In the second episode of PaymentGenes’ “Voices in Payments” podcast series season 2, Denis Kiselev, the founder, CEO of SnapSwap joined our host Diederik Klopper. Together, they discuss how to simplify managing business expenses and the road map for a safe and seamless digital onboarding experience.
Listen to the podcast to find out:
If you’re curious to know more about simplifying business expenses management, feel free to reach out to Denis Kiselev for a conversation.
About Denis Kiselev
Denis established SnapSwap in Luxembourg in 2015, relocating from San Francisco
where he also headed a fintech company. With a professional background and over 20
years of a successful career in banking and finance, Denis combines his expertise with
passion for technology and innovations. He holds academic degrees in Computer
Science and Economics.
About PaymentGenes's "Voices In Payments" - The Future of Payments podcast:
The “Voices in Payments” Podcast, is an initiative launched by PaymentGenes to positively impact the payments community, by educating and connecting the market with vertical-specific industry expertise.
Growth by providing expertise-driven Recruitment, Contracting, Greenfield Consultancy. These services all resolve and intersect around payments. Learn more about how we can help your business here.
00:00:00
Speaker 0
Hi everybody. And welcome. My name is Diederik Klopper and I'm the host of the voices in payments, both guests season two, and which we'll talk all about the ABCD of payments throughout the season. I'll be inviting payment experts to talk about artificial intelligence, blockchain cloud, and data. How did he supply overlap and drive winning business strategies in current day, fintechs in season two, I'm joined by directors and other senior payment experts who oversee these business operations. Even more often, I'm joined by C-level executives, partners, and founders who have leveraged these technologies to generate immense growth. In this episode, I'm joined by none other than Dennis it CEO and founder of snap swap a true tech entrepreneur, Dennis he's the second valley veteran that has come to Luxembourg to start snap swap has just launched a new product called Everest and Everest is a business payments and expense management platform that allows business owners to monitor and manage credit cards with our teams.
00:01:00
Speaker 0
Additionally, snaps up offers snap roof, a digital onboarding tool to help speed up. The verification process gave I see data collection and performance due diligence of customers. Again, a special episode with Dennis. So let's get right into it. Warm. Welcome to the show.
00:01:30
Speaker 1
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
00:01:33
Speaker 0
Yes, it is. How are you today? It's sunny Sharon. It's sunny day here at Amsterdam. How it's over there with you?
00:01:40
Speaker 1
Oh, well it's cloud in Luxembourg that's okay. That's usual.
00:01:48
Speaker 0
Yeah, we know. I hear it. That's, it's always a bit rubbish, but, today we're lucky and Dennis, I always start my podcast the same way and that's awesome. I never met anybody who woke up one day said I'm going to be a payment expert. How did you stumble into payment?
00:02:04
Speaker 1
Well, actually when I finished my university in the S my first job was with the huge interracial payment of financial institution that is called the world bank. That's where I got deep into the space of finance and payments also. For two decades, I was working in C-level positions in very traditional financial institutions, like banks and insurance companies. I realized really well that's, there are things that are really done well by established financial system. Like if I would like to move hundred million Euro from Luxembourg to New York, I would go to credit Swiss or to JP Morgan to big guys. It will be very fast, very efficient, very secure. Yeah. If I want to move 10 Euro from Luxembourg to New York, that will be a disaster because they will take 20 year adjusting, just to make a payment. I realized that there are things in payments in transactions that are done well, and there are things that are required that requires a lot of integration, a lot of technologists.
00:03:18
Speaker 1
That's why I decided to quit traditional financial system and start my first FinTech. It was on the west coast of the years that we moved to San Francisco. So that's how I got into payments. Yeah.
00:03:33
Speaker 0
How was it for you to realize that you were all of a sudden an entrepreneur you're coming from a, quite a traditional financial background, and then all of a sudden you're a FinTech entrepreneur. How was that for you?
00:03:44
Speaker 1
Oh, that's personal. I, I wanted to have some change in my career. I understood that's, I kind of learned a lots the way traditional institutions work and how to build a career there. I was quite successful and I wanted to have a new challenge to develop some sense of something new, to have a change in my lifestyle. That's why I decided to try and move into FinTech. That proved to be a lot of fun.
00:04:12
Speaker 0
Yeah. You already gave the example of moving a hundred million versus moving 10 Euro. What was the first problem that you really tried to solve when you became an entrepreneur?
00:04:25
Speaker 1
So the problems are my abroad. She is that I always try to solve the problem that's I experienced that's, I understand. Well, so like making payments easily in the U S or the payment system is different from Europe. We started our first company in the us. There, you just cannot go log into your online bank and make a payment to somebody. You have to write the check and send this check by mail, and then someone receives the check and goes to the bank to cash it's on the accounts. It's, we found it's so time consuming and inefficient. We wanted to introduce the ways to make it simpler, to use the newer technologies. That's that was the first day practical problem. I wanted to pay something to my friend. I found out there is no way to do that. I said, okay, look, let's do something about it.
00:05:24
Speaker 0
Yeah. The first company that you started is that the ready snap swap, or is it a different company?
00:05:31
Speaker 1
It was under the same brand. It was snap swap in the U S. We made the exit, we managed to agree that we preserve the brand. We transferred our brands to Europe in Europe, in Luxembourg, we created snap swap international. That is the company at the time running. Now it's already five years old. I established it in 2015 and then we've got the license. When we passport it's to old European countries. Now the company and the brand is European.
00:06:03
Speaker 0
Yeah. Great. Why did you choose Luxembourg? Because of course, when coming to Europe pet area specific choices you can make, or where do you want to hold the license? And a lot of companies choose Luxembourg. What was that for you and important decision?
00:06:18
Speaker 1
Indeed it was an important decision. We decided that for our next venture, we would like to establish state regulated financial institution because we wanted to provide our services to the wide range of customers. And, we understood that it's a regulated business. We have discussions with regulators in different, European jurisdictions. I had a meeting with FCA in London. We went to. We discussed with our regulators in Baltics. After all on the short list, I had London and Luxembourg, and that was two years before anyone mentioned the world and Brexit. That was a very good, very good decision. Yes. Seekers, the speaking Luxembourg is a very convenient place to run financial services. The regulators in Luxembourg have hands-on approach. You can really talk with them and explain what you want to do and make sure that's a, you are understood. So it's much easier interaction. It's more smaller markets where you can try new products, like a sandbox, and then expand to all over the Europe using passporting mechanism.
00:07:39
Speaker 1
For us, Luxembourg is in fact very good location, and it's a very good home base to offer our services on European scale.
00:07:49
Speaker 0
All right. This, then, when we spoke before, you mentioned how you got started with snaps up, but as well that you're currently now in the process of launching a new product called Everest. Kate, tell us more about that.
00:08:03
Speaker 1
Yes, indeed. Everest is a, the new products that we created for companies and entrepreneurs like ourselves, the same approach we face the problem and we created the product to address the problem and the problem, I can explain it since I think it resonates with number of people who are leasing us. Now, when we established company in Luxembourg, I went to my bank and I said, okay, I need a credit card, corporate credit card for my corporate expenses. I don't want to use my personal card for this anymore. They said, okay, fine. We will give you a corporate cards. Since you are a new company, we don't know you. We don't know how to assess your risk. We will ask you to provide your personal guarantee again, the cards. We will block some amount on your personal cell phones from your personal account. We will be sure that, the account is always repaid, right? Well, I had no choice.
00:09:02
Speaker 1
I said, yes, I've got the cards that was only one card for the company. When, for example, my office manager wanted to make some expenses. I gave her the card physically. I write to pin on the piece of paper, give it to her. So that's very unsecure and inconvenient. Yeah. Where my sales guys too much traveling, they were spending their own money for accommodation. For troubles. Yeah. I've.
00:09:28
Speaker 0
Been there. It's always a hassle. Yeah.
00:09:31
Speaker 1
Yeah. They come back and they spend time filing expense reports and usually one or two receipts are always lost because you are traveling and you don't have them with me. So they never got the food investments. Everyone wasn't happy. Our accountant was spending time reconciling those expense reports. We said, okay, what we can do about it. We approached MasterCard's huge payments network with the idea of creating a product that would allow companies like us startups, small businesses, growing scale-ups to facilitate the expense management, to make sure that we can focus on our products and our clients, and don't pay much attention. Don't spend too much time on the expense management. So that's the idea behind Everest. What we create that is a broad form, where for example, I, as an entrepreneur can go and open an account for my company. It's fully online, fully automated process takes about 30 minutes.
00:10:35
Speaker 1
I can issue cards for all my employees. That could be virtual card, plastic card. Very sophisticated to allow me to manage my expenses. At the same time, all transactions are settled against my company. It's a company account company, personal account, not my personal accounts. Yes, indeed. Actually my team members, they feel themselves empowered because I give them cards, corporate cards, even though I can manage them fully online, I can set up limits. I can set up transaction or months. I see notifications in real time what the guys are doing. It's full control, but at the same time, the cop is in their hand and they don't have to spend their own money for the expenses. When, for example, they need to go over the limits. They can ping me on slack. And, I immediately increase the limit because everything is done online. That's a beautiful, you don't have to call anyone.
00:11:37
Speaker 1
You don't have to wait for confirmation or for approval. You just go online, you click a button and say, okay, I would like to increase the limit for Olivia from 1000 to 3000 and it's immediately available wherever he is. That's in a nutshell how we started the problem expense management tool that allow you to use corporate credit cards with online platform to manage all your expenses. Yeah. So a.
00:12:03
Speaker 0
Lot more flexible than the traditional setup that was there. At instant, indeed, the possibility to change the credit line instantly. I think that's a massive gain because I still remember from my business trips, when were allowed to travel, that they need, I was ever paying everything out of my own account and it was always a hassle. You're losing time when you're back at the office to settle everything. The accountant loses time to make everything fit and it needs it. If you're going away on a trip for a week, that expense can wreck off, especially if you have dinners every night hotel, et cetera. So, yeah, I can definitely see that as a very, promising solution. You mentioned that you chose both virtual and physical cards. Why did the decision to keep the physical card in there? Because I potentially could do, but just.
00:12:53
Speaker 1
Virtual card. Yup. So, first thing that we put on top of our priorities is to make everything easy for, an entrepreneur, for a business people, and myself, as mentioned the company, I want things to help them instantly. I want to get what I want immediately because I needed for my business. That's why we said, okay, if you need a new cards, you request it. It's immediately available as a virtual card inside the application, you can start using it immediately. If you need plastic, because in some cases I see you still need the plastic or a lot when you are traveling. And, you are being tools on the roads or you're paying gas stations, or you come to the hotel and they ask, please give us a card for a security deposit. You still need plastic, but you don't have to have it in our case, we put a digital first.
00:13:48
Speaker 1
The first card is created as a digital. If you want to order a copy of this carton plastic, you can, but you don't have to. Yeah.
00:13:57
Speaker 0
So, so the choice is really up to the merchant.
00:14:01
Speaker 1
Okay, India, it's the main point is that when the cart is aggressed, that it's immediately available. So it's very easy process. I haven't been in. Also it's quite global, for example, operating out of Luxembourg. If I have an employee in France or in Spain, I can send him a link to invite him, to become a member of my team on the platform. The guy clicks on the link show, his face, show his ID card, biometric verification works immediately. I see him already on the platform. So I can immediately issue the cards. We, the remote working it's very convenient because even if he needs a plastic, it will be delivered to his home address, not to my company address. Well, I can upgrade with distributed workforce and, do it very efficiently.
00:14:53
Speaker 0
Yeah. Of course the friction that you experienced, why you started this company having to set your own account as a deposit for the risk that's, that issuing these card stakes. That of course also at risk is also something that you guys experience. How do you mitigate that risk? And therefore I have to be able to offer the possibility to accompany, to issue those cards directly on the company and not have a owner has a guarantee for the credits.
00:15:27
Speaker 1
Indeed, risk management, in our case, in our product that is based on credit line is a very important part of what we are doing. Yep. We focus on the company itself and we have scoring procedures that allow us to automatically score the, risk associated with a particular company based on various parameters, both traditional like revenue and slope, like, for startups, we don't base it on revenue. We'll base it on founders, we'll base it on, capital on the product. We have quite a sophisticated tool that allow us to allocate credit limit to the company. When the company is with us as a client, we constantly monitor the performance and we adjust limit accordingly. We would like to encourage responsible financial behavior of our clients with higher limits. Yep. That's a, that's how we control there is, but we also keep flexibility, for our clients, the weaker feature of our product, that it combines features of credit cards and debit cards.
00:16:37
Speaker 1
For example, if I have my credit limit of 5,000 CURO for my company, but I need to spend 20, I can always load more money to my Everest account and they will be available on top of the credit payments. So this is the,
00:16:51
Speaker 0
You have a debit score on 15,000 zeros and a negative credit of 5,000 making adults virtue of 20,000 defendable.
00:16:58
Speaker 1
It's combined, yes, it's combined purchasing power that's, your team can use in your expenses.
00:17:05
Speaker 0
Oh, wow. That's something, that's something that you've see quite a lot. Where did a lot of difficulties in setting this up with MasterCard, for example,
00:17:14
Speaker 1
In order to set up the product like this, you have to upgrade directly on MasterCard network. That's why for us, it was critically important to get support from MasterCard's when we started, conceptualizing, designing the products. We managed to convince MasterCard to support us. We became principle member of MasterCard that is quite unusual for a startup. Usually it's for a bigger financial institutions for bigger banks,
00:17:43
Speaker 0
Magic sauce that you have, that allowed you to become a principal member.
00:17:48
Speaker 1
There two sides of the protest one side MasterCard's currently is moving quite strongly, towards startups and fintechs realizing that there is a huge opportunity for current distribution and acceptance in new technologies. They have a special programs that allow selected fintechs to get fast track for principle membership. Were selected for one of this program that called stop us on the side of MasterCard's. Were lucky enough would present our product. It was quite a competitive selection, but when were selected, we are able to go really fast. We say processing to principal membership, and as a principal member, as a principal patient member of MasterCard, we actually designed the product ourself. We issue the program director on the MasterCard network and several transactions directly on MasterCard network. That's why we have this flexibility that allow us to build the product exactly according to the needs of our clients.
00:18:52
Speaker 0
Yup. You start designing the product and having the endorsement of MasterCard. How do you go about finding the first clients? And I can imagine it's the endorsement of MasterCard plays a massive role in this as well, but how was the process for you signing up the first clients and really rolling out the product to go live?
00:19:15
Speaker 1
Honestly speaking that it wasn't that complicated because we found out that there is a need on the market. We started with our home markets in Luxembourg. We run a little campaign to make sure that we present our brand sites, our product, and communicate it to our new clients. And they started to come. Sign up for the product for us. The main way of customer acquisition is online because everything is online. Someone sees our post on Facebook or our comments on LinkedIn, or just know about us, they just click on the link, go to our website and start onboarding process. That's, that's how we've got the first set of pilot clients that are quite diverse. I would say we have, fintechs, we have it companies, we have traditional services like car rental limo services. We have consultants, we have, legal firms, quite a wide range that allow us to evaluate or the needs of our clients and to adjust and develop product accordingly because we are still positioning ourself as a startup.
00:20:25
Speaker 1
We are always looking for new features for how we can better care for the needs of our clients. The development of the product, ongoing development is a very important part of our work. A big part of our investment as well. Yeah.
00:20:42
Speaker 0
With such a broad portfolio of clients and as well, I think a more ultimated of onboarding. I can imagine that also possesses a specific difficulties, because if indeed, you want to automate the onboarding process for startup companies, where indeed you have to score the founders, you have to score to potential revenues, et cetera. That's a lot more complicated than scoring a traditional company. How then do you manage to accurately score days with minimal, human input?
00:21:15
Speaker 1
That's that's the challenge that we have in our technologies, how to make it efficient because we can not spend a lot of efforts. We can not dedicate a lot of manual work to eat every single plan, because we want to have a product that is massively available.
00:21:33
Speaker 0
In order to make it.
00:21:35
Speaker 1
As dessert less. So we rely on, machine learning tools. We rely on artificial intelligence that allow us to learn from the process and to update it's constantly while we are working on. Like our score cards, they are not static score cards. They are dynamic score cards that allow us to learn all the experience that we have to learn on clients that we already have and to adjust them constantly. That's how we minimize the manual work. The manual work is mainly about training the system rather than doing actual scoring.
00:22:11
Speaker 0
Do you score a for instance, a consultancy startup differently than a FinTech startup, or is there one generic system that you use for all the companies that are onboarding?
00:22:24
Speaker 1
We take into account various factors and of course the, business line, the segment, the vertical is a important consideration. Indeed.
00:22:34
Speaker 0
Yeah, yeah. Right. You mentioned that, you are a startup yourself as well. Part of that is constantly developing new features. What are some of the features that you're currently working on that you're looking forward to roll out?
00:22:48
Speaker 1
I, more or less described, our feature over the expense management that's how we started them. That's, what is becoming more and more popular among our clients. We also have faced, the demand from our clients to consolidate their financial operation, their payment operations in one place. They were coming to us and saying, look, guys, you have this nice, beautiful expense management tool. We still have to combine it with our ongoing operations, our receivables, incoming payments, salaries, invoices. We have to have it in two places. Can you facilitate, can you make it somewhat easier for us to manage everything from one single platform? So that's what we going to release next. It's almost straight it's in the final stage of testing. It's what we call currently account banking as a service. This feature is released, you will be able not only to run your expenses, send credit cards, but have a current account, like a bank a2ccount.
00:23:51
Speaker 1
What is IRA number on Everest and to use it for your, all your incoming payments for collecting payments from your clients and from your partners, and also making all your expenses, not only the ones that are done by credit cards, pay outs, rants, and salaries. Everything will be consolidated in one place. On one platform, we use the same system of managing expenses, tax digital receipts that will apply to all types of transactions, not only to crack transactions. That's, something that is, imminent, that is coming to the market. Something that we will first enroll in Belgium and Netherlands, and then, in other European markets and the next sync in the pipeline that I also can share now, as the vision is the solution that would allow you to facilitate collecting payments from your clients, because for every business, incoming payments is a livestream. So you have to make it easier.
00:24:58
Speaker 1
What we are introducing is a very nice invoicing tool that allow you to generate invoices and send them to your clients directly with a PayPal link inside the invoice. Your client received invoice, there will be no delays and snow needs to go to the bank and make a payment. They will just click on the link and initiate payments that automatically will come to your Everest accounts.
00:25:25
Speaker 0
Yeah, but I always tested because this indeed is a very customer friendly tool that you can use. However, we are, as well as a situation where quite a few companies are struggling with COVID industries have been hit hard and that perhaps companies want to make use of the payment period. The, that before the invoice is to, is it for instance as well possible to say, okay, I received the invoice today. I have a 30 day payment period. I want to pay a 28 days and I will now already plan the payment in advance. That something that you're working on as well? Or is that something that the client will need to go back into the same link 28 days later?
00:26:10
Speaker 1
You're correct. Cashflow management is definitely becoming difficult, during this COVID time and we see how we can help our clients with, facilitating the cash management, facilitating their financial situation. While saying is indeed the initial credit line that you get that allow you to make your expenses during the statement periods certain days, and then have five days grace to repay those expenses. So, in fact, it's up to 75 days or free financing. You don't pay any interest or any fuel on this. It's totally free. For example, if you send an invoice to your clients and you say this invoice is payable within 60 days, that's quite normal in Europe. You have to pay, wait for 60 days to get your money. We, created a partnership with one or for the major players in the markets who provide refinancing for invoices. This is also going to be available in our invoicing tool.
00:27:20
Speaker 1
When you issue an invoice to your client and it's payable within 60 days, you will have a little link on the invoice that allow you to say, okay, I would like to immediately refinance this invoice with certain discounts. If you have this problem and see if you need the money immediately, you will be able to use this to get advanced payment against your invoice, which has saved.
00:27:44
Speaker 0
Factoring factoring services. Yes,
00:27:47
Speaker 1
That's integrated in the same platform. You issue an invoice, in fact, you see already how much of them have money you can get in terms of factory.
00:27:56
Speaker 0
Yeah. It's interesting to see that they've fed up. It's because you started off with offering one solution expense management. With that, you get a foot into the door and that slowly but surely you're able to take little chunks of the more traditional players in the banking landscape, and grow your portfolio of services in a very client friendly manner.
00:28:18
Speaker 1
Yeah. That's, that's how we see strategically our advantage. That's the value that we deliver to the markets. We create a platform that's allow businesses to do all their banking needs all the foundational needs. More than that in one place, something that's traditional banks are normally not offering because they are focused on narrow payments care, for example, now in our platform, you go there and among other tops on the screen, you have a tab that is called travel, and you can go there and you can book your travel. We have partnership with kayak that allow you to immediately book your travel from Everest platform. Do you get airplanes, hotels? And then if you do that, you get 1.5% of cashback on your travel booking. So, and.
00:29:12
Speaker 0
It's automatically registered in the next sentence managements.
00:29:16
Speaker 1
Yeah, indeed. That's what we see the demand from our clients. They want to have things fully automated. They don't want to spend the time on payments. No one is really excited about payments in the business. No one wake up in the morning and say, okay, it's a nice day. I will go and make a few payments today.
00:29:36
Speaker 0
Today. I will take all the old invoices and start paying money. Now I've never anybody excited about that.
00:29:44
Speaker 1
The ideal situation for me is when payment totally disappears from user experience, like when you're using Uber, for example, you jump into the taxi, you go to your destination, you leave the taxi, you don't notice the payment is done automatically on the background. That's the ideal situation.
00:30:04
Speaker 0
Having that in the expense management tool so that everything is done because I have to say, I also use for instance, car to go or variants of that. We are back at the office still, you need to take out the invoice you need to make that happen. So that's neat. Great. Besides Everest, I know that you've been working on something else as well, and that's an onboarding tool, separate solution on its own. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
00:30:36
Speaker 1
Yes, definitely. That is the technology that we initially developed for ourselves because when we wanted to, allow our clients to create the accounts, to onboard them quickly, we found out that we need to have new technology to allow to do that. We looked for different elements of the technology, like biomedical verification, for example, how do we make sure that the person in front of cameras is indeed the person that he or she claims to be? We checked how we can do online screening because we have to be compliant with AML KYC requirements as they're a great financial institution. We need to perform screening of our customers, but, we wanted to make it quicker. First of all, to make it real time online. We wanted to make sure that we can collect and process supporting documents, verify emails, phone numbers. All the steps that needs to be done, we wanted to automate it.
00:31:36
Speaker 1
While doing that, we realized that the tool that we created or the solution that we created could be usable, not only for us, but also for other financial institutions that wants to switch groups, they would like to switch from traditional paper-based or form-based on boarding to work faster, better user experience. So closer to the 21st century. Yeah, indeed. We pick as this tool as a commercial solution. Now we are offering it's on the market to financial institutions, banks, insurance companies, investment managements, and also to fintechs, but a number of fintechs who are using our onboarding solution, it's fully white label. As a customer, you don't see it, you see the presence of, your provider, your institution, or your FinTech providing services to, but on the background, all the verifications, all the checks are done on our servers. All the data are delivered to our clients in the actionable digital form while we're completing the onboarding process.
00:32:47
Speaker 0
How does that, because I was just thinking out loud, of course now with deep fake videos, it's, more and more easy to change somebody's appearance online. It a concern that you have as well, if you're, for instance, using biometrics to scan the facial recognitions of an individual, do you see any concerns there, or is that the technology able to clearly identify the deep fake that is being used?
00:33:16
Speaker 1
It's always a process. It's ongoing competition between the security tools and the fraudsters who would like to penetrate, the security tools. We have to constantly updates, the technology that we are using when we started using the solution. We relied on just simple biometrics. We, there lies that simple biometrics, can be, cannot protect our customers, our clients from a fraudster. So we introduced two layer biometrics. That's defined not only the topography of human face, but also age, gender, and, even emotional state of the person in the form of camera. Went from studying biometric to dynamic biometrics. So that's constantly ongoing process. I would say that the technology that we are using now, is quite strong, that allows us to identify whether the person in front of camera is a real person or a video recording. We can clearly say, okay, this is a real person sitting in the real room, or this is a video recording that is translated to the camera over the device.
00:34:29
Speaker 1
That will allow us to identify, fakes based on video manipulation, video creation. We are always looking at what's new on the market on the other side of the wall, and try to see what are the tools that we can use in order to straighten.
00:34:45
Speaker 0
I heard that a comparison waltz, Elva prison guard, who said, we are here and we need to, stop every opportunity for the prisoner to escape and the prisoner owned. It needs to find one opportunity that works. And so there's a huge discrepancy. There that's a, that doesn't play into their favor, but you mentioned something that was interesting for me that you can also identify emotions into the person's facial recognition. Of course, that's also pretty valuable that if you see the journey, the onboarding process, that somebody becomes sad or less happy, then they can translate that back to your client. Listen, in these steps, somebody perhaps gets frustrated or somebody gets distracted. How can we use that in order to optimize the conversion?
00:35:31
Speaker 1
Yeah, it was definitely our own one can, that is technology that is available, that we can use. On the other, we have to be creative to see how we can actually use this technology. What does the value that we ex we can extract from this technology for ourselves and for our clients as well?
00:35:49
Speaker 0
Yeah. Yeah. Coming back to, Everest, a question that just popped in my head that I totally forgot to mention is that you're currently focusing on more startup companies. What is roughly the maximum size that you can, surface and where's the tip over point where it makes more sense to work with a more traditional partner?
00:36:12
Speaker 1
I would say that initially when we created the product and put it on the markets, were more focused on smaller companies or startups and traditional small businesses. We saw that, yes, those are the guys who are underserved by financial services. And so we deliver value for them. To our surprise, we had quite a few really sizable clients who came to us and say, look, guys, can we try to, can we use your solution? Because for example, when we know for corporate cards in our Luxembourgish bank, they say, okay, we can issue cards for your employees in Luxembourg. If you have people who are working for you in France or in Spain, or even in the U S we can not do that. Even bigger companies like big consulting companies. Do why they have to open accounts in every single company and have cards for their employees specifically?
00:37:06
Speaker 1
Yes. In terms of management, in terms of financial flows, it's a nightmare. You have to make sure that you have sufficient balances in all those accounts, in all countries, in order to support the expenses of your employees. To our surprise, we have quite a, we currently have quite a few bigger clients that are using our solution as a pilot. Of course, the decision-making in this size of the companies is much more complicated than in small businesses. It takes longer, but it's a very interesting opportunity on the markets. They definitely can't get what they really want for their expense measurement from traditional banks. We are here to help them.
00:37:50
Speaker 0
Yeah. And, you also mentioned that you can instantly adjust a limit of somebody's cart and also get notification when a purchase has been made or payment has to be made. It also possible for the user of the cards to instantly scan the tickets or the receipts that he or she has received a link that to the payment that has just been made in order to put everything in one system? Or is it still a challenge to gather all the receipts and bring them back to the office?
00:38:17
Speaker 1
Yeah, indeed. That's, where we facilitate the process quite substantially, because that's what were facing. When I was coming back from business trip, always wanted, or receipts were missing and, I didn't get the reimbursement, but what we are doing now is in terms of user experience, it works quite beautifully. When I go for a lunch with a client, for example, and Taipei was Everest cards. I immediately received notification on my mobile. I click on this notification, it activates the camera, and I can just do snapshot of the receipt. It's digitized, it's attached to the transaction. I can throw it away immediately. I don't have to keep the papers anymore because every single digital form of the very beginning and interesting enough, when we are talking with bigger companies, they say, look, our employees, they sometimes forget to scan the receipt. We need to find them ways to remind them.
00:39:15
Speaker 1
We created to do, yeah, push notification is good. But, for example, if the company can set up a policy, like for example, if someone does not attach receipt to three consecutive transactions, his card is blocked automatically. So that's quite a strong incentive. Because we are using it's because we are using technology platform for cards online, we can implement all these tools and all those policies on behalf of our clients.
00:39:47
Speaker 0
Yeah. That's very interesting. Perhaps you can do silver eyes because I think there's a lot of friction that you're already taking away, but you also mentioned that your ideal world is Baird, that the friction of payment totally evaporates it, basically. How do you see it in a perfect world? So, for, especially then for expense management, for instance, your employees go out into the world, they make the payments. How, how does the payments, disappear in this flow?
00:40:20
Speaker 1
In that sense, what we want to do is we want to get more information automatically from the payment and from the payment network that is used. It knows that to categorize the expenses. We want to automate categorization of the expenses. You do the transaction, it's ultimately put on the Sultan, the accounting muskets, and then all this information is automatically shared with your accounting software or with your accountants. So at the end of it,
00:40:50
Speaker 0
The level three data that you can get with closed loop systems, if we can somehow integrate that into these types of payments, that we're almost there.
00:41:00
Speaker 1
Yes, indeed. You go, you transfer all the data to your accounting tool. So you have complete accounting there. From the user experience perspective, it will look like you use the card. You make the payments from your accounts. At the end of the month, you have all your balance sheets already prepared for your accountants and for your approval. Moreover you can see your expenses and you can control your cashflow on the daily basis. Not only are they so you have full visibility and the full forecast what's going on with your payments and the, where we'll be you in your cash position three. Two days from now, 40 days from now, three months from now.
00:41:47
Speaker 0
Yeah. Not only in the future, but we have told to control for our expense management as well. We will not have to pay our accounts as much in order to make everything a balance in the end of the month.
00:41:58
Speaker 1
Indeed. I don't have anything against accountants, but I think we can make their work much more efficient. Yeah,
00:42:04
Speaker 0
Exactly. Well, I'm looking forward to those days, but I think I've got the feeling that they are closer on the corridor. I thought that I thought they would be.
00:42:14
Speaker 1
Thank you. That's that's what we're doing. That's okay.
00:42:19
Speaker 0
All right. It is. Thanks a lot for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you. Yeah, let's stay in touch because, I feel that there are new things coming up on the short notice, but, it's been an absolute precedent of having you here on the podcast.
00:42:34
Speaker 1
Thank you. It's a pleasure to share our views and our product with you and see your audience. And so we should right there. Thank you very much.