25 Aug, 2026
Q2 Innovation Studio just marked its fifth anniversary, with more than 90% of Q2 Digital Banking Platform customers now using its SDK and partner ecosystem. Johnny Ola, SVP of Q2 Innovation Studio, joins the podcast to share the origin story, explain how Q2 vets and works with partners, highlight the use cases banks and credit unions are prioritizing today, and preview what's next as Q2 Code opens up new ways to build on the platform.
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Related Links
[News Release] Q2 Innovation Studio Marks Five Years
[Blog] A Closer Look at Q2 Code
Transcript
Cheryl Brown
Hello and welcome to The Purposeful Banker, the podcast brought to you by Q2, where we discuss the big topics on the minds of today's best bankers. I'm Cheryl Brown, welcome to the show.
This month, we've been marking a milestone here at Q2. Q2 Innovation Studio just turned five. And it has become something that, frankly, I don't think everyone anticipated when it launched. It's now a core part of how the vast majority of Q2 digital banking customers build and deploy new capabilities for their account holders, and to talk through what this anniversary means for us, how we got here, and what comes next. I'm joined by someone who's been at the center of it, Johnny Ola, senior vice president of Q2 Innovation Studio. Welcome, Johnny.
Johnny Ola
Thank you. Great to be here.
Cheryl Brown
So Johnny's been building and scaling ecosystem partnerships in financial technologies for years. And before stepping into his current role, he served as VP of Strategic Alliances and co-lead for the Q2 Partner Marketplace. He knows Innovation Studio from the ground up. So what better person to describe to us what is Innovation Studio?
Johnny Ola
Yeah, you know, at the high level, it's really a portfolio of technologies and go-to-market programs that we've put together that help our Q2 financial institutions and our partners design, develop, distribute new innovative products solutions, new features, new workflows, new extensions, all integrated and offered through the Q2 Digital Banking Platform. That's really it at its core.
Cheryl Brown
So take us back five years ago. What was the early thinking? What problem was Q2 trying to solve when Innovation Studio was conceived? And what did the team think it could become?
Johnny Ola
Yeah. Well, you know, our founder, Hank Seale, had a vision just like he did for internet banking for Q2 and how we started. He had a vision of transforming that, you know, from a cost center, an expense center into a revenue-generating platform for our financial institutions. And that vision was to be able to offer some of the best and brightest fintech and other partner solutions through the platform. And our financial institutions could earn revenue from that, and they could also better serve their account holders with all types of innovative solutions beyond just traditional banking, and if we got that right, it would help our customers compete and win against some of the largest financial institutions in the world. And also the nontraditional banks that are now offering financial services.
So that was really the original vision he had that we set out to try to go and do.
Cheryl Brown
Was there like a particular moment or insight that clarified that this needed to be a platform and not just a collection of integrations?
Johnny Ola
Yeah. I think, you know, as we started to look into how we would deliver this and how we would … you know, there were at least two major problems in the industry that we saw. We knew we had to solve that in a more platform or holistic way and not just try to put Band-Aids on something that was already broken.
The first area was just looking at how financial institutions and partners tried to work together. It was just fundamentally broken. They were building one-off custom integrations every time over and over again, and it took way too long, way too expensive. And you're sitting on top of these legacy systems. It was just too difficult to maintain, as well. So that was kind of the big problem, number one.
Number two is the financial institutions themselves were often locked out of the digital banking platform that they were running. A lot of them had to rely on their digital banking provider to extend and enhance the platform for their own needs, for their own ways to differentiate. And again, it took too long. It cost too much money. Innovation was stifled in both directions. And that's what we really said. You know what? We can do better. We have to do better for our customers and for the industry. And we felt Q2 was in a very unique place to be able to do that versus some of the legacy providers.
So that was a real galvanizing moment. So the decision was made. Let's open up the digital banking platform to our customers and partners in a way that hadn't been done before. Let's go invest heavily into our software development kit and into our APIs so that it could happen at speed and scale. We really wanted to remove the technology barrier and let and let the innovation flow a lot more freely.
And then, as I mentioned in describing Innovation Studio, we put some go-to-market programs on top of that so our customers and our partners could take full advantage of the differentiation that we were offering.
Cheryl Brown
Well, and I think, you know, the numbers speak to how well the solution solves those pain points, right? I mean, if we if we dig into the numbers: five years in, more than 90% of Q2 Digital Banking customers are using Innovation Studio, 450 plus financial institutions are in the ecosystem, and the average institution is running five partner integrations. So when you look at those numbers, what stands out to you? What do you think they say about how the market has shifted?
Johnny Ola
Yeah. Well, you know, I do need to start with saying everything starts with the Q2 Digital Banking Platform. That's what makes it all possible. And Q2 is continuing to pour a ton of investment into the platform and into our own products. Innovation studio multiplies that if you think about the number of partners we have and all the innovation that's happening there. So that really is what gets us excited.
But it's more than just the numbers. It's how our financial institutions and partners are leveraging Innovation Studio and, to your point, the results that they're seeing. But I'll tell you, in the early days, you know, we spoke to hundreds of financial institutions when we were trying to think about what we needed to do, and it literally took them somewhere between six months and 15 months to find a partner they wanted to work with and go through the whole process of standing it up. Often by the time they were done, the market had shifted completely, and they ended up very disappointed.
You know, in our in our minds, that was just unacceptable. So that's when we went to work. And we really spent a lot of time on how we could open the platform in a way that it would be much easier to work with, that we could bring partners in and have them pre-integrate their solution into the digital banking platform. And all they had to do if we got it right was build it one time and it would work for all of our customers instead of these one-off integrations. We wanted, like I mentioned earlier, to remove the technology barrier. It didn't matter what core system you were sitting on, how complicated it was, if our software development kit and APIs could normalize that. And again, you could write a single integration that worked for all of our customers. That could be game changing, right?
And so we did that. We started to see integrations that were built 70% to 90% faster and cheaper. We started to get excited about how those manifested themselves through digital banking. And, look, we could have never predicted where we ended up today, but I'll tell you, there were some scary moments there. In the first year and a half, we had to work really hard to recruit partners because, think about it, we're asking them to build and invest ahead of time with no guarantee of success. And we were also asking customers, financial institutions to join us, but there weren't a lot of partners yet. And so there, if you want a network like this to work, you have to have critical mass on both sides. And there was a time or two in there, in our darkest moments, we were like, well, is this going to work?
But you know, what happened is the momentum started to build. Partners and customers started to see some successes. Then we were able to recruit in larger numbers. We were able to get more name-brand partners. And one of the interesting things that happened is in particular categories, if you weren't in Innovation Studio, you were at a disadvantage against your competitors and you couldn't sell into our customers in the same way. You had to use the old model. So all of a sudden the snowball starts building up and the partners started coming in droves. The financial institutions got more excited. And that's when it really got fun for us.
And here we are today with, you know, 215 partners, 2,500 customer partner deployments. And we're starting to see the results that really get us excited about what's taking place. And it's not just the numbers; it's the business results that they're achieving.
Cheryl Brown
Some of our customers have jumped in with both feet. Some of them have as many as 20 integrations. So what does a successful customer look like? For any customers that may be just dipping their toes in and only doing a couple, what's the difference between someone who's all in and somebody who's just kind of tentatively joining?
Johnny Ola
Yeah. And so, you know, there's a lot of ways to roll this out, and you don't have to launch 15 at a time. But the best-in-class FIs that we work with, we sit down and talk about their strategy. What are they trying to achieve from a business perspective? And then how can these solutions, these Innovation Studio partner solutions, help them deliver on those goals? How should they think about the priority and sequencing of those? And we help them with all of all of that.
And then what we want to do is work together to deploy them in a way that's very easy for the account holders and for the employees of the bank or credit union, and make it much more efficient and easy. And then those same solutions integrated through mobile and business banking in a way that makes sense to an account holder.
So I think a great example is Chartway Federal Credit Union. We went through that whole process. We just talked about with them, and they rolled it out in a very smart way. And they integrated the solutions so it was just very simple for their members to take advantage of them. And then what has occurred since they really rolled all that out—this is Digital Banking plus Innovation Studio—6% organic growth in deposits. That's huge. Right? I mean, that's on the top of all of our financial institutions’ minds is how to grow and retain deposits and attract new ones. A 10% increase in digital banking transactions. What does that mean? It means their account holders are in digital banking much more often, and they can offer new products and services to them and engage in a way that they can't if they're not active in digital banking.
A couple of areas that they focused on, one was account takeover with fraud by leveraging Innovation Studio. They saw a 50% reduction in fraud account takeover. They also attacked their loan portfolio. They had a very poor system. They would typically lose half of their customers in the application process. They implemented these solutions that were much more tightly integrated into digital banking. Through Innovation Studio, they saw a 50% increase in loan acceptance rates. And so it was those types of things they did. They had a new offering for CDs. All you had to do was click on a mobile ad for that, and it would take you straight into the experience. Four clicks later, you've got a new CD set up.
So those are the things that a best-in-class financial institution does. In thinking about strategy, then the solution, making sure their account holders have a wonderful experience.
Cheryl Brown
And from the fintech side, you mentioned that, you know, in the early days, it was tough to convince them to do the upfront work. So talk to me a little bit about what the vetting process is. What is the process that Q2 puts a fintech through to be part of the Innovation Studio ecosystem?
Johnny Ola
Yeah. You know, now we have a critical mass of partners in a lot of the categories that we care about. We have good optionality in most of those. So we're being a bit more discerning. You know, at this point, we're looking for partners that can really move the needle for a financial institution and ones that are either meeting new emerging markets that are new or they're more established and they're helping us break into some different areas there. And so we work now with these partners in a much more regimented way. We have a team that works with them on their technology integration, making sure we get that right up front and that we walk with them through the first three to five FI deployments so that we know the banks and credit unions are going to have a good experience with those. We also have a go-to-market team that works with those partners in parallel. They've got to get their compliance, security, all the information audited financials, the things SOC 2, the things that our customers are going to ask from them. So we want to get coach them, have all of that ready. And that way when they start working with a financial institution, they can move much faster. We then work with them on go-to-market, getting all of their artifacts and everything they need, getting the right marketing solutions ready or the marketing artifacts.
So it's a full kind of end-to-end process for us working with partners so when they launch inside of Innovation Studio, they're ready. And our customers know that they can count on them to have a better experience. We're also very transparent when you're one of the first FIs working with a new partner. We let you know that, and we'll work with you through that process and you'll test a little bit more in those early innings. And then we have partners that have, you know, literally have 100 financial institution customers and you know that solution has been really tested in depth and you can turn it on and get after it very, very quickly.
Cheryl Brown
So let's talk a little bit more about use cases. You mentioned with Chartway that onboarding was one thing that they leaned into. Fraud. We did a news release on the five-year anniversary, and some of the things that were mentioned there, you know, payments, small business, AI, digital currencies. We had Stablecore on the podcast to talk about stablecoins and what that's going to mean for commercial actually. So what are some of the business cases that you see more urgency in soon?
Johnny Ola
Yeah, I think there's kind of five main ones and an emerging one as well here. So we look at an area like deposit and origination. And that's been kind of the number one category for that. You know, think about where you're trying to attract new deposits, whether it's a loan system or other ways that you can reach out and really help financial institutions grow—grow their account holder base, their commercial base, grow deposits.
The second most popular, I'd say is financial wellness. Deep, deep category. Lots of areas of financial wellness, digital engagement. So how do you engage with your account holders digitally, provide automated customer support, chat, self-service, you know. How can they get to a human quickly when they need one?
Fraud’s obviously been a hot topic for our customers. Q2 has some wonderful solutions, and we've got partners that augment many areas of fraud. So that's been very popular as well. And then payments of all types: consumer payments, business payments, commercial payments, international payments. You mentioned Stablecore as an example and many other areas of the payments landscape. Instant payments, FedNow RTP. There's a lot that Q2 does, and then the partners integrate there and augment that.
Lastly, it would be around open banking. You know, so the ease of access of sharing data, sharing account holder information, verifying account holders, we're doing a lot of work there. So we kind of take those five or six major categories.
And then depending on the priorities of the financial institution, we're looking at a consumer cut of those categories or a small business cut of that, or a commercial view into those five categories. And that's where we start to talk to customers about the solutions we think will be the most impactful to them. What are other financial institutions doing? What are some of the best practices, you know? And when we can get into those types of things, that's where we can really provide value. And you start to marry strategy with delivering on those goals in a very concrete and tangible way.
I'll just touch quickly on consumer. So think about family and youth banking solutions for consumers building credit, investments, tax, you know, all those things that they're going to need and they're going to get them from somewhere. We love them to get them through our financial institutions. Small business and commercial customers are looking for accounting, HR, payroll, international, and business payments. You know, we talked about instant payments, cash flow and budgeting solutions, ERP integrations, escrow, sub accounting, and much more.
So there's a lot there to consider. And part of what my team does is really sit with you. We'll consult with you. We'll come back with a set of recommendations. We'll help you evaluate the right partners. We'll be with you through the go-live and deployment, and then we'll help you with all of your marketing strategies. All of that's free to our financial institution customers as part of Innovation Studio to help them get the adoption and what they're really looking to drive from those solutions.
Cheryl Brown
I wanted to go back to another announcement that we made earlier this year. We announced Q2 Code, which is our governed AI development environment that lets teams build on the Q2 platform using natural language prompts. So what does that mean for how financial institutions and their technology teams think about building their own capabilities on top of Innovation Studio?
Johnny Ola
Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question because in the beginning, we talked about opening up the platform to both our customers and our partners. We've talked a lot about partners. We have opened the platform to our customers, as well, and they can license our software development kit. They can extend the digital banking platform themselves with their own resources. We help train them or through partners, and they can build lots of things like it's a full development environment, you know. You can build new extensions, features, functions, workflows. We have customers building entire new applications like a CD renewal system.
And now along comes Q2 Code. And that's only going to make it way better and much easier for them to extend. So you no longer have to be like a senior developer with deep technical expertise to extend the Q2 platform and work with our software development kit. Q2 Code allows you to build it with natural language prompts, and it's really about just getting the requirements of what you want to build correct, and Q2 takes over from there. And it helps you build those extensions leveraging our best practices, our rails in a safe, compliant regulatory manner, and being able to do that much, much quicker with higher quality code up front.
So you think about that and what that can mean for an FI or for a partner, and the reaction we've gotten has really been overwhelmingly positive. So we've loved what we've seen. We're signing up new early adopters now. And honestly, I know it's like a cliche, but I do think it's a game changer. It's really going to change the way our customers can innovate, and we're excited about that. And they certainly seem to be as well. Our sessions at CONNECT and the webinars and things we've done after have been packed.
Cheryl Brown
Yeah, it's, it's an exciting time. And you know, in our press release, you were quoted as saying, “Five years in, and we're just getting started.” So, you know, besides Q2 Code, tell us what does the next chapter look like in your view? What are the priorities for Innovation Studio as it moves into year six and beyond?
Johnny Ola
Well, you know, I'm proud of us. I think we've probably only said the word AI maybe once or twice. That's, that's pretty amazing these days. But it is obviously a major factor. And so, in addition to Q2 Code, think about what's going on with AI, how Q2 is leveraging it. We've also announced things like Q2 Assistant and User Activity Monitoring heavily leveraging AI. Well guess what? Our 215 partners are spending tons of energy on that, as well, and how can they extend and improve their applications that they're going to be offered through Innovation Studio to help our customers and our account holders to be able to interact in ways before that wasn't possible.
So I would just say on the AI front, buckle up because the pace is only going to accelerate. And we're really excited to help drive that in the natural workflows of how bankers and account holders work, and not as some separate, distinct thing that's off to the side. Q2 has the context, the data, all of the things that you need to really leverage AI in a very responsible way, in a very targeted way. So that's one.
The second thing we think about every day is “better on Q2.” That's one of our mantras. And so we're working with our partners to develop more deeply embedded integrations that account holders are going to love that are going to help FIs grow deposits, differentiate and compete against the largest FIs in the world and against the technology vendors that are trying to act like a bank. So we're really focused in that area as well.
We're going to continue to lead the industry. You take something like Stablecore. Because of Innovation Studio, our SDK, and our platform, we were able to work with them and get something to market much faster than other platform providers could do. And so you'll see us continue to lead there because we can move faster.
One of the other areas, you know, enterprise FIs. Large FIs over $10 billion, $100 billion, $200 billion. They were somewhat reluctant to use Innovation Studio in the early days. I think they felt like they wanted to roll their own often. And now we're seeing them come much more eager to work with us. They've seen the success. They've seen how much easier and faster and cheaper it can be. They're kind of tired of having to manage those relationships, manage the integrations, pay for them, upgrade them. Why not work with Innovation Studio? Let the partner do all the work. And so we'll be looking for more areas for our enterprise customers, commercial customers, how we can help attract deposits, grow noninterest income, really differentiate and win in those segments.
And I think lastly, many FIs that we talk to their account holder base, a lot of baby boomers and others are sort of aging. They're trying to go find the newer customers, the younger demographics. How can they attract them? And that's an area we're very focused on where we're helping them with all aspects of that to make the financial institution be the place they go to look for all of these solutions.
So those are some of the things that get us excited. Yeah, we really are just getting started. We believe that we will be able to more and more help our financial institutions leverage data to smartly target their account holders with the right solutions at the right time through the right channels. And so we're going to continue to double down on this initiative for Q2. The notion of our company being a platform company and an open platform is not a hobby. It is core to our strategy.
Cheryl Brown
And it all started with Hank Seale having an idea. I assume there were some other folks that were involved in that.
Johnny Ola
Yeah. Look, honestly, I was not the idea guy. I was there in the beginning innings to help us put it together and execute on it. But there were people that had the vision. So I'll call out a few of those. In addition to Hank, Jonathan Price, our current CFO, was running a lot of our emerging businesses at the time, and he was very passionate about it. People like Greg Varnell, Ryan Hollister, Brian Mego were kind of the technical brains with what we were doing around the SDK. And there were many others kind of thinking about the go-to-market programs that we were trying to put together, like the Jody McCrarys of the world that were key to our early days.
You know, the other thing is I've worked for a lot of technology vendors. It's really hard for the ones, especially publicly traded, to play the long game, to make investments and not put pressure on revenue. Well, Q2, we were fortunate. We had the full support of the executive leadership team. They let us build Innovation Studio the right way without too much pressure in the early days on revenue and bookings. We didn't have to take shortcuts, which is pretty amazing. So we got to think about it and do it right for the long term. And so I really respect the leadership team and all those people that had a vision and took the risk. And now I get the honor of working with the team every day. And it really has been one of the favorite things I've done in my career. So kudos to all of those people that made it happen.
Cheryl Brown
We don't often get on The Purposeful Banker and talk about ourselves at Q2, but, you know, thanks to our listeners for letting us take this moment to kind of recognize a milestone for something that we're particularly proud of. So, Johnny, I appreciate you coming on.
Johnny Ola
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the time. Been great speaking with you. And if we have customers listening and they want to lean in more heavily to Innovation Studio, you can contact your customer support manager. We'll set up a consultation and get after it. You can always reach out to me as well. It's just johnny.ola@q2.com.
Cheryl Brown
And we'll put a link in the show notes so if you want to learn more about Innovation Studio.
But that's it for this episode of The Purposeful Banker. As always, you can subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, including YouTube, Apple and Spotify, and you can see our archive of podcasts at q2.com/thepurposefulbanker. Thanks for listening.