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Leaders In Payments
Leaders In Payments
Women Leaders in Payments: Lena Hackelöer, CEO/Founder of Brite Payments | Episode 413
"The ability to juggle multiple projects and priorities is on a different level with working mothers," observes Lena Hackelöer, CEO and founder of Brite Payments, during our illuminating Women Leaders in Payments episode. Five years after launching her company focused on account-to-account payments in Europe, Lena brings fresh perspectives on leadership, innovation, and diversity in the rapidly evolving FinTech landscape.
Having cut her teeth at Klarna during its early growth stages, Lena's journey from marketing professional to FinTech founder offers a blueprint for aspiring women leaders. She challenges the notion that technical backgrounds are prerequisites for success in payments: "Don't shy away from the challenge just because you don't have a technical background. That's a really common misconception." Instead, she advocates gaining comprehensive understanding of business operations across departments, creating value through perspective rather than siloed expertise.
What truly sets European payments apart right now? Lena highlights the game-changing instant payment regulation enabling 10-second transfers across the entire Eurozone. This cross-border capability is transforming how merchants and consumers interact with money, positioning account-to-account transfers as a formidable alternative to traditional card processing. With Brite Payments now operating across 27 European markets, Lena's insights into the region's payment transformation arrive at a pivotal moment.
Her leadership philosophy balances high performance expectations with collaborative support - rejecting both the command-and-control approach and the ultra-consensus models that can slow innovation. This middle path creates space for diverse voices while maintaining the decisive momentum essential in FinTech. For women navigating this dynamic industry, Lena's structured mentorship approach, including strategically pairing board members with executives for built-in guidance, offers a replicable model for nurturing talent.
Listen now for practical wisdom from a leader who's building the future of payments from the ground up.
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:Hello everyone and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast. I'm your host, greg Myers, and this episode is part of our Women Leaders in Payments month, something we do every year in the month of July, and it's one of my favorite times of the year. This year's theme is redefining leadership, influence, impact and innovation, so those are some of the things you're going to be hearing about during the month of July. So first, a special thank you to our sponsors. Our title sponsor is WorldPay, our participating sponsors are VisiPay and PayRock, and our episode sponsors are the Clearinghouse and Genico and PaySafe. So special thanks to those companies. So today, our special guest is Alina Hakalor, the CEO and founder of Bright Payments. So, alina, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Greg. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2:And just for our audience to know, alina has been on the show before. She was on in October of 2023, episode 265. So I suggest you go back and listen to that episode as well. So, alina, let's get started with a little kind of icebreaker, a little fun thing. So if you could have dinner with any woman in history, past or present, who would that be and why, and what kind of restaurant would you go to?
Speaker 3:Wow, that's actually an interesting question and one that I haven't gotten before. I'm going to have to say, top of mind, probably Michelle Obama, not just because I'm a huge fan per se. I do like her, but it's not sort of that. She's one of the people that I would look up to most, necessarily, but I think she's a very interesting person. I think she's had a very interesting journey on the side by side with her husband and, obviously, given what's happening, currently in the US politically.
Speaker 2:I bet that would be such an interesting conversation if she would be open to share and what kind of restaurant would you go to?
Speaker 3:Probably Indian. I love Indian food.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, great. So let's talk a little bit about your background and your career. So give us a little snapshot of, maybe, where you grew up, where you studied and kind of what led you into payments.
Speaker 3:Yes, so I am. I'm German by birth, so I'm born and raised in Germany but have been living sort of all across, spend lots of time in the UK and the US and France and Norway, and I got relocated to Sweden where I've been spending a little bit more than the past 15 years by Klarna, which is also where I got my start on payments, and so, right fresh out of college, I joined Klarna when it was relatively early stage and started building the B2B marketing and demand generation for Klarna, and that's how I ended up in the payment industry and I've never left, as you can see, with Bright Payments. I'm still right in the center of the payments industry.
Speaker 2:Okay, and you started Bright Payments. What about five or six years ago?
Speaker 3:That's right. So I founded the company 2019. We launched in 2020. So we've been at it now for about five years.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. Well, let's have another little fun question and then we'll get back into it. So if you're coming on stage, I'm sure you speak at conferences. So you're coming on stage at a conference. What would your hype song be, and why?
Speaker 3:I'm going to have to have a quick look at my Spotify, because I have a couple of songs that I listen to on a regular basis. I'm going to have to say it would be a song called Music, which is by Eric Sermon featuring Marvin Gaye. Who doesn't love Marvin Gaye? So it's a very vibey upbeat type of song which I think matches my personal energy level.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. Well, it's interesting because I've asked that question, obviously, to all the women leaders that I've interviewed. So far. I think I've done seven or eight episodes and I've yet to get the same answer. So that's kind of cool. So, yeah, let's jump back into maybe your career a little bit, or what you're doing at Bright Payments. Obviously, ceo and founder, you started the company, but maybe talk about what excites you, what's going on, what's new at Bright Payments and what excites you about what you're doing today.
Speaker 3:So, generally speaking, I started Bright because I felt that there was a massive opportunity in Europe to shift the focus of the payments industry away from card processing over to instant account to account payments. What is exciting about the space that we're in is that there is just so much sort of regulatory improvement, technological improvement, that we can tap into. A great example is the instant payment regulation that has come into force in Europe just recently, where we can actually transfer funds within just 10 seconds across the Eurozone, and that is, of course, a massive catalyst for the category that we're in right now. So what keeps me excited is the fact that there is so much potential in what we're building, and we're seeing more and more markets pick up on account-to-account payment methods. We have markets where it's already a staple in every single checkout. We have markets that are just learning and sort of adopting now for the first time, and I think the category that we're in truly has the potential to change the way that Europeans pay online, and I think that's incredibly exciting.
Speaker 2:Okay, and are you focused? Remind me, are you still focused just on Europe?
Speaker 3:For the time being. Yes, absolutely. Europe is a very diverse payments market, very fragmented market, in all fairness. I mean, every single market has different payment preferences. So we are now covering 27 markets in Europe. So we're getting there, sort of we're filling the gaps in the coverage, and while A2A per se or count-to-count payments are not necessarily a European-only phenomenon and there is a lot of potential in other markets, for example, such as Brazil, where we have PIX, we have India with United Payments Interface, for example, there's many other continents that already have a strong adoption in account-to-account. For the time being, we focus on Europe, for sure. Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk a little bit about leadership and maybe some lessons learned there. So, if you don't mind, how would you define modern leadership and how do you embody that every day?
Speaker 3:So, having worked in different tech companies across Europe for the past, well, 15 years or so, or 10 years before I started my own company, I've seen various different leadership styles.
Speaker 3:I think that most people would agree that a lot of tech businesses especially tend to have a culture that's very much focused on performance, which can sometimes come at the expense of the atmosphere and sort of the overall collaboration amongst employees. It doesn't have to do that, obviously, but it can, and so I think good leadership is to lead a business that has high ambitions, with people that want to go the extra mile, but they do that, or, as a leader, you enable them to do that in what is a very healthy and collaborative working environment, which means that, as a leader, you should be placing high demands on your team, but you should also be supportive, respectful and provide a fun, friendly atmosphere where people like to spend their time, because, ultimately, building a large tech business requires a lot of time and effort and dedication, not just from the founders and from the C-suite, but also from every single person working in the business, and sort of enabling that perhaps is, I would argue, the most important task of leaders.
Speaker 2:That perhaps is, I would argue, the most important task of leaders. Okay, I know, at least in the US, maybe not recently, but in the past sort of the command and control right. So pushing everything down from the top was a leadership style. I don't think it's as prevalent as it used to be. So kind of curious your thoughts, like in Europe is that still around? Has that gone away? Or kind of, what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3:Interesting. So the US, famously, is certainly an example for that. Interestingly enough, we are based in Sweden Sweden's, I would say on the other end of the spectrum, where everything is very consensus driven and everything is very democratic. And while there's, generally speaking, certainly a beautiful concept, it also means that sometimes it sort of leads to decisions being taken at a very slow pace because you need to get everybody sort of aligned, a very slow pace because you need to get everybody sort of aligned. So I would say the answer is in the middle. I think that's sort of the for me personally. I would say. Sometimes there are certain decisions that just need to be taken by the management team and also sort of give a certain level of guidance, whilst others of course require more sort of feedback from different teams internally. So I think a good balance for me is probably the recipe for success.
Speaker 2:So I think a good balance for me is probably the recipe for success, right? Okay, so during your career, have you had one of those like defining moments where you really step back and when you look at it like oh, wow, that was like really an important decision or moment in time? I call them the like aha moments. So have you had any of those in your career? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I think there's probably quite many, but top of mind, I would say I worked for Klarna for seven years, which was a fantastic time. It was such a high growth business and you could really witness the business being built around you while we were there. And that was not just an incredible experience at the time, but in hindsight I felt really, really useful, because when I then left Klarna and I first became the CPO and later the CEO of a stock listed business here in Stockholm, I could see how different things were in that type of environment. I really had this moment where I felt like, wow, companies can be so different, the pace can be so different, even though both were tech businesses.
Speaker 3:I think that was a decisive moment that eventually led to me starting my own business. That I felt like, okay, but clearly there's a certain pace that suits me personally. There's a certain ambition level, there's a certain type of product that I really love and burn for, and it was only then, after I got out of Klarna and viewed that business and my time there with the distance, or from a distance, that I realized, okay, I really want to be in exactly this spot, and that's ultimately why I started my own business, so I think that's one of the aha moments for me.
Speaker 2:Okay, so what is something that female leaders bring to the table that you think the payments industry needs more of?
Speaker 3:That's a good question, because I'm not so sure that there are attributes that are like uniquely female or uniquely male.
Speaker 3:If we look at FinTech, which is the space that we're in, this would have been a space that has been very male-dominated traditionally, not because I think anyone intentionally designed it that way, but a large part of tech businesses are engineers and engineers.
Speaker 3:We see that sort of a larger share of the candidates leaving school are actually male and so traditionally you would have had fewer females in FinTech, and that's changing, and I think what they're bringing to the table is a different perspective. They are four just because they're relatively newer to FinTech, if that makes sense, and that means that they often have a more diverse career background. That's what we see in our female applicants that they've done other businesses in the past, especially at a sort of different level of seniority, and that can bring quite fresh impetus to the business and different perspectives. So, reason being not that they're female, but just sort of that, since there have been fewer women in fintech, they've done other things in the past more often, more often, and therefore bring sort of experience from other businesses or industries, which I think is actually now that we have such a thing as a fintech industry, which, frankly, wasn't the case 10 or 15 years ago, because the term wasn't around.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Can be quite rewarding, I would say.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, let's talk a little bit about innovation and influence. So, as you well know and you've talked about the industry, payments, fintech is fast changing, ever changing. So how do you stay innovative as a leader?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. I think it's important to hit a balance between following what the market is doing, what competitors are doing, and then staying true to your own path, because you can spend endless amounts of time trying to analyze what other sort of market participants are building or launching, and it's very easy to get sidetracked. So definitely keeping an ear on the ground is important, but I think it's also really important to sort of stay true to the mission, otherwise you have a leadership problem. If we're going back to leadership, you're changing course all the time and dragging the teams in different directions. I think that that can become problematic.
Speaker 3:But so yeah, so basically looking at, of course, how the market is evolving, but also speaking to customers, I think is a really really important aspect of innovation Really truly addressing pain points that customers have. Listening to those. It's so easy to get caught up in what you think are shiny new features and not solve the basic pain points of customers. So I think probably those are the two key components pain points of customers. So that's, I think probably those are the two key components. So, for me, definitely keeping an eye or an ear on the ground and an eye on the market, but more importantly perhaps, in the agent conversations with customers.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, what's one trend or key change that's going on in the industry right now that you're really keeping up with?
Speaker 3:That's a good. I can give you one that I haven't been keeping up with, and that is stable coins. I was at Money 2020 just a few weeks ago and I felt like this was a topic everybody raised and I haven't spent a terrible amount of time on it. So that is one thing that I feel like right now in payments is becoming a really, really, really hot topic. Other than that, for us specifically, it is most definitely, I think, changes in sort of European instant payments. Absolutely, that's something that I spend almost every day looking at one way or another, just because it is such a big catalyst for our payment method and for the category that we're in.
Speaker 2:Okay, so just curious for clarification on that. Does, like the US we have RTP and we have FedNow Does Europe have similar kind of capabilities like that that make instant payments work there?
Speaker 3:I would say that sort of the European infrastructure, at least for account to account payments in this regard is much more advanced actually, the fact that you can now transfer money from Spain to Norway, to Sweden or basically all across the Eurozone. From that point of view view it's actually, for example, but let's say in the Eurozone for a moment if you can do that just within 10 seconds, I think that's pretty amazing. Sort of cross-border payments that sort of can be executed at that speed, are really really powerful tool.
Speaker 2:Well, how do you think that women leaders can help influence the future direction of payments in fintech?
Speaker 3:I think that there is a lot of scientific proof that sort of more diverse teams are higher performing teams and oftentimes I find that sort of women bring not because they add gender diversity in themselves, but just because they have a different view that is something that I think can be quite helpful. But just because they have a different view, that is something that I think can be quite helpful. I can personally say I don't want to say that this is necessarily representative of every single business, but at Bright we've been hiring fairly senior leaders across the board, so the majority of them are mothers, especially, at least in the more senior range, I can confidently say people and that's probably not exclusive to mothers. The same would probably apply to fathers as well, but let's focus on mothers for a moment.
Speaker 3:The organizational skill of a mother, of a working mom, is on a different level than what I see with sort of the average employee. So definitely so. The ability to juggle multiple projects and priorities at the same time is also something that we see quite stand out from, at least from our team members. I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but certainly for us.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, let's talk a little bit about mentorship and impact. So, have you had, or do you have, mentors? Who are they and what kind of impact have they had on your career?
Speaker 3:Interesting. So I haven't had a the one mentor that I've been discussing everything with. I have generally kept in touch with a lot of my previous managers, many of whom are, of course, quite a bit older and have done very well in their careers and are now CEOs or you know sort of professionals. I turn to different people for different topics, so it's not the one person that I always ask, but there's definitely been people around me that I've been able to go to for different topics and I've been very fortunate that they've been very generous and sort of sharing their thoughts and insights with me. But other than that not sort of the I wouldn't say that I have the one mentor that I keep turning to.
Speaker 2:Okay, and within your organization, like, how do you handle sort of mentorship for, say, the younger people in your company? Do you have any kind of programs or is that more on them to build their networks and to build their mentorships on their own?
Speaker 3:We do sort of try to encourage, of course and sort of collaboration between different levels in the organization quite a lot, and I've done this, for example, even on a board level.
Speaker 3:So what we have is we have independent board members whose skill set match those of the C-level management team. So, other than, of course, our investors that are present on the board, we have board members that are specifically chosen to be sounding boards for the executive level. So there we have a, let's say, a structural mentoring that's built into the boardroom, if you will, and I think that's been quite helpful, especially in areas where I'm not strong, so let's say finance, for example. I'm not a CFO by training. So therefore my CFO has another CFO on the board that he can balance with. If there are any topics that he'd like a different opinion on, that I would not be able to offer just because my background is not as a professional CFO. And in the organization we do have a buddy program actually for new joiners, where you're assigned a more senior member in the organization or just an employee that has longer tenure, of course. That will help navigate around the business, especially in the early days.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we often hear this phrase. It's lonely at the top, so you're the CEO. How do you, when you have to make a tough decision, who do you talk to about that? I mean, obviously you have a board, but are there other people outside the organization that you typically go to, or how do you handle that kind of decision-making?
Speaker 3:So I don't have a co-founder.
Speaker 3:I have a tech lead that joined quite early, but he's no longer with the business.
Speaker 3:So not to say that I was all alone in the beginning, but I don't have a co-founder in the classic sense within the business that has been by my side. So what I've done instead is I've hired a fairly senior management team fairly early in the business, some of which I've worked with in the past. So there are people that I've not, at this point, worked with, some of them for almost a decade, and I typically have a very open dialogue with them. So I very much feel that, even though I'm the founder, I operate in in a team that has been with the business for a long time at a very senior level, and that those are the people that I speak to most openly, and sometimes you know everyone. We're all people in the end. Everybody has vent, everybody has to have a moment and just get upset about something for a minute in a professional way, and I think that is generally helpful. Like the, I would like to think that we keep each other sane.
Speaker 2:Right, Great, that's a great way to put it. So if you had to give a say maybe female coming right out of college or university, or maybe even moving into payments from another industry, and you had to give her one piece of advice, what would that advice be?
Speaker 3:I usually say that it's important, first of all, don't shy away from the challenge just because you don't have a technical background.
Speaker 3:That's a really common misconception that people have, that you have to be very, very technical to work in FinTech, and that's not the case, and so that's the first thing.
Speaker 3:So let's assume that we have somebody who's already decided they want to join a fintech.
Speaker 3:I would say try to get as much insight into the business and its core challenges as you can. I feel that I personally and my advice would in this case be sort of based on personal experience I feel that I've benefited a great deal from being in a fast-paced environment because it meant that I got a lot of insight to do different parts of the company and if you have an ambition and you want to be, you know, eventually become part of management team. I would say it's extremely useful to get a true 360 of the business that you're in and not just sort of focusing on your team and your discipline, and that does obviously doesn't mean that you're supposed to try and like do everybody else's job, but just trying to truly understand what other teams challenges are, how they relate your area to other areas, I think will make you a massive asset for the company, and anyone who's an asset for the company and has the right mindset and attitude is very likely to be very successful.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. So one final question before we wrap up. A little bit of another fun question. So, when you look at your phone, what app do you use the most? But it has to be non-business related, and what does that say about you?
Speaker 3:I'm going to have a quick look again, because I have so many apps. The first one that comes up if I sort of pull down and look at my last used apps is Skyscanner, and that probably makes a lot of sense because I do love to travel and Skyscanner, for those who don't know, is an easy way to find flight options online. So that is probably the one that I spend quite a bit of time on and, to be fair, it is end of June, holiday season coming up. I haven't had time sort of to nail all of the summer holiday plans yet, so perhaps it's also top of mind because I've been using it this past weekend.
Speaker 3:Okay, so is that used for business or pleasure, or both, probably both, but right now mostly pleasure Trying sort of to see sort of where we should be going, where we should be traveling, compare flight options. It's right next to hotelscom, so that probably goes to show.
Speaker 2:Travel is the theme here.
Speaker 3:Travel is the theme Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Great, great. Well, before we go, is there anything else you'd like to add? I want to give you the opportunity to kind of summarize the conversation or tell the audience anything you'd like to at this point.
Speaker 3:No, this has been. You've asked very, very fun questions, which is great. No-transcript and obviously more women. Yes, please, absolutely so. If you're a female candidate, you're looking for a role in FinTech and you happen to be in any of our locations. We have offices in Stockholm, in London, in Malaga, in Spain, in Berlin, coming up soon, so we have quite a few locations across Europe. So if anyone's looking, please do check out the career page on buypaymentscom. They would love to hear from you.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, lina, thank you so much for your time. I know it's very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2:And to all your listeners out there.
Speaker 1: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.