Ep 98: BaaS in the USA with Arcady Lapiro of Agora

Arcady is a veteran, serial fintech entrepreneur! Over twenty-four years ago, he was part of the founding and management of a challenger digital bank that grew to over $37bn in assets. The same group then launched the 1st generation of BaaS solutions, and with that, they grew to over $60bn in assets under custody. Now, he is the founder and CEO of Agora, a third-generation banking platform at the intersection of BaaS and embedded Fintech. Agora has built its own modern composable cloud-core banking solution and is working with sponsor bank(s) for the compliance and bank charter aspects. Arcady demystifies the differences between the US and European Banking Markets and some of the challenges of addressing the US market, which is spread across over 9000 banks. He also provides some great insights on bank partnerships with FinTechs. Inevitably, we also discuss the challenges of legacy technology, not only for banks but also for incumbent core banking providers.