Latest / Leaders In Payments / Financial Inclusion Series: Paul Dwyer, Co-Founder and CEO of Viamericas | Episode 258

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Financial Inclusion Series: Paul Dwyer, Co-Founder and CEO of Viamericas | Episode 258 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast, where we talk to C-level leaders from across the payments landscape.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: The consumers know and trust the people that are right there in their community, because these stores they're not big box stores that are 20 minute drive away.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: These are mom and pop stores that are right in the communities where the consumers live and work.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: And they do know the proprietors.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: They know the clerks and the clerks and the proprietors know them.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: It goes in both directions.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: That was Paul Dwyer, the co-founder and CEO of the Americas, and he is my special guest on this episode, episode 258 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: I'm your host, greg Myers.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: This is the second episode in our series on financial inclusion.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Every year, we dedicate four or more episodes to highlight what leading companies in our industry are doing to help serve the underserved, the unbanked and the underbanked.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Paul and I talk about the remittance business that Paul co-founded in 2000.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: We discuss the value for both consumers as well as the agencies or retail locations where most of these transactions take place.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: We also talk about what's next for the Americas.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Also, I suggest you listen until the end.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Paul debunks a very common myth about the remittance business or industry.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: You don't want to miss it.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: We've got a great episode ahead, so let's get started.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Hi, paul, thank you for being here and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast and especially this special episode during Financial Inclusion Month.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: So thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: Thanks very much for having me.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: Let's dive right in, if you don't mind.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Tell our audience a little bit about yourself, maybe a little personal and professional background, as well as your role at V Americas.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Certainly, I am the CEO of V Americas.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: I started it together with my brother-in-law and my wife, joe Argalagos, lily Argalagos, in April of 2000 and have been running it ever since.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Before that, I was a lawyer working principally in Latin American financial transactions, and grew up in Mexico and in South Florida.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: I have lived in the Washington DC area since 1990.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, great.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about the company.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: So tell our audience what V Americas does.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: We are a person-to-person money transfer service.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: We work through a network of agencies located across the United States and from those agencies we provide customers a way to send money back home to friends and family.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: We don't do business payments.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: We don't do trade payments.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: These are all family remittances, averaging about $450 a transaction.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: These are people that are working in the US and sending money back home to support their families.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: And what makes what you do different or unique in the marketplace.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Well, we operate, as I said, through a network of agencies.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Those agencies tend to be small, family-owned locations, not big box stores, not national chains, and we provide those agents with a series of tools to help manage their business with the consumers.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: So we offer several different consumer-facing services the remittances, bill payment, mobile phone top-ups, and then for the agencies, we offer services that help them manage their business Significantly.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: A very large check processing business.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: So the check processing gives the agency a way to process checks that they've cashed for the public.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: And checks are still very, very important.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: You hear, oh, they're going away, but in this market they're really not.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: And we view the way that we operate is win, win, win.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: It's a win for the consumer because more places can efficiently and safely cash checks.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: It's a win for the agencies because they can get those checks, get value for them, very, very quickly.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: And it's good for us, for the Americas, because it reduces the cost of collecting cash from all these agencies.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: So that's a big differentiator for us.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Well, let's jump in and talk about the financial inclusion aspect.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: So let's start with the end consumer.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: They walk into one of your smaller mom and pop locations.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: I think you've said you've got roughly 5,000 of those.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: Can you talk about who those end consumers typically are and what's the biggest benefit they get?
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Well, the end consumers typically a latin american immigrant living and working in the united states and they are sending money back home to family in mexico or guatemala or one of the other hey, the countries that we serve beyond latin america, of course for the eighty, and they are looking to get a good exchange rate, pay a low fee and, most importantly, have a service that's safe and reliable and is going to have the money arrive at the payment location minutes after they send it from the location.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: So reliability, speed and efficiency, and in terms of cost and trust, are the factors that are most important, I think, to the senders are they typically walking in with cash or, like you said, are they walking in with the check?
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: how does that usually work?
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: They're typically walking in with cash to do the remit.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Second, also pay with the debit card, and many do, and that surprises people sometimes I, what do you?
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: mean you got a debit card, why aren't they just sending it through the bank?
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: The reality is that banks are not set up to do cross border person the person money transfers and they don't for the most part do the wire transfer just is not efficient and many times on the receive side the recipient doesn't have a bank account and could not receive a wire transfer because there's no place to send it to.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: So the consumer walks in the typically are paying cash or is this with a debit card and separately they may want to cash a check or someone else may need to cash a check and so the checks really serve is a way for the retailer first to provide that service to the consumers Generally at a lower cost than a big national check cash in chain would charge, and for us it's a way to settle with the agent.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: So the check cash doesn't have to be from the same person as the remittance agent has purchased these checks from Whichever clients need to cash a check, and now the agent has checks that they can tender to us to satisfy the outstanding remittance obligations, the money that they owe us for the remittances that they've done.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: So it's a settlement kind of thing.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: So it's not that the same person is walking in and paying for remittance with the check is that the agent offers check cash in there the license check cash and the agent contender those checks to us to settle the money transfer liabilities that they have.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: So it just turns out to be a very efficient kind of net settlement Mechanism where the currency circulates at, the agency comes in for money transfer, goes out for check cash and we can be paid by the agent through the checks that they've collected, with the balance being paid in cash by depositing into one of the many, many banks that we work with.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: When these consumers send the money to these other countries on that receive side, how are they receiving it?
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Is it sometimes bank accounts, but not always?
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: Are there other mechanisms?
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: great question really varies by country and by the consumer, financial history and profile Of that country.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: So, if you take latin america as an example, brazil because of the high inflation that it had back in the eighties, and the reaction to that inflation was that it became very important for individuals to have accounts that they could quickly move money into and out of.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: So Brazil tends to be a very, very highly banked population.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: So remittances into brazil are paid almost exclusively into bank accounts because the penetration of the banking sector in the population is very, very high.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Brazil may be 95% remittances income interpaid out into bank accounts.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: And there's an interesting more recent development with Brazil, a system called PIX, which we can talk about in a minute.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: But just to round out the thought on the difference between the countries, mexico, by contrast, has not had a very high level of banking penetration of the population.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: It has improved over the last five years or so.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: But currently about 30% of incoming remittances are paid out into bank accounts and the balance are paid in cash and transaction is going to be paid in cash.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Of course, the important thing is how close is that payout location to where the recipient is?
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: So it's very important to have a very, very large network of payout locations, places that are reliable and safe and customer service oriented, that people can go and pick up their money.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: So it really varies country by country.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Outside of Latin America, mobile wallets are becoming very prevalent in some places, especially Africa and the Philippines as well, mobile wallets are a significant way that people are receiving money, so it's a combination of those through a bank account, cash payout and mobile wallet.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: Okay, before we leave, talking about the consumer, I've done this series for this is the third year, I believe on financial inclusion and what we talk a lot about is the unbanked, underbanked, the need for them to have a checking account.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: But in your experience, from what I understand, there's a lot of people who don't want a checking account.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: Can you speak to that?
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Well, a checking account is obviously a very useful tool, but in all payments you have counterparty risk.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: There's some risk that the payment that you're receiving is going to be reversed and that manifests in different ways with different types of payments, starting with cash.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Well, there's almost zero counterparty risk with cash.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Once I hand you a $20 bill, we're done.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: I can't magically reach out and pull that back from you.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: You walk away.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: That $20 bill is in your wallet and that's that contrast that with a check.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: If I write you a check, you think you've got $20, you do as long as the check clears but if the check bounces you've lost that $20.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: So for people that don't have a very big financial cushion, they don't have a lot of savings and they can't really absorb that counterparty risk, a checking account can be a very dangerous thing.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: If you take an example of a couple of people that work in the same store.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: They work for the same company, let's say a landscaping company, and they both get a $500 check at the end of the week or $1,000 check at the end of the week.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: One of them deposits it in a checking account because he's heard that that's the right thing to do, and the other one goes to a check cashier and maybe pays 1% to cash that check and they both pay three bills.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: The guy that deposited it into the checking account writes three checks and the guy that cashed it into the check cashier does three bill payment transactions at that check cashier.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: When you stop right there you think, well, the one with the bank account got a much better deal because he deposited his check, it didn't cost him anything and he wrote three checks and that didn't cost him anything, whereas the one that went to the storefront to cash the check and pay the bills, he paid a 1% fee.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: So okay, boy, that you paid $10 on the $1,000 check and then he paid maybe a dollar for three bill payments, or $1.25, something like that, and so he's all in, paid maybe $15.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: So you look at that and you say, well, clearly the one that is banked is ahead of the game.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: But then both checks bounce.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: The landscape company didn't really have the money.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: They were close to the line and the checks bounce.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: The one that went to the check cashier it's not his problem.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Legally maybe there's recourse to him, but practically it's not his problem, it's the check cashier's problem.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: He walked out, he got his money.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: He paid his bills.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: He's done the one that deposited it in the bank.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: It's very much his problem.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: He's going to be charged a fee by the bank he deposited into for the returned item and the three checks he wrote are going to bounce.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: That's going to cause him a world of problems with the three people or entities that he wrote those checks to.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: So checking accounts are a good thing, but the customer has got to have enough financial wherewithal to absorb the counterparty risk that's present in whatever checks he's depositing into that account.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Otherwise it can really turn out to be a very negative thing and we're seeing that with fees that the bank's charge on returned items, the fees that are charged for overdrafts.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Some people very rationally decide that they would rather work in a transactional environment where they pay a fee and understand that there's finality to that.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: They're transferring that counterparty risk, effectively transferring it to someone else.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: Thanks for sharing that.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: That makes a lot of sense.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: Let's turn to the retail partners you mentioned.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: These are typically smaller, mom-and-pop type stores.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: What's the value in it?
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: What's it mean to them as far as having this service available in their stores?
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: The value is twofold.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: First, it provides a reason for people to go to the store, so it generates foot traffic, and there's fee income for the store for providing the service, so they'll earn a commission for each transaction that they are doing.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: So it's both income generator and customer traffic generator.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Okay, and most of these transactions I think you mentioned this are people sending money back home to their home country.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: But what are some of the other use cases that you're seeing?
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: International bill payment is becoming popular, where the sender will send money but to pay a specific obligation, say a light bill or a water bill, and that provides the sender with a little more control over the use of the money that's being received.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: And for us that's pretty much it.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: We do not do any kind of small business payments or any kind of massive disbursements gig economy type disbursements that are also important, but not our bailiwick.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: So are they able to pay those bills while they're there at the mom and pop shop?
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: Is that how it works?
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: It does work that way and it's really interesting.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a level of connectivity that would surprise a lot of people, because to have a good international bill pay service what you need to have is full connectivity between the retail front end, the terminal that's at the agency, say, a place in Topeka, kansas, that is connected real time through our system to the back end of the bill pay provider, and so the customer walks in with a bill or information about a bill that they want to pay, say for an electric company in Mexico, and through our system we'll be able to query exactly how much is due on that bill and do the reverse calculation of exactly how much has to be paid in dollars to satisfy that precise amount of Mexican pesos, real time, so that when the bill is paid there's no over amount or under amount, which is a problem, but it's exactly the right amount that is received and any partial payments that were made or balances that were around from the last building cycle or taken care of.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: So the level of connectivity between the front end of the service and the back end, with the integrations into the bill pay providers, is something that surprises a lot of people when they understand how it works.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and we haven't really talked about that and it's interesting.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: So really, you have a lot of technology that you have had to build to make all those connections.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is surprisingly complex, not just the bill payment but the money transfer portion of the technology.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Take a money transfer transaction.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Everything's very straightforward on the happy path when the customer comes in and wants to send money and has the exact, correct spelling of the recipient's name and everything goes smoothly.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: That technology is fairly straightforward and it used to be just kind of a collect the information, batch it up and transfer it.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Later the frequency of the later became less and less and less, but 20 years ago those transmissions might have been every couple of hours to send that information to the payout partner and the payout partner would then receive that file and stand ready to pay the orders that were in that file.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: That happy path transaction is easy.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: But the more difficult thing is when there's a mistake or when there's a need to modify or reverse the order.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: And now, at that point in that kind of transaction the quality of the connection, the nature of the connection between the money transfer provider in the US and the payer in the received country, is very, very important.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: If it's an old batch and transfer type system, that modification or cancellation could take hours and in the meantime the customer is in limbo.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: They can't get their money back because it can't be refunded until you've confirmed that it's not been paid already.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: They can't replace the transaction with the correct information, so they're just waiting and that's frustrating for the agent, it's frustrating for the customer.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: If the nature of the connection is a more robust API based connection between the money transfer company and the payer, then you've got a real time ability to modify that transaction or to cancel it and replace it, and that can all be done while the customers right there in front of the clerk in the send location in a couple of seconds or minutes.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: So that requires a lot of tech because it means API integrations with every single payer and there's no common standard for that.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: This isn't like the credit card world where there's one standard everybody works to.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: These are all individual connections that are as robust as the individual connection between the payer and the money transfer company is.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Speaking of technology, you also have a mobile app.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: Can you talk about maybe the more digital solutions that you offer and the benefits to that segment of the consumers?
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Certainly so the remits world, the market in the United States.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: You can think of it as divided into three large components.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: One component is the walk in traffic in the retail locations Independent retail locations, the type of locations that we serve.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Another component is in person walk in traffic buddy in different and much larger agent locations.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: So walmart or a grocery store that contracts with a money transfer company has a money service counter.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: So those big box or national retail type of accounts still walk in.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: And then the third, the third sector is digital.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Digital tends to be consumer direct companies that market directly to the end users.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: So they're advertising, convincing users to download an app and send money From the app.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Of course, in order to send money from an app you have to have the money in some digital form to begin with.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: So you either have to have a bank account, you have to have some remote way to pay.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: You could do it with a prepaid card with a general purpose reloadable card, but the fees involved in that between loading the card and then paying for the remittance you Can't be really high.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: We do have a mobile app.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: We offer that mobile app anybody that wants to use it.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: We get a pretty good uptake on it, but we think that the experience for the customer going into the agency and having that trusted person across the counter that they can go to if they have a problem they got Recourse with our customers tell us that that's very, very important to them.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: So our approach to digital is to respect the agent and to not try to disintermediate the agent by going directly to the consumer and marketing that we do have the app, but it's not something that we're pushing very hard because we don't want the agents to feel that we are trying to replace them.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: We are working on and will launch shortly, a different incarnation of digital that is very connected to the agent, where the agent will, we believe, have a very strong incentive to promote the digital app themselves.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: For the consumer it'll be exactly the same as walking in To the agency and for the agency it'll be exactly the same as if the consumer had walked in, and we think that that's going to be a game changer in digital.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: The other leg of digital for us is remittance is a service where we offer Banks that are outside of the United States the ability to offer a remittance service to their customers that are in the United States.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: For example, we have several of the largest banks in India as clients and they use our platform.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: We got via connect to offer remittances service to their non resident Indian consumers that are living in the United States.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: So in that model we're providing the technology, the licensing, the compliance, the funds collection, the risk management.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: They are providing the customer base.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: They got all these customers that they already have a relationship with, that have an account in India and wanna send money back home and we're giving them a way to do that without having to go and get Fifty state licenses and banking relationships with all the banks necessary to handle the transactions and the risk management.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Plaid integrations that's the other leg of digital for us is a consumer facing and the remittances service business facing.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Both of them, we think, have a very strong promise.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: I want to connect some dots because I think this is really important and you've said it.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: But early on you said one of the value for this whole thing is trust.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: And then we talk about walking into a retail location.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: These consumers know that person across the counter and they've seen each other on a weekly basis for months, years or whatever.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: So I think there's something to that whole trust aspect of walking into an actual retail location.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, do you agree with that?
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's in both directions.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: The consumers know and trust the people that they're right there in their community because these stores they're not big box stores that are twenty minute drive away.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: These are mom and pop stores that are right in the communities where the consumers live and work.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: And they do know the proprietors.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: They know the clerks and the clerks and the proprietors know that it goes in both directions.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: We think that that's a very, very important relationship that should be fostered and should be encouraged.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: And the advocacy role that the agents play when there is an issue is very important.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: When we have an agent that is a substantial either, even if they're not a big agent but let's say, an agent is doing a thousand transactions a month with us, that's an important account.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: If there's an issue with one of those transactions and that agent Contact us, from our perspective, this is an agency that represents a thousand customers.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: The power of that communication is intense.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: Contrast that with somebody who's dealing with a mobile app and they have an issue, the money stuck somewhere and they're trying to navigate the customer service and the chat bot that that app has on the other side is very different.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: So not just the trust but the advocacy that the agencies can provide to quickly resolve any issues that arise are both very, very important.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: So what's next for the Americas and where do you see the market going and are you going to continue to help these consumers?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: We think that digital is important from a convenience point of view and, as I mentioned, we're preparing to offer a digital solution that we think will be respectful of the agents role and we're looking at an active in additional receive markets.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: I mentioned the Philippines.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: We have an office in manila that is back office for our operations in Asia and we've seen that market really grow and now the south asian markets are really growing for us india, napaul, bangladesh, pakistan so we see a lot of opportunity in serving those consumers in the united states as well and in africa we're seeing substantial growth in the markets that we serve in africa work.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: We're currently in about fifteen markets.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: A lot more work to do there to add the additional receive locations.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: Beyond that, we're expanding into originations send transactions outside of the united states.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: So we have been licensed in canada for some time and we're getting that business up to scale and we're looking at starting operations in europe To facilitate transactions from europe initially to north africa and to latin america, but beyond that to markets that are important in europe is a very interesting business in the sense that every country is unique in terms of what the destination corridors are.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: Reminces are the lifeline of many, many, many families, billions of people really live on the money that is being provided by their family members that are living and working in another country.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: This is the human level of globalization.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: You have people my great and my great many times to More than another country and send money back home, and we are the pipeline that does that.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: So we see lots and lots of opportunity, both for adjacent products in the united states, products and services for the consumer and for the agencies, and for Additional geographies to serve, both on the receive side and on the sense.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: Paul, we've covered a lot of ground so far.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up the show?
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: I'd like to debunk the notion that is often the initial reaction that people have the here reminces and they think that should be free and any kind of fees that are charged are abusive and people are just tricking consumers and charging them too much.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: That's just nonsense, is just not the reality of the market.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: This is an extremely competitive market With extremely good exchange rates, low fees.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: You'll do better sending money from a agency in the united states, say, down to mexico, and picking it up in person in mexico.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: You'll end up with more pesos for a given amount of dollars, and you will If you use your visa card.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: By the time you get the exchange rate visa applies plus the foreign transaction fee that the bank applies.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: People think that reminces are expensive.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: That is something that I'd really like to invite anybody who's you know a careful student of the marketplace to dig into and question, because it really is just kind of a knee jerk reaction that people have that is not supported by the evidence.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: Great, I'm glad you shared that, paul.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: I appreciate your invitation and I hope the information I've been able to provide is helpful and very much appreciate what you do with your podcast.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: So thank you very much for having me.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: Absolutely until all your listeners out there.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us this week on the leaders in payments podcast.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Make sure you visit our website at leaders in payments dot com where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes.
• 28:16
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