New Aeropay CCO Sarah Stapp Sees Big Potential in U.S. Account-to-Account Payments Market

In a Nutshell: Account-to-account payments are poised for a breakthrough in the U.S. in the very near future. With the hiring of payments industry veteran Sarah Stapp as its Chief Commercial Officer, Aeropay figures to feature prominently in driving adoption of the payment method with its innovative and easy-to-use solutions. Stapp’s expertise and foresight further position Aeropay as a force in the digital payments space.

In the uber-competitive payments space, a company has to have the right product mix to stand out in a crowd. But innovative products don’t just invent themselves. Not yet anyway — looking at you, artificial intelligence.

Payments companies have to have the right people on board to ensure its products harness cutting-edge technologies and improve the lives of its customers, whether that’s by making a payment task easier or more cost-effective.

Aeropay operates in the financial technology arena, helping people seamlessly and securely move their money through Automated Clearing House transfers. The company recently ramped up its potential to transform the way people transact in the 2020s by hiring industry veteran Sarah Stapp as its Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). We sat down with Stapp to talk about her career and what she’s most looking forward to accomplishing with Aeropay.

Stapp has spent the last 15 years working in payments. She was an early employee of Braintree. If you’re not familiar with that name, you may have heard of some of the companies it partnered with.

Braintree acquired Venmo in 2012, a move that garnered significant attention in the payment industry. The company caught the eye of PayPal, which purchased Braintree in 2013. 

“Most of my time there was spent surrounding global expansion,” Stapp told us. “I managed the acquiring relationships as well as a lot of other transactions. If a partnership or something to that effect affected the transaction in some way, my team was handling that and was very involved in all the bits and pieces around the payment-service-provider and acquiring world.”

Stapp’s credentials are impressive. She told us she’s launched payments initiatives in countries around the world, including Australia, Brazil, and the U.S.

After nearly 12 years at Braintree, Stapp was looking for a break from corporate life. A stint in payments consulting, where she worked closely with merchants, gave her an insider’s view of what it takes for them to be successful. Her time in consulting clarified the pain points merchants experience when it comes to reducing payment-processing costs.

Looking to take on another role at a payments company, Stapp connected with Aeropay’s Founder and CEO, Daniel Muller. And that’s where things clicked.

“It didn’t take long in those initial conversations with the Aeropay team to find out that this was going to be a really great, mutual fit,” Stapp told us. “The culture is so exciting at Aeropay — they have that same energy and magic fairy dust that I felt when I was at Braintree. It’s been really exciting to be able to come in and help build the next phase of the company in the Chief Commercial Officer capacity.”

A Chief Commercial Officer is an important member of any company, let alone one that’s at the forefront of changing the way people make payments. As CCO at Aeropay, Stapp has sales, marketing, and partnership management under her purview. She told us she’s excited to manage those three areas because, though they’re distinct, she anticipates fostering communication and cohesiveness among them that will bring out synergies beneficial to both Aeropay and its customers.

“I’ll be doing a lot of the types of things I did when I was at Braintree, including talking to the payments world at large and then bringing that information back to our organization,” Stapp told us. “We want to make sure that we’re aware of and prepared for things that are headed our way. I’ll be having a lot of merchant conversations, doing a lot of internal strategic planning, and looking to see what’s coming next to ensure Aeropay continues to be a best-in-class solution.”

Account-to-account payments bring flexibility to transactions. They allow consumers to make payments without having to reach for cash or a credit or debit card. 

To get started, users create an account with Aeropay. They can then link their bank account and use their Aeropay profile to make purchases. Aeropay handles the funds transfer from your bank to where you direct a payment to go.

In a fast-paced world where people can feel that they’re pulled in many directions at once, being able to streamline payments, and leave your wallet at home, is a game changer.

Account-to-account payments are more common in European countries than in the U.S. Stapp told us that Aeropay is passionate about pushing the account-to-account payment method in the U.S. and helping people understand that account-to-account payments are a viable way of transacting.

“It’s interesting because a lot of folks think this is something that will never take off,” Stapp told us. “But there’s so much interest in seeing account-to-account payments become a prominent payment method, especially in areas where you might be used to sending a check in the mail or using online bill pay or something of that nature. There are so many options available now that weren’t even just a few years ago, and that means there’s a lot of opportunity for innovation.”

Aeropay’s rollout of account-to-account solutions in the U.S. won’t go far without consumer adoption regardless of how much time the company invests developing its solution and ensuring it can transfer funds quickly and securely.

But consumers can be a hard crowd to please. Stapp said people want payment solutions that are fast and easy to use, but those benefits can’t come at the expense of security.

“We’re really pushing to get to that experience that is secure but isn’t too different to a user as using their card to make a payment is,” Stapp told us. “Once people understand the functionality and ease of use of our product, that’s when you’re really going to start to see adoption take off.”

Merchants have some power to persuade customers to lean toward using one type of payment method over another. However, one bad experience can sour a customer’s perception of a new payment process, especially when so many other established forms of payment are available.

People may be wary of using account-to-account payments because they assume that they’ll be sharing their bank account details with merchants to complete a purchase. But that’s not the case with Aeropay, Stapp told us. 

Users access Aeropay’s payment portal through a credentialed login that employs multiple factors to authenticate a user’s identity.

“We offer a very secure solution that doesn’t share your information with other parties,” Stapp told us. “There are a lot of benefits to the consumer, including things like not having to worry about dealing with a credit or debit card expiring every couple years and updating your payments to align with that. We just need to educate customers and make sure that the checkout experience a user has with us is on par with what’s out there today.”

I’m not going to downplay the role of education in a consumer’s willingness to use a new product, but some people follow an “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy when it comes to personal finances.

Stapp told us that, in addition to educating customers, Aeropay aims to get people to try its product. Once they do, the company believes users will be surprised by how easy it is to make payments with Aeropay. 

“For the past 15 or 20 years, payments companies have been having that conversation about how to get to the top of wallet position in a consumer’s payment preferences,” Stapp told us. “To me, for a solution to accomplish that, it has to be comfortable, convenient, and secure. And we’re really ticking a lot of those boxes.”

Merchants pay processing fees to accept card transactions. Though fees for each transaction are relatively insignificant, they can add up over the course of thousands or millions of purchases. Stapp told us that account-to-account payments are much cheaper for a merchant to process, and, by offering incentives to customers, merchants can motivate customers to give account-to-account payments a try.

Consumers who link their bank account to Aeropay once can make payments at any merchant that partners with Aeropay without having to link their account again prior to subsequent transactions.

Stapp is excited about Aeropay’s future and her role in advancing the company to higher heights. She told us the company has partnered with payments behemoth WorldPay to further advance its mission.

“We’re really excited about expanding that relationship and moving into different verticals going forward,” Stapp told us. “We want to make sure that both merchants and customers have a great experience with us.”