Before he founded Neural Payments, Chief Executive Officer Mick Oppy was an employee of Vantiv, which merged with Worldpay in 2018 to become a payments giant. After several years of innovation in fintech, Oppy noticed that, like an aircraft carrier trying to turn at sea, changing direction for his large employer was hard. He wanted to be a part of something more nimble, more able to change with the payments landscape, and he found it in a classroom.
A lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Oppy was discussing this problem with his students when the seed of what would become his company was planted. In 2019, Oppy Co-Founded the company because he knew—was certain—that he had the dexterity to respond to changing market conditions faster than his previous employer. “I was like, man, we can do better,” he said in a 2022 interview. “I know we can do better. And so Neural Payments kind of spun out of that. Our engine truly was born from those struggles.”
Now a leader in the peer-to-peer payments industry, the positive results came fast and furious once Neural Payments was off the ground, as it saved smaller banks thousands of dollars at a time by simplifying processes and eliminating excess fees. Those thousands of dollars added up quickly, and Neural Payments’ concept was proven. “There's three or four or five things that you can do in a little bitty bank,” he said. “And all of a sudden, boom.”
It’s the latest evolution for Oppy, who graduated from Cincinnati Christian University with a BA in Biblical Studies and has spent his career in and around fintech, eventually earning an MBA from MIT in 2019 after years at Worldpay, Citibank, and more. It was during those years that he saw how slow, old businesses moved and how little he had in common with their elder statespeople, many of whom were blasé about fraud happening under their noses.
“I haven't found anybody that's sophisticated enough that could tell me what's going where and how bad,” he said. “And I've met like two bankers that off the top of my head, they're like, I can tell you this number and that number and how much of a problem. We, as an industry, haven't even woken up to this problem.”
As a CEO, however, the safety and security of Neural Payments’ P2P platform is top-of-mind—and older scandals in legacy payments businesses are driving Oppy’s business. “What's been good is the disruption has created space for us. I love it as the guy trying to come in and help because like, oh, people are listening, right?”
They’re not just listening. They’re adopting. And it’s proof that Oppy was right all along.
