The MoneyPot
00:01:40 · Medhy Souidi, Pranav Sood
[00:01:40] S2: One of my questions for you is you joined the company one year ago. What was the challenges for you in terms of how to implement the partnerships in EMEA and what was the learnings you get from here? [00:01:52] S1: Yeah, so I joined Airwallex, as you mentioned, about a year ago. I'd actually been in fintech for quite a few years before that. Was with a business called GoCardless. I spent about five years there from 2017 through to 2022. And so fintech as an area is not a new area to me, but Airwallex as a business is obviously one that I'm still getting to to know. We scale our product in lots of different ways. Some of our customers are SMEs, so they might be e com companies who are buying and selling across borders. Others are much, much bigger and more sophisticated buyers of fintech products and services. And so we have a whole bunch of different ways that we scale. Part of it is working with partners, of course. So people like Xero, for example, we collaborate very closely with on the SME side. But we're actually also out there, particularly coming to events like this and meeting some of the larger customers more on a one to one basis as well. And it's been a very successful strategy. We've been able to announce some fantastic customers. So in the last few weeks, people like Trulayer, Modify also in the fintech space. And then even in Israel, were talking about a minute ago, we're working with people like Papaya Global, OurCrowd, and and many others as well.
00:02:58 · Rachel Morrissey
[00:02:58] S0: Great. That's wonderful. I just wanted to... I know that today we wanted to talk about programmatic money and basically how we can utilize, you guys are utilizing that to help SMEs scale for cross borders. And so I wanted to start there a little bit because, there's programmable money, which is a different thing a little bit. So let's talk about what programmatic money is and how that is thought about by Airwallex. So I'm gonna let you define that first.
00:03:27 · Pranav Sood
[00:03:27] S1: Yeah. Let's start with the problem space. So you're an SME, let's take an example. I've got a backpack here actually, which was one of our customers has made it. The company's called July, it sells, they're fantastic by the way, so big shout out to them. They sell the kind of backpacks that people who travel too much always have with loads of compartments and so on. Now, the reason I'm telling you about these guys is because they're quite, symbolic in some ways of the challenges that businesses like them are facing. So they will be buying products from all over the world, in order to make the backpacks that they make. They'll be selling those backpacks online to customers all over the world as well. And as a consequence of that, they face a bunch of really quite significant challenges. One is that they are having to transform the money that they're collecting from their customers into the money that they are using their settlement money. The second is that having to then pay out from that money to their suppliers all around the world. And they're trying to do both of those two things in a really cost effective way. They're also trying to do it in a way that doesn't require tonnes of humans to be constantly looking reconciliation and costs and so on. And so that's where someone like Airwallex comes in, where we can say to them, hey, look, you know, we can give you access to the global financial infrastructure that you need at a really transparent and competitive price point. And we allow you to use it in a very simple and, as you mentioned, programmatic way. So for us, programmatic means you can do things at scale through simple either API or even UI, I mean, web app type UIs that allow you to be able to tackle your needs without having to build the manual processes or the human resources to to have to fulfill them. And so that's where that's where Airwallex comes in.
00:05:02 · Medhy Souidi, Rachel Morrissey, Pranav Sood
[00:05:02] S2: You just shared with us the macro view, but do you have, like, any successful use case that you can share with us who make you proud or make Airwallex very proud? [00:05:09] S0: I mean, other than July that you already gave the shout out to. [00:05:12] S1: Yeah, I mean, we work with loads of e commerce businesses globally. I think that use case is just quite symptomatic of many others that we operate in. I mean, in The UK, for example, one that I really like is a company called Young Goat. They're a streetwear brand. They sell really cool t shirts and stuff that I say are really cool. My younger sister would probably think are horrific, but I think they're really trendy. And they have exactly the same problem. They're getting these t shirts and their clothing manufactured around the world, they're selling online, their payment provider had been forcing them to convert into a particular currency. And so every single time they fall into this conversion trap where your money is being transformed into a currency that you settle in, and then you're having to convert it again. And so each time you're paying two to 4% more than you should be for something that we could do for a way, way, way more transparent and competitive rate.
00:06:03 · Rachel Morrissey
[00:06:03] S0: Okay. But we're gonna get deeper into the financial side of this, but this is very interesting to me on the ecommerce side alone because as as we know with social media coming in in the whole Web 2.1 thing, right, it kind of created groups or tribes that didn't have the same kind of borders. Right? We no longer shop at a local store and just you happen to run into it. Right? So now they're finding their audience. Like you said, you think they're really cool. Your sister thinks they're And if that if that, you know, was the only... They were only available to be seen by a small group of people, you never know where that would fall. But by being able to find their audience globally, they don't have to have a giant audience to be successful. They just have to find the right audience to be successful. And that's really interesting that it could be cross border now, and you don't have to think about it being so limited or think about growth in the same way as, like, you have to make a group of people all in the same area. Love you. Right? You can find your people. Anyway, sorry. I wanted to go further into the the financial side, but I I just wanted to... That really struck me with what you're doing.
00:07:14 · Pranav Sood, Rachel Morrissey
[00:07:14] S1: I think that's a really interesting prompt, because, yes, the Internet, social media, shopping platforms allow you to be able to sell your product around the world and and without borders, but they also create a whole bunch of additional challenges that you need to navigate. So for example, you're selling a product to customers in The Eurozone, in The US, in Singapore, wherever. Those customers want to pay in different currencies. They may want to use different payment methods. So in The Eurozone, for example, we're in The Netherlands today, payment methods like ideal are massive. Now you try going to The US and telling someone to pay via ideal, they'll laugh at you. And so when you're dealing with those challenges of scale as a a as a scaling business, you need a partner who's able to help you to navigate the right currencies, the right payment methods, the right checkout, you know, orientation, and then crucially, pair that with settlement into the currencies that you actually need and payouts so that you can do everything in a single place. And for us, that's what we're really proud of, which is we've built the infrastructure. We've gone really deep, got the licenses, integrated with the banks, you know, integrated with the schemes. And so we're able to give our customers that end to end stack. That means that they can focus on selling t shirts and we can focus on doing payments. [00:08:32] S0: Right. As I always say, bakers get in to bake. They don't get into bank. [00:08:36] S1: That's quite right.