I’m Erin McCune, a partner at Bain, and a senior expert in our payments, financial services, and investor due diligence practices. I focus on global A2A, wholesale & B2B payments. Wholesale payments are all the unsexy stuff that comprises ~94% of global money movement, to the tune of more than $1,150 Trillion every year. They include settlement transactions between financial instutions, capital markets flows, payments to suppliers, payroll, and payouts to gig workers and other other non traditional recipients. SMBs represent a small proportion of the flows but are often higher margin. Similarly, relatively few transactions are cross-border but they are very lucrative.Over my career as a consultant, both independent and prior to Bain as a partner at Glenbrook, I’ve worked on hundreds of complex payments and fintech projects. My clients have been financial leaders of huge, global companies; product managers nurturing development of new A2A, bill pay, and business solutions; bankers and processors, entrepreneurs and investors; as well as policy makers and eGov leaders. I’ve automated back office processes solving problems for vendors, customers, accounting teams, and sales teams. Over time, I realized that I just kept solving variations of the same problem over and over again.I joined Bain with a big ambition to solve the most challenging problems in B2B, bill pay, SMB finance, and payment infrastructure. Problems that won’t get solved at the product or business line level of organizations. Challenges that require collaboration across companies, the fragmented payments value chain, industries, and even geographic borders to solve. Intellectually, I like to figure out how things work, what motivates people and companies, and I enjoy hairy, seemingly intractable challenges. Following the money within and between financial operations has proven a great way to learn about companies of all sizes, a wide range of fascinating industries and I’m excited to share what I’m learning and ask your help along the way