Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does Dean Leavitt, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Boost Payments.
When he started the company in 2009, Leavitt was already a 20-year fintech veteran, and his trained eye had noticed a disturbing trend. As commercial credit cards became more and more popular, Leavitt noted in a 2021 interview, there was still a distinct lack of “players addressing the pain points associated with the use and acceptance of commercial card products,” he said. “Boost was founded to do just that.”
More than 15 years later, Boost is one of the biggest names in the industry, with growth that continues apace to this day. While technological inflection points have hastened the process—COVID was a big driver, says Leavitt—it’s really the generational turnover in fintech management that’s speeding up Boost’s business, as he said last year.
“More specifically,” he said, “as younger people who have grown up in a digital world gain more seniority within finance and treasury departments, their expectations of how payments are made and received are clearly shifting towards digitization and along with it, the requirement that payment experiences must be integrated directly into operational workflows.”
All of this is part of the Payments-as-a-Service playbook, but Leavitt wants Boost to be more than just a teammate for his client companies; he wants to see everyone working together holistically. “As businesses increasingly adopt PaaS,” he said, “the role of a payments partner will shift from simply processing transactions to becoming a strategic ally in optimizing overall financial operations.”
Such an evolution makes sense considering the forever-changing landscape of B2B payments, especially across borders. Each change is an opportunity, Leavitt says. With each evolution, he says, he sees a “chance to create something better, more efficient, and more impactful.”
Over half of the Fortune 100 companies already make or receive payments using Boost, which means there are fewer than 50 companies to go for a company with Boost’s ambition. And after that? They’ll move to the next challenge. It’s Leavitt’s way.
