Greg Irwin 0:18

First off, thank you all for joining us here this afternoon, we're thrilled to be here partnered with Fiserv to talk about what's happening here in terms of payments, the payment landscape landscape for fintechs. We've got Glenn Fodo. And I'm Matt. Sorry, Sunsil Sachdev, who are going to be co hosting with me here today. And we're gonna drive this as interactive as, as you all like, we're really not big believers in a big presentation. And one speaking to many, where we're going to push for is really leaning on the, the experiences as deeper light as they might be people in similar seats. So I'm going to go around the group and ask, ask for stories. Where are the priorities? Where are the pain points, and really what people are doing here across the market. You know, as we go, I have a challenge for everybody, which is to make one new contact over the course of this session doesn't need to be Fiserv or, BWG, we actually have an outstanding group that's dialing in. So as we go, and as people are talking and contributing by just thinking about that, and we'll be happy to make those connections, you just reply to those, all those emails that we like to send out. Also, we've got a chat window here. Let's use it, it's incredibly powerful for this kind of a forum to is one person speaking, you can just log in a question, it's a very easy way just to say, hey, how did that really work? Or what about in this situation? Or, hey, I tried it didn't work at all. So you know, parallel path back channel with that chat window, I promise it'll be worthwhile. Now, let's get it going. Sunil thank you so much for co hosting with us here. Do us a favor, give a little bit of a personal intro and a little bit on the team and focus that you're overseeing at advisor.

Sunil Sachdev 2:25

Sure. Thanks, Greg. Good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. Great to be here with you today. So as Greg mentioned, you know, at Fiserv, we're truly enabling connected commerce around the world. And I'll talk a little bit about that as well as gland. What I personally oversee is the community bank segment here at Finserv as well as lead a number of our FinTech initiatives, whether they're in crypto or banking as a service. we're engaging with more and more non traditional institutions that are looking and merchants that are looking to embed financial services in their user experiences for a variety of reasons. And we as a company that is kind of in the, you know, center of a lot of money movement and data movement, we naturally see our products and services, filling those niches, not only for our traditional customers and partners, but also as this kind of space emerges and evolves over time. Fiserv is, you know, as I mentioned, a leader and connected commerce mostly because, you know, as the original Fiserv we were a leader in bank tech. And when we completed the merger with First Data, our footprint, our footprint and capabilities, and assets also grew. Now, we're a leader in not only bank tech, but payment tech, as well as digital tech. And through those capabilities, we're able to reach a wide spectrum of customers, both in the US as well as around the world. And we're excited because that allows us to participate in all many of the emerging trends that are coming out, you're probably kind of experiencing as well. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of a lens on who we are in terms of some of the things that Fiserv you may or may not know about where when you look at some of the league tables, Alright, number one in the core account processing section, right. So that basically means a majority of the financial institutions in this country leveraged Fiserv Bank tech, to enable core banking capability or digital banking capability or some level of compliance across their entire technology stack. We're also the number one merchant acquirer the number one in mobile banking, number one in online banking issue or processor, bill payments we bought, many years ago, it seems now we bought a company called checkfree. That's given us You know, a very preferable or, you know, position in the marketplace. Also with p2p payments. We were one of the first companies to democratize p2p, we purchased cash edge company that came out with pot money in 2011. And now obviously, everybody's looking at Zell and Venmo as kind of the the next generation of p2p and what's happening in that marketplace, so that hopefully that gives you a little bit of who we are. And what we're trying to do

Greg Irwin 5:31

is to kneel for the purposes of this group, you know, a FinTech or a non traditional, you know, non bank. Thinking about adding bacon banking services, what's the most what's the most common type services that you're talking to that that group about? Sure,

Sunil Sachdev 5:53

I think, usually in that playbook, Greg, most folks come out with some type of prepaid or debit product, right, because they want to establish a relationship with the customer, they want to have provide a service to the customer where they can deposit some funds, and then provide them with a payment vehicle that allows the organization to earn some revenue. So interchange revenue is usually kind of the first type of revenue non banks look for, because it's associated with, you know, a fairly basic service or product that you can provide to your customers aren't super.

Greg Irwin 6:31

So folks in this is we're not going to do any sales pitch here, it should go without saying that you want to go deeper in terms of your use cases. That's that's the opportunity that that spy service is looking at. So whether for you or for a calling, you want to do some follow up coming out of this, by all means. That's that's what we're doing here. Let's, let's shift over to Glenn. Glenn, please give a similar intro and then let's talk about some of the trends. Let's talk about the market and key activities that you're following. That'll help us you know, kind of set the table for this conversation. Sure, can you hear me? Okay? Loud and clear. Yes, sir. Great.

Glenn Fodor 7:16

Glad to be here. Thanks, everybody. for joining Glenn Fodor, I run the data analytics business at Fiserv, which in you know, as the name implies, we mind our data flowing through our pipes along with third party data to deliver insights and customer satisfaction to our to our clients. I also spend a lot of time following trends in the industry and I merged, you know, the observation of those trends with the data that we're seeing, to come up with again, differentiated insights. So I'll just throw out just a couple trends out there that we're, we're we're seeing, as you know, there's a lot going on in FinTech, particularly with how it's intersecting with commerce more broadly. A couple examples just off the top of my head that I'm referencing, there's banking as a service, there's FinTech coming together with retailing, there's the buy now pay later phenomenon, there's embedded finance. Overall, in the interest time, I'll double click down on the first two. So for starters, banking as a service, the as you all know, on the phone, these platforms enable fintechs and other third parties to create and distribute financial products to their customers, making it easier to integrate with banking systems. Now, this allows financial services for the first time, you know, really ever to be embedded with other within other applications, seamlessly, almost hiding it from view from view of the consumer, but also allowing non banks to offer fully integrated banking products that are aligned with their own customer experience. You know, I'll note that 80% survey, say 80% of ephi executives are embracing these, this open platform approach. So when you think about banking as a service, and how it's changed banking, in a couple ways, you know, first, we always had to go to a traditional physical bank in the old days to open a financial account. Then there was the evolution to offering accounts through other channels. But in many respects, those were still physical channels, like retail stores, then we turn to modern banking as a service. It's enabling a complete rethinking of the experience of opening and retaining a financial account. We can see several examples of this this in practice. So it's interesting to see how banking as a service has evolved. First, we characterize it starting with general banking services like T Mobile several years ago, t mobile's mobile banking account. Then there were, you know, your derivative of the affinity group. This is like cards for gig employees like Uber has a Visa card to pay out their drivers. And then there's the latest and greatest studio retail payment or innovation in retail payments, like the buy now pay later phenomenon. Now, interestingly, all this has led to a concept or or at least, it part is driving the concept we call big tech in financial services. And I think this, this big tech of the power of these big tech platforms is going to have a ripple effect across the industry, both good and bad for all players, including ourselves. Here, it's things like Amazon is partnering with Goldman slash their Marcus brand for SMB lending. The partner, Amazon's partnering with Citi for buy now pay later solutions. And then Amazon's doing all of this with their powerful AWS platform. Then there's Google efforts, Google's efforts with things like g pay, we all know that's its digital wallet, which is expanded to provide a digital bank account. I think they they said at the outset, they'd launched with, or initially partner with 10, large ephi City being the first one. And like Amazon, and AWS, Google is delivering it through the Google Cloud, which is used by five of the top 10 financial institutions. So you know, what they're doing big tech is doing and banking and commerce matters. Secondly, second trend I want to get to, and then we can get into our discussion, but just to queue it up.

FinTech and retail meeting this is is a retailer or I should say retail and FinTech retailers getting into financial services. And in some cases, they're partnered with FinTech some cases are doing their own, but on their own, but we have folks like Walgreens Now recently, most recently started launched a credit card in partnership with synchrony with Amazon over the years, they've experimented. And there's rumors and they brought the market variety of financial products and related services. There's IKEA the parent company recently applied for a banking license. And, and most recently, and importantly, given how large they are, there's everything that's going on at Walmart. So let's double click down on Walmart, because of who they are. Now, they just branded their financial services offering as Hazel. And so when you look back over the last year, recent observers to the Walmart experience might say this hate that started with the ribbit capital that FinTech player or VC firm and FinTech that they they think last year. But you know, their effort actually goes for those fall in Walmart for many years. This goes back over 10 years to the partnerships thing years and years ago ago with green dot for prepaid services, and with Western Union and MoneyGram for Bill Pay and, and money transfer. And then even goes back even farther than that which started all which was Walmart's efforts way back when to get a banking license. So let's turn to Hazel. Right, so we dug into Hazel, just for our own. For our own sake, we looked through the trademark filing and that gives a lot of information of where they're going, what's their North Star here. Now when they roll this stuff out, if they ever do, you know, remains to be seen. But now some of these things that were in the filing where they want to offer payment services, such as credit card, debit cards, prepaid card processing, EFT services, credit line issuing financial planning, bill payments, which they've they've already done financial counseling already mentioned that, among them a variety of other services. And if there are any doubts about Walmart's in additions, and there shouldn't be, they've also poached several financial executives from traditional banking giants like Goldman Sachs, and Citi. So just to wrap it up and closed loop on this trend, you know, why are retailers looking at this strategy? Have you had a high level, I think when you boil it down to three reasons, they want to build loyalty. They want to provide those services that keep their customers coming back again, and again. And particularly with Walmart, that's a no brainer. When you think about the volume and the the number of amount of foot traffic that Walmart has, they want that those folks continuing to come into the store, along with the other brands that I just mentioned to you reaching new segments of the population, particularly the underbanked, and underserved population, and then finally diversify their revenues, right get away from just selling skew level products and getting into the the bigger wallet of the consumer, if you will. So I touched on to these banking as a service and retailers getting into financial services that these powerful trends in FinTech and how they're impacting commerce more broadly, I think this is a you know, this is the first inning of a nine inning ballgame, we have a lot to still play out, it's gonna be a fun game to watch and participate in. But as I noted up front, there's a bunch of other moving parts as well, the whole buy now pay later phenomenon. So I'll stop there just to queue it up and turn it back to you, Greg, where we can start some discover, hey, I've

Greg Irwin 14:29

got some questions. And I'd welcome the group here to ask some questions. But for me, I come right to the consumer. And I'm thinking to myself, alright, the way people are buying and interacting is changing. So how does it help a retailer or FinTech to offer these services? Meaning, alright, maybe it's social, you know, so social commerce, social retailing, or, or other ways that people are behaving so that you can Engage and basically drive, you know, better traffic better gmv or better, you know, a better profit per sale.

Glenn Fodor 15:11

I'll take a shot and then pass to Sunil and anybody else who wants to comment, but yeah, look this this this evolution of the consumer and the consumer experience. Yeah, that started a long time ago pre pandemic. But as we all know, from our own experience, and you know what we've observed, it has only gone in overdrive over the last, you know, call it year and a half with this push to digital, right? So the genies out of the bottle if it wasn't before, and it's not going back in the bottle. I am. And, you know, we have lots of different models, focused and being led by a tech first model, rather than just a, you know, particularly product first bottle or focused on yield. Again, it's it's centered on the technology, the consumer experience, it's britch, distributing those capabilities, whether it's commerce, whether it's financial services, it's bringing it to the hands of the consumer, obviously, cliche, it's, it's, you know, your mobile phone. But again, I think that's a that's a, that's a complex endeavor. And again, consumer was ready for that to a certain degree pre pandemic. But now on the other end of the pandemic, whenever it gets here, but it was here a couple of months ago, but maybe we wait a couple more months, you know, that that consumer experience has gone lightspeed forward, and has raised expectations in general, folks like us, and are your partners, we have to respond to that guy. Sunil Anything you want to add to that?

Sunil Sachdev 16:34

Yeah, no, I think it most of the key points there, Glenn, the only two pieces I'll add is just I think, just double click on the tech first piece, the interoperability, I think, you know, API's and, you know, the power of the devices, the handheld devices, all the screens that everybody's customers are using today, I think they just become a natural aggregator of different types of services and things that people want to do, right. And people now are more open to trusting, you know, many providers, as opposed to the traditional providers in banking, or in payments, to offer them, you know, specific capabilities. And I think that has to do a lot with just kind of who we are as a society today, where we're going the trust that we have in our technical capabilities and the tools that are out there. And the clients point, like, you know, the genie is out of the bottle. And so it's all about trying to enable the best experiences for whoever your target customer is. And then there are less and less constraints on putting the Lego pieces in the back end together to enable the best experience that you can.

Greg Irwin 17:48

It is so outside of Walmart's and the, you know, the big guys of the world. What about I'd love to hear a nice story done with the name the name, but you know, midsize retailer or an emerging FinTech, who's done a good job with a product. Can you give one example without naming a name without, you know, naming a specific you can name it great, but I don't think that's what's important. What's important is, you know, giving us some confidence that a small company with limited resources is able to add on something that fit for purpose for their customers, that's incremental, for their customers.

Sunil Sachdev 18:29

So I can throw out a couple and then I'll, you know, toss it back to Glenn, I think, you know, the names are well known, right? So if you look at you know, time Acorn's money a lot, right? And if you look at those types of fintechs, and you say, hey, these are not really chartered institutions, what are they doing, to capture the imagination of millions of people that they've been able to bring onto their platform for the last couple of years. Now, if you if you go and download any of their apps, you know, it's a, it's a very thoughtful user experience, the feature set and the functionality is not innovative, right. People have had the ability to round up spare change for a long time. And a lot of financial institutions offer that people had the ability to process direct deposit payroll ahead of, you know, when you're supposed to get paid every two weeks, you know, that payroll file sits there a couple of days before the bank even processes it. So it's actually up to the bank to go out there and, and process the file if they want to a little bit earlier. It's a good funds model. So you know, being able to accelerate, payroll do around up, be able to offer PFM, where you're able to connect to all the bank accounts a customer has in their, their brokerage accounts and put them together in a single view. I think those are were not real breakthroughs. From an innovation perspective. I think the breakthrough really was on the customer experience and how They've kind of, you know, created that flow that allowed users to basically really appreciate and also kind of make that kind of their one stop shop in terms of coming and doing, you know, whatever experience or financial service experience they needed. I don't mind if you had any, any more there? Yeah,

Glenn Fodor 20:20

I'd say, you know, there's examples of plenty one is so five, right started with student student loan, alternative student loan sort of model, they're expanding into a, you know, expanding the footprint into other financial services. And we're seeing that, you know, it's the, it's the wedge approach, or the Trojan horse, you see lots of players getting in, you know, with with one product driving the wedge, and then expanding from there, getting a banking license, expanding the, you know, the suite of capabilities that they can provide, leveraging, they hit the success they had, you know, at the core. So I think consumers these days are welcoming of these these added services and are willing to embrace alternative providers for financial, financial planning, financial, you know, financial advice, trading, getting loans, getting short term funding, long term funding. So, it's it stands a continuum. But this wouldn't be successful if the consumer or that business, if we're talking about a b2b play wasn't receptive to it. And I think across the board, they just are, particularly if it's delivered in a digital fashion.

Greg Irwin 21:31

Hey, guys, let's start to broaden here. Thanks so much Glenn, and Sunil. JOHN, I'm going to I'm going to bring in for a minute, john. Do Janis. And a good question john sent me I'm going to post to the group and others for buy now pay later and credit cards, what are you seeing in terms of average account balances and consumer account balances per consumer, now versus where we were pre COVID. And john Alecia, later on for specifics, but let's talk about what others what others might be seeing. Well, john, hey, quick intro, and I'm going to springboard with that question.

John 22:15

Great. Hi, everyone. I'm john diegesis, CEO of vector consulting, in vector giftcards, vector consulting, we mostly consult with retailers for financial institutions, investment funds, and FinTech companies, as it pertains to payments options and marketing. The question here was, I know as a consultant that I've seen, working with lots of private label credit card programs, or co branded credit card programs, and with be by now, by now pay later options, is, we're seeing kind of a change in terms of how the consumer is revolving their credit, or those accounts receivable for those those individual credit card programs and buy now pay later options that are that I've seen some growth or even some decline during Kobe, just wondering what you guys were seeing, in terms of everyone on the call. in that regards? Are you saying fewer consumers use these payment options or more? And how is their behavior change? are they spending more given that they are making more in terms of wages, inflation, or government subsidies or government payments? Whatever the reason might be? What do you think? And why I guess is where I'm getting to.

Greg Irwin 23:32

First shot, I'll look to Sunil and Glenn, but I'd love to hear from others as well. Guys, do you have a first shot?

Glenn Fodor 23:43

I can't vote for basket size increase, but the popularity, the volume, the number of transactions? Clearly, it's off the charts again, is it expanding the pool of commerce in general? Not sure. I would, without facts to back it up. I would venture a guess if you held the gun to my head that it is right, because you're providing another funding vehicle for people to you know, perhaps otherwise buy something that they wouldn't have. Otherwise, does that ultimately create leakage from somewhere else? right because there's only so much spending in the economy possibly but again, there's no doubt the volume just look it up amount of capital markets funding private and public that are chasing these business models. So that's because the demand is there. That's because you know, consumers, consumers and merchants and fit alike like these products. You're starting to see this evolution, you know, the first step there was a concept. Now generally the the fintechs glommed on to this and your your upstarts then you saw or are seeing your traditional advise bulge bracket up eyes, Amex city, Chase, want to get into the game because you know, they're looking at their customer base and say enough, we're having we're having or the threat of leaking out. customers to these alternative players, we want to get into the game. And you're seeing all of those folks that I just mentioned, have various flavors of buy now pay later offering so they wouldn't be ended if it wasn't. There wasn't a critical mass there.

Sunil Sachdev 25:15

Yeah, and I know, all I'd add is that I think we're still kind of Glenn's point earlier, we're in kind of the early innings, right? I think all lending in general is obviously seeing a lot of boom, in terms of interest. And in terms of kind of leveraging different types of products like the MPL and others to get to the underserved, underbanked market as well, and trying to help them out. It'd be curious to see what happens, you know, as we go through kind of one economic cycle, with regards to the ability for people to, you know, leverage this, maybe the pendulum has probably moved a little bit too far. Or maybe I'm too conservative. But the other thing is, you know, given the pandemic and everything that it's done on, you know, how credit bureaus capture data and how credit bureaus basically capture risk and communicate that out to whoever these traditional lenders are. I think there's, there's opportunities for newer models to come out there to basically do a better job of identifying risk and identifying and the ability to pay back. So I think all of those things are what you're starting to see come together and kind of the boom that we're seeing online. They

Greg Irwin 26:28

are a very good, guys. Let's keep let's keep working around I want to invite Eddie price. To to, to engage here in the session, Eddie, let's check and see that you're on with us over at shoe shoe sensation. With us? Nope. All right. Why don't we try? Why don't we go over? How about Maria mclaury? Maria, are you on the line with us? No. All right. How about I'm gonna keep I'm going to keep going to get some others. How about Kathy Lou? Kathy, are you on the line with us? Are we getting a lot of listeners? How about scott brown? Scott? Are you with us? not my forte. I'm just listening in on this one. All right, very good. Shawn. Shawn, Eddie, are you on the line with us? And I'm also on this one. All right. So in that case, we're going to be presenting How about guys, let's, let's keep going. And so we have listeners, we have a couple other questions and all encourage people to send questions in data direct to consumer, from Chris Peck, Nate, do you see direct to consumer becoming bigger and bigger in CPG? How do you see these services being incorporated into a fragmented shopping experience for consumers? Alright, I'm going to come back to Sunil and Glenn on it. How is this baked into a DTC experience? claim? Do you want to take that one first? Sure,

Glenn Fodor 28:22

some of the names escape me other than the obvious ones like Nike, but yes, the direct to consumer play is, is alive and well. And again, given technology and, you know, apps and just just the set success of other channel strategies. Yeah, you're seeing a a groundswell of direct direct to consumer models. Again, we wrote about this in some of our thought pieces, I think, like two years ago, right. So this is not a new phenomenon. Again, I forget some of the suspects. It's been a while. But Nike is one that certainly comes to mind. Right? So not only going through their stores going through their app. And yeah, I think it's it's certainly a thing. And it's another one of those things once, it's genies out of the bottle. And, you know, the implications then or for the payment methods, whether that's a traditional payment method and emerging payment method, new ways to pay new ways to, you know, create demand for embedding payment solutions into these into these new into these new channels, ie via the app. That's what we're, you know, rejiggering our whole tech stack to accommodate as a firm in general. So yeah, so this is, this is certainly a channel and for any of you books on the phone, who might be a retailer that sells some of these, some of these brands, it's certainly going to be a consideration as you as you plot your strategy, you of course forward, I will say like a fork of this is it's not what we love talking about. Maybe you've heard about it, maybe you haven't called Live Stream shopping, then We wrote wrote about this multiple times in the last year in our thought pieces about how this is becoming such a thing here in the US. It is a enormous thing in Asia Pacific, specifically China. So what's livestream shopping? That is the the new look and feel, if you will of home shopping network or QVC. Right. So it's that same concept of, you know, advertising your wares, you know, not on TV anymore. But online. You know, the differences are, it's a very big social media component. There is a big influencer component. Yeah, there was some of that as well with the QVC. And home shopping network models, which To be clear, they still exist in a big way. Today, they make 10s of billions of dollars of sales. So that's a that's a business that is still here with us. So but this new live stream approach has a little bit different features, but also some of this some of the same, but a twist on them again, so I said, live stream shopping has an influencer component, where you might have an influencer, you know, that's in the travel space, a model or whoever is going to those locations, selling selling wares or selling vacations. Now you think back to the old days of QVC and home shopping network, you'd be selling us over or something, you might have a celebrity or celebrity chef on pushing it for a small amount of time as well. So there are some some tie ins to the from the new back to the old. So it's very interesting to see how it's out evolving. So again, the differences are social component, the celebrity tie influencer tie in. But then finally, the, the the speed of the whole situation, meaning these are this could be a virtual pop up store, where we're going to sell something watches or vacations or whatever, in a live stream event. And we're gonna do it for a three hour period, and then we're going to shut it down, and then we're gonna move on to the next one. So it has a much shorter life, if you will, you know, comes and goes. But I will say again, this is a huge, huge thing in in, in China. Look, China sells their equivalent of Mack trucks, through livestream events, they famously they had one earlier this year 1000s of people dialed in, I think they sold 100 of these, were talking to big 18 wheelers, they sold 100 of them and like something like 10 minutes. So that's a market of like 100 billion, don't quote me in China, whereas in the US, it might be a $10 billion market today are expected to in the next couple of years. So a small fraction of where China's China's a big and everything right, it's big, it's big within that payments, anything related to commerce, just China's off the charts. But again, $10 billion, couple billion dollars is nothing to sneeze that year in the US. And as well, particularly if it's a new, a new channel for sales, you have Walmart nordstroms, all pursuing this, this approach, which isn't necessarily the direct to consumer, but you can see brands as well, embracing live stream, this live stream channel. So again, that's one of the one of the hottest, I want to call it now. One of the hottest things out there, keep an eye on it, as you think about retail, and all the payment implications that surround it. overdue.

Sunil Sachdev 33:12

Yeah, no, I think that's great insight, Glenn. And I think, you know, the other thing that we're starting to see on the traditional side, right, it depends on kind of how you're going to engage the customer, which platform, right. So a lot of the brands and a lot of the merchants that we've talked to have expressed interest in either ISVs or PFP facts and other kind of technology players that are basically taking care of the checkout piece, and then the payment piece at the end, right. So depending on kind of how you're focused on taking your products to market, there are a number of providers that are out there that are aggregating these types of capabilities into platforms that you can be a part of, to then kind of streamline the entire checkout experience the payment experience and offer those alternative funding capabilities at scale that Glenn was talking about.

Greg Irwin 34:04

I like the idea, so much of the, you know, Glenn, you got me thinking about MIMO. In in China and the gifting and, you know, you follow a stream you're engaging with so it could be social, you know, it could be social shopping, and the way that you can gift people or keep an account of tokens, or maybe real credits that could be reimbursed into, you know, into your own. So maintaining a wallet, and using it not just for shopping but for for other purposes, as part of the overall experience. It's just it's interesting to think about how the whole experience can change when you get on to when you're in the digital. You know, I'd say this the shared type of experience. Let me let me invite Laura Smith. Over at Amazon pay. Are you on the line with us? They want to ask a question or share, share or comment.

Laura 35:08

I am here Oh, apologies. I am here to hear about other experiences. Amazon pay is the Division I work with on the business development team, where we offer merchants the ability to leverage over 300 million amazon.com accounts, the billing and shipping and payment methods on to their own retail sites. So a customer is able to log into their Amazon account, and use the billing and shipping methods that they have there. To quickly check out on retailer sites. This is something that is becoming incredibly popular. And we're always eager to learn about the trends and the experiences that merchants are facing in in the direct to consumer space.

Greg Irwin 36:06

Is there one example? So we're talking about all the different options and the changing patterns of either, you know, credit, debit, or, or enabling different types of payments? What's one trend you can share with the group? And we'll keep going around for others. But one story you've seen here, Laura?

Laura 36:27

Well, I have seen a really shared goal around everything from small business to high end retailers, that really there is no difference in their approach to consumers. So we have had very high end brands that are using amazon.com billing and shipping and payment methods on their retail checkouts. And that has been very interesting to see. It I I'm more than happy to talk to anybody individually. But yes, that is that is something we're seeing is just a shared approach to consumers that isn't really specific to the segments they target.

Greg Irwin 37:21

Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Let's, let's keep going. Michael, you've been listening intently. Thank you for having the camera on. Any questions or comments? You've got Michael amico? Thanks, Greg,

Michael 37:34

I know I was predominantly listening in for just kind of getting up and learning about all the different offerings from other folks and what trends they were seeing. So on my side, just for the folks that I have not met, my name is Michael Michael. I'm the CEO of a company called Connect tricks. And we are integration partner for large software companies. So we help integrate all these good things together. For people,

Greg Irwin 37:58

is there one use case? So we're all here sharing, sharing stories? What's one use case that you've seen?

Michael 38:06

Well, I was interested actually, on what Glenn had just mentioned, with regards to the pop up stores and things like that. I would like to make that a use case with our clients. There's no doubt about that. Off the top of my head, can you use case in what particular piece because there's a big gap there. So

Greg Irwin 38:21

there, you're absolutely right there is it could be anything on credit, it could be lending, it could be, you know, savings, it could be, you know, we're talking about all aspects of, of enabling, you know, financial financial payments are not just payments, but financial savings and payments were for this new new generation of retailers or fintechs.

Michael 38:45

Got it. So the trend that we're seeing right now with across the partners that we are the clients that we're working with, we predominantly work with the point of sale side lightspeed and Salesforce and Oracle and Microsoft. And what we're seeing from a trending perspective is subscription based and appointment based type transactions have gone through the roof. Obviously, that's no, probably no surprise to everybody here. But subscription based on products, such as health care products, subscription based membership base, things like that. All those are definitely on the uptick right now. And those are the type of implementation projects that we've been working on. From from a consumer standpoint,

Greg Irwin 39:24

God. Thank Thank you, Michael. Sure. Hi, let me come back here to Sunil The question is, what kind of resources does it take? Let's say I do want a buy now pay later solution, or I do want a, you know, a customer wallet solution layered into my e commerce platform. What kind of effort does it take to actually one put it in place and to maintain it?

Sunil Sachdev 39:51

Sure. So there's, there's a number of different paths, right. So from a from a buy now pay leader perspective, there's a number of providers out in the marketplace today that can help with kind of the underwriting and being able to integrate that capability into the POS, we can definitely help on our end as well. So if you're a merchant that's looking to offer this to your customers as a as an option, there's an opportunity for us to work with you, through our merchant business, to help facilitate that, yeah, with regards to kind of maintaining it. You know, again, a lot of these solutions are parameterised, right. So from a business rule perspective, if there are some thresholds that you'd like to be within, in terms of what you're able to offer to customers, and for what types of purchases, those all can be configured, right. And in terms of kind of the end user experience, if there's an opportunity to then kind of take advantage of the data that comes through these transactions, and then be able to provide additional funding options down the road, or be able to provide information on other products and services that you think you can offer to that segment. So from that perspective, I think it's a it's a, it's a fairly straightforward use case. That's provided by a number of players in the marketplace today. I don't know, Glenn, if you'd add anything to that. Yes.

Glenn Fodor 41:26

Sunil's master on the on the technology side, but you know, what I think is fascinating on you know, to, to Michael's point, and which I don't know much about much about his company, but I'm guessing it might, you know, fit into what I'm about to talk about here. But it matters to everybody on this on this on this call as far as you think about, you know, these cottage industries, if you will, that are popping up due to need. And these new commerce models that are that are emerging. So for example, the very simplest example, way back when GoDaddy, right, you need to open up a website, you go to GoDaddy or Wix, they get you up on a on a website, you need to, you know, sell online, you go to Shopify, or the number of other players out there, and I'm guessing Michael's company fits into something around that, that paradigm. I just talked the other day to a group of folks about, you know, marketplaces to what Laura's company Amazon is doing of, of getting all these brands, whether they're a large retailer, or small retailer, or small merchant in general, not just powering their payments, their payments at their own site, but bringing them on to the Amazon Marketplace and creating this, if you will, a consolidation of, of commerce volume in general, right? There's a lot of complexity to that, which is creating this cottage industry of need of technology integrators that get you onto the platform, right? So hey, if you're Macy's and you want to get into Amazon's platform, I'm sure there's an API, I'm sure Macy's and has the the the the tech resources to make that happen. And Amazon makes it nice and easy. But if you're a small, you know, small merchant, even if you're using the Amazon tools, you there's probably some other help you need some middleware layer or some type of systems integrator to get you there. And we put on a page a probably 30, some odd names of these players that are participating in the Amazon Marketplace ecosystem, meaning they're getting these small to midsize companies that don't have the resources, but they're being like the Shopify or GoDaddy, of getting those small companies onto marketplace, whether that's Amazon, whether it's at E Bay, whatever. But again, this is great, this, these new trends out there are all creating their own subcategories of sub trends, some of which are enormous in and of themselves, of new tech players and opportunities, if you will.

Sunil Sachdev 43:48

The only other thing I'd add there, Greg, Greg, sorry, just kind of give you a you know, in terms of maintaining it, and kind of what you need to look at from a provider perspective is, I think that's why I think initially, you know, I referenced how five servers kind of driving connected commerce, right, it's the ability to, to work with somebody that can provide the right merchant capability that's needed for you to engage with your customer on whatever channel you want to engage. But at the same time for some of these newer funding products and services, like buy now pay later, then being able to potentially connect to financial institutions that are going to play a role in driving, some underwrite, right, that's needed to make sure that you as the merchant can offer this right either through kind of your existing relationship with your merchant acquirer or through a larger relationship with a with a financial institution in the background. So I think that's where we've kind of see this kind of merging happening of banking as a service and kind of these enabling these types of use cases in the merchant checkout flow diagram.

Greg Irwin 44:54

No, no, not at all. I gotta tell you, I get confused here very easily. There's so much opportunity, and so many different vectors of consumer and consumer engagement with each other with the brand with the retailer. You know, you can, we said you can do lending, you can set up accounts, you can make purchases, you can round up, around up for charity, you can, you know, gift to, to a friend. It's too It's too much. It's arguably too much. And particularly in a conversation like this, where everybody's listening, saying, What are people doing? And the answer is they're doing everything. But they're doing everything specific to themselves. So maybe what I've been thinking about it as we've been speaking, and I'm wondering, what the heck does success actually look like? Like, you don't have to be Walmart, you don't have to be Marcus. You don't have to be Coinbase. But you want to do enough to engage with your customer. And be be a better be a better merchant, be a better brand. So I'm going to ask the group, whoever wants to participate, but starting, of course, with Sunil and Glen, what do you think success really looks like for a merchant or a brand that wants to do more, in terms of providing financial services for their, for their customers?Think

Glenn Fodor 46:28

about it. I mean, I think this applies that to anybody on this call, whether you're a FinTech player, or a merchant or financial institution, I mean, it's it's cliche, and it's obvious, but it's like, know, your customer know your niche know you where you can add value know, where you differentiate, don't get enamored with, you know, chasing, you know, the the next big thing. You know, it, this is very important, you know, you can lose a consumer and why is this important? just reiterate, is because of this, you could lose a customer really quickly, like you say, Greg, there's too much out there, there's too many things. And this is part and parcel for getting a payment solution, right? Like, it's got to work. And this is what our tech team, why we have 10s of 1000s of people focused on it 24 756 sigma reliability, because you're a large merchant, a large f II, they're gonna lose a customer, we're gonna lose those, the client, the the merchant, or an F II, if their customer doesn't have a good experience. So that applies to everybody on this call, whether again, you ephi, FinTech or, merchant Don't get ahead of your skis, nowhere again, where you can add value in the food chain and stay in your swim lanes. And if you're going to expand them long outside of your swim lanes, you just have a Northstar approach of how you're going to get there. Like so far right. I don't know if when they started if getting a banking license and providing other financial services was part of it might have been, but in what they did at the outset very well with student loans. And they mastered that, then they were ready to move on, they didn't move on until they were ready until they had their their core business locked down again, because consumers when it comes to payments, when it comes to check out financial services, you don't have you know, you don't always have a second chance, if you lose them because of a bad experience. Or, you know, you lose their money. You're not getting them back.

Greg Irwin 48:31

Right? The hurdle fail or failure. hurdle for success is actually quite high. You can't you can't really can't screw up that many times. And be forgiving. Not Not Not in this category. Sunil here. Yeah,

Sunil Sachdev 48:49

I think one, one great example of kind of your point of pay. There's too much out there, right? Just in the last, I would say three months, the inbound on crypto has been amazing. from every part of the economy, right? And financial institutions want to know about it, merchants want to know about it. And then when you kind of then double click on it and you say hey, well, what is crypto and what is it going to facilitate? And how is it going to help you Mr. Merchant? Right. And what we have learned talking to large and small merchants, enterprise merchants is that you know what we just want to learn and we want to understand what it is we don't really see a lot of people coming in and buying shoes on Bitcoin right now or on any of the other digital currencies, right? But initially, they were is kind of this FOMO right? Hey, we've got to get something out into the marketplace and Glenn's absolutely right. Like and once you know, they started realizing, Hey, what is this going to mean to the journey and what is this going to mean from a from a cost perspective to kind of facilitate in a regulatory perspective to manage, then it just quickly became Okay, this is something that's interesting and something that I'm going to monitor close And we'll figure out, it's way too complicated to put it through the checkout process today because of the tax implications and settlement and everything else, right? I mean, it's a great example of like, this market is going to throw out a whole bunch of stuff. And it's up to every institution and every merchant to just figure out a look. And again, I think Glenn said it best in the beginning is talking about, hey, how do you increase loyalty? How do you increase conversion rate, right, whichever channel they're coming through, and it increased the ticket size. And I think a lot of that stuff is on the user experience and the product itself. And then, you know, the the time of Truth is, you know, at the checkout, right, and making that simple and giving everybody options on on the right options, and being as intuitive as you can be. To make that seamless, just like you know, I'm sure you know, Laura will attest, I Amazon's a great experience every time I just need to swipe right, you know, my checkouts done. I don't even have to think about anything else. So hopefully that helps. Great.

Greg Irwin 51:01

It does. And it's actually interesting, I think about it provides a sheen, no, there is a potential great opportunity that some brands have taken advantage of by accepting crypto. It's not a You're right. It's not for the masses. It's not at mass adoption stage. It's early adopters right now, but by but maybe that's the identity you want. Maybe you want to be seen as it may be that supportive of the brand identity and the type of customer that you that you go after. So you say I am going to accept Bitcoin, and it might be a pain in the butt, I might have a whole big back office to make sure that they handle all the bad exceptions that I have to be dealing with. And there might be market swings I have to deal with if I'm carrying any balance or any risk. But for those that are works, expand, I am thinking a micro strategy company out of nowhere, that said, I'm going to tie myself onto that offer because it's very additive to the brand appeal and it

Sunil Sachdev 52:06

works a Tesla is another great one. Right? You know, and the way that you know, for for a while they're there. I don't know if they're still accepting but, you know, buy a Tesla one bitcoin, right? You know, those are your right, you know, for certain brands, it's very creative, right?

Greg Irwin 52:20

Yeah. Well, I think that's what we're talking about. That's the advantage of being an early adopter, hear on some of these, you know, social shopping, and trying to enable some of these financial services within that realm. It really could add and be not just a nice to have profit add on, but it could help drive you as a brand or or retail. Let you know, I'm going to put up one last shot here to Allie. Scott, any Shawn, Laura. Any Any other questions that you have here? Otherwise, we're going to do a wrap up with Glennon Sunil. And then we'll look for some some follow up an alley or or anyone else have any questions or comments that you'd like to share here with our group?

Scott 53:13

I could say one thing for you, Greg, this how many dtcs out there are a place where somebody goes to so regularly that a one click Checkout, like you said like soon as suneel said, swipe right is going to work. The marketplaces have such a variety of merchandise, everything from you know lawn and garden to to underwear to clothing to, to to groceries, I can't tell you how many times I go online and we can order something from Amazon even if it's only $5. Even though I know that it's $5 because it's $3 plus $2 and shipping in the real in the real life. And I could technically go to the dollar store and buy it myself but then I got to inconvenience myself an hour to go and do that. So Amazon is kind of all the marketplaces for that matter Walmart, Amazon Newegg even the new eggs even less because it's mostly computer stuff, but how many dtcs have that ability to say you know what I'm about to spend all this money and, and and read reorganize my entire payment system? have that one click strike? And how safe is it from from a financial security standpoint, we have a lot of fraud on our site. You know, it's so hard when you're using all these payment processors to work with all the all the fraud is not it's not pre transaction fraud is post transaction fraud that we're running into now. I'm sure you're aware of the the social engineering schemes with the label manipulation and

Greg Irwin 54:46

so on and so forth. Anyways, any thoughts on that?

Laura 54:51

I can share. This is Laura Smith with Amazon pay. I can share that from the Amazon pay perspective. amazon.com has very sophisticated fraud practices, and the hundreds of millions of amazon.com accounts have the benefit of both the experience they have have with amazon.com. And also the fact that amazon.com doesn't experience a lot of fraud. This is because not a lot of people are going to take the trouble of creating an account, likely paying an annual fee, loading, billing and shipping addresses loading multiple payment methods, because typically, there's more than one credit card loaded on their account to commit fraud. There's just easier ways to do it. So and you're right,

Scott 55:45

we don't have we don't have any problems with Amazon when it comes to payments. But I do have it with eBay and target. Amazon and Walmart don't have problems with all the rest of them do.

Greg Irwin 55:57

Interesting. Interesting. Hey, Scott Scott. That's it. That is interesting. What is it about target, that makes it more susceptible than Amazon or Walmart.

Scott 56:07

It's the it's the customer service policy. So I'm target's case, they handle all customer service. And they have simple rules, kind of Amazon has to in a way, but if a return tracking number shows that it's delivered, then they credit the customer back, the seller is not believed. Amazon doesn't have that issue. And I think it's exactly what Laura said, it has to do with all the effort that it takes for a customer to open up an account and everyone knows you mess with Amazon, they will shut down your account, to the point where if you sell your home and somebody else moves in, it's very possible that next person who signs up and has an Amazon account may get his account shut down for a while until they fix. So Amazon is really, really strict. And some people might say, Oh, it's too strict. But in my opinion, fraud is the one thing we all have to stay away from because if you let them into tiny little hole, they just open up a bigger hole.

Greg Irwin 57:02

Great point. Thank you both Cindy. Oh, let's let's wrap on this question of fraud. We're coming at it from an opportunistic perspective. But as we said, The your measure of success has to be spot on. So what do you think your in terms of how people are embracing some of these services, and still mitigating risk of fraud? Yeah, no,

Sunil Sachdev 57:25

look, I think, you know, we've definitely seen as more and more transactions, whether it's financial or purchases or anything, go online. With that comes, you know, a requisite increase in cyber and fraud issues, right. And it is a constant battle, in an area that we continue to stay vigilant on, day in and day out. There's no end of job when it comes to fraud and cyber. And I think in terms of the emergent kind of opportunity, that's where I kind of referenced some of the platforms that are emerging, right? There's some marketplaces and ISVs, that have come out to make it easier for individual merchants that don't have that scale right out of the gate, to be able to participate in a broader marketplace where they, as the into, you know, as a technology provider, they basically handle the checkout piece, the fraud piece, the returns piece and the service, right, there's a number of those, and there's a growing part of our business as well in terms of working with those ISVs and those PII facts as they kind of try to consolidate that and provide a better level of service. But yeah, that is that is something, Greg that we're continuing to see. And there are new models emerging in the marketplace to help smaller merchants that don't have that scale out of the bag to get access to those.

Greg Irwin 58:49

Alright, excellent. Well, hey, guys, we're at our hour. So we're gonna wrap it up here. Let me give a big thanks, not just Sunil and Glenn, but to everybody for taking some time and joining. Obviously, the more interesting conversation is the next one. So let's dig into the real use cases and talk about what's possible. what's what's interesting, and to basically build on this initial conversation Sunil and Glenn. Thank you both for co hosting me with me this afternoon. I really enjoyed it. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, everybody.

Sunil Sachdev 59:22

Yeah, thank you, Greg. And hey, guys, if we're going to be at some of the more FinTech shows later this year, whether it's money 20 are finovate. So if you are around those shows at all and or want to reach out to Glenn and I please feel free to do so. Look forward to it.

Greg Irwin 59:39

Super. Alright everybody. Let's wrap it up. I look forward to catching up on a future call. Thanks, everybody. very educational. Thank you guys. Thank you.