the services that you provide, other than payments, obviously, because we're going to dive into that.

Jacob Olins:

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I mean it's the spectrum of the business. We probably provide a service. In many of the cases we're the owner of that, but in a lot of cases we partner and because we're the operating system, as you mentioned, we're that primary control point and real estate, and so we can help distribute all sorts of things. But it starts with customer acquisition. We provide marketing tools that help our customers source new clients, and then we provide CRM so that our clients can keep track of the closed, one closed, lost, and then manage those customer relationships. And then there's a big aspect of dispatching right, so you're routing these trucks in the very most efficient way so that our client can hit the most houses and have the most routes and therefore run the most efficient business that they can. And then their technicians are using our mobile app and so that'll tell them exactly what services they need to provide. Maybe there's certain chemicals on one lawn and then a mowing treatment on another lawn. Maybe it's a routine pest checkup in a certain place, but it's a termite prevention or a rodent exclusion in another place, and so all that instructions that the technician gets is all in that mobile app.

Jacob Olins:

A lot of these industries are regulated. So we provide a lot of the compliance requirements to make sure that to give the consumer comfort yep, you're getting a chemical treatment, but this provider is completely licensed and here are the disclosures and whatnot, and then all of the invoicing is happening through our platform. So I think in a lot of ways we're also, like, have been responsible for some of the transformation of these industries. Historically, like 10 years ago, a lot of these industries were one service at a time right, you're calling because you've got a problem, you're getting treatment for that problem, kind of like how you'd use a plumber or an electrician today. And we've been able to help a lot of these businesses evolve into recurring service businesses and a lot of our customers attribute that to, like the payments capabilities taking that CRM, enabling the card on file-file, enabling the auto-pay capability, powering that auto-pay capability with account updater so that they don't have to chase customers whose payment methods go expired and whatnot.

Jacob Olins:

Yeah, and then in some of these verticals we provide accounting services. In some of these verticals we provide payroll services, and the payroll services extend into how can we help our customers with employee retention? So we'll go into earned wage access. If it's a big mobile workforce, it's primarily hourly, and a lot of times, waiting two weeks for your paycheck can put these individuals in difficult situations. We try to do things that drive our customers' employee retention and then just make it easier for those employees to live their lives in a financially responsible way. Yeah, and then in some of these verticals we're like we're the accounting system, the ERP, and so there's, you know, expense management, and we've started to launch some bill payment capabilities as well in our FinTech suite.

Greg Myers:

Okay, Okay. Well, let's talk about embedded payments for a minute. Maybe describe how it's embedded and maybe you know how it got to this point. Did you start as kind of the ISO of the world? You're now a Payfax, so maybe talk about that journey a little no-transcript.

Jacob Olins:

Totally, yeah, I mean, I think it is like a very common story. You know how vertical SaaS platforms like us moved to and today we're a Payfax. So we, you know, fully own the risk, the compliance, the product, the onboarding, the selling. But wasn't always like that in the early days and it predates my time at WorkWave, certainly. But yeah, we started as a reseller, so we were early on the integrated payments offering and then, as a reseller, we were reselling, referring our customers to payments providers, and those payments providers were setting up a merchant account and it was useful insofar as you could attach that customer to a card and you could start to do some of that recurring payments and there was a level of integration.

Jacob Olins:

But there was also a lot of dissatisfaction with hey, why are there so many different suppliers and why is there inconsistency across the data that I get from you and the data they get from them? And dissatisfaction just with I get one level of service from my vertical SaaS provider which is fantastic, but then, like payments which can some like it's less critical until it's more critical, right, like the second, that it's that the settlement is late or that the authorizations aren't working, like that's when you sort of realize, wow, this is such, I might argue, the most critical part of the platform that we offer. So, yeah, anyway, it was just it was customer feedback driven that we started to explore owning more of the solution ourselves, and so we moved to that PayFact model pretty early on I think that was around 2019. And that turned out to be a phenomenal strategy for us, a real win. Customers got a better product, it was easier for us to manage.

Jacob Olins:

Obviously, it's a good business move for a vertical SaaS platform. So then we continued to scale that we made a couple of acquisitions. We were able to deploy that WorkWave payments really as a common service to these new acquisitions that we were bringing in. So that really helped make those acquisitions more accretive to our business and it just continues to be a key area for us and a key part of the platform and the value that we provide to our clients.

Greg Myers:

Okay, and how do your clients typically use the payment solution?

Jacob Olins:

So our clients will sign up for our software and our payments product just comes included in the software. And so most of our clients, because they're more established, they understand credit card processing is critical. So most of our clients, because they're more established, they understand credit card processing is critical. Obviously, the things that we're helping in our overall sales process, the things that we want to make really clear to our customers, is like you're trying to run a business that is as much as possible on subscriptions, so you want to get every one of your clients onto subscriptions and then you want to secure those subscriptions with a card on file and with an auto payment, and so it's that combination. It's like, yes, it's the CRM, it's the CRM that's adding the card to that account, it's managing that customer account and then it's billing that customer account in a way that you don't have to maintain that at all. So that's our sales process and that's a really obvious value proposition right, and that like integrated.

Jacob Olins:

I think part of the beauty of it is when you're combining these things, like you're not selling payments, you're just selling business management and it's part of the broader business management value prop. You move further up market and we certainly have a lot of enterprise clients and you have to get into a lot more of the payment specifics and we support flat rate billing models and we support interchange plus rate billing models and we offer things like network tokenization and we have to get a lot more sophisticated to support the needs of the larger enterprises who have payments, people who are part of the buying process.

Greg Myers:

Do your customers take payments out in the field? Do you have that option?

Jacob Olins:

Yeah, we do. It's not a large percentage, most of it is card on file subscription. But absolutely and I kind of break down in our customer base like the oversimplified way to think about one of these field services businesses they're probably doing like 50% of their business, 50 or 60% of their business is like a residential subscription, and then 20, 50% of their business, 50% or 60% of their business is like a residential subscription, and then 20%, 25% of their business is a commercial subscription, and then there's 20% to 25% of their business. That is like a one-off service, a large ticket item, and so certainly for those large ticket items, we're doing some payment acceptance in the field, and so we've got a device, a physical device. But one of our big initiatives this year that we're excited about is moving that to a tap-to-pay, because these technicians are already on our mobile app, and so we've got tap-to-pay on our roadmap and we'll be rolling that out.

Jacob Olins:

Yeah, the other thing you see in the field, like in these remote settings, is if you've got a Bluetooth device, it's an extra device, you've got connectivity issues and so just the convenience of tap to pay some store and forward technology. It'll probably increase the amount of percentage of card present transactions that we're doing.

Greg Myers:

Right, okay. Well, moving beyond payments and under the fintech umbrella, what other financial services products do you offer?

Jacob Olins:

Yeah, it's been a big part of my strategy since joining WorkWave is just to extend further and further into financial services and we've got like so many great opportunities just where we are in that ecosystem as that operating system. So you know, the big one of our most exciting opportunities is consumer financing and so I was talking about that. 20 percent, 20 to 25 percent of these businesses. That's one off. Well, a lot of those big ticket jobs are their big ticket jobs, so they're not always affordable with with what an individual's got in the bank, but in the vast majority of these cases it's a critical service. You got a tree trimming, need bed bug, need something like that. So financing those consumers is one of our big initiatives this year. And we've got a great partnership with a company called WiseTac. That's been really, really appreciated by our customer base. We do a merchant cash advance product, so that's a capital lending product. We do that with a company called ULend. They're a fantastic partner. Our base is more upmarket and those products are all just shared.

Jacob Olins:

I had a previous company. It was a point of sale company and we were really focused on the micro, SMBs and capital in that market that's super, super underbanked, was like one of the highest attachment new products that we launched and our market is just a little bit different. I think you always got to think about, with the financial products that you want to extend into payments is kind of like the most horizontal, Depending on the types of lending needs or banking needs that your customers have, what they're already getting from banks, what that ecosystem looks like. Your strategy might go one way or another. So, to elaborate on that, we've got in our security and janitorial industries.

Jacob Olins:

We're a full ERP and a payroll provider, and so earned wage access is our biggest fintech opportunity in that space, is our biggest fintech opportunity in that space, and so we've had some real exciting early success in earned wage access, like seeing employee retention increased by like north of 30% for our customers who are on it, and so just building deeper and deeper embedded capabilities like so employees can see that earned wage access opportunity, Like again they're on our mobile application right, so they can see it as they clock out. That's like a super powerful way to drive that attachment and to drive that satisfaction. And then ultimately it's like that's actually the employee satisfaction with their employer. So it's like a very virtuous cycle. And then bill pay. So power you know, as that ERP enabling our customers not just to export a Notch file but to actually pay their bills using WorkWave and WorkWave partners. That's a big one for us as well.

Greg Myers:

Okay, and you mentioned some of these partnerships. Are they white-labeled? Do they typically get fully integrated, like payments does, or sometimes are they a little more like a referral kind of thing?

Jacob Olins:

Yeah, I think it's a great question and, like you know, for me like the kind of strategy archetype is the payments progression that we've kind of all seen over the past 10 years. Right, it's like you might not know, you might have a lot of theories about like what good opportunities could be, could be even like it can be overwhelming. Right, and in most organizations, probably more and more, we're all like kind of resource constrained, so are you going to invest a lot in building something from the ground up that you're not 100% sure is going to resonate? Meanwhile there's like this tremendous network of fintech partners out there who have products and would love to partner with a company that's got great customer distribution. And so I sort of like mirror, at a certain level, the payment strategy, like, hey, let's set up a referral partnership, let's see if that works.

Jacob Olins:

All right, is there some product? Is there some obvious product market fit? If there is, great, let's lean into this a little bit more, let's start to embed this and we even go so far as to, in our partner strategy, take on the full go-to-market right. And so we've got to try to make it a more sophisticated partner model where we can kind of stand up a referral, really lightweight, but also offer to our partners like hey, this can be virtually a zero cost customer acquisition channel for you and then, if the economics look good, then we're able to really invest in go-to-market, really incorporate it into our core sales pitch. The same way payments is. This is a core part of the product. The other beauty of it is a lot of cases these are usage-based models and so you get less sticker shock. So there can be a high degree of interest and, okay, cool, I can use it a little bit. I can see if it works at the customer level. I can see if it works for me.

Greg Myers:

Okay, I can see if it works at the customer level. Right, I can see if it works for me, okay, okay. Well, when you kind of step back and look at the payments and fintech industry as a whole, where do you see it headed in the next, say, three to five years?

Jacob Olins:

Yeah, I love that question and.

Jacob Olins:

I think it's like so many different things depending on the market, like where I paint the perfect future state picture and I'm going to come back a little bit. It's colored by my experience. I spent a lot of years at big banks doing financial innovation and new products at big banks and the problem there was you got to gather so much context as a bank to provide a tailored fintech solution to a customer. And the beauty of the position that these vertical SaaS platforms like WorkWave are in is we've got all that data, we've got all that context. We've got a really strong pulse on what the real problems are.

Speaker 1:

And so.

Jacob Olins:

I see more and more financial services getting distributed through vertical SaaS platforms. I think it's a common trend that a lot of us are seeing. But when I was at my previous company focused on micro merchants, it was like, oh, this market is so underserved from a commercial banking perspective and so we launched a mobile bank account and day one, 25% of new customers were attaching to that mobile bank account because they weren't even really it was pretty much greenfield. They weren't even really. It was pretty much Greenfield. They weren't even really using commercial banks. They were like co-mingling funds in their personal accounts. So you can see that like, hey, maybe this is disruptive to commercial banking, or commercial banks are really just infrastructure and the vertical SaaS platform owns that.

Jacob Olins:

I think as you move up market it becomes a lot more like can you solve really discrete cash flow problems?

Jacob Olins:

And so one example I love is tax bank accounts where you say, hey, we're the merchant acquirer, we're the payments processor, we're that integrated into the business management system, and so we know the sales tax on every invoice that you're sending out and so we can split, settle that sales tax into a special bank account and then we can file your taxes and pay it for you and indemnify you for any late fees or issues with your tax payments, and I think that concept scales.

Jacob Olins:

But you got to pick your spots right. Maybe you'll bank payroll because your customer base is like ours, workforce management right, and that is the number one cost. Or maybe you'll bank supply chain because you do e-commerce and it's all in COGS and so I think when I think five years out, and it's probably more like 10 years out, just a lot more banking and treasury activities are happening in the platform on top of like. I don't think that. I think it's the rare case where the platform becomes the bank, but the common case where the platform, you know, is using a API, banking as a service kind of platform for these specific cash flows.

Greg Myers:

Right, right, no, that makes sense. Well, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about you. So maybe you kind of gave us your background from a career perspective, but maybe talk about why WorkWave, what was attractive about WorkWave? And they were doing that. You wanted to join the company.

Jacob Olins:

Yeah, I reached out to the WorkWave CEO at the time two years ago, and it was because, like, they posted a great job rec for what I've kind of found is my niche, which is really establishing these and scaling these and transforming these like payments and fintech businesses within these vertical SaaS environments. So, you know, I think you're seeing more and more of that and you're seeing more and more of these vertical SaaS companies like realize what a major strategic opportunity investing in payments and but really beyond payments, fintech is. So, yeah, that was what got me interested in WorkWave and I looked at that job rec, listened to some of the CEOs' podcasts, read about the company and said, okay, this company is doing a lot of cool stuff. Field services is a super interesting industry. It wasn't one that I had a lot of exposure to, but it's definitely like you could see the financial services opportunity and could tell like, hey, this is probably a more of a lagging industry and there's probably a lot more opportunities for some disruptive innovation.

Greg Myers:

Gotcha Okay. Well, what are some things you're passionate about? Maybe one work-related passion and one personal passion.

Jacob Olins:

All right the evolving on the work front like the evolving fintech landscape and just how financial services is transforming, and I think there's a roughly $13 trillion banking industry out there and 99% of it is flowing through traditional channels, so I think that gets bigger. But also a lot of that goes towards platforms and fintech providers in the coming years and just tracking that and trying to stay one step ahead that's a lot of fun. Personally, I'm married and have three young boys a couple of twins and a two-year-old behind them, so we're getting into skateboarding and skiing and just doing all sorts of fun stuff with them. So, yeah, the family and the little kids trying to keep up with little kids.

Greg Myers:

They keep you on your toes right. They absolutely do Great. So one last question If someone came to you and they're interested in building a career in payments or fintech and they just said, hey, jacob, like what do I need to do to be successful in this industry, what advice would you give them?

Jacob Olins:

For me, what's worked really well and where I think that I've got some uniqueness is really good exposure to both the banking side and the software side.

Jacob Olins:

I think that a lot of people, maybe in similar roles to mine, come from one area or the other and so being able to round out that experience, like on the banking side, you really understand the risk management aspect, you really understand, like the fundamental cogs you know, you really understand, like what does it cost from a risk management and from just a pure materials perspective to build these businesses and so what the economics are. And I think if you're all on the software side, you probably get tripped up when you talk about things like interchange and basis points. And likewise, I think people who are just pure play payments and banking people really miss the importance of the user experience. And so if there's a way that you can round out that right, that you can really appreciate the value that the product is providing and the importance of the user experience, but you also understand the economics and like banking and payments business models, I think that goes a long way and I think it's pretty unique Okay.

Greg Myers:

Okay, well, obviously, jacob. We've covered a lot of ground already, obviously, about you and your background and the company and payments overall. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up the show?

Jacob Olins:

This is a wonderful show, Greg. I really appreciate you having me.

Greg Myers:

Yeah, absolutely so. Jacob, thank you so much for being on. I know your time is very important, so I don't want to take more of it, but thank you so much for being on the show today. Thanks for having me Great, and to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.

Speaker 1:

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.