Today we’d like to introduce you to Ronald Herman.
Hi Ronald, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
The oldest male to a single mother of six children, I learned at an early age the importance of hard work and earning a wage to help contribute to the household. My first job at 13 years of age was to clean and stock the local, small-town hardware store after school and on weekends. It was my first exposure to the responsibility of paying over time for a bicycle I bought at the hardware to get to work and school from our country home four miles away. It was also my first exposure to opening a savings account at the corner Savings & Loan Bank.
Leap forward to launching and exiting four technology companies over a span of 49 years, including current venture Sionic Mobile Corporation founded in 2010.
I often refer to Sionic as “the boomerang company” as its resiliency over a span of 14 years has produced an effect whereby partners and clients enter our ecosystem, leave, then return again several years later. Perhaps a better analogy is we try to remain on the leading edge of the market rather than the bleeding edge. Timing, as they say, is everything — especially when it comes to the fintech sector.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
With minor pivots over the years, Sionic remains true to its founding mantra: reduce the cost for businesses to accept payments and make room for them to reward customers for their patronage.
In 2017, Sionic launched a mobile rewards program with a top-three mobile network operator. The Sunday before the apps were to “go live” in the AppStore and Play, I received a phone call from their Chief Marketing Officer saying the launch and other marketing programs had been canceled as they were entering a “quiet period” for a merger.
In 2019, Sionic built a real-time interactive gateway with a top-three US automaker, enabling drivers and passengers to buy goods and services through the dashboard. The automaker’s user experience was cumbersome and required too many steps for a simple purchase, including joining each seller’s loyalty program and storing payment information for each.
Though the in-vehicle Marketplace came and went during the pandemic, Sionic gained high-value intellectual capital and has applied the learning experience to its present-day, real-time, Pay-by-Bank service.
As you know, we’re big fans of Sionic. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are the first fintech to enable real-time, bank-to-bank payments between consumers and merchants at the point of sale, whether online, in-store, via mobile, or in-vehicle.
Sionic’s instant Pay-by-Bank (PbB) service uses The RTP Network and FedNow bank payment rails to move the funds from buyer to seller at checkout. Funds typically transfer in 5-20 seconds, and merchants enjoy an average 60% savings over credit card payment fees. Consumers earn special perks from merchants for paying digitally with their bank account using Apple Wallet or Google Wallet already on their phones.
The PbB service will be available to all financial institutions participating in RTP, FedNow, or NOW Network bank payment rails in late Summer 2024. PbB is being offered exclusively through Google Cloud Marketplace.
What would you say has been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Contradicting fictional Gordon Gekko, greed is NOT good. Every participant in any ecosystem must benefit fairly. Failure to do so typically results in failure.
Sionic was founded on the basic principle that our solutions must save merchants money and provide rewards for consumers to pay with their phone. Throughout our 14-year history, whenever we strayed from that principle, we were not successful.
Our lessons learned: 1) perseverance is critical to longevity and long-term value creation; 2) pivot when necessary but stay the course; and 3) only do business with good people – whether staff, investor, client, partner, or supplier.
Contact Info:
- Website: sionic.io
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SionicDotIO/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sionic-mobile-corporation
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sionic_io
