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.
00:08:36 · Pranav Sood, Medhy Souidi
[00:08:36] S1: That's quite right. [00:08:39] S2: I would like to ask you a question because Airwalex was created in Australia and after this move to Hong Kong, go global in Asia, and now you have also the office here. Do you see on that kind of money movement a difference? You touch it a bit here, but I would like to go on a deep dive. Do you see like a very difference on how people use your platforms in Asia and in Europe, for example? And do you see like some trends for money movement in Europe or in Asia that are very different from each other?
00:09:07 · Pranav Sood
[00:09:07] S1: So I think the, yes, of course, there are differences in the rails and in the payment preferences that you see across borders, but there's a lot of consistency in the actual use cases themselves. So fundamentally, you need a financial operating system to be able to manage your money in, your treasury, your FX and your money out. And people may choose different rails in and they may choose different rails out, but the core of the use case is very similar. Similarly, we were talking a lot about the SME side of our business. We also have a big platform side of our business as well. I mentioned Sheehan as a good example of a customer like that in e commerce. They're about as far on the other end of the spectrum of scale as you can get from a mom and pop shop selling t shirts or candles online. And they have similar problems. They're trying to optimize for their authorization rate performance. They're trying to make sure that they can have redundancy and diversification in their stack, but they don't want to go and build 20 different infrastructure solutions to accommodate that. So I think in answer to the first part of your question, yes, of course, there are differences in preferences. But I think in terms of the actual core use cases, there's a lot of replicability, which is part of the reason why we've been able to scale so quickly. In terms of then the trends and what are we seeing, I think, again, there's quite a lot of consistency in the trends that we're seeing across both Asia, The US, and also here in EMEA as well. A couple of big ones that are coming up, and I'm sure your other guests have talked about this as well. But number one, people looking for diversification in their financial stack, whether that's from an acquiring perspective, whether it's from actually more of a banking perspective in light of of what happened with SVB and and what's been happening across The US with some of the community banks. Number two is that kind of ironic, but, I think, also valid combination of things. So people are looking to diversify. They're also looking to consolidate. And lots of CFOs, lots of chief product officers have woken up and of seen that their buyers have gone out and acquired 10 different fintech services over the last ten months.