Guest: Sidharth Shah
Today I’m talking with someone I always enjoy learning from. I sat down again with Sidharth Shah, lead product manager of onboarding and identity at Novo, to talk about what he has been seeing across fraud, product, and B2B fintech, along with what he has learned by pushing himself outside his comfort zone professionally.
What I like about this conversation is that it covers two things that are more connected than people sometimes realize. The first is how fraud shows up across different industries, business models, and financial infrastructure environments. The second is how fraud professionals grow when they keep learning, keep asking better questions, and stay open to perspectives outside their own lane.
Because at first glance, career growth and fraud pattern recognition can sound like separate topics. They really are not. The people who get better in this field are usually the people who stay curious, learn how adjacent teams think, and build enough range to understand how fraud interacts with onboarding, identity, payments, risk, and product decisions.
And that matters.
Especially in B2B fintech, where the risk is rarely isolated to one moment. It can show up in onboarding, embedded payments, payment processing, financial infrastructure decisions, and the way teams balance growth with control. So this conversation is really about how better perspective makes you better at the work.
Here is what that means in practice:
- B2B fintech fraud work gets stronger when teams understand product, onboarding, identity, and payments together
- Data-driven thinking matters because fraud decisions need to be grounded in patterns, not assumptions
- Career growth in fraud often comes from stepping outside your comfort zone and learning how adjacent functions operate
- Diverse perspectives usually lead to better fraud judgment, better collaboration, and better long-term strategy
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- What Sid has learned by stretching professionally and taking on new challenges in B2B fintech
- How fraud patterns can look different across industries, business models, and financial infrastructure environments
- Why data-driven decision-making matters so much in fraud, onboarding, and identity work
- How product thinking connects to embedded finance, embedded banking, and payment processing risk
- What practical advice we would give anyone trying to grow their career in fraud prevention
You should listen to this episode if you:
- Work in B2B fintech, fraud, risk, onboarding, or identity and want a broader perspective on the work
- Are interested in embedded finance, banking as a service, embedded payments, or financial infrastructure
- Want practical career growth advice from people who have learned by pushing themselves professionally
- Care about how product, payments, and fraud intersect in fintech software and payment automation
- Want a clearer view of how better perspective can improve both fraud strategy and career development
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Episode notes & key takeaways
Why B2B fintech fraud requires broader perspective
Let’s break this down.
One of the things I appreciate most about this conversation is that it reinforces how much fraud work in B2B fintech depends on context. You cannot just look at one alert, one transaction, or one identity check and assume you understand the full picture. In a lot of fintech environments, especially ones connected to embedded finance or banking as a service, the customer journey and the risk journey are deeply connected.
That is the part that matters.
Because fraud in these environments is often tied to how onboarding works, how identity is verified, how payments move, and what the product is actually enabling. A team may be looking at b2b payments, spend management, accounts payable automation, or cash flow management, but the underlying risk decisions still come back to the same question. Do we really understand what normal looks like here, and do we know how to spot when something does not fit?
Sid brings a really useful perspective to that because he sits at the intersection of onboarding and identity. And in fintech, that is often where a lot of the most important decisions start.
- B2B fintech risk is often shaped by product design as much as fraud rules
- Embedded finance and embedded banking models can create more complex onboarding and identity questions
- Financial infrastructure decisions affect how early or how late fraud gets detected
- Payment processing risk makes more sense when teams understand the broader business model around it
Why data-driven decision-making matters so much in fraud work
This is one of those points that sounds obvious until you see how often teams drift away from it.
Fraud professionals have instincts for a reason. Experience matters. Pattern recognition matters. But if those instincts are not backed by data, it gets much harder to influence decisions, test what is working, or explain risk clearly to leadership and product teams.
Right.
That is why I liked this part of the conversation so much. Both Sid and I care a lot about data-driven thinking, not because it sounds good, but because it is practical. Fraud teams need evidence. They need to know whether a control is improving outcomes. They need to understand whether a shift is isolated or systemic. And they need to be able to translate those findings into something useful for the business.
That becomes even more important in B2B fintech, where finance automation, treasury management, or fintech software workflows may involve different stakeholders with different priorities. If fraud teams cannot clearly explain what the data is saying, they are going to have a harder time getting traction.
- Data-driven fraud work helps teams separate noise from meaningful shifts
- Good measurement improves decisions around onboarding, identity, and payment flows
- Fraud teams need evidence to influence product and operational priorities
- Stronger analytics usually lead to stronger long-term fraud strategy
Why product thinking makes fraud professionals better
This is where things get especially interesting.
A lot of fraud professionals get stronger when they stop looking only at fraud and start looking more closely at product. What is the customer trying to do? What friction exists in the flow? What incentives is the product creating? What assumptions did the team build into the experience? Those are product questions, but they are also fraud questions.
And that matters.
Because a lot of fraud issues do not come from a failure to identify something obviously bad. They come from a product or process creating room for abuse that nobody fully accounted for. That can happen in onboarding. It can happen in embedded payments. It can happen in spend management, payment automation, or accounts payable automation. Different context, same pattern.
This is exactly why I think B2B fintech professionals benefit so much from understanding how product managers think. Sid’s perspective highlights that well. When fraud teams understand product tradeoffs better, they usually partner better too.
- Product thinking helps fraud teams understand where abuse is likely to emerge
- Embedded payments and fintech software flows often create risk through convenience and complexity together
- Better fraud work usually comes from understanding customer behavior and system incentives
- Stronger collaboration happens when fraud and product teams speak more of the same language
Why career growth in fraud usually starts with curiosity
I really liked this part of the conversation too.
A lot of people want career growth, but not everyone realizes how much of that growth comes from discomfort. Learning a new domain. Talking to people outside your function. Taking on work you are not fully confident in yet. Asking questions that make you feel a little inexperienced. That is usually where the real growth starts.
I have seen this over and over.
The best fraud professionals I know are almost always curious. They want to understand more than their own queue, their own tool, or their own company’s version of the problem. They learn from peers. They go to events. They compare notes. They build relationships. And over time, that gives them much better perspective.
That is true in B2B fintech too, maybe even more so. The space moves fast. The terminology can get specialized. The business models can vary a lot. So if you want to grow, you need more than technical skill. You need range.
- Career growth often comes from learning beyond your current role
- Curiosity helps fraud professionals build stronger perspective and better judgment
- Networking and industry conversations can accelerate growth in practical ways
- People who push beyond their comfort zone usually create more opportunities over time
Why this conversation matters beyond one industry
The bigger takeaway for me is pretty straightforward. Yes, this episode is grounded in B2B fintech, onboarding, identity, and product thinking. But the lessons apply much more broadly than that.
Good fraud work depends on perspective. Good careers do too.
If you want to improve your fraud judgment, understand more of the ecosystem around your role. If you want to grow professionally, get comfortable being new at something again. Learn from people in adjacent functions. Pay attention to how product, payments, and infrastructure decisions shape risk. And do not underestimate how much better you can get just by staying curious a little longer than most people do.
That is the part that holds up.
