Genevieve went into the leadership program at age 22 at the 10th largest bank in the US to learn all aspects of the bank. She chose at the end of the program to begin her career in the payments acquiring line of business, a.k.a. Merchant Services. Genevieve was reporting to the President of the division by age 30 as the VP, Product Strategy and Sales Support and was the youngest and only female responsible for Product & Vendor Development and Management, Pricing Strategy, Sales Support and Sales Training for 57K merchants processing $18B in annual volume and producing $370M in gross revenue. After ten years, she left the regional bank and went into the global technology side of the business working at Ingenico, CardConnect and First Data/Fiserv. Next, she became the Chief Business Development Officer for a fintech startup. Genevieve then started her own LLC, Warpaint Consulting as Founder & CEO to provide thought leadership in preparation for a book she is currently writing. And now she is Director Business Development at Finova Capital, a business lending company that specializes in financing for SMB and MSPs.
Finova Capital is a direct lender serving payment providers through their CashTap solution. The team has decades of experience running finance divisions at other companies and has created best-in-class, customized programs to provide a straightforward, transparent, and excellent experience. The product suite for point-of-sale equipment financing, merchant cash advance, and residual loans includes POS options including subscription and buy now, pay later and cash options including embedded lending. Partners love their cloud-based platform-portal and API for boarding. Finova Capital’s competitive advantage is that they care, they understand, and they are prompt to respond and resolve. The culture is inclusive, diverse, supportive and collaborative.
From Genevieve’s perspective, cash continues to be king when businesses need capital to grow or merchant services providers need cash to help purchase equipment to sell to SMBs. Continuing to innovate in the space, to make it easier for businesses to get cash as soon as same day with little to no documentation, and provide a value-added service is how she is working and impacting fintech. Traditional bank lending is not a viable option for many anymore and she is happy that her and her team at Finova Capital are able to provide a convenient and fast solution to help business owners to purchase the latest card acceptance equipment where prices continue to rise and to help them leverage their card processing deposits to sell their future receivables.
How do you challenge yourself in your role? How do you differentiate yourself at your role (so that other FinTech women can reference to model their career pathways)?
Tasked with growing the existing business and finding new business maintains to be a challenge to do my best to meet goals. I differentiate myself in many ways. I can put myself in my customer’s place since I was in a similar role previously so I can understand and help them with strategy. I am honest, transparent and real. I am authentic in my responses and am prompt to respond. I reach out if I do not know the answer 100%. I answer with what I do know to be true and then will follow up after research with anything I am not 100% on. I am not afraid to ask questions and I advocate for myself and my ideas.
What are you excited about Fintech this year? What is a trend that you are seeing in your vertical? What developments do you see in FinTech in the future?
I am excited to continue to find more ways to help merchant services providers deliver non-traditional financing to the businesses they do card processing for. Thanks to rising interest rates and uncertain economic conditions, small- and medium-sized businesses are struggling most to secure financing. And with continued rumors of a recession, conditions will get only worse. Banks are approving much fewer loan requests and 70% of those approved received an amount less than they requested while 85% of SMBs continue to experience financial difficulties. This is an area with I can help ISOs, PayFacs, processors, agents, and ISVs be superheroes!
More on Genevieve
Where you currently live: Grandy, NC at the REAL Outer Banks
Living arrangement: House on ½ acre lot on a golf course
Family at home: Husband who was my high school sweetheart (together for 23 years, married for over 17), Tucker 13 year old son, Camilla 11 year old daughter, Leo 6 year old male cat and Lulu 1 year old female cat
Hometown: I was born in Lubbock, TX but grew up in Moyock, NC with about 2K people. We got our first stoplight when I was in high school and I lived on a dirt road. “From the dirt road to the board room.”
Favorite hobby: travel, fashion, beach
Favorite show to binge: Stranger Things
Favorite fintech media: Theo Lau’s One Vision podcast. Theo and I are like minded. I like being introduced to the guests she highlights and their insights on the human aspect of financial services whether it is payments, AI, or socioeconomic policy.
What is one piece of advice someone told you that resonated with you that can give to other women in FinTech?
The only person that is truly looking out for you is you.
What's the best job decision you ever made?
Leaving a role quicker than before when I start to see red flags. Don’t waste time once you know it’s not going to work out. I took a major pay cut, but I was so much happier.
Can you tell us about a time someone encouraged you to try a task or take on a project you didn’t think that you would know how to do/or be good at?
My current role. I technically never sold these solutions directly before but learning something new after a 17-year career was fun and my first 12 months produced good outcomes as well as expanded my network.
Accepting a role to speak on a panel where I am not a subject matter expert on the topic. Often a SME may not be a great speaker. My encourager advised the best way to learn a topic is to have to speak on it because then your research and due diligence is greater, and you captivate the audience to reflect on the information with aha moments that you know how to deliver.
Another time was when I was encouraged to apply to be on the Board of Directors. I thought I was too young. I had never been on a BoDs. Nonetheless I applied and I was named Board of Director and felt I brought great value to the role.
What is the most important lesson you have learned from a mistake you’ve made in the past?
I do a lot of public speaking and most of the time I stand. At my last speaking engagement, I sat in a chair, and I didn’t cross my legs. The few days after I really beat myself up for it. For pictures, which is my marketing for future engagement, crossed legs just looks so much better. Even my husband jokingly asked, “what were you raised in a barn?!” I tried to put the negative, automatic thoughts out of my head because I couldn’t go back and change it. I just told myself next time I would cross my legs. I did feel reassured when speaking to some of the audience they commented “no one was paying attention to your outfit or your posture because they were so captivated by what you were saying.”
Do you have any productivity hacks? What keeps you motivated? How do you maintain a work/life balance?
First setting expectations with my direct manager and team about my schedule and my priorities and making sure they are supportive. For a long time I didn’t have work life balance. It was all work until one day my goal turned to wanting to feel like a good mom while still growing in my career. I am there for my family as much as I can be. Working remote starting in 2016 helped me accomplish this where I could work early or late hours or on weekends so that I had flexibility during the week. I don’t mind the travel since when I’m not traveling I’m working at home. I have always been passionate and motivated by helping people. It started out with businesses and then my direct reports and then when I moved to an individual contributor role following an acquisition I started volunteering, speaking, writing and mentoring to help people in the industry and in my community with their personal and professional life. I take mental health time, I take self care time and I put in work as needed to yield satisfactory results. The best productivity hack is to listen to your body. Prioritize daily tasks and what doesn’t get done probably didn’t need to get done, at least not that day. Give yourself grace.
Daily Diary
5:00 am – 8:20 am up, workout in home gym, get ready, do chores like laundry, dishes, etc.
6:15 am – start waking my daughter up for school
6:45 am – make sure she’s out of bed
7:00 am – wake up my son, pack daughter’s lunch and clean her eyeglasses
7:30 am – make sure he’s out of bed, take my daughter to school
8:20 am – make son’s lunch, clean his glasses and take him to school
9:00 am – login to computer, eat breakfast and make espresso/have OJ
2:30 pm – pick up daughter from school
3:00 pm – work at computer
3:40 pm – pick up son from school
4:00 pm – work at computer
6:00 pm – make dinner
7:00 pm – eat dinner, spend time with husband and kids
9:00 pm – try to go to sleep
REV promotes holistic land management practices that prioritize long-term sustainability over short-term gains. By integrating organicrev regenerative agriculture techniques such as agroforestry and rotational grazing, REV creates resilient, self-sustaining ecosystems that benefit both the environment and local communities.