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Georgia Technology Summit 2025: Yogs Jayaprakasam with Deluxe

April 24, 2025 by angishields

Atlanta Business Radio

Georgia Technology Summit 2025: Yogs Jayaprakasam with Deluxe

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Georgia Technology Summit brings together 1000+ Georgia-focused technologists to network, learn, and engage with the latest trends in Georgia innovation. This year’s summit was held at the Woodruff Arts Center, a stunning and iconic cultural landmark located in the heart of Midtown Atlanta.

Yogaraj (Yogs) Jayaprakasam joined Deluxe Corporation in May 2022 as Chief Technology and Digital Officer and a member of the Executive Leadership team, leading all aspects of Deluxe’s technology, digital assets, DATA and AI capabilities, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and business resiliency.

Yogs has an extensive, distinguished background in financial services and payments, leading large-scale technology organizations for American Express, Cognizant Technology Solutions and a Start-up for more than 20 years. His expertise spans Multi-Cloud Payment Platforms, MarTech, Open Banking APIs, Client & Partner integrations, Data & Analytics Platforms, and other key areas.

Most recently at American Express, Yogs led the technology teams supporting the company’s B2B Digital Channels, Corporate Cards, Virtual Payments, B2B payments and API Platforms, Commercial Data platforms and other key areas. He holds several patents, and also co-led various innovation efforts including a recent innovation partnership with one of the largest cloud and CRM technology providers.

Yogs received his bachelor’s degree in Physics from University of Madras, India, and a master’s degree in Computer Applications from Bharathidasan University, India. He also has a Chief Technology Officer Certification from University of California, Berkeley.

Connect with Yogs on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Georgia Technology Summit 2025 at the Woodruff Arts Center. This is Business RadioX. And now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here broadcasting live from Georgia Technology Summit 2025. So excited to be talking to my next guest Yogs Jayaprakasam with Deluxe Corporation. Welcome.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: Uh, for the two people out there that aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about Deluxe? How you serving folks?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: Fantastic. Uh, Deluxe is a 110 year check printing company. So our founder invented the first checkbook that we all still use. And, uh, we are a $2.2 billion publicly traded company. Beyond check. We now also make, uh, digital payment Processing platforms. B2b payments and data driven marketing solutions as well. We work with 4000 financial institutions and millions of small businesses and mid-sized companies across the country.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your role with Deluxe?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: I lead their technology and digital organization for the company, so my team is responsible for driving the technology systems.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: That’s a great question. So I started my career back in India after my post-graduation in computer applications. So I have background in working for startup companies that built web websites and mobile products. Then I was in consulting for a bit, but before taking this exciting job with deluxe, I worked for American Express for 13 years. So I believe a lot of the listeners would know American Express. It’s a fantastic card brand. So there is a lot of similarities between what the transformation Amex went through. If you don’t know, Amex used to be a traveler’s check company that evolved into digital payments Months now, Tada deluxe is transforming in from check company to become digital payments and data, uh, which is a commonality that excited me to come be part of this transformation.

Lee Kantor: So what’s it like for a legacy company like deluxe where like you like you said, the first checkbook. Yes. And to to have the foresight and still be relevant today is an amazing achievement, right. To be able to kind of move with the times to the point we are today where we’re getting into, you know, less and less checks. Right? So how do you like how important was the culture of, of innovation that that the deluxe must have? And how are you helping lead that culture through this transformation?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: I think that’s a fantastic question. Um, because culture eats strategy for breakfast is a very common, uh, saying, and I personally believe in that. So what I mean by that is if you pay attention to as a company what you do, you do certain problem solving for your customers. And as things move with time, the way you solve that problem keeps changing too. It’s up to the people and the culture. You have to pay attention to what is changing. So in the context of deluxe, if you really seriously think about it, our initial problem solving for the customer is issuing a check, which is an alternative form of form of payment from the currencies that we have. So now the payment mode from paper check to credit cards and digital payments and everything. We are still solving the same problem and that’s what we are trying to do. As tech becomes less relevant, how do you replace that with the solutions that is relevant to the customers too? So we focus on our customers and we focus on our communities because we believe as we help small businesses and mid-size companies succeed, they contribute to the economy and they contribute back to the workforce, which creates a virtuous cycle.

Lee Kantor: But to make that shift, a lot of companies weren’t able to kind of make that change and really get to the heart of what it is, the value they’re delivering to customers. A lot of companies get hung up with, well, this is how we do this so that the, the how we do it is the thing and it’s really not the how we do it. It’s the why we do it.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: I, uh, that’s that’s a very insightful, uh, statement that you just made there. If you really understand why we exist and continue to be true to that purpose, then solving that problem becomes easier. To what I mean by that is, of course, every company exists to make money and contribute to their shareholders. That is a judicial job that we all have to do. But it it cannot be at the cost of forgetting what you’re supposed to do for your customers, right? Focusing on your customers and then focusing on your employees takes care of focusing on the shareholder promises that you make to. And that’s what we fundamentally believe in.

Lee Kantor: So how do you like what advice would you give an organization that might have maybe fallen in love too much with the nuts and bolts of their product or service and are kind of forgetting, like, okay, what are our customers really need? And what uniquely can we be delivering to them that’s different and special?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: My advice would be, uh, shift your focus from falling in love with what you are good at doing to falling in love with the problem you are solving for your customer. If you are very clear on the problem you solve for your customer. Just like how I explained, the problem we solve is creating alternative payment solution for our customer. Then you will start to find what is the best way to solve that problem. And that changes with time, with process, with technology evolution. You will constantly experiment to find the best solution to solve it. And that’s my recommendation. Stop falling in love with what you are good at. Start falling in love with what you are committed to. Solving the problem for your customer.

Lee Kantor: But I, like you said earlier, that’s a cultural issue because a lot of times it’s going to require some of the times it’s going to require you to abandon things and to, you know, the sunk cost is real. And a lot of people don’t want to pay that price when it comes to sunk costs, especially in technology or things they’ve invested a lot of, or even maybe brand identity, you know, to make that shift. It takes a lot of leadership.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: Yeah, I think that’s a very good point. Often companies that are focused too much on today’s profitability forget that for you to sustain your own profitability. Sustained investment in technology and innovative culture is critical. So what I mean by that is if you don’t invest today and over a period of time, you either become too expensive to maintain every old things that you have inside your company, whether it is old systems and databases and everything. But if you invest to stay current, the managing those technology becomes cheaper and cheaper as you go as well. So for example, we used to be on so many data centers running all of our own servers before. So now we consolidated our footprint to a much smaller data center and moved to public cloud. It not only reduced our cost, of course, initially you have to make some incremental investment to do that, share.

Lee Kantor: The change.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: It. Right now it reduced the cost, but also because we are already on public cloud, we are able to innovate faster because the public cloud providers are already enabling generative AI, artificial intelligence, machine learning, all the cutting edge thing that is coming to become available now, you are paying for the use of it. You are not making one time big investment like you used to make as well. So even though the thought of it looks daunting, unless you go through that process, you are not going to have the same profitable growth that you can enjoy in the future as well.

Lee Kantor: So now, why was it important for you and deluxe to have you become part of the Tag board of directors? Like what was the thinking there?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: So there are two reasons. One, uh, our CEO has this, uh, pretty much a mandate or a requirement. Part of our goal that every one of our executive leadership team should sit in a not for profit organization. And, uh, Tag is a relevant organization for me and my role. Because being a technology leader, you cannot solve it all by yourself. You got to be connected to the industry where you have like minded people who can bring similar problems that you are trying to solve to. So tag made all the difference in the world for me to be part of that as well. So it is 2 in 1 opportunity. So there is a need for me to be in a non not for profit board. But being in a technology driven, not for profit board is very relevant for me and the company as well.

Lee Kantor: So, um, what did you spoke here at the summit or have you spoke yet?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: I’m going to be speaking at 1250. In a panel discussion that talks about, is AI going to change the CEO’s job, or should we let AI to change the job of CEO?

Lee Kantor: So any spoilers? Is it going to change the job?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: I think I will change how we do our jobs. So it will replace people who don’t use AI to do the job with people who know how to use AI to do the job better.

Lee Kantor: So, uh, your advice is to lean into AI. Don’t run away from it.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: My advice is not only lean into AI, but also be part of shaping how AI should be used because the narrative today is, oh, it is going to come and change my job. If we let any technology, not just AI, it will do what you don’t want it to do. We got to be part of shaping what are the things we want AI to do? What are the things we don’t want AI to do? As an example, I don’t want my nurse’s job to be fully done by. I want a human telling me how I feel. What is my health? All of those things, and those are the things we need to consciously contribute and shape the laws shape as a tag, as it plays a bigger role, because we can influence the community and then go influence the law as well.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more about deluxe, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: D e l u Xe.com Xe.com is our website and we share all the great products that we do, how we are modernizing, what problems we are solving for our customer. We would love to talk to anyone who is interested in what we do to help them solve their needs.

Lee Kantor: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor back in a few. At Georgia Technology Summit 2025.

Fintech South 2023: Michael Reed with Deluxe

September 22, 2023 by angishields

Atlanta Business Radio

Fintech South 2023: Michael Reed with Deluxe

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Fintech South 2023 is a world-class summit with its nexus in Atlanta live and in-person, a global financial technology hub that is home to more than 200 fintech companies. The top 15 public fintech companies in Georgia alone generate more than $100 billion in revenues. On September 12th & 13th, 2023, at the Georgia World Congress Center, we welcomed fintech leaders from around the world for an amazing experience designed to help you make the most of the opportunities of the fintech revolution.

Michael Reed, Deluxe

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the beautiful Georgia World Congress Center for FinTech South. 2023. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here broadcasting live FinTech South 2023 celebrating fintech leaders from around the world. Right now we have Michael Reed, division president of payments for Deluxe. Welcome, Michael.

Michael Reed: Thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: For the two people out there who don’t know, tell us a little bit about Deluxe, how you serving folks.

Michael Reed: Yeah. So Deluxe is a 108 year old business. The founder of Deluxe invented the checkbook. So we say that we’re the original payments company. You’re the.

Lee Kantor: Og?

Michael Reed: Yes. I lead our digital payments business, so it’s my job to find digital solutions for customers, whether it’s credit cards, debit cards, you know, paper based payments, different things like that. But so I’m on the different side of the business.

Lee Kantor: But so how’s business going? Is this a world that just kind of seems like it’s going to keep growing forever?

Michael Reed: Well, you know, we’ve done a really good job of getting, you know, some frictionless experiences from consumer to business payments as an ecosystem. And so I’m focusing most of my time now on business to business payments, where it’s probably surprising to a lot to realize that 60% or so of businesses still send paper based payments to their customers.

Lee Kantor: Is that six?

Michael Reed: 66 060. So just as an example, we process $3 trillion in payments today that originate as paper.

Lee Kantor: Wow. That that is shocking. Is that shocking to you as someone in the industry that it would still be that high?

Michael Reed: It was very shocking to me when I came to Deluxe. I had been working on the consumer side for a long time, working at companies where we were helping businesses, consumers pay businesses, you know, credit cards, debit cards, those types of things. And we had, as an industry, done a good job of getting rid of those paper payments, you know, quite some time ago. So to learn that there are so many out there, it’s really the next frontier for payments. And there’s a lot of opportunity for all of us to go help businesses better pay each other.

Lee Kantor: Why do you think it’s still, like so slow for them to adopt this newer technology?

Michael Reed: Well, we’ve been looking at that quite a lot. And, you know, we try to find out what the job that this piece of paper is doing today that that a digital platform or solution can’t do or doesn’t do as effectively So.

Lee Kantor: Your jobs to be done.

Michael Reed: Person I am a jobs to be done we subscribe we subscribe to the jobs theory or I do and so we deploy that. We deploy that at deluxe. So the you know, the paper check does a bunch of different things where the process of sending it through the mail rather does a bunch of things. One is as we’ve been talking to payers that are looking to send money to another business, if they don’t know that they’re ever going to have to send a payment to that provider again, They don’t really want to store ACH or card information. There’s some some inherent risk in doing that. And you know, it’s maintenance of those databases and different things. So that’s one piece. The other is in many cases, they have to tell the recipient what the payment is even for. So if you think about a medical claims payment, you know, if you’re out on vacation and you sprain your ankle and you go to the closest clinic, you as a as a, you know, you go, you pay your.

Lee Kantor: Co-pay, you do that digitally.

Michael Reed: You’re out. You get your out-of-network copay. Well, today, when your insurance company settles that claim with your with that provider, they mail the final payment. And the reason that they do that is they don’t know if they’re ever going to have to pay that person. They need to tell them why it is they’re making that payment. So, you know, they sent a bill for $1,000. They’re paying 800. They need to tell them why they’re only paying them 800. And they have the address of the clinic. So they stick these things in the mail. And, you know, we’ve got a digital solution. We call it the medical payment exchange that we’ve done in partnership with with another payments platform provider, Echo Health. And we’re working to digitize those payments. So now we notify that provider that they’ve got a payment coming from this insurance company and how do they want it? And we then maintain those databases of information and send those payments digitally and reduce the need for paper.

Lee Kantor: In that case. So when they say, how do you want it? Does anybody pick check?

Michael Reed: Well, check is still an option, right?

Lee Kantor: But that’s an option. But anyone picking that option? No, that’s.

Michael Reed: Not normally, you know, they’re happy with an ACA or they’ll even sometimes want to put it on their PayPal account or what have you.

Lee Kantor: So that’s that’s wild. So so that’s part of your job is just to help people make this transition.

Michael Reed: That is the whole job.

Lee Kantor: That’s the whole job.

Michael Reed: Is to to.

Lee Kantor: Make that 60 turn into six.

Michael Reed: We we obviously do you know, do what we can. We’re privileged to support about 70%, 76% of the top 300 financial institutions in the United States providing these types of services. And we’re bringing digital capabilities to them. It help them to provide these types of solutions to their customers? Bill, Pay different things like that. And, you know, it’s our job to do a good job with what we’ve been entrusted with so far, but help them to to provide better payment options for their consumers and help them educate their consumers so they’ll use them.

Lee Kantor: Right? So that’s a lot of your job is having these conversations to really understand the pain points and understand what it is that job that check is doing in that firm and how you can kind of make that digital solution rather than a paper solution.

Michael Reed: That’s right. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: So how do you attack a conference like FinTech South? How how do you get the most out of your time here?

Michael Reed: Well, you know, we you know, I’ve been I’ve been personally transferred in and out of Atlanta a couple of different times. My family and I really enjoy being and living here in Atlanta. It’s a fantastic city for us and for our industry. There’s really only one other market that I’m aware of that has the number of companies that are in payments, and that’s London. So Atlanta is in rare air relative to the number of payments companies that operate here, which gives us the opportunity to find, you know, great talent, a great network of of fintechs and other partners that we might want to package into our solution and and just learn from each other about the different things that are going on. And I like this particular conference because it focuses not just on payments, but it really does focus on technology and how it is that we can deploy technology to solve these different types of problems for our respective customers. So, you know, there’s just a there’s a lot of great things here. The university system is strong. The way that this industry is rallied to educate the students in the university system on the things that are going on in this space. We just it’s a great talent pool. It’s a it’s a great peer group to to be around. And it’s, you know, made up of some really compelling value propositions from these different companies.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you finding young people kind of gravitating to fintech as a career or is it something that you need more folks to to go into developers?

Michael Reed: Absolutely. You know, I think from a technology perspective, it’s a lot easier to explain what a job is if they’re, you know, if they’re a developer or someone that’s coding. You know, we’ve got the you know, we’ve got the benefit in Georgia of the FinTech academy and the fintech academy helps to educate on the broader on the broader ecosystem with payments, whether it’s, you know, product managers or or the different types of jobs that we would need in different in different companies, product owners, you know, all those, all those different types of, of of roles and how we can bring this young talent in to help us to solve these these next generation problems. So it’s a great it’s a great market for that type of for that type of work. But we do have work to do to keep educating on what this industry is and why companies may want to participate.

Lee Kantor: So any advice for young person deciding what career path to go in? How would you sell them on pursuing fintech?

Michael Reed: Well, I mean, if they’re in Georgia and they want to and they want to have a, you know, an industry that has really been in be in an industry that’s really been embraced by all aspects of the economy here. You know, fintech is definitely that that particular industry. So, you know, if they’re in university and they’re doing things, they probably already have some intellectual curiosity. There’s lots of avenues to go educate themselves on what this different stuff is and and how it works. There’s lots of conferences around like, like these. But, you know, if they’re looking for an enduring industry and a growth in a secular growth environment in a fantastic city to, you know, to live. This is this is definitely the you know, where I would be focused if I was.

Lee Kantor: Is there an opportunity to bring in some of the the fintech curriculum into lower grades rather than starting in college? Like, can we start doing a better job maybe sprinkling in some of those kind of core competencies earlier on in a young person’s life so they can kind of follow that path into this as they get older?

Michael Reed: Well, the fintech academy is already providing curriculum to all the public high schools in the state. So they are starting to see starting to see that. And obviously with the with the Hope scholarship, which is, you know, a scholarship that’s afforded to, you know, most all of the students in the state of Georgia that graduate with a certain GPA and affords them the opportunity to follow and secondary education. You know, there’s a big incentive for Georgia natives to stay in Georgia and to get their education in Georgia. So that combination, I think, is an interesting.

Lee Kantor: And then that’s good for companies like Deluxe to, you know, access that talent pool.

Michael Reed: Absolutely. You know, you’ve got if you think about even. Just the city of Atlanta. You’ve got you know, you’ve got Emory University, Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Kennesaw State. And each one of those university systems pull a different type of student. And there’s something to be you know, there’s some you know, there’s compelling attributes from each one of those different types of universities and the types of students that you may draw. You know, you may draw from a Georgia state student, you know, generally speaking, is helping to put themselves through school. So they’ve got perseverance and grit and they’re, you know, they’re doing a lot to drive to drive their personal journey forward. And, you know, you’ve got Georgia Tech where, you know, it’s heavy engineering and you’ve got that type of mindset there where you’ve got, you know, people that understand how this stuff works and, you know, are driven by that. So, you know, you know, the other that’s.

Lee Kantor: Good for companies like Deluxe. Right. Absolutely.

Michael Reed: It’s great for it’s great for businesses like Deluxe.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more about Deluxe and the opportunities there, what’s the website?

Michael Reed: So deluxe.com we’ve got a got a great website there and you know you can check out Deluxe and our careers page is there if you’re looking for a role and opportunities.

Lee Kantor: Well Michael, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you. All right.

Michael Reed: Thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This Lee Kantor back into for you at FinTech South 2023.