Lessons Learned From a Journey Into Fintech
Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was one of CEF’s 2019 White Papers.
— by Chris Melendez
Do you ever stop and think, “How did I get here?!” Then, you look back on the steps of your journey and quickly realize God designed a path for His greater purpose. As a pastor’s kid, I grew up assuming that surrendering to the Lord meant working in full time ministry. I had no intention of building a career in financial services, much less building the financial technology itself. Now I know the industry relates to our surrender to the Lord. In fact, I believe Christian leadership in the fintech arena can play a critical role in advancing the Kingdom.
Money is essentially the manifestation of human effort. So at its core, every financial transaction is a transfer of human energy. Through new technologies, we transfer our God-given energy to others in ways most people before us never imagined. We can tap a little button on our mobile phone to purchase an item and have it arrive on our doorstep the same day. We can swipe a credit card through that same mobile phone to collect payments for our business. We can move money instantly to a friend at lunch or send money to a loved one on the other side of the world. Many of these advancements can equip Christians to extend God’s provision in exciting new ways. Conversely, most products are designed with behavioral hooks that can lead to habitual misuse of God-given resources. God does not call us to simply abstain from or warn others about the dangers; He also equips some of us to create better technology designed to bring Him glory. My story is an example of Him doing just that.
Using Fintech
My journey with fintech began as a user in my early twenties. I was married at 19 and had three kids by the time we were 23, so managing the little money we had became vitally important. I had to learn how to navigate confusing banking systems, utilize credit appropriately, and engage new fintech advancements that were coming on the scene. One advancement that positively affected our financial struggle was bill pay. We were so busy with managing little kids and juggling multiple jobs seven days a week that paying bills on time became a major stressor. Automating the bill pay process made a significant impact on keeping our commitments paid on time. But just having bill pay didn’t help keep the accounts balanced, and the banks sure benefited if we were out of balance. In fact, overspending is big business for the banks. Reports show that banks make over $30B in overdraft fees each year. We were grateful for one technology but needed a better overall technology system to help keep us in line.
When our kids became teenagers, I wanted them to become responsible users of financial technology. So, I thought it would be a great idea to provide each of them with a credit card they could manage through a mobile app. This could keep them from carrying cash, learn to manage digital currency, and help them build a credit score early. We quickly learned this created a challenge for our kids to spend responsibly. They could drive up to the closest Chick-fil-A whenever they wanted to buy whatever they wanted. It was way too easy for them to spend more money than they had. We tried several products and methods to help them manage their own money but learned that the typical teenager’s brain defaults to spending all of the money they have . . . and don’t have. In theory, technology can make it easier to manage money but once you add in the human condition, things get complicated.
We have all used some sort of technology to help us manage our finances. But there is something very powerful that must be used in combination with these technologies: self-control. In his book, Your Future Self Will Thank You. Secrets to Self-Control from the Bible & Brain Science, author Drew Dyck writes,
“Study after study has linked self-control to a surplus of favorable life outcomes, including better relationships, higher incomes, and higher levels of happiness. People with greater self-control are more sociable, honest, and sacrificial. They have lower rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and aggression. They even live longer. If you could bottle self-control, it would be one of the most valuable substances on earth.”
Dyck also points out that for Christians, “there is certainly a role for human effort. But there’s a giant paradox at the heart of this issue. What self-control requires, ultimately, isn’t control but surrender.”
We must first surrender our money AND our fintech to the Lord, so He can supply us with the self-control we need to manage them both. We should consistently be asking ourselves questions like these:
Is this technology keeping me aligned with God’s purpose for my life?
Is it becoming a distraction or an idol?
Is it helping me be generous with my resources?
Asking these questions will help ensure we are using technology that promotes a closer walk with God and meaningful use of our money. When we get this right, technology can help us in powerful ways. It can help create financial habits that reduce the willpower needed to exhibit self-control. My journey was leading me deeper into these technologies.
Selling Fintech
In my late twenties, I went from simply using financial technology to selling it when God opened a door for me to work for American Express. Working for a financial company gave me an even deeper understanding of the benefits and challenges of fintech. It was a struggle at times to be in an industry and with a company that was, in some ways, contributing to society’s consumerism and debt problems. Fortunately, my roles were in B2B areas where I could focus on helping companies use fintech to make and receive payments efficiently, and then use the transactional data to grow their business. I sat with hundreds of business owners, listened to their individual needs, and helped solve many of their challenges through our fintech solutions. This experience helped me understand the far-reaching impact of the payment systems and how the right use of financial data could help people make better decisions.
In my time there, I also learned to make an intentional effort to check my heart and my motives regularly to ensure my promotion of these technologies was God-honoring. Instead of only focusing on quotas and goals to make more money, I had to surrender the outcomes to the Lord and focus on the best interest of my customers. Self-control and surrender also proved to be a necessity for selling fintech.
Creating Fintech
After 10 years at Amex, I had the opportunity to be a part of a payments startup. I didn’t know exactly why, but I knew God was leading me there. It didn’t take long before I began to develop a passion for building something new. This path led me to building a banking experience that supports the surrender of our finances to God, facilitates the self-control needed to keep our commitments, and equips us with technology to develop good financial habits.
This part of the journey has been the hardest, but it’s convinced me that the creation of new technologies will be critical to advancing Christianity in our society. If we merely sit back and respond to what the world is creating, we lose our position of influence in this arena. Peter Thiel, author of Zero to One and a leader in the tech world, addressed technology creation this way: “It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1.” Thiel goes on to say that, “Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future.” Unfortunately, most technology leaders are on lifelong missions to create technology that elevates mankind. We need to have more Christians on lifelong journeys to create technology that elevates Jesus Christ. By His grace, we can take the world from 0 to 1 while integrating the gospel into the fabric of the very technology we create.
In summary, fintech continues to advance rapidly and impact people all over the world. My journey into fintech has taught me that whether we are engaging it as a user, a seller, or even a creator, Christians must approach this technology with self-control and surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ.
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[Special thanks to Clay Banks for the cover photo]