August 18, 2025 • 23 mins
Ever wonder what it takes to transform a basement startup into a global payments powerhouse processing over a quarter trillion dollars annually? In this fascinating conversation, Taylor Lauber, CEO of Shift4, reveals the remarkable journey that's taken the company from a small payment processor to an innovative force reimagining commerce across 75 countries worldwide.
Taylor's own path to leadership wasn't straightforward. After beginning his career at Merrill Lynch and Blackstone, he initially resisted joining Shift4 despite his teenage connection to founder Jared Isaacman. His skepticism about the sustainability of the payments business model eventually gave way when he recognized that Shift4 wasn't just riding a fintech wave but actively creating their future through strategic innovation and problem-solving. "This was not luck," Taylor explains. "This is a team that can identify opportunities and manufacture success."
What sets Shift4 apart in the crowded payments landscape? According to Taylor, it starts with humility – "If we stand still, we will not survive" – coupled with the ambition to tackle problems others avoid. Unlike competitors who choose a single strategy, Shift4 employs a three-pronged approach: building proprietary solutions when necessary, acquiring strategic assets that shouldn't be standalone features, and partnering intelligently where ownership might alienate collaborators. This flexibility has allowed them to serve diverse markets from single-location restaurants to massive enterprises like casinos and stadiums.
Taylor offers particularly valuable insights about global expansion opportunities. While integrated payments have reached relative maturity in the United States, international markets remain in the "early innings," with payment experiences often resembling those in the U.S. from 15-20 years ago. This represents an enormous opportunity for companies that can adapt proven solutions to new cultural contexts.
Listen now to discover how Shift4 balances innovation with execution, and how Taylor maintains his own equilibrium between leading a global enterprise and preserving sacred family time around the dinner table.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast,
where we talk to C-level leadersfrom across the payments
landscape.
We'll be discussing theproducts and services that
impact the payment space today,as well as trends and
predictions for the future ofpayments.
We will also hear stories fromour guests about their journeys
to the top.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Leaders in
Payments podcast.
I'm your host, greg Meyers, andon today's show we have a very
special guest.
Payments Podcast.
I'm your host, greg Myers, andon today's show we have a very
special guest, taylor Lauber,who is the CEO of Shift4.
So, taylor, thank you so muchfor being here and welcome to
the show.
Oh, thanks for having me.
So, if you don't mind, tell ouraudience a little bit about
yourself, maybe where you'reborn, where you grew up, where
you went to school, a few thingslike that.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah, sure.
So I grew up in really centralJersey and a buddy of mine
founded what would become Shift4in his parents' basement when
we were teenagers.
So I got a little bit ofexposure to this boom that was
the payments industry back inthe late 90s, early 2000s.
And then was the idiot thatleft and went to college, so I
(00:58):
thought my career would be onWall Street.
I went to a school calledBentley, which really focused on
business and technology,ultimately landed a job at
Merrill Lynch supportingcompanies through their public
journey, whether that wasissuing equity to their
employees and the lifecycle of apublic company from the
standpoint of the employees andthe executives.
(01:19):
Got to know Blackstone throughtheir IPO and the CFO and the
head of HR at Blackstonerecruited me to come over and
work full-time for them, whichstarted an entirely new journey.
It was very different.
It was how do we think aboutgrowth as a company and how do
we think about adding customersand adding products and all that
stuff?
And I got shoved into a lot ofreally cool projects, first of
(01:42):
which was building a newfundraising arm for Blackstone
so they can attract newinvestors into their own funds.
Spent eight years there andreally loved it Highly
entrepreneurial, despite theglossy brand name and the
reputation.
You had license to buildwhatever you thought would grow
and create a lot of value forthe company.
(02:03):
But more or less every year,jared asked me to come back and
work for the business and I was,quite frankly, the biggest
critic, I think, of the industryand the business and was it
luck or was it skill, and howdoes all this stuff even work?
And finally relented abouteight years ago when he, I think
the phrase was I'm not going toask you, I'm telling you, I
(02:30):
want your help and come join me.
And I've been with Shifor eversince and I can tell you that
that eight years has eclipsedkind of the entirety of all the
years prior in terms of justlearning.
I mean, went from probably a300 person business to now a
6,000 operating in one country,to over 75 today, and so it's
been a heck of a journey, butalso a heck of a lot more
complicated than I ever imaginedit could be in terms of just
(02:52):
how commerce works all over theworld.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Okay, I think that's a great segue into the next
question.
For those in the audience thatmay not know who Shift4 is and
what you do, do you mind givingus kind of the high-level
overview of the company?
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
So we are a software and payments provider for a lot
of different industries and, upuntil recently, primarily
focused on what we would callcard present.
So you'd find us in about athird of the table service
restaurants in the United States.
You'd find us in roughly 40% ofthe hotels in the United States
, an overwhelming number ofstadiums, theme parks and
entertainment venues, etc.
And what's really exciting isthese kind of solutions we've
(03:32):
been able to bring to theseindustries have yet to exist all
over the world, and so if youthink about going to a pub in
London, it kind of looks like apayment experience from 15 or 20
years ago in the United States,which is that they pull out
this bank terminal and they lookup what you owe and they punch
it in.
And so today we're actuallymuch more defined by introducing
(03:54):
what's made us successful forthe last 25 years from a
technology standpoint into allof these new markets all over
the world.
And maybe, just to cover theheadlines, we are, as I
mentioned, about 6,000 people.
We process well over a quartertrillion dollars of payment
volume or commerce around theworld in different capacities,
and beyond those verticalsserved, we've got a hell of an
(04:17):
interesting customer base, kindof forcing us to evolve all over
the world.
So we're enabling payments inplaces like Africa and places
like Asia for a lot of emergingcompanies.
We've been able to leverage ourused technology to solve
difficult problems, mindset tonot just enter those verticals
that I mentioned but also buildfranchises to start to support
(04:39):
other huge verticals of commercewhere complexity is a challenge
.
So if you think about one endof the spectrum being a square
giving that small business ownereverything they need to run
their business, we try todeliver a similar set of
capabilities to the New YorkYankees, who have a whole
different set of challenges.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Okay, and is your customer base?
All the way from small to superregional?
I mean national orinternational businesses, yeah,
so what would have?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
started as a typical shift for a customer maybe 10
years ago, would have been theowner-operated bar and grill in
boise, idaho.
Hypothetically, all the way totoday, put that bar and grill
inside of like the wind casinoresort in Las Vegas and it's one
of hundreds of revenue centers.
And that operator needs to knowthat it needs world-class
(05:30):
software to run that food andbeverage location.
But it also needs commonreconciliation across hundreds
of these revenue centers.
And it's not just a restaurant,it's also a spa, it's also a
golf course, it's also a frontdesk times as many revenue
centers as I mentioned.
So, yeah, it's been anincredible journey because the
typical customer of Shift4 wouldhave looked pretty ubiquitous
(05:52):
10 years ago and now we havesingle locations that do
hundreds of billions of paymentvolume, if not billions, and,
quite frankly, conduct commercevery differently.
Right, like the New YorkYankees have to sell their
ticket online and they need oursolutions to help enable that
but also fulfill the journey asyou kind of go to the game and
watch the experience.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
So did you have your customers that seemed to pull
you into doing the internationalgrowth side?
Or was that a decision, astrategic decision?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I'd actually like to pull it a step back and
philosophically, why do weembrace these problems?
And it started 25 years ago.
It started with if all we'redoing as a payments company is
an approval, a decline, a refundand putting a terminal on a
countertop, we're not adding aheck of a lot of value.
And let's not kid ourselves,the fact that digital payments
(06:44):
acceptance was such a gold rushshould not lull ourselves into
complacency, thinking we'resmart or good, we're probably
lucky and there's not a lot oftechnology here in this
countertop terminal.
And if we want to command valueand we want to win the hearts
and minds of merchants, it's notgoing to be through approvals
to clients and refunds.
It's going to be throughtechnology that helps them run
(07:06):
their business better.
So it was a 20-year journeywhere we started combining what
at the time were three cottageindustries of hardware, software
and payments into a singleecosystem and delivering that to
the merchant, and it wasimmensely successful.
We learned a heck of a lotabout what it means to be a
technology provider.
Beyond that payment experience,you need to think about
(07:28):
software coding, you need tothink about implementation.
You need to think aboutlifecycle support.
That's far more intense.
Did the money arrive or not.
And it was those learnings thattaught us that the bigger the
problem, the thinner the airfrom a competitive standpoint.
And why can't we do what we'vedone in restaurants for hotels
who have not three vendorsthey're working with, but maybe
(07:50):
six or more, or stadiums whohave potentially even more than
that?
And to your point, when westarted to solve those problems,
customers started to say I wantthis solution for my locations
outside the United States.
And it makes perfect sense,although they were telling us
that seven, eight years ago,when we didn't have an ounce of
(08:11):
capabilities and it startedwhat's now been a journey of
that length to start to buildthe capabilities that let us
deliver that simplification inas many markets as possible.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Okay.
So if you let's say in the US,with the integrated payments
with software technologypayments together, let's just
say maybe we're in the fourth orfifth inning, I don't know kind
of making that up, but let'sjust say we're there, we've been
doing it for 10 years in the US.
Where would you kind of saythey are?
In other parts of the world?
Are they just like at the topof the first or kind of?
Where is the maturity of that?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
So very much the early days.
I mean, it is still, by andlarge, the bank terminal that is
delivered to help acceptpayments, and this can be a
point of confusion for consumersbecause there has been
investment, there's not like.
This is a lost opportunity.
The consumer payment experiencecan look somewhat modern if
you're tapping or they'rebringing a device over to the
(09:06):
table, but it's, by and large, abank terminal that offers very
little utility to that merchant.
It's still not connected to thesoftware they use to run their
business and the othermanagement systems that they
have, and so, in that regard, itis very much the early innings,
and what's exciting for usabout it is the idea that we've
solved these problems before.
(09:27):
These aren't new and they'renot unique.
There's certainly geographicdifferences and there's cultural
differences they have to adaptto, but I learned a long time
ago that if you can find thesame problem in a different
place that you've already solvedbefore, it's a recipe for
success.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Okay, well, what would you say?
Differentiates Shift4 from your?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
competitors.
Well, what, would you say,differentiates Shift4 from your
competitors?
It starts with a humility If westand still, we will not
survive.
And that comes from the earlydays of Jared saying if I don't
embrace technology and emergencyvalue, I'm going to be
worthless to my merchants.
So we start with this humilitythat we're never going to be
doing it perfectly, and then anambition that we're going to
(10:06):
seek out problems that othershaven't solved yet, and maybe a
motivation that the bigger theproblem, the more eager we are
to take it on.
There's another philosophythat's somewhat unique to
fintech companies, at least fromour perspective, which is we
didn't take outside capital inthe business for the first 15
years it existed.
(10:26):
And to think about what thatdoes to an institution, it means
you are immensely disciplinedabout how your dollars get spent
and you will not do somethingwithout, ultimately, the aim of
profitability.
And I think that for us, as welook across the competitive
landscape throughout variousmarket cycles, is a huge
(10:47):
differentiator.
I mean we have many competitorsthat had a license to light
money on fire and no plan toever kind of become profitable.
So, as a public company, thatthe ultimate goal of a public
company is to deliver a returnon capital to your shareholders.
We've got a kind of we wereforged in a way that I think has
that entrepreneurial livewithin your means but also make
(11:07):
your dollar go really, reallyfar when you plan to invest it.
We have that mindset.
And the last thing I'd say andI'm really I'm glad the world
has gotten glimpses of this iswe have a founder that, like
went to space and thenimmediately decided to go back
again and make the mission a lotmore challenging and accomplish
a lot more.
That ambition can't beunderstated and obviously that
(11:31):
ambition has been on displayprofessionally long before the
public could see the goals hesets for himself and the company
.
So I think that is anotherreally really unique testament
to the problems we try to solve.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Right, right, okay.
Well, one kind of finalquestion about the company.
A lot of payments companiesdecided to sell to SaaS
companies, who are the software,and you guys, I think, decided
strategically to take anotherroute.
Could you maybe talk about thatdecision-making process?
What were you guys thinkingwhen you decided to own all of
it as opposed to just stick tothe payment side?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, it's a great question.
It comes to the heart of who'swinning and who's losing in the
current operating environment.
It starts with Jared and theteam recognizing 20 years ago
that technology was what wasgoing to win, not payments.
Payments, payments was muchmore of a utility that a
(12:29):
merchant was required topurchase than something that
they were excited to purchase orsomething that actually helped
run their business better.
And so that framework of wehave to deliver technology is
something that I you know Jaredcaught on to a decade before any
of the traditional paymentscompanies did.
The wave of how does paymentsand software fit together that
we saw over the last 10 yearshad been worked on for 10 years
(12:52):
and already at Shift4.
And so what did we learn?
We learned that there are areasyou build, there are areas you
buy and there are areas youpartner.
And if you want to be inmultiple verticals, you can't
have a monolithic strategy,because you cannot possibly own
all of the software that a largecasino resort in Las Vegas
(13:13):
needs to run their business and,quite frankly, if you own
certain pieces of that software,you might alienate the rest and
they'll never want to work withyou.
And so those are areas wherepartnership makes obvious sense
and it creates a differentiatedapproach where partnership makes
obvious sense and it creates adifferentiated approach.
(13:34):
Similarly, there are solutionsthat don't exist and yet
merchants need them.
So pay at the table and mobiledelivery and payment solutions
became an urgent need throughthe pandemic and there wasn't a
good solution, so we went outand built something.
And then, lastly, there areassets that shouldn't be
standalone companies.
They are features as part of abroader offering, and the idea
that a merchant needs to stitchfive or six of them together to
(13:54):
get commerce to work is notthat's a bug, it's not a feature
, and so it is unique because wedo all three of those things.
And I would think, if you lookacross the landscape, most of
our competitors and, just simply, most companies in the industry
pick one of those things.
And I would think, if you lookacross the landscape, most of
our competitors and, just simply, most companies in the industry
pick one of those three andthey stick to that, which
constrains their growth andtheir flexibility, in our
(14:15):
opinion.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Okay.
Okay.
Well, let's switch gears alittle bit and talk about you.
You sort of walked us throughyour professional journey
earlier and you said thatbasically, jared said you're
coming to work here, but you hadto convince yourself that
Shift4 was a place you wanted tobuild a career.
So maybe walk us through thatdecision-making.
Why did you say yes?
And you know, obviously therest is history, but tell us
(14:37):
maybe how you were thinkingabout it.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Yeah, sure, I'll start with where the skepticism
came in.
The skepticism in the earlyyears was that the business was
tremendously successful from itsinfancy and life's not supposed
to be that easy.
It was a gold rush to enablemerchants with this capability.
This was, keep in mind, itsounds like ancient history, but
no, giving a merchant theability to accept a credit card
(15:01):
was innovative 25 years ago.
I mean, we were 16 and we weregetting sent credit cards in the
mail to our attention by thecard issuers, and yet the
average business didn't have thecapability to accept them.
And so enablement were theearly days, and simply
enablement, and innovation andgo-to-market created a ton of
success, and I questioned thedurability of that.
(15:22):
Now, interestingly, jared didtoo, and that's why he evolved
the business through deliveringall these technologies over the
years.
But that was one thing.
Blackstone was an incredibleplace to be.
It is still an incrediblecompany.
If you want to work in assetmanagement, there's nowhere
better and so that obviouslycreates its own inertia, and I
really enjoyed my time there andI still have great
(15:42):
relationships there.
Two things really distinctlychanged my thinking in the
equation from a careerperspective.
One was Jared had justcompleted a wave of acquisitions
, that was assembling.
It was combining a lot of partsthat had traditionally been
their own industry, and the waveof growth was obvious.
(16:04):
It was like what I saw atBlackstone when I joined in 2010
.
It was this company is going toquadruple, even with mediocre
execution.
That's how much success we'vegot in front of us.
And, sure enough, it did farbetter than that.
And then, lastly, I saw theteam and it was a small group at
Shift4, building an air defensebusiness.
(16:25):
Like Jared built a completelydifferent business, kind of in
his spare time, and it dawned onme that this was not luck.
I mean, this was not rightplace at the right time.
This is a team that canidentify opportunities and
manufacture success, and theindustry doesn't matter, the
customer doesn't matter, theproduct doesn't matter, it's
just that mindset and skillset.
(16:46):
And so when I saw that Jared'sa persuasive guy, he actually
took me on a trip to go purchasea bunch of fighter jets from
the Spanish government and Isaid, wow, this is something
truly special.
And it actually doesn't matterwhat the product is.
The team that is executingagainst it will pivot as often
(17:07):
as the world necessitates it.
So in that regard, it's beenexceptional and I would not have
expected that we'd be a companyof the scale we are and a
public company and all thosethings, but it's certainly the
byproduct of an excellent teamand a mindset that you pivot as
often as the world requires youto.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Okay, so what is something you're passionate
about?
So, maybe one work-relatedpassion and one personal passion
.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So, it's hard to say this as a passion.
It's just kind of a philosophyI've learned professionally and
as a young person trying toinnovate and trying to create
success.
I got really frustrated when Iwas at Blackstone because we try
to build these investmentproducts and the senior
management team we're allrunning the company today would
(17:53):
constantly send us back to thedrawing board and say this is
too complicated, it doesn'tscale in the way that you think
it should Start over.
Think bigger, think simpler.
If you want it to be huge, itcan't be complicated.
So think about scale.
Before you want it to be huge,it can't be complicated.
So think about scale before youbuild it.
Don't build something thatcan't scale beyond a billion in
assets under management in theirindustry or something like that
(18:16):
.
I didn't have an appreciationfor it.
So this product in isolation,with the resources we need to
make it work, is going togenerate a lot of profit on a
standalone basis and that'sentirely uninteresting to the
leader of a big and growingbusiness.
What it takes to move theneedle is really really hard in
a fast growing business.
To calibrate to A milliondollar idea when I joined,
(18:39):
shift4 was a great idea.
Now a hundred million dollaridea is kind of an okay idea,
and so I gained an appreciationfor just thinking about what
moves the needle and scale andusing that framework to approach
kind of problems and innovation, as opposed to just what sounds
like a good idea, becausethere's a niche that you can
(19:01):
fill.
On the personal side, I met mywife when we started dating when
we were teenagers.
We've been together ever since.
We've got four kids.
That doesn't allow for a lot ofhobbies.
My sacred time is the Sundayfamily dinner and I love to cook
and put on a show and spendtime with my family, incorporate
(19:22):
a complicated large family lifeinto the necessity of traveling
around the world and makingsure that employees and our
customers know that they've gotas much focus as they need, and
so it's meant for a lot ofinteresting engagements.
We closed on Global Blue whileI was in Paris with my family on
vacation, which meant I had todrag my kids into the Global
(19:44):
Blue lounge and introduce themto all the employees and attend
the customer cocktail event thatnight.
But it's fun as hell when youcan make all that work in the
same equation.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Okay, so what's your number one dish that you're
cooking these days?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
In summer it obviously has to be on the grill
.
But I love paella.
My Spanish colleagues tell me Ido it.
Okay, I think they're justindulging the boss, but I really
kind of like cooking whateverfeels seasonal at the time.
I'm not married to a particulardish.
Perfecting the roast chicken isa hell of a lot harder than
(20:20):
building a multi-billion dollarcompany, believe it or not.
So I'll probably be on thatjourney for as long as I'm on my
career.
But no, just the time with thefamily and some nourishment is
more important than what's onthe plate.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Gotcha, gotcha.
So one final question.
So, Taylor, if someone comes toyou maybe they just graduated
from college, or maybe they'rechanging industries and they
want to get into payments orFinintech and they come to you
and say hey, Taylor, what shouldI do to help be successful,
what advice would you give them?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I'd start with this industry is tremendously
complicated.
If you could pick one that'sless complicated that you have
passion for, get after it,because it's not payments, it's
not technology, it's commerce.
And when you use the wordcommerce, it evokes the
complexity of commerce, which isit's all over the world, it's
in lots of different forms,everyone needs to engage with it
(21:13):
and it's fundamentallydifferent from industry to
industry and place to place.
But we're trying to solve thatproblem.
So commerce is complicated.
If you can find simpler placesto do business in your career,
go after it.
It's a heck of a lot morecomplicated than asset
management.
I tell you that.
But more importantly, there'ssome fundamental things, which
is you gotta really have apassion for what you're doing.
(21:36):
I would tell young people allthe time if reading about our
industry isn't the first thingyou do when you pick up your
phone in the morning, whetherit's vacation or you don't have
a job yet then it's probably notthe right industry.
You need to align something toyour passions.
We've had incredibly talentedpeople do very poorly simply
because they thought theindustry was an important place
(21:59):
to be, but they didn't have thepassion to put the work in.
And so align to your passion,because the work becomes very
easy, and by that I mean to besuccessful.
It's not going to be overnight,it's going, and it's not going
to be 12-hour days, by the way.
It's going to be like 14 and16-hour days, and that's really
hard to do if you don't lovewhat you're doing.
So start with that fundamental,have a genuine curiosity and
(22:21):
passion for the industry, andthen the hard work just becomes
a byproduct of trying to fulfillthat emotional connection that
you have, and then it all fallsin place.
I guess I'm somewhat uniquebecause I've interviewed for one
job my entire life and that wasto be an administrative
assistant at Merrill Lynch.
But a passion for what I wasdoing and a focus and a
(22:41):
willingness to do anything I wastold to do, regardless of what
was on my business card, has ledme to a collection of awesome
companies and increasingresponsibility each time.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Okay, well, taylor, it's been a great discussion,
but before we go, just wanted tosee if you had any final
comments, anything you wanted toleave with the audience before
we go.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
No, just thank you for the time and the interest.
It's a fascinating placemeeting the financial technology
and the payments industrybecause you learn all the time
it's like commerce does notstand still and therefore you're
not going to be doing the samething you were doing yesterday
on any given day, which isincredibly cool.
So thank you all for theinterest.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah well, taylor, thank you so much for being on
the show today.
I know your time is veryvaluable.
So, being on the show today, Iknow your time is very valuable,
so again, thank you for beinghere.
Yeah, of course, good to seeyou all and to all you listeners
out there.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
I thank you for your time as well, and until the next
story.
Thank you for joining us thisweek on the Leaders in Payments
podcast.
Make sure you visit our websiteat leadersinpaymentscom, where
you can subscribe to the showand where you'll find our show
notes.
If you enjoyed listening,please share on your social
channels as well.
Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast,
where we talk to C-level leadersfrom across the payments
landscape.
We'll be discussing theproducts and services that
impact the payment space today,as well as trends and
predictions for the future ofpayments.
We will also hear stories fromour guests about their journeys
to the top.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Leaders in
Payments podcast.
I'm your host, greg Meyers, andon today's show we have a very
special guest.
Payments Podcast.
I'm your host, greg Myers, andon today's show we have a very
special guest, taylor Lauber,who is the CEO of Shift4.
So, taylor, thank you so muchfor being here and welcome to
the show.
Oh, thanks for having me.
So, if you don't mind, tell ouraudience a little bit about
yourself, maybe where you'reborn, where you grew up, where
you went to school, a few thingslike that.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah, sure.
So I grew up in really centralJersey and a buddy of mine
founded what would become Shift4in his parents' basement when
we were teenagers.
So I got a little bit ofexposure to this boom that was
the payments industry back inthe late 90s, early 2000s.
And then was the idiot thatleft and went to college, so I
(00:58):
thought my career would be onWall Street.
I went to a school calledBentley, which really focused on
business and technology,ultimately landed a job at
Merrill Lynch supportingcompanies through their public
journey, whether that wasissuing equity to their
employees and the lifecycle of apublic company from the
standpoint of the employees andthe executives.
(01:19):
Got to know Blackstone throughtheir IPO and the CFO and the
head of HR at Blackstonerecruited me to come over and
work full-time for them, whichstarted an entirely new journey.
It was very different.
It was how do we think aboutgrowth as a company and how do
we think about adding customersand adding products and all that
stuff?
And I got shoved into a lot ofreally cool projects, first of
(01:42):
which was building a newfundraising arm for Blackstone
so they can attract newinvestors into their own funds.
Spent eight years there andreally loved it Highly
entrepreneurial, despite theglossy brand name and the
reputation.
You had license to buildwhatever you thought would grow
and create a lot of value forthe company.
(02:03):
But more or less every year,jared asked me to come back and
work for the business and I was,quite frankly, the biggest
critic, I think, of the industryand the business and was it
luck or was it skill, and howdoes all this stuff even work?
And finally relented abouteight years ago when he, I think
the phrase was I'm not going toask you, I'm telling you, I
(02:30):
want your help and come join me.
And I've been with Shifor eversince and I can tell you that
that eight years has eclipsedkind of the entirety of all the
years prior in terms of justlearning.
I mean, went from probably a300 person business to now a
6,000 operating in one country,to over 75 today, and so it's
been a heck of a journey, butalso a heck of a lot more
complicated than I ever imaginedit could be in terms of just
(02:52):
how commerce works all over theworld.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Okay, I think that's a great segue into the next
question.
For those in the audience thatmay not know who Shift4 is and
what you do, do you mind givingus kind of the high-level
overview of the company?
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
So we are a software and payments provider for a lot
of different industries and, upuntil recently, primarily
focused on what we would callcard present.
So you'd find us in about athird of the table service
restaurants in the United States.
You'd find us in roughly 40% ofthe hotels in the United States
, an overwhelming number ofstadiums, theme parks and
entertainment venues, etc.
And what's really exciting isthese kind of solutions we've
(03:32):
been able to bring to theseindustries have yet to exist all
over the world, and so if youthink about going to a pub in
London, it kind of looks like apayment experience from 15 or 20
years ago in the United States,which is that they pull out
this bank terminal and they lookup what you owe and they punch
it in.
And so today we're actuallymuch more defined by introducing
(03:54):
what's made us successful forthe last 25 years from a
technology standpoint into allof these new markets all over
the world.
And maybe, just to cover theheadlines, we are, as I
mentioned, about 6,000 people.
We process well over a quartertrillion dollars of payment
volume or commerce around theworld in different capacities,
and beyond those verticalsserved, we've got a hell of an
(04:17):
interesting customer base, kindof forcing us to evolve all over
the world.
So we're enabling payments inplaces like Africa and places
like Asia for a lot of emergingcompanies.
We've been able to leverage ourused technology to solve
difficult problems, mindset tonot just enter those verticals
that I mentioned but also buildfranchises to start to support
(04:39):
other huge verticals of commercewhere complexity is a challenge
.
So if you think about one endof the spectrum being a square
giving that small business ownereverything they need to run
their business, we try todeliver a similar set of
capabilities to the New YorkYankees, who have a whole
different set of challenges.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Okay, and is your customer base?
All the way from small to superregional?
I mean national orinternational businesses, yeah,
so what would have?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
started as a typical shift for a customer maybe 10
years ago, would have been theowner-operated bar and grill in
boise, idaho.
Hypothetically, all the way totoday, put that bar and grill
inside of like the wind casinoresort in Las Vegas and it's one
of hundreds of revenue centers.
And that operator needs to knowthat it needs world-class
(05:30):
software to run that food andbeverage location.
But it also needs commonreconciliation across hundreds
of these revenue centers.
And it's not just a restaurant,it's also a spa, it's also a
golf course, it's also a frontdesk times as many revenue
centers as I mentioned.
So, yeah, it's been anincredible journey because the
typical customer of Shift4 wouldhave looked pretty ubiquitous
(05:52):
10 years ago and now we havesingle locations that do
hundreds of billions of paymentvolume, if not billions, and,
quite frankly, conduct commercevery differently.
Right, like the New YorkYankees have to sell their
ticket online and they need oursolutions to help enable that
but also fulfill the journey asyou kind of go to the game and
watch the experience.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
So did you have your customers that seemed to pull
you into doing the internationalgrowth side?
Or was that a decision, astrategic decision?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I'd actually like to pull it a step back and
philosophically, why do weembrace these problems?
And it started 25 years ago.
It started with if all we'redoing as a payments company is
an approval, a decline, a refundand putting a terminal on a
countertop, we're not adding aheck of a lot of value.
And let's not kid ourselves,the fact that digital payments
(06:44):
acceptance was such a gold rushshould not lull ourselves into
complacency, thinking we'resmart or good, we're probably
lucky and there's not a lot oftechnology here in this
countertop terminal.
And if we want to command valueand we want to win the hearts
and minds of merchants, it's notgoing to be through approvals
to clients and refunds.
It's going to be throughtechnology that helps them run
(07:06):
their business better.
So it was a 20-year journeywhere we started combining what
at the time were three cottageindustries of hardware, software
and payments into a singleecosystem and delivering that to
the merchant, and it wasimmensely successful.
We learned a heck of a lotabout what it means to be a
technology provider.
Beyond that payment experience,you need to think about
(07:28):
software coding, you need tothink about implementation.
You need to think aboutlifecycle support.
That's far more intense.
Did the money arrive or not.
And it was those learnings thattaught us that the bigger the
problem, the thinner the airfrom a competitive standpoint.
And why can't we do what we'vedone in restaurants for hotels
who have not three vendorsthey're working with, but maybe
(07:50):
six or more, or stadiums whohave potentially even more than
that?
And to your point, when westarted to solve those problems,
customers started to say I wantthis solution for my locations
outside the United States.
And it makes perfect sense,although they were telling us
that seven, eight years ago,when we didn't have an ounce of
(08:11):
capabilities and it startedwhat's now been a journey of
that length to start to buildthe capabilities that let us
deliver that simplification inas many markets as possible.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Okay.
So if you let's say in the US,with the integrated payments
with software technologypayments together, let's just
say maybe we're in the fourth orfifth inning, I don't know kind
of making that up, but let'sjust say we're there, we've been
doing it for 10 years in the US.
Where would you kind of saythey are?
In other parts of the world?
Are they just like at the topof the first or kind of?
Where is the maturity of that?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
So very much the early days.
I mean, it is still, by andlarge, the bank terminal that is
delivered to help acceptpayments, and this can be a
point of confusion for consumersbecause there has been
investment, there's not like.
This is a lost opportunity.
The consumer payment experiencecan look somewhat modern if
you're tapping or they'rebringing a device over to the
(09:06):
table, but it's, by and large, abank terminal that offers very
little utility to that merchant.
It's still not connected to thesoftware they use to run their
business and the othermanagement systems that they
have, and so, in that regard, itis very much the early innings,
and what's exciting for usabout it is the idea that we've
solved these problems before.
(09:27):
These aren't new and they'renot unique.
There's certainly geographicdifferences and there's cultural
differences they have to adaptto, but I learned a long time
ago that if you can find thesame problem in a different
place that you've already solvedbefore, it's a recipe for
success.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Okay, well, what would you say?
Differentiates Shift4 from your?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
competitors.
Well, what, would you say,differentiates Shift4 from your
competitors?
It starts with a humility If westand still, we will not
survive.
And that comes from the earlydays of Jared saying if I don't
embrace technology and emergencyvalue, I'm going to be
worthless to my merchants.
So we start with this humilitythat we're never going to be
doing it perfectly, and then anambition that we're going to
(10:06):
seek out problems that othershaven't solved yet, and maybe a
motivation that the bigger theproblem, the more eager we are
to take it on.
There's another philosophythat's somewhat unique to
fintech companies, at least fromour perspective, which is we
didn't take outside capital inthe business for the first 15
years it existed.
(10:26):
And to think about what thatdoes to an institution, it means
you are immensely disciplinedabout how your dollars get spent
and you will not do somethingwithout, ultimately, the aim of
profitability.
And I think that for us, as welook across the competitive
landscape throughout variousmarket cycles, is a huge
(10:47):
differentiator.
I mean we have many competitorsthat had a license to light
money on fire and no plan toever kind of become profitable.
So, as a public company, thatthe ultimate goal of a public
company is to deliver a returnon capital to your shareholders.
We've got a kind of we wereforged in a way that I think has
that entrepreneurial livewithin your means but also make
(11:07):
your dollar go really, reallyfar when you plan to invest it.
We have that mindset.
And the last thing I'd say andI'm really I'm glad the world
has gotten glimpses of this iswe have a founder that, like
went to space and thenimmediately decided to go back
again and make the mission a lotmore challenging and accomplish
a lot more.
That ambition can't beunderstated and obviously that
(11:31):
ambition has been on displayprofessionally long before the
public could see the goals hesets for himself and the company
.
So I think that is anotherreally really unique testament
to the problems we try to solve.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Right, right, okay.
Well, one kind of finalquestion about the company.
A lot of payments companiesdecided to sell to SaaS
companies, who are the software,and you guys, I think, decided
strategically to take anotherroute.
Could you maybe talk about thatdecision-making process?
What were you guys thinkingwhen you decided to own all of
it as opposed to just stick tothe payment side?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, it's a great question.
It comes to the heart of who'swinning and who's losing in the
current operating environment.
It starts with Jared and theteam recognizing 20 years ago
that technology was what wasgoing to win, not payments.
Payments, payments was muchmore of a utility that a
(12:29):
merchant was required topurchase than something that
they were excited to purchase orsomething that actually helped
run their business better.
And so that framework of wehave to deliver technology is
something that I you know Jaredcaught on to a decade before any
of the traditional paymentscompanies did.
The wave of how does paymentsand software fit together that
we saw over the last 10 yearshad been worked on for 10 years
(12:52):
and already at Shift4.
And so what did we learn?
We learned that there are areasyou build, there are areas you
buy and there are areas youpartner.
And if you want to be inmultiple verticals, you can't
have a monolithic strategy,because you cannot possibly own
all of the software that a largecasino resort in Las Vegas
(13:13):
needs to run their business and,quite frankly, if you own
certain pieces of that software,you might alienate the rest and
they'll never want to work withyou.
And so those are areas wherepartnership makes obvious sense
and it creates a differentiatedapproach where partnership makes
obvious sense and it creates adifferentiated approach.
(13:34):
Similarly, there are solutionsthat don't exist and yet
merchants need them.
So pay at the table and mobiledelivery and payment solutions
became an urgent need throughthe pandemic and there wasn't a
good solution, so we went outand built something.
And then, lastly, there areassets that shouldn't be
standalone companies.
They are features as part of abroader offering, and the idea
that a merchant needs to stitchfive or six of them together to
(13:54):
get commerce to work is notthat's a bug, it's not a feature
, and so it is unique because wedo all three of those things.
And I would think, if you lookacross the landscape, most of
our competitors and, just simply, most companies in the industry
pick one of those things.
And I would think, if you lookacross the landscape, most of
our competitors and, just simply, most companies in the industry
pick one of those three andthey stick to that, which
constrains their growth andtheir flexibility, in our
(14:15):
opinion.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Okay.
Okay.
Well, let's switch gears alittle bit and talk about you.
You sort of walked us throughyour professional journey
earlier and you said thatbasically, jared said you're
coming to work here, but you hadto convince yourself that
Shift4 was a place you wanted tobuild a career.
So maybe walk us through thatdecision-making.
Why did you say yes?
And you know, obviously therest is history, but tell us
(14:37):
maybe how you were thinkingabout it.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Yeah, sure, I'll start with where the skepticism
came in.
The skepticism in the earlyyears was that the business was
tremendously successful from itsinfancy and life's not supposed
to be that easy.
It was a gold rush to enablemerchants with this capability.
This was, keep in mind, itsounds like ancient history, but
no, giving a merchant theability to accept a credit card
(15:01):
was innovative 25 years ago.
I mean, we were 16 and we weregetting sent credit cards in the
mail to our attention by thecard issuers, and yet the
average business didn't have thecapability to accept them.
And so enablement were theearly days, and simply
enablement, and innovation andgo-to-market created a ton of
success, and I questioned thedurability of that.
(15:22):
Now, interestingly, jared didtoo, and that's why he evolved
the business through deliveringall these technologies over the
years.
But that was one thing.
Blackstone was an incredibleplace to be.
It is still an incrediblecompany.
If you want to work in assetmanagement, there's nowhere
better and so that obviouslycreates its own inertia, and I
really enjoyed my time there andI still have great
(15:42):
relationships there.
Two things really distinctlychanged my thinking in the
equation from a careerperspective.
One was Jared had justcompleted a wave of acquisitions
, that was assembling.
It was combining a lot of partsthat had traditionally been
their own industry, and the waveof growth was obvious.
(16:04):
It was like what I saw atBlackstone when I joined in 2010
.
It was this company is going toquadruple, even with mediocre
execution.
That's how much success we'vegot in front of us.
And, sure enough, it did farbetter than that.
And then, lastly, I saw theteam and it was a small group at
Shift4, building an air defensebusiness.
(16:25):
Like Jared built a completelydifferent business, kind of in
his spare time, and it dawned onme that this was not luck.
I mean, this was not rightplace at the right time.
This is a team that canidentify opportunities and
manufacture success, and theindustry doesn't matter, the
customer doesn't matter, theproduct doesn't matter, it's
just that mindset and skillset.
(16:46):
And so when I saw that Jared'sa persuasive guy, he actually
took me on a trip to go purchasea bunch of fighter jets from
the Spanish government and Isaid, wow, this is something
truly special.
And it actually doesn't matterwhat the product is.
The team that is executingagainst it will pivot as often
(17:07):
as the world necessitates it.
So in that regard, it's beenexceptional and I would not have
expected that we'd be a companyof the scale we are and a
public company and all thosethings, but it's certainly the
byproduct of an excellent teamand a mindset that you pivot as
often as the world requires youto.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Okay, so what is something you're passionate
about?
So, maybe one work-relatedpassion and one personal passion
.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So, it's hard to say this as a passion.
It's just kind of a philosophyI've learned professionally and
as a young person trying toinnovate and trying to create
success.
I got really frustrated when Iwas at Blackstone because we try
to build these investmentproducts and the senior
management team we're allrunning the company today would
(17:53):
constantly send us back to thedrawing board and say this is
too complicated, it doesn'tscale in the way that you think
it should Start over.
Think bigger, think simpler.
If you want it to be huge, itcan't be complicated.
So think about scale.
Before you want it to be huge,it can't be complicated.
So think about scale before youbuild it.
Don't build something thatcan't scale beyond a billion in
assets under management in theirindustry or something like that
(18:16):
.
I didn't have an appreciationfor it.
So this product in isolation,with the resources we need to
make it work, is going togenerate a lot of profit on a
standalone basis and that'sentirely uninteresting to the
leader of a big and growingbusiness.
What it takes to move theneedle is really really hard in
a fast growing business.
To calibrate to A milliondollar idea when I joined,
(18:39):
shift4 was a great idea.
Now a hundred million dollaridea is kind of an okay idea,
and so I gained an appreciationfor just thinking about what
moves the needle and scale andusing that framework to approach
kind of problems and innovation, as opposed to just what sounds
like a good idea, becausethere's a niche that you can
(19:01):
fill.
On the personal side, I met mywife when we started dating when
we were teenagers.
We've been together ever since.
We've got four kids.
That doesn't allow for a lot ofhobbies.
My sacred time is the Sundayfamily dinner and I love to cook
and put on a show and spendtime with my family, incorporate
(19:22):
a complicated large family lifeinto the necessity of traveling
around the world and makingsure that employees and our
customers know that they've gotas much focus as they need, and
so it's meant for a lot ofinteresting engagements.
We closed on Global Blue whileI was in Paris with my family on
vacation, which meant I had todrag my kids into the Global
(19:44):
Blue lounge and introduce themto all the employees and attend
the customer cocktail event thatnight.
But it's fun as hell when youcan make all that work in the
same equation.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Okay, so what's your number one dish that you're
cooking these days?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
In summer it obviously has to be on the grill
.
But I love paella.
My Spanish colleagues tell me Ido it.
Okay, I think they're justindulging the boss, but I really
kind of like cooking whateverfeels seasonal at the time.
I'm not married to a particulardish.
Perfecting the roast chicken isa hell of a lot harder than
(20:20):
building a multi-billion dollarcompany, believe it or not.
So I'll probably be on thatjourney for as long as I'm on my
career.
But no, just the time with thefamily and some nourishment is
more important than what's onthe plate.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Gotcha, gotcha.
So one final question.
So, Taylor, if someone comes toyou maybe they just graduated
from college, or maybe they'rechanging industries and they
want to get into payments orFinintech and they come to you
and say hey, Taylor, what shouldI do to help be successful,
what advice would you give them?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I'd start with this industry is tremendously
complicated.
If you could pick one that'sless complicated that you have
passion for, get after it,because it's not payments, it's
not technology, it's commerce.
And when you use the wordcommerce, it evokes the
complexity of commerce, which isit's all over the world, it's
in lots of different forms,everyone needs to engage with it
(21:13):
and it's fundamentallydifferent from industry to
industry and place to place.
But we're trying to solve thatproblem.
So commerce is complicated.
If you can find simpler placesto do business in your career,
go after it.
It's a heck of a lot morecomplicated than asset
management.
I tell you that.
But more importantly, there'ssome fundamental things, which
is you gotta really have apassion for what you're doing.
(21:36):
I would tell young people allthe time if reading about our
industry isn't the first thingyou do when you pick up your
phone in the morning, whetherit's vacation or you don't have
a job yet then it's probably notthe right industry.
You need to align something toyour passions.
We've had incredibly talentedpeople do very poorly simply
because they thought theindustry was an important place
(21:59):
to be, but they didn't have thepassion to put the work in.
And so align to your passion,because the work becomes very
easy, and by that I mean to besuccessful.
It's not going to be overnight,it's going, and it's not going
to be 12-hour days, by the way.
It's going to be like 14 and16-hour days, and that's really
hard to do if you don't lovewhat you're doing.
So start with that fundamental,have a genuine curiosity and
(22:21):
passion for the industry, andthen the hard work just becomes
a byproduct of trying to fulfillthat emotional connection that
you have, and then it all fallsin place.
I guess I'm somewhat uniquebecause I've interviewed for one
job my entire life and that wasto be an administrative
assistant at Merrill Lynch.
But a passion for what I wasdoing and a focus and a
(22:41):
willingness to do anything I wastold to do, regardless of what
was on my business card, has ledme to a collection of awesome
companies and increasingresponsibility each time.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Okay, well, taylor, it's been a great discussion,
but before we go, just wanted tosee if you had any final
comments, anything you wanted toleave with the audience before
we go.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
No, just thank you for the time and the interest.
It's a fascinating placemeeting the financial technology
and the payments industrybecause you learn all the time
it's like commerce does notstand still and therefore you're
not going to be doing the samething you were doing yesterday
on any given day, which isincredibly cool.
So thank you all for theinterest.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah well, taylor, thank you so much for being on
the show today.
I know your time is veryvaluable.
So, being on the show today, Iknow your time is very valuable,
so again, thank you for beinghere.
Yeah, of course, good to seeyou all and to all you listeners
out there.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
I thank you for your time as well, and until the next
story.
Thank you for joining us thisweek on the Leaders in Payments
podcast.
Make sure you visit our websiteat leadersinpaymentscom, where
you can subscribe to the showand where you'll find our show
notes.
If you enjoyed listening,please share on your social
channels as well.
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