Reimagine payments systems and unlock sustainable value

Forte Fintech addresses
the biggest challenges in B2B, bill pay, SMB finance, cross-border, and payment infrastructure.

WHO WE ARE

Forte Fintech was founded by Erin McCune to reimagine payments and unlock sustainable value for all participants in the ecosystem.

The company was created to address some of the most pressing challenges—and opportunities—in B2B, bill pay, SMB finance, cross-border payments, and payment infrastructure. These are not problems that can be solved at the product or business line level within individual organizations. They require collaboration across companies, the fragmented payments value chain, industries, and even geographic borders.

Erin McCune brings 25 years of consulting experience, having worked at Bain, Glenbrook Partners, and as an independent advisor. Over the course of hundreds of complex payments and fintech projects, she has partnered with financial leaders at multinational corporations, product managers at both incumbents and emerging players, bankers and processors, entrepreneurs and investors, as well as policymakers and eGov leaders. Her work has included automating back-office processes to unlock insights and streamline workflows for vendors, customers, accounting teams, and sales organizations.

Through this experience, Erin recognized a consistent theme: the same core problem was being solved repeatedly in different forms. This insight led to a conviction—it’s time to change the approach.

Key Themes of Reimagining Payments

Navigating the uncertainty of a new era >

Cross-border competitive dynamics are rapidly evolving in light of market infrastructure developments (blockchain/CBDC/stablecoins, Swift gpi, vLEI, ISO 20022, etc.). Industry players, whether new or established incumbents, are struggling to understand which capabilities ought to be federated vs. those that drive differentiation. 

No one has the luxury to stand by the sidelines and question hype from reality when it comes to AI and payments. The implications for bank office efficiency (for both banks and corporates) and risk management/compliance/fraud mitigation are profound. Not to mention emerging AI agent purchasing scenarios. It’s a question of when, not if. 

Examining the new rules of the game due to regulatory shifts, globally and specifically in the U.S., and implications for various industry stakeholders (bank charters, anti-trust, compliance, open banking, data standards, digital ID, stablecoins/crypto, etc.) is imperative for ensuring future success.

Rethinking Transaction Economics >

There hasn’t been enough deliberate, use case by use case rail cannibalization as banks realign to a real time, wallet-enabled, potentially post-interchange (?!) era. The potential erosion of card-based, reward- and rebate-fueled business models due to supplier/merchant pushback and the maturation of real time payment creates opportunity for new models that will take their place. Who is brave enough to go first?

Is it viable to value base price B2B transactions based on payment attributes (speed, data, good funds, extension of credit, etc) rather than pricing according to rail? This would require a fundamental rethink of treasury transaction pricing/relationship economics. And is deeply intertwined with bank-software partnership expectations, as banks have yet to wake up to the fact that customer relationship primacy is a myth.

Interoperability and inter-connectivity >

We’re in the midst of a slow-paced, uneven transition from EDI to APIs to AI-agent led data integration. The implications are profound for bank-corporate connectivity as well as data connections between office of the CFO software solutions within and between companies. What happens to the value of OCFO software automation when AI/ML can knit together the disparate (even legacy) back-office solutions? Does industry vertical specialization still matter? Or will the general models become dominant? And who is going to provide the various AI agents that specialize in accounting, cash management, etc.?

Who will foster B2B interconnectivity between buyer and supplier-centric software solutions, industry vertical software, banks on either side of a transaction, and payment networks to facilitate native digital exchange of payment related information and accelerate digitization—today, and when agents are doing the purchasing?

How does tokenization of payment credentials extend to a broader array of payments-related data? Which aliases will we use to address estimates, invoices, payments, and remittance data? And how do those addressing capabilities get tied to digital IDs, ideally in logical hierarchies?

Fostering and maintaining
trust >

As fraud becomes ever more sophisticated, establishing trust becomes paramount. Who owns and issues a consumer digital ID remains unclear (and will likely vary by use case and geography). Meanwhile, there’s coalescence around legal entity identifiers for securities and they are moving to x-border/sanctions and the inevitable tying of payment credentials to those biz identifiers (per above). 

And, much sooner than most payment companies realize, we need to extend digital ID to the AI agents working on behalf of both consumers and businesses. Given their regulatory responsibility for KYC/KYB one would think banks would have an advantage in vouching for users, but given that both consumers and businesses have multiple bank relationships, which bank? Will they lose out on the business opportunity (but still have the regulatory burden)?

Facilitating effective bank-software/fintech partnership is critical as embedded payment becomes the norm. And, more importantly, the maturation and go to market of reg tech, reconciliation, ledgering, and KYC/KYB tools that are necessary to foster transparency and trust in an increasingly complex payments value chain.

What we do.

  • 4-10 weeks

    Tailored consulting engagements that address your strategic questions and organizational challenges. Whether you want to refine your GTM/partnerships; vet a new product concept; develop a new market entry strategy; validate your investment thesis; refresh competitive intelligence; align leadership; update your company strategy; or accelerate digital transformation in the back-office Forte Fintech can help. 

    As necessary, the Forte Fintech teams expand to complement my expertise and skills.

  • 1 Day

    Robust, honest, facilitated discussion with boards, executive leadership, or product teams that sharpen focus, foster alignment, and define your path through uncertainty to success.

  • 6 month minimum

    Ongoing advisory services for leaders or executive teams.

  • Public and private events

    Topics include:

    • The Future of B2B Payments: Real-Time, Data-Rich, Automated

    • Stablecoin and DLT: Myth vs. Reality

    • AI-Enabled Finance is Coming - Are you ready? (You aren’t.)

Contact Forte

Interested in working together? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. We look forward to collaborating.