994. Insights: The future of partnerships in fintech

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1:10Welcome to Fintech Insider Insights, the podcast from 11FS, five-time winner of Consultancy of the Year at the British Bank Awards. I'm Benjamin Ensor, and today we're diving into one of the most important components of what makes fintech successful. Partnerships. We've all searched for or are searching for the perfect partner, right? It's a universal pursuit, whether in life or in business. And in the fast-paced world of fintech, building effective partnerships is crucial. In 2025, and over the past decade, digital capabilities have unlocked a whole load of new ways for companies to collaborate, ways that were unimaginable a couple of decades ago.

1:50According to recent research from Deloitte, more than 70 % of fintech product launches now involve at least one strategic partnership. And cross-company collaboration has doubled in the past three years. Product companies can no longer thrive alone. For product managers, partnerships are not nice to have, they're essential. From distribution and scale to speed and innovation, partnering is often the only way to get a product to market fast and to stay competitive. So in this episode, we're going to dive into fintech matchmaking. What do you look for in a perfect partner? How do you align goals, interests, cultures, timelines?

2:28And we'll explore what happens after you find a partner. How do you build trust, maintain momentum, and create lasting, successful value from a collaboration? Because finding the one is just the beginning. So to help us on this journey, we're joined by a fantastic panel of three guests. First up, we have Denise Aran, Head of Payment Partnerships EMEA at Google. Welcome back to the show, Denise. Please can you introduce yourself and tell our listeners a little bit about you and your role at Google? Hi, Benjamin. It's great to be back. I lead the Payments Partnership team at Google, looking after the UK, Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

3:11And I manage our two main products, Google Pay and Google Wallet. Google Pay enables secure, simple payments online, and Google Wallet is the preferred way to make mobile payments on Android. And you can also save other digital credentials, such as IDs, loyalty cards, that would normally sit in the physical wallet to Google Wallet. And if we look at my team, we work with partners across the whole payments ecosystem. Fabulous. Welcome. And we have a Fintech Insider debut for Mo Daman, Head of Card Network and Product Partnership at ADN. Please could you also introduce yourself Mo and tell our listeners a little bit about you and your role?

3:53Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I'm Mo. I'm responsible for Global Card Network and Product Partnerships at ADN. I manage the partnership ecosystem for ADN's core platform So on the one side we have the card networks where we manage the foundational relationships with Visa, MasterCard. And on the other side, I'm responsible for the product partnerships. And that's really also I think where the conversation of today is really about because that's where we are looking for those partners that fit to our product needs. and this is the suite of partners that power our global product suite. So in a nutshell, it's about identifying and managing the best partners to help our customers succeed.

4:50And I'm very excited to be here today to join this conversation and to be here with experts also from key payment method partners. I loved how you put that. It's about identifying the partners to help our customers succeed. Fantastic. And it's also a very warm welcome back to Veronica Glab, Strategic Partnerships Lead at Juice Ventures. Welcome back to the show, Veronica. Can you tell our listeners who haven't met you before a little bit about you and a little bit about what you've been up to since you were last on the podcast? Sure, Benjamin. Thank you for having me once again. So, Veronica Glab.

5:28I've been the Head of Partnerships at Innovate Finance. the UK FinTech Association, and a FinTech strategist for the last couple of years. But I think with your introduction, you gave it away as actually I've just stepped into a new role as the strategic partnerships lead at Juice. So I'd love to tell you a little bit more about that. Juice is a long-term funding partner for ambitious businesses in the UK, providing a fresh alternative by combining growth capital and insights. So that's being smart growth capital. We partner across the fintech and financial services ecosystem to support the ambitious SMEs in the UK.

6:08So I think it's a perfect moment for me to be back on the show and share a little bit of that experience, but also to learn from the rest of the panelists. Fantastic. Well, congratulations and welcome back. Okay, so we've now got a panel of matchmakers and we need your advice on how to partner. So let's set the scene. Our listeners have just signed up for a fintech or banking version of a dating app. It doesn't exist yet, so bear with us. So you're scrolling through profile after profile, each one offering all sorts of fantastic promises of profitability and market expansion and so on. And all these potential partners look potentially perfect, but how do you separate the green flags from the red ones?

6:54How do you look past the sort of glossy profiles and slick branding to understand which partnerships are truly going to be a right fit for your business. So maybe I could start by asking all three of you, what do you think makes a good partner and a good partnership in sort of fintech ecosystems today? What do you look for? Maybe Denise, perhaps we could start with you. What sort of things make another company a good partner? Yeah, that would indeed be very convenient, actually, if we had all the potential partners in one place and we could just pick. But in our case, there is a step before that where we start with actually the user's needs.

7:41So it depends on what problem we're trying to solve for the users, for the merchants or the other ecosystem players. And then based on that, we determine the partners who might be relevant for our products. And it's really difficult to generalize this, but depending what our goal is, what we want to accomplish with our products and the problems we're trying to solve, there might be just a single company that we must partner with, or there might be hundreds of companies which require a much more scaled selection and communication approach. So once we pass that stage and we know who we should partner with, and in the case there are multiple partners we prioritize, then we would actually take a more systematic approach.

8:25So we would review that company's relationship with Google, their current engagements they have. Perhaps they work with us as Google in the way we support the e-commerce ecosystem and payments acceptance. Or they are working with another part of Google, such as Android or Cloud or Chrome. So by looking at the relationship and the partnership in a holistic way, we can build the most mutually beneficial relationship. And this will influence our prioritization and how we view that partnership. What do you think? I think Denise makes a really important point there that obviously sometimes you don't have a choice.

9:08You need access to, I don't know, payment systems in Brazil or Turkey and there's basically only one firm you can partner with. But other times maybe it's, I don't know, some kind of anti-money laundering thing where, you know, there's a number of people you could potentially work with. and so on. But what do you start thinking about at Aegean when you're trying to build partnerships? Well, when we look for a partner, actually that search never starts externally. It always starts internally. So looking internally, what Denise alluded to as well, what are our customer needs? Because that's where you identify what you're actually looking for.

9:41And it needs to be very crystal clear like what your intention is, of course, because otherwise you just go out to the marketplace and see, okay, nice partner. Why are we going to partner? So it starts with that why. And well, for us a big green flag, I would say, when we have come to that decision, okay, this is the problem that we're trying to solve. Let's search for a partner. It always helps if a partner is, of course, aligned with our strategy as well. If they are as customer-focused as we are, a big red flag could be when they are differentiating from our core product or from our core strategy.

10:32So it's a spectrum, so to say, when you're looking for partners. What's your take, Veronica? are some red flags or some green flags that spring to mind for you? I think as far as green flags, both Mo and Dumise summed it up really well. And, you know, looking at a proven track record of successful partnerships as a really good green flag, I just want to mention that for early stage fintech companies that might be only beginning their strategic partnerships journey, you might recognize you've not got a big track record yourself. It's just dipping your toes into thinking about what kind of strategic partnerships are going to work for you.

11:16So one piece of advice would be to really engage with the industry and with the community as well as you're on that journey, researching what your strategy is going to look like. Because FinTech in the UK, it's a big community, but because there's a tightly organized ecosystem, it's a big community that feels small and reputations matter. So you're going to think about the reputation of some of your prospective partners, but also how you can build your own reputation as a good member of your own community when you're just starting out as well. So strongly, strongly advise engaging with the community before you even start building the strategy.

11:52And I think conversely, one of the big red flags as well is that if we're going to go with the dating metaphor as well, you know, look out for the love bombers, look out for a prospective partner who maybe has a track record of over-promising or making very grand promises. You know, the big green flag would be that together when you're in the partnership conversation, defining the terms of the partnership, that you're actually thinking about what you can both, you know, contribute to the relationship, make it a symbiotic relationship, set out a framework, and then consistent communication throughout in order to deliver on those partnership KPIs.

12:29So, I think that's the two big ones for me. Denise, presumably partnerships very much sort of evolve over time? I mean, a little bit like human relationships, you know, potentially you start collaborating a little bit with the company on something and then gradually, you know, as you build up more trust between the organizations and you uncover sort of more shared opportunities, shared capabilities. Is that right? Do you sort of see that happening, that there are some partnerships that become more and more important and others that maybe were opportunistic and then sort of fade away or end? In our case, I absolutely believe the foundation of trust is really important.

13:05Once you start the relationship and you are able to have open communication and you're able to collaborate and then build that trust, that definitely helps take the relationship forward. There can be ebbs and flows in all partnerships. We need to be realistic here. At the same time, in my experience, what I have seen is if you started on a good way, had to open dialogue, clear goals, and build trust based on that, that partnership will go forward. and you can build a deeper and deeper relationship between the companies. Maybe we can give an example of the partnership we have at ADN because Mo and I actually have met previously in the partnership context in our roles and the partnership between ADN and Google is around Google Pay Online API.

14:13That's an online payments product I was talking about. And that's offered to Adyen's many e-commerce merchants. And that, I would say, is a mature partnership now, but started a few years ago. And since then, we have built on it. And as we think about new product features and innovation, Adyen is one of the companies we would often speak with. So how do you go about the sort of assessment? So let's go back. And I don't want to focus on the Google Adyen partnership at the expense of other partnerships or indeed cause you to sort of reveal any secrets. But, you know, Mo, let's take us a step back.

14:53When you're thinking about partners and you're doing that assessment, you've identified you have this customer need and maybe it's a customer need that you can't easily serve internally. So it makes sense to go and find, hey, someone else has probably built this capability already. And let's imagine there is a choice of there's a number of people who can come in. How do you go about doing that sort of assessment and really thinking about, well, okay, there's five or six firms we could partner with here. You know, how do you decide, well, these guys are in Amsterdam, so they're easy to partner with.

15:25How do you sort of filter it down? How do you decide who you might want to work with? Yeah. Well, alignment is, I think, critical. It goes much deeper than simply liking a brand. So when we are setting for partners, so to say, there's a very structured due diligence process. We identify, does it serve our needs? And we measure technical fit, scalability, but also alignment on our values. And these things, yeah, they require a constant alignment. And that is, of course, also internally with product teams. Is this indeed the right fit? Will this help our products scale? Will this commercially scale?

16:19These are all things that we would evaluate, so to say. Veronica, you were talking earlier about startups and so on, and you often see this sort of mismatch where you've got big national banks or international banks looking to partner with tiny little fintechs, and the tiny little fintechs are 10 people or something, and the compliance and vendor assessment teams and the big banks are hundreds of people. How do you manage, how do you see people managing partnerships where you've got this sort of difference in scale? Because this can be really tough for a little fintech to navigate a huge firm.

16:58And can you even get an equal partnership between firms of very different sizes? What do you think? Yeah, certainly you can. You just have to be really aware of the timelines. I think especially when we're looking at an early stage fintech company versus, not versus, but together with a legacy financial services institution, then there's going to be a lot of natural elements where you can have a symbiotic relationship, where you're going to have very different technical capabilities and very different compliance and regulatory overhead and approvals that need to happen. therein. So, you know, my number one approach is to actually really look at the timeline of the conversation and start the conversation early.

17:45You know, if we know that one year from now, or even two years from now, we want to be partnered with XYZ Bank, we want to start those conversations early to see what are their current frustrations, their current pain points in serving our shared community or shared audience, and actually, where do they see that timeline going. And we're going to compare that against what some of, you know, other legacy banks are doing as well, if they're sharing some of those frustrations, because then as a more agile, younger company with possibly a more agile tech stack as well, we can also pivot and start to anticipate where the industry and where the market is going.

18:25So if you start the conversation early, it could look like, hey, we're just beginning this journey here with our product. We're looking for how to develop it. We want this product to really solve major problems for our partners. What's your roadmap look like? Let's keep the conversation going. Where have people seen partnerships not working or not even at the beginning? I mean, we talked a little bit about some of the red flags. Are there times when, you know, partnerships look like they're not going to work, times when, you know, maybe at your firms, you've sort of said, actually, this isn't going to be right.

19:10This isn't the answer. Do you see, have you seen elsewhere in the industry, maybe things like culture clash or legal barriers or, you know, in payments, right, competitive challenges? Because in payments, it's very easy for a company that is potentially a really attractive partner to also be a competitor in some other corner of your business um have you seen have you seen those kind of obstacles coming up and and sort of preventing partnerships from working um i know it's quite a tricky question and i'm not looking for specific examples but mo what's maybe i can add a little point is that what sorts of things have you seen that have maybe stopped partnerships from happening or maybe caused partnerships not to work out and as well as people hoped yeah and this this time goes back a little bit to finding that strategic fit with a partner so when some when a partner for example offers something that is completely off that doesn't fit with our product differentiation then yeah there might be a clash an example uh that i had from my own experience we had a partner that was pushing a certain product, an existing partner, pushing a certain product for us to resell.

20:28But everybody knows IDN builds a single platform. We own the technology stack. So then we noticed, okay, there's a clash. This is not going to work. So that specific initiative, of course, didn't go through because that model wasn't a product strategy fit for us. So yeah, and that happens. sometimes you identify that. And that's also a part of the process. It's a part of the partnership life cycle that also sometimes these partnerships end up not succeeding because you have identified that you're not the right partner for each other. Denise, you must have to think about this carefully at Google because Google is obviously such a fabulous brand.

21:11You've got so many users all around the world and so on that I'm sure you are inundated and everybody wants to partner with Google. So you must have to think quite carefully about you know when does it make sense for Google and also how you manage that sort of power dynamic because it's very different partnering with a big company or relatively big company like Adgen but you know there's probably lots of little startups that like to partner with Google too how do you sort of think about that and decide sort of how to manage that that sort of power dynamic almost between you know Google with its size and some partners who are potentially crucial to you but much much smaller.

21:46Yeah I think it depends on the again the problem at end and what are the goals of the partnership I think the size maybe is less important in that sense and once we have a common goal and we can have a clear understanding with the partnership in my experience where I've seen has been a difference or the partnerships that perform better are with companies who are really willing to test and learn with us or not shy to be on a journey. And the reason I say that is a lot of the partnership we do are related to a product feature or a product launch. So the partners need to be willing to also really test here and be early adopters.

22:38So the partnerships that succeed are with these types of companies. So you're really sort of talking about cultural alignment, aren't you? And sort of having that common shared focus on your customer and the objectives and testing and learning to iterate towards that. Okay, fantastic. All right, let's take a very quick pause and we will be back very shortly.

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24:07Welcome back to Fintech Insider Insights. In the first half of the show, we kicked off our fintech matchmaking journey, diving into what to look for when skiting for the ideal partner. Now in the second half, we're going to shift gears to focus on the road ahead. What does it really take to build a perfect partnership? And how do you make it work sustainably for both sides? And I'll also be asking our panel of partnership pros to dust off their fintech crypto crystal balls and share some bold predictions for the future of the partnership landscape. Okay, so let's imagine the partnership's been secured, the media release is out, and it's time to embark on the next stages of the journey.

24:45What are the most important things to make a partnership work beyond a media release? The media release is nice, but what does it actually take to make a partnership successful? Veronica, perhaps I can start with you. What do you think of the sort of maybe maybe we can have one each from each of you but um what are the three things that you need to avoid sort of partnership theater where it's just a media release to actually genuinely create value for the end customers and the and the and the firms involved in the partnership yeah so actually i would argue that a lot of this has to be done before that partnership this signed and announced and you know sort of my my two of what really really has to be done first before you sign that partnership is make sure that you're aligned on the vision and goals for that relationship.

25:37Ideally pivoting that partnership relationship towards a renewal and working back from what a successful renewal looks like. But of course, accepting that, you know, things can work out very differently as well. And then also aligning on your technical capacity and the regulatory and governance overhead as well. Now, once you've signed that partnership, you've made the announcement, you're very excited about it as well is when you have to start executing on it. So this is where I would also advise to start with a pilot program or a basic proof of concept, and then slowly work your way throughout execution, keeping very good timelines on what your sort of monthly or quarterly KPIs are going to be for that.

26:19take real-time data to turn that POC into an actual minimum viable product and then keep testing, executing in real time. So then you really see the scalability. Mario, what do you think? Like Veronica said about it starts with indeed defining the goals, how we internally look at that, we define success beforehand. That's where it starts. Because then you always know what you're working towards. And if you don't get that right, then often you also see a partnership deteriorating if you haven't defined success. So it's important to have very clear KPIs beforehand. And then in order to drive that success, drive towards that outcome, you have continuous engagements.

27:13You really try to actively manage that partnership to make sure, are we aligned on our goals? And that is a continuous process because FinTech world, it goes very fast. Things change, things move. So it's very important to keep that alignment checks on are we still aligned on what success looks like. Can you give us an example just quickly of a sort of KPI or an outcome? Is that generally a shared outcome or is that an outcome just for sort of your business? Can you give us an example of what kind of KPI you might use? Yeah, of course. It really depends on where on the spectrum of partnership you are.

27:57Because if you are on, let's say, a partner where we are a full stack build ourselves or you are a partner on the other end of the spectrum where, yeah, it's simply an agent product layer and we use a service of a partner beneath. Take, for example, identity verification. That's an easy check. We have not built that fully in-house. We use a partner for that. And they are the differentiator, so to say, in that area. We are that within payments. That's our core. And this is really a strategic spectrum, I would say, of partnerships. so going back to what is such an example of a KPI it will differ of course per partner so for that identity verification partner the success rate of of of of throughput for a more tech stack when we're looking at payments yeah it might be much broader are we are we getting more opportunities out of this partnership than than just the services so the KPIs will vary widely.