What are the origins of Apto and how did the company get started?

As I reflect on these last two years of the pandemic, the shift to remote-first has really been an interesting experience. Among the challenges, in a remote-first environment, culture is something that's even more difficult to establish, maintain and actually share.

Along the lines of what makes Apto different or how Apto is approaching this industry in a new way, I think it comes down to not just myself, but my co-founder and the leadership team, the tone that we set, and the way we go about our day-to-days. I hope the  consistency and authenticity of our leadership styles positively touches every colleague at Apto. We're not a hugely top-down type of organization; we're very organic and often bottoms-up. The way in which we try and go about our business is meant to be in our own unique way, as opposed to, say, a win-at-all-costs type of mindset. I don't want to call it a being humble thing, but I really think it is a reflection of who we are as people, the team we are, how we like to work, and how we like to see our work impact the world.

With that backdrop, to your question, “What is Apto? What are we trying to do?” We are a developer-first card issuance platform. How do we differ from, say, a banking-as-a-service platform, or why are we focused on being a point solution?

By way of background, my co-founder and I met at a consulting company that specializes in financial services matters, including regulatory issues, compliance, and risk management. It was a tremendous experience -- very, very valuable to me -- and we continue to work with many of our former colleagues. The point is, half-jokingly: as a consultant, you learn a lot, the client learns a little, but nothing really changes.

One of the last straws for me was the mortgage foreclosure crisis: consulting companies got paid gobs of money, but those who were harmed got very, very little out of it. The banks spent so much money on remediating and doing this forensic analysis of whether or not they did something wrong, but it was the consultants who got paid and not those consumers who were wronged. By rethinking payments and financial services infrastructure and specifically card issuance, why we thought we could drive change and meaningful impact.

If you think back to front, when folks are trying to pay in more seamless ways or simplify their life in terms of how they pay for things, the safest mechanism or device is, in the modern age, the card or the mobile phone. We went straight to the most tangible thing. 

We were originally called Shift Payments and one of our first products to market was the first US bitcoin debit card. If you take a look at the internet time machine, you will see that our tagline back then was: “It's your money.” It really is an empowerment story of: it's your money, it's your asset, you should be able to spend it or access it however you want. Why should a company tell you otherwise? In terms of mission, we've always been about empowering consumers and helping bring about modernization and better solutions to market.