Podcasts about satago

James van den Bergh, Chief Executive Officer of Trufin #TRU discusses their final results up to 31st December 2022, which saw revenue grow by 26%, is forecast to grow significantly more this year as Satago & Playstack hit commercial milestones. Financial Highlights  ·   Gross revenues grew 23% to £16.1m (2021: £13.1m) driven by significant revenue growth from three out of four subsidiaries ·   Recurring software and licensing fees represented 84% of revenue (2021: 87%) ·   Gross profit margin grew to 69% (2021: 53%) ·   Loss Before Tax ("LBT") was £8.0m (2021: £8.4m) ·   Cash and cash equivalents at year end totalled £10.3m (£3.9m unrestricted) Company Highlights ·   Oxygen Finance Limited ("Oxygen") EBITDA increased 62% to £1.1m (2021: £0.7m) ·   Satago Financial Solutions Limited ("Satago") grew revenues by more than 350% to £2.2m (2021: £0.5m) after its platform was chosen to support invoice factoring solutions for Lloyds Bank plc ("Lloyds Bank" or the "Bank") customers ·   Playstack Limited ("Playstack") acquired Magic Fuel Games Inc. ("Magic Fuel") and signed a concurrent technology contract with a global technology platform ·   Vertus Capital Limited ("Vertus") grew its loan book by 38% and revenues by 61% to £2.2m (2021: £1.4m) Current Trading and Prospects ·   Group revenues in January 2023 were not less than £0.98m (unaudited), growing 26% compared to January 2022 ·   Oxygen Q1 revenues to date have experienced double digit growth when compared to the same period in 2022 ·   Satago delivered the trial phase to Lloyds Bank for a digitised end-to-end invoice finance solution ·   Playstack has secured more than 5 games for release throughout 2023 ·   Vertus's pipeline remains strong. Despite early loan settlements dragging on loan book growth, revenues in January 2023 were up 83% versus January 2022 To read the full RNS click here

Change management, digital transformation, and wtf has Obi Wan got to do with accountants? https://www.linkedin.com/in/leighstallardhttps://www.satago.com/ www.accountingpirates.com www.linkedin.com/in/kellidoorneWant to connect with Kelli? www.linkedin.com/in/kellidoorneIf you would like to find out how Accounting Pirates can help you with your marketing journey, visit www.accountingpirates.com

What happens when your business pivots so much you end up in a completely different industry? Steven Renwick founded Satago, a platform that helps businesses get paid faster, in 2012. It was actually one of the first companies to raise money on the equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs.  Whilst it started out as a way to crowdsource data about when companies were getting paid and use that to make real time credit reports, Steven had to pivot the business multiple times, meaning it went from a technology to a finance business.  The more the company grew, the more they needed investment, plus Steven was now in an industry he had no experience in. They raised nearly £3 million in total. But, in 2017, Steven had to try to sell Satago after it became insolvent.  What went wrong? Listen to find out.  If you have any feedback, we'd love to hear it. What would make the show better? hello@secretleaders.com  Sponsor links: quickbooks.co.uk/secretleaders

On behalf of the Accounting Influencers Broadcast Network (AIBN), this is the "UK Matters in Accounting" show, going live every Friday. For our regular listeners, the original name Accounting Influencers has now moved from 'one show with 6 episodes a week' to 'five shows a week, 1 episode a day'. In this episode 11 of the brand new UK Matters in Accounting podcast, Rob Brown continues with a series of live interviews from Accountex 2022 in London recently. AIBN were the official broadcast partners of the event which featured the great and the good in the world of accounting and the many software/fintech vendors to the profession. https://www.accountex.co.uk/ (https://www.accountex.co.uk/) Guests interviewed by Rob Brown on this show are: Dan Richards, Commercial Director at MyFirmsApp https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielrichards1/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielrichards1/) Nic Byrne, Market Development Director at LexisNexis and Tolleys https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-byrne-20837012/ Joelmy Jacquemart, International Business Developer at GEST ON LINE https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelmy-jacquemart-78239994/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelmy-jacquemart-78239994/) Leigh Stallard, Head Of Accounting Partnerships at Satago https://www.linkedin.com/in/leighstallard/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/leighstallard/) Enjoy the live buzz of the event! You can also check out these live interviews on youtube here: Dan https://youtu.be/R47CnSDq7y4 (https://youtu.be/R47CnSDq7y4) Nick https://youtu.be/TNUAqeiaMF0 (https://youtu.be/TNUAqeiaMF0) Joelmy https://youtu.be/Y8eKNr4g4L0 (https://youtu.be/Y8eKNr4g4L0) Leigh https://youtu.be/DF7CGr0jG-Q (https://youtu.be/DF7CGr0jG-Q) If you'd like to book for 2023, the dates are 10-11 May at the ExCel in London. They have an international portfolio of events taking place in Madrid, Spain (3-4 Nov 2022), Toronto, Canada (Nov 40-Dec 1 2022) and Sydney, Australia (15-16 Mar 2023) as well as another UK show in Manchester (12 Oct 2022). More details here: https://www.accountex.co.uk/ (https://www.accountex.co.uk/) ◣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◢ A reminder of 5 great shows in the Accounting Influencers Broadcast Network: ❶ Success in Accounting - MONDAYS. Our flagship main show featuring panels, highlights, combinations, panels, topics, live interviews and best ofs. ❷ Insights in Accounting - TUESDAYS. The best news, analysis, commercial awareness, news under microscope, podcast mentions and recommendations. ❸ Influencers in Accounting - WEDNESDAYS. Deep dive 1-1 interviews with leaders, experts, influencers from around the world. ❹ Best Practice in Accounting - THURSDAYS. Practice development, growth, management, consulting, examples, stories and practical here's what works stuff for accountants, bookkeepers and the fintech/software people who serve them. ❺ UK Matters in Accounting - FRIDAYS. A UK focused show featuring UK related topics, news items, events and interviews. Find them all on your preferred podcast app, platform or channel. Thanks for subscribing, sharing and listening! └╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┘ FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: We'd love to get to know you! ➺ Main show website. For access to every single show with full shownotes: https://accountinginfluencers.com/podcast (https://accountinginfluencers.com/podcast) ➺ LinkedIn. For announcements of published shows, tagging guest so you can build your network and offer feedback on the show: https://www.linkedin.com/company/accountinginfluencers (https://www.linkedin.com/company/accountinginfluencers) ➺ Youtube. For videos of all podcast interviews and bonus video content: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3AwPLSr2rCqTylGj0s7TJQ (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3AwPLSr2rCqTylGj0s7TJQ) ➺ Twitter: https://twitter.com/accinfluencers (https://twitter.com/accinfluencers) ➺ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/accountinginfluencers (https://www.facebook.com/accountinginfluencers) ━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

James van den Bergh, Chief Executive Officer of Trufin #TRU explains the significance of Satago's commercial agreement with Lloyds Bank and talks about progress within other parts of the business. Highlights TruFin is pleased to announce that following the conclusion of the commercial pilot first announced on 11 December 2020, and a competitive tender process, Lloyds Bank has confirmed its intention to enter into a commercial agreement to license Satago's software platform for its Single Invoice Finance and whole of book Invoice Factoring customers. Satago and Lloyds Bank have signed a letter of intent and are working towards finalising a commercial agreement in the coming months.  Satago's platform will introduce a new digitised proposition designed to help the Bank further support UK businesses. Satago expects to be paid a recurring fee for each customer of the Bank which utilises Satago's platform, as well as one-off implementation fees, with the final terms of this landmark agreement subject to commercial negotiation. TruFin is also pleased to announce that, ahead of signing the commercial agreement, Lloyds Banking Group has today completed an investment of £5 million of new equity capital in Satago, at a pre-money valuation of £20 million. All parties believe that the commercial agreement will be transformational for Satago and has the potential to deliver significant equity value uplift for Satago. TruFin has agreed to vary the terms of an existing £3 million loan to Satago so that it is convertible into equity capital in Satago at the same valuation as the LBG investment or, if a further funding round takes place, the valuation implied by the funding round. Assuming conversion based on the £20 million valuation (and assuming LBG does not subscribe for its pro rata entitlement to shares), TruFin would hold approximately 68% of Satago (on a fully diluted basis). In addition, the Company is delighted to announce Ben Stephenson will be appointed to the Board of Satago. Ben is Managing Director and Head of Specialist Client Solutions at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking and is responsible for the teams who provide SMEs with Invoice Finance, Trade, Payments, Asset Finance and Merchant Services solutions.  He sits on the Executive Committee of the LBG's SME and Mid Corporates Business and is a member of the UK Finance IF&ABL Product Board. As Satago rolls out its best-in-class platform to a growing pipeline of leading finance providers, the Board believes there are multiple value accretive developments to follow.

Take a walk on the white and green side with Johann Goree, one of six QBO Strategic Partners in the UK. Join Ryan as he delves into whether QBO is outpacing the competition and what else is coming from across the pond. This week in app news:  QBO announces launch of tax filing software and MTD ITSA at QBO connect, working papers product and overhaul of payroll - https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tech/accounting-software/quickbooks-announces-tax-prep-and-filing-intentions Xero dashboard getting a new look https://www.xero.com/blog/2022/03/new-look-xero-dashboard/ Xero comments on reliability of bank feeds - https://www.xero.com/blog/2022/03/uk-bank-feeds-reliability/ Xero and Meta create financial wellness program in Asia Pacific. Financial wellness if overall financial health of the business. https://www.thedrum.com/news/2022/03/07/how-meta-and-xero-are-helping-smbs-improve-financial-wellness-through-technology Xero appstores purchases in AUS get Qantas points https://devblog.xero.com/earn-qantas-points-on-xero-app-store-purchases-f81298c1d64f Xero announces stance on Russia – halted Russian operations https://www.xero.com/blog/2022/03/our-position-on-ukraine-and-russia/ G-Accon integration with Freshbooks https://blog.accon.services/2022/03/11/new-product-released-g-accon-for-freshbooks/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=rasa_io A2X announces partnership with Rewind https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?zx=7wjrtkk9g0zw#inbox/FMfcgzGmvLQhqRqRXztCVXJlLVnplwXs Keypay integrates with SAGE https://support.yourpayroll.com.au/hc/en-gb/articles/4416419313039?sea=support@yourpayroll.co.uk IRIS and Revolut announce payroll partnership via staffology https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tech/tech-pulse/iris-and-revolut-hail-payroll-partnership-benefits Open banking - Natwest testing Variable recurring payments in Payit app in 2022 with commercial product 2023. Working with FreeAgent and will work with NatWest Rapid Cash https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/39805/natwest-preps-for-live-roll-out-of-variable-recurring-payments Payroll processing salaries to rise 15% https://www.accountancydaily.co/payroll-salaries-rise-15-hybrid-working-expands Tax Giant Ryan buts R&D specialist Catax in UK expanding into UK https://www.accountancydaily.co/us-tax-giant-ryan-acquires-rd-specialist-catax Atlantic money launches in London with funding round to take on Wise and Paypal https://www.cityam.com/exclusive-money-transfer-fintech-launches-in-london-to-take-on-wise-and-paypal/ Lloyds invest £5m in Satago for 20% stake. Will roll out for single invoice finance and whole of book invoice factoring. Satago to get recurring fee per deal. Values Satago at £20m https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/39827/lloyds-bank-invests-5-million-in-working-capital-platform-satago Visa acquries Tink, an open banking platform https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.releaseId.18881.html Steadypay secures £3.8m series A https://www.uktechnews.info/2022/03/08/steadypay-secures-3-8-million-series-a-investment-led-by-digital-horizon/

James van den Bergh CEO of Trufin #TRU discusses how they're extending the scope of their commercial trial with Lloyds Bank and also provides a trading update on their other Fintech businesses. Statement regarding Satago The Company announces that Satago Financial Solutions Limited ("Satago") has broadened its relationship with Lloyds Bank plc ("Lloyds Bank" or the "Bank") and extended its commercial pilot. As part of the continued partnership, additional functionality within Satago is now being evaluated by Lloyds Bank as part of a broader remit within the commercial banking offering. TruFin is also pleased to announce that Satago has completed its integration with Business Finance Assistant (the Bank's proprietary Accounting Software Solution) for Business Banking customers. This integration will broaden the digitised functionality offered to the Bank's Business Banking customers, providing seamless access to working capital. As a result of the extended scope of the initiative, the commercial pilot phase will continue into early 2022.  Trading Update  During the second half of 2021, the gross revenue of Oxygen Finance Group Limited (together with its subsidiaries, Oxygen Finance Limited, Oxygen Finance Americas Inc. and Porge Limited) ("Oxygen") is expected to grow in excess of 30% over the same period in 2020. Oxygen's client base is expected to exceed 120 unique clients by year end (31 December 2020: 92). This positive momentum has resulted in Oxygen posting its first cash flow positive month during Q4 2021. Oxygen continues to dominate the markets within which it operates, whilst delivering meaningful social value as it accelerates payments to thousands of suppliers in local economies. Oxygen expects to deliver revenue growth in excess of 20% per annum over the coming years, which, given the operational gearing in the business, should translate to increasing profits. Oxygen is fully funded for this organic growth, requiring no further financial support from TruFin.  The launch of Mortal Shell at Playstack Ltd ("Playstack") on the 'Steam Platform' occurred in August 2021 and negotiations to extend the franchise are ongoing. The pipeline of console IP remains strong and Playstack is well positioned to capitalise on recent successes with a number of further console signings expected over the next few months. The beta launch of the brand technology platform 'Interact' occurred in late November 2021 and a formal launch is expected to occur in Q1 2022.  Vertus Capital Limited ("Vertus") has maintained its record of no credit losses since inception and, despite two early loan repayments, is still targeting a loan book of £22m by the end of Q1 2022 (from £12m as at 31 December 2020) and has a three-year loan book target of £50m. Vertus will be investing in technology-enabled lending solutions during 2022 to satisfy the growing pipeline and has recorded its first month of profitability during Q4 2021. It is pleasing to report that two of our subsidiaries have recorded their first profitable months during 2021. However, the broadening and extension of Satago's commercial trial will result in the financial benefits of a successful commercial outcome being pushed back. The extended scope of the initiative has enlarged the opportunity set for Satago and this, coupled with Satago's increasing pipeline of strategic partners, gives the Board of TruFin confidence in the significant value creation opportunity at Satago.  We look forward to updating shareholders as to the result of the enlarged trial in early 2022. About Trufin TruFin is an operating company focused on growing Fintech and banking businesses to provide niche lending, technological and service solutions to the working capital and early payment markets. Oxygen Finance is a leading provider of early payment systems to the public and private sector both in the UK and internationally. Satago Financial Solutions is a provider of working capital finance and technology solutions to SMEs. Vertus Capital is a provider of bespoke business loans to enable succession between independently minded financial advice firms in the UK. PlayStack Limited provides publishing and financing services to the mobile game and console sector.

James van den Bergh CEO OF Trufin #TRU discusses their continued growth achieved in H1 and significant milestones approaching for Satago and Playstack. HIGHLIGHTS OF THE INTERIM FINANCIAL REPORT FOR THE SIX MONTHS ENDED 30 JUNE 2021 • Combined gross revenue for the Group increased 18% to £4.9m (H1 2020: £4.2m). H1 2020 benefited from interest income from Distribution Finance Capital Ltd. Excluding this income, H1 2021 gross revenue rose by 28% over H1 2020 • Gross revenue at Playstack increased 79% to £2.2m (H1 2020: £1.2m) • Gross revenue at Oxygen Finance Group Limited increased by 6% to £1.8m (H1 2020: £1.7m) • Gross interest income and fee income at Satago Financial Solutions Limited's core invoice financing division was £0.3m (H1 2020: £0.4m) as Satago focused on Lending-as-a-Service solutions with Lloyds Bank plc and other potential strategic partners • Gross interest income and fee income at Vertus Capital Limited increased 26% to £0.6m (H1 2020: £0.5m) • TruFin Group's loss before tax improved to £5.2m (H1 2020: £5.5m) To read the full release please click here About Trufin TruFin plc is the holding company for an operating group of companies that are niche lenders and early payment providers. TruFin Group combines the benefits of both the traditional relationship banking model and developments in the fintech sector. Our Companies Oxygen Finance is a leading provider of early payment systems to the public and private sector both in the UK and internationally. Satago Financial Solutions is a provider of working capital finance and technology solutions to SMEs. Vertus Capital is a provider of bespoke business loans to enable succession between independently minded financial advice firms in the UK. PlayStack Limited provides publishing and financing services to the mobile game and console sector.

17/3/21 Today on the podcast, Zoe Whitman was joined by Sinead McHale, CEO of Satago. Satago is the platform that provides automated credit control, risk insight and invoice finance to business owners and their accountants. Sinead has held senior management roles in New York, Dublin and London across a variety of industries including banking, investment funds, and alternative business finance. Sinead also holds a Master's degree in Strategic Management Accounting, giving her a unique perspective on small businesses, their relationship with their accountants, and their cash management challenges. Passionate about small business growth and fintech, Sinead applies her varied expertise to ensure business owners have access to the tools and finance they need to thrive. Here a bit about what they discussed in today's episode: Cash flow can be a huge problem for small businesses but it doesn't always feel like it's the bookkeepers' key area of focus. So they discussed what conversations bookkeepers can have with their clients to support them What we can advise businesses to do to avoid cash flow problems caused by late payers and bad debts Whether or not it's the place of the bookkeeper to suggest businesses consider invoice financing What's involved with invoice financing on a practical level If you enjoy our podcasts please don't forget to subscribe and if you're not already in our 6 Figure Bookkeepers' Club you can join us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/6figurebookkeeper To sign up for our FREE Bookkeepers Bootcamp visit our website: https://www.6figurebookkeeper.com/bootcamp You can visit Satago's website here to find out more: https://www.satago.com/

“I see UX like a function of product design because it’s less about the look, feel and structure of a product and more about behaviours and getting into the psychology of the user” Alex is the Head of UX/ UI and Product Consultant at WM Reply. Alex believes UX is a function of product design and he has spent most of his professional life combining the two disciplines. With a background working for companies like; Satago, Comet & Millermedia7 he is an expert in bringing together UI, UX and Product Design. And in doing so, making something far greater than the sum of its parts. An expert at bringing together teams, Alex can communicate a company’s goal to various departments in a way that drives greater cohesion. He has a sharp eye for web design which he uses to dissect the inner workings of Facebook’s business model on this show. Show Notes: 0.32 Peer-driven behaviours. 6.06 De-centralising the internet. 12.56 Commoditising creatives. 19.01 The UX & UI talent pool. 23.14 Diversifying your skill set. 27.02 Staying with a company for too long. 31.08 The automation & AI movement. 34.38 Making sure your work challenges you.

Satago Company Demo at LendIt Europe 2016.

Highlights of my conversation with Steven Renwick Offering cloud credit control and accounts receivable solutions to small business turning Oxford MBA projects into a cloud success story utilising the crowd equity funding platform seedrs to launch Satago partnering with Experian to offer free access to credit data on UK businesses Subscribe to Episode # of Cloud Stories on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/cloud-stories-heather-smith/id908333807 Transcript Heather:        Hello and welcome back to Cloud stories. Today I’m interviewing Steven Renwick. Steven is the founder and CEO of Satago. Satago is a clever credit control and accounts receivable software that helps companies get paid faster. Satago connects to user’s accounting software and takes over the process of chasing customers for payments as debts age through automated statements and escalating email reminders. Included with Satago is free credit information and payment behaviour data about all of your customers, allowing you to determine which customers you can offer credit to and on which you should concentrate your collection efforts. I first met Steven at Sydney Xerocon, and that’s where he gave me blue sunglasses which you frequently see me wearing in pictures from Xerocons and Xero events, and there are a few of us around there sporting the Satago blue sunglasses. I started by asking Steven, what did you like to do when you were a 12 year old? Steven:          Wow, as a 12 year old. I was very much into fantasy/war gaming. That’s like these lead models you get. You paint them up and then you play battles against each other or you go into dungeons and explore. So me and my brothers used to play that quite a bit. Did you ever manage to sell those models for money? Steven:          A few of them I have but most of them I’ve still got in my parent’s attic. They’re now worth quite a bit of money because they’re all out of production. Heather:        My son keeps trying to convince me to buy them, which he does, he buys them and he’s like, “They’ll make money. They’ll make us money.” It sounds like you’re on the same street there. Steven:          Yes, could be. Can you explain to our listeners essentially what your business, Satago, does? Steven:          Sure, Satago is an add-on for Xero. What it is; is clever control and accounts receivable software. We connect into your Xero account and then we basically take over the process of chasing your customers for payment through automated monthly statements and through customised escalating email reminders which get more serious in tone as the debt gets older. We also automate the sending of hard copy payment demand letters and we also get actual credit managers on the phone for you to call up your customers for payment. You can either be using it as an in-house tool to improve your own credit control, or to effectively outsource your credit control. Something else we have is credit data on companies. Once you’re integrated with us, you can see the credit score, suggested credit limit and the payment behaviour data for your customers. In terms of the credit data, is that England specific or UK specific, or everywhere global? Steven:          At the moment it’s only UK specific. We actually only launched that a couple of weeks ago. It’s through a partnership with Experian, which is the big credit data company. It’s quite expensive and took a wee while to negotiate the deal. So we really need to see what the uptake is for that in the UK first of all before we consider doing it around the rest of the world. What’s interesting with the credit data is that the quality of it varies greatly between countries depending on what sort of statutory rules there are for releasing information. One company might have good coverage in Australia but not in the UK and vice versa. So we have to look at it on the country-by-country basis. Heather:        Absolutely. What has been the customer reaction to that new feature addition? Steven:          The phrase that kept on getting used is “this is a no brainer” because we’ve actually made it free to integrate … it’s free to integrate with Satago and it’s free to see the top level Experian data. So everybody gets to see the credit ratings and the credit limits and the days beyond terms data for all their customers. Even if you don’t use Satago for chasing customers because it’s not always necessary, you should at least know their credit data. It’s been really good so far. I think, on a daily basis, between about 30-50% of our users are looking at the credit data. Heather:        I’m sure for a lot of small business owners, this is actually the first time they’ve looked at credit data. Would you agree with that? Steven:          Yes, exactly. That’s why I wanted to do it because not enough small businesses look at this sort of data. When it comes to good credit control, although we started Satago and the whole ‘chasing you customer’ payment idea, the first real bedrock of credit control is knowing your customer. That means the very basics like knowing where they are actually based, knowing their real trading name, and knowing the very basic credit data. We’ve just made the very top level data for free because often small businesses don’t really know what they’re looking at when they look at that full credit report. So just the top level data but if you do want the full credit report, you can buy those through Satago as well. Heather:        Okay, sensational. It’s a really interesting add-on and I think from a small business owner’s perspective, they weren’t able to afford it in the past to even consider going down the route because for every new creditor that you took on board, that would be a costly exercise to do a full assessment of them, especially when you’re starting out and your small and you’re trying to grow. It’s like, “Anyone who wants to be my client can be my client.” Steven:          Exactly. I mean if you’re thinking about giving someone a £20,000 line of credit, it’s probably worth spending the £15 or £20 on a full credit report but if you’re doing large numbers of clients, that’s maybe not quite so feasible, so just having the top level data for free is very sensible. Having it integrated with your Xero account makes it even easier. You don’t have to go in there and start searching for all your customers because we’ve already matched it up for you. Heather:        Absolutely. I think it’s an excellent idea. I used to work for a company that standard payment terms were 18 months but the people selling to them didn’t realise that. They were like, “Yes, we’re a big company. That’s our standard.” So it makes things very difficult. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off. Steven:          I was going to say, 18 months is a bit crazy. That’s the way you put your own suppliers out of business. Heather:        Yes, that was the industry normal for that particular industry. Steven:          Okay. Why did you start Satago? Steven:          I don’t know what industry you were talking about. Maybe it’s the construction industry because that was my family business background. In Scotland, my dad started a business which ended up installing and maintaining passenger lifts or elevators. Heather:        Like Schindler’s Lifts. Steven:          Exactly, they were the big competition. Heather:        Oh were they? Sorry. Steven:          Yes, slightly bigger than my family business, nevertheless they compete. That’s in the construction industry and they’re at the end of the supply chain more or less. I kind of grew up with this issue of late payment. My dad would come home and say, “This contractor has not paid us yet for this job we’ve done,” and there would some pretty big bills we were waiting on, like £20,000-£30,000 at a time, when they’d finish a job. The payments would drag on for weeks and weeks and weeks and months and months. Then occasionally these customers would just go into bankruptcy and leave you with this £30,000 invoice that you can’t pay. I always thought it was really unfair how the big guys treated the little guys and I kind of wanted to do something about it for a long, long time. Then years later, I was just thinking about what industries are ripe for disruption. I looked at the credit data industry and I thought, “Well, you’ve got the big guys like Experian and Dun and Bradstreet but nothing new has really happened there for a long time.” I thought, “Well, why don’t we take advantage of the internet and all these new cloud accounting software companies that are coming up, and build a way of encouraging companies to anonymously share data about when their customers pay them versus agreed terms.” I thought, “It will be a bit like EBay where the buyer rates the seller and the seller rates the buyer.” So basically I actually investigated this idea on my MBA at Oxford. I spent a year doing all the usual business school stuff but at every opportunity possible, I would investigate this idea I had. So was it a project? Was it an assessable project? Steven:          Yes, I gamed the system a little bit and used it for every accessible project possible which meant I got to have my classmates working with me. I got what would otherwise be quite expensive consultants, these guys were used to charging thousands of pounds a day, but because it was a project for school they were doing it for free. Heather:        Sensational. Steven:          I used it for a few projects, used it for a few competitions, and did quite well from it but I didn’t manage … I’m talking by the end of the MBA I would have convinced someone to give me enough money to build a prototype of it just to test the idea out and get started. I didn’t manage in the end, so I had to go off and get a job. Heather:        You’ve mentioned Oxford, so I’ve got to stop and ask you for our listeners who perhaps are going to visit Oxford. Steven, what’s your favourite pub in Oxford and what beer do you suggest they try? I just know that if you were at Oxford Uni, you’re bound to know a good pub there. Steven:          Yes, Oxford is overflowing with good pubs. I’ll give you two to try. On Broad Street, there’s one called the White Horse. It’s very small. It’s quite compact. It sells a lot of good beers. One I would recommend is White Horse – it’s from a relatively local brewery. Heather:        So White Horse selling White Horse. You just said the name of the pub was White Horse? Steven:          Yes, the pub is called White Horse, I think coincidentally, because the white horse is a famous prehistoric chalk drawing on one of the hills in the Cotswolds. Heather:        Yes, in Denver. Okay. Sorry. Steven:          Or in the Cotswolds. Heather:        Devon not Denver. But anyway, yes, I’ll take the Cotswolds then. Steven:          Yes, so the brewery and the pub is called that. Another one you should look for is called the Turf which is Oxford’s worst kept secret. It’s down some secret little alleyway but then there’s this beautiful big pub which gets very busy because actually everybody knows about it. Heather:        Fantastic. I’m sure some of the listeners will venture there. Steven:          They should. @HeatherSmithAU @GoFi8ure just for you Heather: sunnies, ginger beard, Tower of London and the Shard in one pic: pic.twitter.com/gZZw2WtCD9 — Satago (@satagonet) March 4, 2015   So in your journey of developing Satago, what obstacles have you met along the way? Steven:          Well, the first one was raising money. In that respect we’re a normal tech start up, not unlike Xero a few years ago itself, except this is my first company so I didn’t have previous successes with which to finance this one. We were actually quite fortunate in a way, that one of my classmates from the MBA, a year or two before me, actually founded a company in the UK called Seedrs which was basically the world’s first genuine crowd equity funding platform. Everybody will have heard of things like Kickstarter from the US where people crowd fund books or projects and stuff like that. Heather:        Yes. Steven:          Now the difference with Kickstarter is you’re basically just paying in advance for a product. You’re paying for a product to be developed, then you get the product. What’s different with the crowd equity funding is that people are actually buying a bit of your company, so they actually hold shares. When this platform launched I thought “Okay, I’ll put my idea for Satago on there and I’ll see if I can just raise £30,000 to build a prototype,” and it worked. Within two weeks I had 60 people had invested anything from £10 to £5,000. I had my £5,000 to go off and try and build version 1 of Satago. Heather:        Wow. So you’ve got multiple investors in the company? Steven:          Yes, I mean technically the way it works is that I actually only have one investor listed on my capital table because if I had 60, that would be a mess. So Seedrs actually manages it so that they’ve got like 60 investors in a special vehicle they have but technically Seedrs, the investment company, is the only investor in Satago. But really there are 60 different people who all have rights to the shares. Heather:        Okay, that’s really interesting. So Seedrs is still in existence? Steven:          Yes, it’s doing very well. Heather:        Okay. Steven:          They’re funding millions of pounds every month in companies throughout Europe. I think they’re just getting started in the US. And it’s an experience reflecting on it, that you took that route? Steven:          Yes, I’m very happy with it because what I think is very important about this crowd equity funding side of things is that it makes start-ups accessible to people. If you read the conventional guidance on how to do a start-up, the first thing they always say is, “You should raise your first bit of money from friends and family.” Now, I don’t know about everyone else’s friends and family but there’s no way I was going to manage to get £30,000 from my friends and family because they’re just not that wealthy. I think the people that make that suggestion perhaps do have the wealthy friends and family, and forget that 95% of people don’t have friends and family with £30,000 lying around. For me, it almost democratises doing start-ups a little bit, which I think makes it accessible to a broader range of people, which is very important. Yes, it was a great experience for me. There’s no other way I would have got that money so quickly. Heather:        Absolutely. That’s really exciting. I actually hadn’t heard of that company. I always watch the Kickstarters and the Indiegogo’s, etc. It’s always very interesting to watch. What is the most rewarding aspect of being involved in Satago Steven? Steven:          I guess the most rewarding bit is when you get positive feedback from your users. You’ll have people just sign up, and out of the blue, without you even having spoken to them at all, they’ll get in touch with you and say, “This is amazing. I’ve just sent my first batch of statements or reminders,” or something “and all these people promised to pay me.” That’s great. It’s real internet business. It’s complete strangers somewhere on the internet, somewhere in the world, emailing me to say this thing that you’ve been spending the last two years building has actually made a difference to them. That’s fantastic. Heather:        Absolutely. I signed up recently to the product to have a look inside the product and one of the things I really liked about it was that you have the option to set the emails and the reminder notices so they go out during the week rather than on the weekend. That’s always really important to me because I know that in this cloud based, automated world, people kind of … and I watch them and they’re just working 24/7, which is fine, however you need to have a life as well. To me, I don’t think there’s much of a point for the reminders to go out on the weekend - obviously different industries, etc. It is such a massive time saver for such a small amount of money, and it’s a massive relief to know that that’s actually working in the background. It sounds like you’ve actually got all of the different elements in place because a lot of small business owners just want to be passionately involved in their business and they want to passionately have this relationship with the client or the customer, and they don’t want to say, “Hey, by the way, you owe me money.” Because I think a lot of people would do it for free if they could do. Steven:          Yes, that’s the thing because we’ve always been saying people start businesses because they love what they’re doing and they’re very good at selling their product or their business. It’s what they love and what they’re excited about. But people often forget that about a third of your businesses function is probably doing credit control and just getting the money in at the end of the day. A lot of people don’t even realise that that’s ever going to be an issue and quite often they only do begin to realise when it’s almost too late. It’s really one of these things you need to get in place really early on. Heather:        Yes. Steven:          Using Satago just makes it easy, takes it out of their hands of having to think about it too much, and it’s all done professionally. Heather:        It is done professionally. As you said before, it is a bit of a no brainer because I always kind of equate the cost to how much is that in minutes of your own time. So over a month period, it’s like nothing at all. Plus it’s not nasty chasing. You can do it very politely and very professionally and still have that in place. I know that clients say to me after a while, “Oh, I actually wait for the reminder and then I pay you because I know it’s coming.” It’s almost like their payment cash flow system that they work on. Steven:          Yes. So how do you go about acquiring additional customers for your business? Steven:          Well, to be honest, as an early stage start-up, we’re still experimenting and finding out what the best way of acquiring users is. We work with a number of accounting firms and bookkeeping firms, a kind of partner programme similar to that which Xero has itself. That seems to be quite popular. Then to be honest, a lot of our users come direct through the website. I think a lot of them come from the Xero add-on store and I think our organic search engine rankings are quite decent. We have a lot of people signing up directly, direct end users, and what we have a lot of is people sign up wanting the full credit control service. They want somebody on the phone for them as well. When they do that, we refer them to one of the partners that we’ve got already, and they effectively become the outsourced credit management company for them. They will be doing full service, so they’ll manage their Satago account and they’ll be the one that decides who to phone, who needs to be chased through the courts, that sort of thing. Heather:        Fantastic, so they can just get on with running their business. Two questions come out of that for me. What has been Satago’s secret for generating enviable press coverage in the Guardian, Forbes, Independent, etc? You’ve done very well that way. Steven:          We put a big effort on that in the beginning of the year. We came up with some interesting stories. We did some research amongst our users and even people who weren’t users of Satago, just asking them what were the excuses they’d heard of for late payment. Heather:        So you shared funny stories of why people …? Steven:          Yes, kind of interesting stories about late payment because in the UK, it’s a very hot topic just now. It’s probably one of the … at least the top three concerns of small business owners is late payment, and the government has been very good about trying to do something about it. Barely a week goes by without there being some sort of story about late payment in the small business press. I just tried to help out with our own bits of research, what we’d found so far, and the journalist seemed to quite like it. They were all very willing to write about us. Heather:        Sensational. It’s actually really difficult in this whole ecosystem, that a lot of the subjects are quite dry, to find an angle that’s actually of interest and to exploit it. People love those stories of the dog ate my invoice, etc. But those stories certainly are of interest and your coverage is amazing. So people, if you are looking for exposure, go and take a look and read at the Satago media coverage that they’ve actually had. Now, I’ll also ask you, you talked about the partner programme. How does your partner programme work? Steven:          If you become a Satago partner, we will give you a free account for Satago … it’s for accountants and bookkeepers mostly. Heather:        Yes, and cloud integrators probably as well. Steven:          Yes, so we’ve got a few cloud integrators there as well. You get a free account to use yourself to chase your customers as much as you want. Then after you have a certain number of users … we have two different things we do. We will either give you revenue share which you can either take as revenue or pass on the savings onto your customers. But we’ve also partnered, or about to partner, with … Heather:        Is this exclusive news? Steven:          It is actually, yes. Heather:        Very good. Steven:          We haven’t actually started yet but there’s a charity called Buy One Give One (B1G1)    . Have you heard of that? Heather:        Well, you explain what yours is in case I explain something different. Steven:          So Buy One Give One (B1G1)    is I suppose a charity which encourages you to give away a little bit of your profits I guess, or a little bit of revenue for every time you sell something. Heather:        Oh okay. Steven:          It could be something as small as: every time you sell a cup of coffee, you give 10 pence to this charity. The idea is a large number of these relatively small donations add up to something quite significant. Heather:        Absolutely. Steven:          The chairman of Buy One Give One (B1G1)   is a gentleman called Paul Dunn who is quite famous in the accounting profession, I think particularly in the UK. He now lives in Singapore but he is a quite famous speaker. I saw him speak at an accounting industry event called 20/20 in the UK, and he kind of inspired us to get in touch with this charity and do this kind of partnership. We haven’t started it yet but what we’re going to do is give accountants and bookkeepers the options of either taking this revenue share or giving that revenue share to Buy One Give One (B1G1)  where it can have an impact on people around the world. Heather:        Absolutely, that’s a sensational idea. Excellent. Steven:          Thank you. Heather:        So this is my cave man question for not understanding how technology works, okay. Steven:          I’ll do my best. Heather:        Well, you should be the genius here and this is me not understanding it. Satago offers three different pricing levels which reflect the number of invoices that the solution will chase at each of the different pricing levels. In this automated world, how much extra effort is there in a solution to chase more than one invoice? Steven:          You mean from Satago’s point of view? Heather:        Yes. I didn’t understand … and you’re not alone in this but I didn’t understand if you’re chasing one invoice, why is it more effort … because in this automated world, why is it more difficult to chase two invoices than to chase 5,000 invoices? Steven:          Really from our point of view, there’s no difference in effort. There’s a slight difference in that we have these automated … we also send letters. We give you different number of letters you can send but that’s really by-the-by. I mean to be quite honest with you, it doesn’t make any difference … it doesn’t make much difference if we’re chasing 1,000 invoices or 10 invoices in a month. This is what you would call in your MBA class ‘price discrimination’. In an ideal world, we’ve got to make money. We would be charging each of our users £100 a month or something decent like that so we can make a lot of money from each of our users. But the reality is that the person that’s only sending 10 invoices a month is never going to pay £100 a month, whereas the person that is sending 1,000 invoices a month has a much greater need and is more willing to pay for it. It’s more of an economic discrimination rather than any kind of technical discrimination at all. Heather:        Very good, I feel like I’ve been professor'd by the Oxford scholar. Thank you for that. Steven:          Pleasure. So is Satago based in London? Steven:          We are based in London. That’s right. Heather:        Okay. You’re in Berlin at the moment. Satago is based in London. Steven:          I am today, yes. What’s the internet connection like in London then for you guys? Steven:          The internet connection? Heather:        Yes. Steven:          It’s okay. It seems pretty fast to me. Heather:        Is it? Okay. I don’t know whether it was going to be fast or not, so that’s sensational. Steven:          We often get told we’re lagging behind the rest of the world. I think our investment in infrastructure perhaps isn’t the best but we’re never going to be as fast as the Estonians or something like that, who seem to be all very wired up. Heather:        Yes. You recently featured on the cover of XU Magazine. What was the modelling experience like for you? Steven:          That was a great day, yes. I was with Colin from Float and Michael from Receipt Bank. Heather:        Michael from Receipt Bank, yes. Steven:          Yes, it was really cool. I guess that was inspired by the Xerocon down in Sydney where I think the three of us were wearing our kilts. We did a shoot … that was actually at the Receipt Bank offices, had a really great photographer along, and just trying to dream up what would actually make good photos. The Receipt Bank office is quite neat in that they had these airline seats there for some reason. Heather:        As you do. Steven:          As you do. Yes, we drew on some windows onto the chalkboard behind. You may have noticed the windows that were drawn on were square, which any airplane engineer will tell you is a terrible idea. Nevertheless, it made a decent photo, and yes it was a lot of fun. What effect did it have for you and your business at London Xerocon with your face all over the magazine being handed out to all the attendees and delegates? Steven:          I guess a lot of people did comment on it because I actually wore my kilt to Xerocon. Heather:        Yes, I saw. There were three of you in your kilts wasn’t there? Steven:          There was meant to be but we failed. I actually ordered some kilts to get delivered from Scotland down to London so my two colleagues, Adam and Florin, could also wear the kilts and we’d make a bit of a theme of it but the couriers completely stuffed up. I use the G-rated ‘stuffed up’ there. Heather:        Yes. Steven:          And completely failed to deliver them to us, so it was just me. But yes, it was great. It was really cool being on the cover. Funnily enough, I was standing next to the XU Magazine stand talking to someone and he says, “You look a bit like the guy on the front of the magazine but it’s not you is it?” I was standing right next to it wearing a kilt. It was like, “It really is me.” Heather:        In the exact same kilt? Steven:          In the exact same kilt, yes. Heather:        Goodness. Excellent. It’s always fun to be at those events when you’re such a star from the magazine. Steven:          It is indeed. It helps. So Satago was reviewed by the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers. They did a big review of your product, produced a very nice and detailed review of the product. What did that mean for you? Steven:          Well, it was just great to have an independent validation, a proper audit. All too often, companies of course will get launched and you’ll get a lot of noise but you won’t have anyone actually take a proper deep dive from anyone that’s properly independent. What was really good was that also shortly after that, we exhibited at the ICBs Bookkeepers Summit in London. That was like 300-400 bookkeepers turned up for this conference and we were literally mobbed for every minute of the two days we were there. Every time they had a break between sessions, we would have bookkeepers three or four deep at our stand, so it was quite phenomenal. Heather:        Excellent. Well, we’re having the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers annual conference in Brisbane this month. Steven:          Oh, I wish I could be there. Heather:        What a shame you didn’t make it out for that. Steven:          That would have been great. Heather:        Brisbane is far nicer than Sydney too. Steven:          Really, I’ll take your word for that. I’ve got relatives there as well I need to visit. Maybe I can pop round. Heather:        Tax deductable holiday to Brisbane. Steven:          Sure. So what does the future hold for Satago? Steven:          Well, we’ve got a lot more cool features coming out. Our main user interface is going to have a new dashboard on it fairly soon, a lot more on the reporting side of things. We’re going to make more use of the credit data. We’re going to start trying to be a bit more proactive on the sales and marketing side of things because we haven’t really … apart from going to the conferences, we haven’t actually spent on marketing yet. We’re going to start experimenting with that. We’ll also have to have a look at being a bit more proactive in the international side of things. To date we’ve mostly concentrated on the UK market, largely because we knew that the Experian data was only going to be valid in the UK. But if the demand is there, then I would really like to source data for the New Zealand and Australian markets, because they’re obviously where Xero is most strong, and see how that goes. Heather:        Yes, absolutely. I found when I went in and explored and worked my way round the Satago Solution, it was very clean and an easy to understand interface. Steven:          Thank you. Heather:        I do encourage anyone who’s listening, who’s interested in the product, to jump in and take a look. I reckon you’ll be up and running within about 8 minutes. Steven:          Yes, should be. Heather:        Time to boil a cup of tea and get it going. Steven, one final question for you, what advice would you have for your 18 year old self? Steven:          Ah, my 18 year old self. It’s a tricky one because I had this weird career path where I started off doing biochemistry. I did a PhD in genetics and now I’m working in internet businesses. Off the top, you might just say, “Skip the biochemistry and PhD bit and go straight into business because I’m not using the genetics anymore.” But the reality is that that path led me to where I am now, so I wouldn’t change anything about that. Maybe what I’d say is, “Start learning German in university because you’re going to end up living in Berlin and not have a clue what anyone is saying.” So there you go. “Learn a language.” Heather:        Didn’t I see you tweeting the other day that you wanted someone to subtitle a Finish programme or something like that? Steven:          Norwegian. My girlfriend is from Norway, so we quite often end up watching this chat show, this Norwegian chat show. When they have guests from English, it’s all in English but a lot of the time it’s in Norwegian or Swedish, and I just don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Heather:        Absolutely. No, learning a language is very hard. With your genetics background, is any of it applicable? Is it the discipline that’s applicable or the knowledge applicable to what you’re doing now? Steven:          I think what I probably don’t appreciate enough is how it trains you to be inquisitive in the correct way. I don’t literally use any of the genetics or anything like that but it does help me, I think, to understand some of the technical side of what we’re doing and to ask the right questions. A lot of what you’re doing with a start-up business is constant experiments which is what PhD is. You’re testing out this new feature. You’re testing out this marketing channel. You’re testing if I change the headline from A to B, do I get 5% more signup? So it’s a little bit like doing a PhD except almost the stake is about 10 times higher. Heather:        Yes, I guess so. Absolutely. I guess you are … rather than assuming you know the answer, you’re testing it because it is really easy to sit there and go, “Everyone thinks the exact same as me. We should just do it this way,” rather than what you’re saying. Doing a PhD isn’t something you accidentally fall over, wake up one day and have done. That was a huge commitment to do, to then move into something else. But there does seem to be a few people out there who have done that. I just got an email that the head of Dell was a zoologist to start off … Dell Australia started off as a zoologist. I’m like, Okay …” Steven:          I’m in good company then. Heather:        You are. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us and sharing your insights about building your business and what it can do for people. I really, really appreciate it. Steven:          My pleasure Heather. Heather:        Thank you. End of Transcript Mentions Satago - https://www.Satago.co.uk/ Xero - https://www.Xero.com/ Experian - http://www.Experian.co.uk/ Dun and Bradstreet - http://www.dnb.com/ Seedrs - https://www.seedrs.com/ Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/ Indiegogo - https://www.indiegogo.com/ Buy One Give One - https://www.b1g1.com/buy1give1/ XU Magazine - http://xumagazine.com/ Float - http://floatapp.com/ Receipt Bank - http://www.receipt-bank.com/ Dell - http://www.dell.com/

Ep.12 Barry Dowling – TransferMate Global Payments – Minimising costs and complexities associated with foreign currency payments seamlessly from with Xero Highlights of my conversation with Barry Dowling ·        Spending time to understand your client ·        Using client feedback to tweak the solution offered ·        Achieving the milestone of $5US billion in transfers ·        Using referral links as a marketing strategy Subscribe to Episode 12 of Cloud Stories on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/cloud-stories-heather-smith/id908333807 Transcript Heather:        Heather Smith here. Welcome to Cloud Stories. Today I’m talking with Barry Dowling. Barry Dowling is the cofounder of TransferMate Global Payments. He is dedicated to making the process of booking foreign currency payments seamless, easier, faster and cheaper. TransferMate Global Payments is a global Fintech company that provides integrated solutions enabling companies to seamlessly process international payments. They provide a 24 hour phone service and online systems to enable clients to seamlessly process their foreign currency payments. They sync with Xero, enabling Xero users to cut down on wasteful double entry and transaction costs when processing payments. Whether your business is based in Australia and looking to transfer funds to China or based in California and transferring to the U.K., TransferMate has the widest collection of payment licences worldwide, enabling their team to assist clients get a better deal than using their bank. I started by asking Barry who is his favourite super hero and why? Barry:             Who is my favourite? I really didn’t expect that question to be honest. I can’t help get Wonder Woman out of my head which is not saying too much but I’d have to stick with Wonder Woman. It’s the first thing that came into my head. Heather:        Sensational. You’re not into super heroes then? Barry:             Listen, I like them all to be honest with you. Wolverine, I’d be a big fan of Wolverine too but listen, to be honest with you, as a kid growing up in the 80s, Wonder Woman would have held most of our fascination, so I’ll have to stick with her. Heather:        This is going to timestamp this interview but you must be excited by the news, the Spiderman/Wolverine news that came out yesterday, that they’re now allowed to be in the same shows together. Barry:             Oh, I didn’t realise they were prohibited from that before, were they? Heather:        They were owned by different companies. The comics were owned by different … Barry:             Marvel and … Heather:        Sony. Something Sony, I’m not exactly sure of all the details but I know that now they can appear on shows together. Barry:             Well, all I know is whoever is behind the marketing of Lego is destroying our bank balance with our kids. Every superhero Lego character is there. Heather:        Cool. You’ll have to turn it into little videos for your products and then you can have it as a tax deduction. Yes, they always go viral those videos do. Barry:             That’s a very good idea. So Barry, you cofounded a business called TransferMate Global Payments. Is that the full name of it? Is that correct? Barry:             That’s right, yes. It’s generally referred to as TransferMate. As the name suggests, ultimately our core service is to help clients transferring money. At the moment, still about 90% of companies would use the bank. There’s a better way to do it. Quite often businesses get caught up with naturally running their own business and taking care of sales and dealing with inventory and everything that goes with that, and in terms of all the daily activities, making the payment is kind of the one that slots in as a once a fortnight, once a monthly activity. It doesn’t get as much attention but when you look at it, it’s quite apparent that the banks charge too much generally, as a general rule of thumb. Heather:        Absolutely. So you would probably be in agreement that businesses don’t think about the actual cost of the payment involved, it’s kind of like an afterthought. Barry:             Well, I think that it doesn’t help that the banks are less than transparent. Quite often if you do a transfer to the bank … we’ve checked with all the banks in Australia, and as a general rule of thumb, without naming banks, the fees are typically anything between $22 and $35. You can even look at let’s say … we’ve talked to Xero clients in the States and one in particular is paying their US bank $80 for no apparent reason, and it’s sometimes just rolled up in a monthly fee but typically $22 to $35. But that’s not really where the loss is. The loss can be seen in the exchange rate and the exchange rates can ultimately be beaten. Quite often what you’ll find is a company will say, “You know, I’m inclined to do …” if you’re a Xero partner and you have clients that do foreign currency payments and you speak with them, quite often the client will do what they’ve always done. The whole idea of cloud accounting broke that myth and has revolutionised accounting. In the same way, this should really do it for the client. I suppose all the client really needs to see is a comparison cost to really get themselves interested. Heather:        Yes, absolutely. So what you’re saying is there are two expenses involved: both the actual charge and then the exchange rate, and it’s understanding there are better alternatives out there.                         Go on, sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off. Barry:             I was just going to say, technically there’s three: the exchange rate, the sender fee and the receiver fee. Heather:        Yes. Barry:             So if you’re an Australian business making a payment to the UK, the UK bank in addition charge a fee too because the beneficiary receives the payment and the bank says, “You know what, I’m going to charge you for receiving that.” Why? Because you can’t do anything better. Heather:        Yes. Barry:             So what we’ve created is a bank-to-bank network worldwide. We have bank accounts in 90 countries. When we make a payment to the UK from Australia, as one example, we pay out of our UK account. So we receive in Australia and pay out of the UK. Heather:        Okay. Barry:             That way it avoids all the international fees altogether. We’re effectively using our own clearing system. Heather:        Excellent, yes, and you are unaware of that. I know I’ve dealt with business and we’ve paid the business, and then they’ve said, “Yes but you owe us another $20 after you’ve paid them like $20,000,” and you’re like going, “Seriously? We paid everything we were supposed to pay there,” but we didn’t realise that was happening. What inspired you to start TransferMate Global Payments then? Barry:             I suppose we’ve been involved with a number of online businesses in the past. It’s only really when we got a chance to look deep down at the rates and the fees the banks were charging that we realised that there was a better way to do it. I suppose back in 2010/2011, we had quite a number of corporate clients that we felt needed a service that would beat the banks. At the time there was one licence required to operate this service. So we took about six months to get the licence and it was very much a … there wasn’t very much technically involved. We were basically dealing with the banks and we’d get a wholesale deal with the banks and we were able to … the same way a wholesaler gets better pricing for a product and can pass something on to the retailer, we had the same on our setup. Then I suppose over the years we advanced. We now transfer $5 billion US dollars on behalf of clients worldwide. Heather:        Wow. Barry:             The system that we built automatically prices up wholesale banks. A lot of the banks we would have traditionally bought currency off can’t give us the currency at the rates we buy it off. So we’re now buying it, in many cases, at the same rates the banks are buying it at. With the volume you buy, you can really go in and get the best possible deal. The systems that we built are all in-house and they’re bulletproof. We set them up in 2010 and it’s just getting better and better and better. I suppose a natural progression was to integrate into the likes of Xero to make the whole process much easier. Heather:        That’s really interesting. What have been the biggest challenges and obstacles that you’ve faced running this business and growing this business? Barry:             I guess a challenge is always getting the brand out there. I have to say, I guess it would be the case for a lot of services, it’s ultimately the idea of apathy. How do you convince a client what they’re doing today and have done for years … everyone knows a client – I wouldn’t say stubborn – but has run a successful business. They’re the boss. They’ve been doing something for 10 years and you walk in and you know where you stand with them in terms of accounts, “You do that but this is my business,” kind of way. It’s trying to convince him that there’s another way to do it without maybe telling the client, you know, any obligation.                         We win over clients but it does take time. I suppose it’s that time that it takes because when we contact clients, they typically don’t have a payment today. So the analogy I use is it’s kind of like approaching a client after coming out of a restaurant and saying, “We’ve got a nicer hamburger.” They’d say, “Great, I’ve already eaten.” So the timing isn’t quite good. It’s a case of timing really. Heather:        Yes, I know in situations where I’m dealing with businesses and they’re doing this, when they need to do the transfer, they have no time to actually think about doing it a better way, so they never have anything in place. They also just keep going through the same old process. I know I’m quite detailed in that I split out all the expenses related to exchange rate both movements and charges, and they really, really add up, and they’re just straight off the bottom line if you’re not monitoring them. Barry:             That’s kind of interesting. From a Xero perspective, and Xero handles foreign currency far better than most accounting packages out there … Heather:        Yes, love the way it manager multi-currency in Xero. Love it. Barry:             It’s brilliant. But nevertheless, if you have say 10 payments to make today, when it comes back to actually making those payments you have to go into your online banking, make each one individually, then you have to go back to your account software, change the exchange rate, account for the bank fees. Believe it or now, for each payment, it probably takes about five minutes. You can do it faster if you rush but it probably takes five minutes. With the add-on that we created, you can literally click a button, log in, it pulls 100 payments in for example, shows you the live rates, the fees are automatically 75% cheaper than the bank, you click one button and it does all the auto posting of the currency loss, gains, bank fees, and the payments directly into your account software. Heather:        Excellent. Barry:             It’s much, much more time efficient, and funnily enough, that’s the part the clients really like. Heather:        The time efficiency. Barry:             Yes, because the fee thing, they can kind of get over the $10 or the $15 or whatever they save in fees but what they see is the hassle gone. That’s what they really like. Heather:        Let’s jump ahead. Can you describe to our listeners … I’ve got Xero running and I want to integrate it to TransferMate, what does that look like and how quickly does it take me to set it up? Barry:             Okay, so it takes two minutes to register. All I need to do … there’s a special website for Xero add-on and it’s called TransferMateonline.com. Heather:        I’ll put that in the show notes for listeners. Barry:             Perfect, yes. There’s a special link also on your website obviously. We’ll make sure we fast track those but basically once they register on that website then they’ll have a one page, we call it an AML form, it’s like a signup form and we just need those details there for regulatory purposes. It’s nothing serious. It just says who are the shareholders, who are the directors, sign here, that’s really all. Then we take that to our compliance team and it’s set up usually either same day or within 24 hours, and then the client’s pretty much good to go.                         We provide all the help in terms of setting up the add-on but it’s really, really simple. They just simply add their bank account, add a few supplier background details, and they’re ready to go. Heather:        Excellent. Do you think the payment fees on your solution are less than if you’re paying say subscriptions via PayPal? Barry:             I’m not too sure what the subscriptions are to be honest with you but I do know that PayPal, the exchange rate, is basically 3-odd percent. So it’s definitely not … if you’re doing any payments of any consequence, it’s definitely cheaper to use our solution. Heather:        Excellent. Where about is your business based Barry? Barry:             We have an office in Sydney and we have offices in Chicago, London, Dublin, Madrid and Paris. They’re our main offices. Heather:        Excellent. So you’ve got quite a lot of offices then. Barry:             Yes, but mainly what we do is we wanted to provide a 24 hour solution for clients, so if you’re a client in Australia, for whatever reason you want to check a payment at 9 o’clock at night, you can pick up the phone and you’ll get through to our team in Europe. It’s the same as the CRM system. Everyone would be able to tell you what’s happening with your file. Equally if a client wants to call at 2 o’clock in the morning, they’re talking to our US office, and same again. We provide a 24 hour solution for clients worldwide. We have a big base of clients in the US and Europe and increasingly in Australia and New-Zealand. Heather:        Wow, so it’s 24/7 access to the solution and it’s operating globally, so all of Xero’s global customers can access your solution if they need to. Barry:             Absolutely. Heather:        Excellent. I was going to ask sort of what business industries does the solution suit but I’m guessing it’s anyone who is transferring money internationally. Barry:             Yes, you’d be amazed … well not amazed, you mentioned the Spiderman figures, I suppose as shocked as I was with the question and had no answers, if I told you exactly what sort of companies or the crazy stuff they’re doing, I’d probably bowl you over too but it’s really anything. I suppose, in my experience, it’s typically somebody who basically imports a product and then basically resells it. But you also have services, business that might … it’s really kind of anything. Like if you look at … I suppose 70-80% of the payments out of Australia, for example, are in US dollar. I’d hazard a guess that about 60-70% of those are to China and they are to buy products. Heather:        Yes, absolutely. Barry:             Right now it’s quite an interesting time because I saw in the Sydney Morning Herald today that the rate, the US dollar/Aussie rate is expected to go down to 0.68, so it’s quite an important time to be making sure you’re getting I suppose the best rate. Heather:        Absolutely, from an Australian perspective, yes. Barry:             I’m sorry. Equally I suppose there are pressures on all currencies against the US dollar at the moment but I suppose time has changed, while the US dollar is strong now it may not necessarily be but it’s forecast to have a lot of strength over the next year. Heather:        It just seems to be an ever growing roller coaster. I’d like to probably clarify for our listeners. Xero has various subscription levels, one which has multi-currency in it, however I believe your product will work even if you don’t have the multi-currency level in Xero. Is that correct? Barry:             Yes, in order to get the integration and the benefits, what the add-on does is it pulls in the invoices that are due and it pushes them back as paid. So it needs to know what currency they are to show you a rate but if you don’t have multi-currency enabled, you can use the standalone website which is just TransferMate.com/xero as opposed to TransferMateonline.com. The other part we’ve seen is despite the fact that the multi-currency is so easy to setup in the packet, some clients just say, “I don’t need to pay X for it. I don’t do enough payments.” But if you look at the savings you can make on a couple of payments, it warrants … and we’ve seen it, clients upgrading to the premier package, they can see the benefits of time saving. Even if they’re making a couple of payments a month, that in itself warrants even looking at maybe upgrading. Heather:        So upgrading their Xero package. Barry:             Exactly, yes. Heather:        I do find that a lot of people have this mentality that if something is online they shouldn’t pay for it. You explain to them, “But look at the time it’s saving you,” and it’s a real mindset that they’ve got, “Well, I can just spend that hour doing that.” Barry:             Totally. Heather:        It’s like, “Wouldn’t that hour be better off enjoying yourself on the beach or working with your customers, like not doing an administrative process that doesn’t need to be done. It can be completely automated.” Barry:             You could be playing with Spiderman and Batman on the beach. Heather:        You could be. You could be making little videos of Spiderman, turning your videos viral. Barry:             You’re totally right. Some people are inclined not to put a value on their time. I suppose really good business, like the Xero advisers, this whole kind of revolution … the whole era of the adviser level doesn’t really appear at all in the UK/Ireland, but it’s very, very … you can feel it’s very strong in the Australia/New Zealand, and it’s great for businesses to have that kind of crutch to lean on. I don’t think it exists in the UK/Ireland. Heather:        Yes, it’s interesting watching the wave spread across the world on social media and how people are kind of reacting to it and how the early adopters are reacting to it and how other people are like going, “No, I don’t want to do it that way. I don’t want to let anyone loose on our accounts,” and stuff like that. What have been some of the key milestones or successes in growing your business Barry? Barry:             Well, the way we look at it is every week we have clients coming onboard and asking, “You know what, this feature here, this is the way we want to do it.” There’s always a tweak that a client is going to put to the add-on because surprisingly enough it’s not simply just putting your payments and pushing them through. That’s a really good challenge for us because for me it’s important to make sure the Xero add-on is the best available. Our developers are great. They turn around change really quickly. So we want to make sure that it’s as good as it could ever be.                         I just love, to be honest, talking to a client and seeing how quickly the changes go into play because quite often with the desktop software, people are used to not having to put up with whatever they get. Heather:        The annual update. Barry:             Yes. It’s just great when you have a client and you know you’re saving them time. Again, with the Xero software in particular, what I find really interesting is how open clients are to kind of looking at the add-ons in particular because they expect that kind of eco system which is great. Heather:        Yes, that is true because I’ve been on desktop software for a long time and I was just like complacent. I know the first time I heard Rod Drury speak about Xero, etc., I was astonished at how upset he was about desktop software and how frustrated he found it. I was like, “Wow, it’s not that bad,” but I kind of get it now. It took me a while to get onboard with that. I now find it frustrating. It’s like, “Why won’t it work,” but it’s the evolution of it. Barry:             Just on the back of that another milestone for us to hit I suppose it’s a really big number and one we’re proud of, $5 billion transfers … Heather:        Yes, that’s seriously big. Barry:             On the scale of things, it’s very, very small. In Australia alone there’s $200 billion in foreign currency payments taking place for small to medium business, and again, I think it’s $70 billion in New Zealand. US – you can imagine the size of the market. I suppose it’s great to know that when we see our numbers escalating like that, it just tells us that we’re doing something right. It’s great to see. Heather:        And someone is making a lot of money on the foreign exchange if that’s the number of foreign exchange transactions that are happening. The banks are – is what I’m saying, and they could be saving a lot of money using you. Barry:             Well, I think so. I suppose the great thing about the add-on is they don’t need to take our word for it. They can just quickly sign up and they can check themselves. Sometimes our clients will just pick up the phone and call us and get a rate quote. That’s I suppose the great thing about it: it’s an alternative but not an obligation. So they can get a rate quote without pushing through the money? Barry:             Yes, absolutely. Heather:        They can get a rate quote before the transaction happens. Barry:             You can pick up the phone 24 hours a day and say to the guys, “I heard about you. Give me a rate.” Heather:        Excellent. How many people do you have on your development team Barry? Barry:             About 12 including web developers and database developers. I suppose the system that we have in place is … we’re kind of unique in that we spent a long time getting regulated and we’re probably one of the more regulated businesses of our kind in the world. In the US along, you have to be regulated in each state. To give you an example, in California, it took 18 months to get regulation, and you have to have a million dollars in deposit. It’s not something that you can take lightly. Then you have to do monthly filings with each state. I don’t know where I was going with that. But in terms of our developers, our system has to be up online 99.999% of the time. We’ve got a huge investment in datacentres. All this terminology, I wasn’t really aware of it for … synchronous replication, so if the system goes down it comes back up again in 2 seconds on another site. We’re quite heavy in that respect but we’ve got the best, I think anyway … Heather:        My transcriber is going to love that word – synchronous replication. Where about are your datacentres based? Barry:             They’re based in the States and also in Europe. Heather:        Excellent. So you’ve just come home from London Xerocon. Can you share with us what your experience was like at London Xerocon? That’s 2015 for people listening in. Barry:             I’ve been to Xerocon in Sydney and it definitely had the same theme. The whole place was buzzing with energy. Heather:        Yes. Barry:             I think it was packed to capacity. Everyone seemed to kind of be buzzing off each other, the kind of family feel, it was just … yes, you literally could have closed your eyes and you would have thought you were in the Sydney one. Heather:        Oh really? There you go. There didn’t seem to be very many kilts hanging around when I saw in the photos there. It just seemed the Satago guys had come down with the kilts. Barry:             Yes, I think they were dominating the dress wearing. Did you have any revelations at the London Xerocon? Barry:             Not necessarily revelations. I just … having walked around talking to a number of accountants at the show, they all seemed … the common theme was ultimately they’ve got to catch up or they’ll be left behind. That’s a very powerful message to somebody who’s been doing the same thing or doing it the same way for years, to be told, “This is what we’ve seen,” because we’ve seen the evidence before. It’s a great way to have a room sit up alert. Heather:        Yes, we had a local Xero roadshow in Brisbane yesterday and I think it was like 50% of the attendees, if not more, it was the first time they’d been to a Xero roadshow. They were just walking around stunned at what was going on and what was being told at the actual sessions. It’s like, “My goodness, we need to get on this.” Barry:             I kind of look at it like … and again, I’m not probably representing it right but a lot of the advisers seem to be almost like MacGyver’s with all the add-ons and the functionality of the software. It was kind of like a big bullet belt or suitcase full of tricks that they can show clients that … Heather:        What do you mean by MacGyver sorry? Barry:             MacGyver, again, an 80s show. He used to have tricks and ways of getting out of situations … Heather:        Is he like Inspector Gadget? Barry:             Yes, kind of like that. So he could basically pick locks with a toothpick or a matchstick. I suppose ultimately the idea being that there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do with his box of tricks. I know this is going to be a 20 year old saying, “Who the hell is MacGyver?” Heather:        I know I was kind of going … I kind of vaguely knew who he was but wasn’t exactly sure how the reference was working in. But yes, Inspector Gadget, I get what you’re saying and definitely the bookkeepers that I’ve seen who have kind of moved to the cloud integrator space, they’re saying to businesses, “Okay, you’re a business, you need to get in this product, this receipt scanning product, this debt tracking product, this cash flow solution. Integrate it with Xero, and that’s the roll out, and you’re getting that. If anything else is happening then we can talk about it.” Barry:             Yes. Heather:        We’re seeing the education of the add-on solutions, which you probably don’t perceive yourself as an add-on solution, but for the people within the Xero community it’s like, “Okay, then this solution TransferMate, we need to add it to all of our companies who have it sitting there as an option for all of our companies who are doing international exchanges.” Barry:             Yes, and I’d be happy if you did. I suppose an interesting kind of feedback, we saw recently because someone asked us and we hadn’t really kind of looked at it before, was what’s the retention rate? What’s the repeat use rate? It’s over 90% which is phenomenal I think, which ultimately tells us that it’s working and clients like it. The main reason why the 10% aren’t mainly is because they don’t have payments [for tolls? 00:27:24]. Heather:        Yes, people evolve their business. Look, whenever I put in a new solution, I always evaluate the time cost and will drop it if it’s not beating that. But even if I’m using a solution, sometimes for 40 minutes a month, I know it’s saving me so much money in the actual use of it. I just keep adopting and plugging in more. Then people come and say to me, “How can you manage to do so much?” I’m like, “Well, all of my life is automated, so that’s how I manage to do it.” Barry:             Actually that was one of the take points from the show. I suppose one of the gold partners sat up on stage and he was asked, “What has it meant to him,” and he said, “Well, typically I have a big client, for example, that would normally take two staff, two days to do a return for him. Now it takes one staff, one day.” So he said it’s quite a simple way to break it down in terms of the cost saving. Heather:        Absolutely. Barry:             But even if you look at the add-ons, traditionally I would have seen old desktop software, and you have clients clambering around trying to find inventory, third party inventory, to slot in and their pieces don’t really fit in well. But it just seems to be the eco system here is quite unique in that the pieces have to work. Heather:        Yes, absolutely. I think the technology behind the open published API which I’m not pretending to understand exactly, everyone seems to say is like this phenomenal, “Click and it works, and the flow of data is what’s saving us all that time, that automation.” Barry:             Well, the great thing about it is the team in Xero, the developer team, can see that it works. You can’t build an add-on and say it works because they’ll say, “No, it doesn’t. We can see that.” Heather:        And everyone raves about the Xero developer team, so that’s good to know. To ask you a bit more about your business, what activities have been successful for TransferMate in generating leads for your business? Barry:             I suppose typically it’s going through and contacting accountants, letting them know how the service works. We do a little bit of social but ultimately it’s picking up the phone and calling companies. I suppose it’s ultimately getting to talk to clients, getting directly to a client is something we can measure a lot easier than necessarily going through a channel because I suppose we’re talking directly to the client, so we can know if we make X amount of calls today … it might sound like a funny way of doing things but that’s what we find has traditionally worked. But we’re more open to we now have a partner channel where we have the centres in place for the accounting partners to earn additional revenue stream by telling their clients about the service, and in doing so having the clients save money. That’s a more logical way to go for us and it’s something we really, really encourage. Heather:        Do you want to expand on your partner programme? Barry:             Yes, so in effect what we do is, if you’re a partner and you believe you’ve got clients or you may know of companies that make international payments, we provide a unique tracked web form and we simply give it to you to put on your website. If someone stumbles across it, they may not even be your own client, they may be a company down the road or somebody who has come across your website because you perform well in the search engines, as long as they see that link there in the website and they register, automatically we sign up the client and every time the client books payments, there is a referral fee split for the partner, and the partner can track that online in our online system. So the more clients transfer, they simply log in every [one? 00:31:26] and they can see exactly what’s been earned and how active their clients are, referrals are. So you’re effectively encouraging partners to assist in the selling process on your behalf? Barry:             I suppose what I’d liken it to is basically opening the door and letting our flyer in I guess to some degree. If you can imagine we’re in a neighbourhood, and there’s a roundabout in the middle, and there are eight houses around that roundabout, and all the doors are closed but there’s a party happening inside every house, we’re kind of just saying, “Open your door and let us in.” Heather:        Sensational. I’ve not heard it described that way but yes, it’s a warm introduction. Barry:             And to be honest with you, that’s why I guess the relationship that advisers have with clients is naturally a very strong one. It’s one of advice. It’s one of reliance to some degree, and because of that there is trust there that helps us move past, “Who are you,” to “Okay, I understand you’re a good company. What does your service do?” Heather:        Excellent. Yes, absolutely. On the technical side of that, I think you used a different term – referral link, but in terms of the referral link or the affiliate link, is it built in-house or did you use a commissioning programme to provide that? Barry:             We built it all in-house. Heather:        With your smart team of developers, sensational. Barry:             I guess to be honest with you, we’ve been involved in online businesses for I suppose the best part of 10 years. The one thing we’ve seen from day one, our referral programmes were like many which is basically, “Tell us a client and we’ll record all the details and sales and we’ll share Excel sheets.” It just doesn’t work. Partners shouldn’t need to have to second guess or figure out how it works. It should be very, very transparent.                         The way it works is quite simply if a client books a payment, signs up and books a payment today, within five minutes you’ll be able to login and see the details right through our system. That’s exactly the way it should be. Heather:        Excellent. It sounds like another solution you could sell to the cloud community … Barry:             Yes, we’ll have to get on it. Heather:        You could split of and sell. What have you learnt from running your business? Barry:             I suppose I’ve learned that power of the brand. So early days we would go out and we would tell clients about what we do and it shouldn’t really be about, in my opinion … I guess it’s nice to build a big brand out there but it’s also, in terms of scaling up, it’s nice to be able to lean on an existing brand whether that be an adviser brand or a Xero brand. I suppose clients, when they understand the association between Xero, as an example, it opens the door a lot easier. Heather:        Yes. Barry:             I understood very quickly that the cold call is a cold call. The warmer it can be obviously the quicker you can get to where you need to get to. Other than that, I suppose it’s the same principle for any business: you’ve got to say what you do. If you win a client it doesn’t mean they’re going to stay, particularly in the Xero community. If you don’t do what you’ll say you’ll do, it won’t go unnoticed. You have to basically stand by your service and I suppose take care of business. Heather:        I guess that’s actually when we’ve moved from desktop to cloud computing, we’ve also evolved into social media. So whenever something goes wrong, it’s just all across there and these grumpy people have these grumpy complaints about stuff, so you’ve got to be on the ball all the time with it, just monitoring it what’s going on with stuff. Barry:             It’s interesting though, while the Australian banks aren’t necessarily the best, they’re not the worst. Heather:        No. Barry:             We have clients … the French banks are charging up to 12% on foreign exchange to clients. Heather:        Wow. Barry:             I asked one of our clients before to ask their client three questions for a partner and the three questions were: who are you using? Question two was basically how do you find our service now? Three: would you recommend it? When it came to the third question after saying he used a particular bank in France, the answer from the client was, “Not only would I recommend you but when I told my bank the rate you gave me, they told me to use you too.” Heather:        That’s a great case study. Barry:             Yes. Heather:        So I’ve got one final question for you Barry. No, I’ve got two actually. First question is will we be seeing you at Auckland Xerocon? Barry:             I hope so. We have a team in Australia, so I hope to have one of our team in Auckland, absolutely. Heather:        Sensational. I’m planning to go so I’ll see someone there. My final question for you Barry is what advice would you have for your 18 year old self? Barry:             Ah, you hit me with another one. Don’t throw out the Superman figuruines. Heather:        Because you can make a lot of money. Barry:             Put away the Wonder Woman outfit. No, what would my advice for my 18 year old self … my advice would be I suppose from day one I’ve always wanted to be involved and working for myself in one of my own businesses. When I was 18 in school, I didn’t think … I was fully of ideas but I just didn’t think I was ready for it yet. I ducked into a master’s for a year and it gave me a lot of time to sit back and work on concepts and I suppose just ready myself, but like anything else, get out there and if you’re … I suppose it depends what you want to do. I’m from a family who like to sell things and ultimately that’s what we do. We’ve got that in us whether we do it well or not. I suppose it’s in our blood. It’s what we love to do. So do what you love to do and ideally keep on doing it. Heather:        Do you think that the master’s helped you or do you think it was just the time that helped you while you were doing the master’s? Barry:             I think … looking back on it now to be honest with you, I think … it seems to be more logical for someone to take a masters on after you’ve … so they may have gone through college, they may not have but they find themselves in the workforce and they may not be doing things particular right or there are processes they could be doing better. Then when they go to do a masters, they can understand, “Well, that’s what I should be doing.” It kind of puts a framework on top of it. I’m kind of glad. It sounds a bit square to do it so I’m kind of just glad I got it. I knew I had to do it straight away after I finished college because I knew as soon as I got out and started selling, I wasn’t going to want to go back to college. Heather:        Yes, absolutely. Barry:             Our best sales guys did not spend any time in college. I suppose if it’s … I know quite often in terms of candidates looking for work, they’re preoccupied with finding candidates that have college degrees but I suppose there is nothing better than finding somebody with a passion and being likeable. So I don’t really necessarily think that everybody should have one. Heather:        No, the education question I think is evolving very quickly as we speed up. I think concise learning is really important but this extended long learning is interesting, whether it’s still going to be relevant in many years to come. Barry:             I suppose cloud accounting wasn’t taught in college. It was probably learnt in the minds of creative thinkers. Heather:        Absolutely. I’m a professional accountant so I used to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning and study through till 11 o’clock in the evening for like four years while I completed my qualifications while working full time. I’m looking back on it, “Hmm, I’m not sure it was worth it.” But anyway, it’s done, box ticked. Barry:             I guess the accountant is different. Like it’s lovely to be able to have an actual skill, a passport that can say, “You know what, as a matter of fact, this is a tangible skill to have.” It’s a great thing to have. I suppose in the marketing/sales side of it, you have to rely on a little bit of luck, a little bit of ideas and timing, and [crosstalk 00:40:29] I guess. Heather:        Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for speaking to me today Barry. I really appreciate it and I’m sure the listeners will get a lot of information from this session as well as learning more about TransferMate Global Payments and also about how you grew your cloud business globally. Thank you very much. Barry:             Thank you very much for your time. Heather:        Cheers. Barry:             Take care. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Heather:        Thanks a lot Barry. Bye. 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