Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 20 - The Biggest Race in Payments: Embedded Payments with Jack Mangnall, Co-Founder @ Shape Technologies

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Ep. 20 - The Biggest Race in Payments: Embedded Payments with Jack Mangnall, Co-Founder @ Shape Technologies · The Payments Shed

• 0:02
  Welcome to the Payment Shed Podcast, the weekly podcast that
• 0:05
  dives into the big topics, trends and people shaping the
• 0:08
  worlds of payments, fintech and business leadership with your
• 0:11
  two Co hosts, myself Grant Evans and Justin Hannah.
• 0:16
  Today we're joined by Jack Mangal, Co founder of Shape
• 0:20
  Technologies. Jack, welcome to The Payment
• 0:22
  Shed. Can you introduce yourself
• 0:24
  please? Hi, I'm Jack Mangal, Co founder
• 0:26
  of Shape Technologies. I've worked in payments for
• 0:28
  about 5 years now. Always focus on helping Isvs,
• 0:32
  vertical focus, SAS companies, call them what you like, create
• 0:35
  and deliver their payment strategies.
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  Whether that's working through payment gateway companies, open
• 0:39
  banking providers, that's always where I focused.
• 0:42
  Clearly had the pleasure of working with you guys at
• 0:44
  acquired.com for just about a year, which was great.
• 0:46
  Still stand by the fact that it's the best job I ever had.
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  It was a really good team of people.
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  It was good. But we founded SHAPE 2 years ago
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  with a mission to get payments businesses to market quicker.
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  And I'm sure I'll get some opportunities to tell you more
• 0:59
  about SHAPE today. OK, very good.
• 1:01
  Thanks for that intro. And I think that kind of ties in
• 1:04
  nicely to the topic we've got today, which is the biggest race
• 1:08
  in payments, embedded payments. Can you just maybe delve into a
• 1:12
  little bit about what you've built at shape and and how that
• 1:15
  kind of lines up with the embedded payments ecosystem?
• 1:18
  Yeah, we'd love to. It's a great question.
• 1:19
  So we shape our mission was to build a payments platform as a
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  service which can get different types of payments businesses to
• 1:25
  market much quicker. So when we started two years
• 1:29
  ago, it was all about pay facts. So the likes of Visa and
• 1:32
  MasterCard, we're spending lots of money, time and energy
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  telling everyone in UK and Europe that the pay fat model
• 1:38
  was going to be the next wave of innovation in in this market.
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  Because they've seen what was happening in the United States
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  and would pay FAC and pay fax as a service.
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  Some great companies doing awesome things.
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  But if you Fast forward to Fast forward to today, we've not seen
• 1:52
  that emergence of pay fax due to regulatory challenges.
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  Fragmented market in Europe is quite hard to do right And it's
• 2:01
  clearly some big product requirements that we're trying
• 2:03
  to sell. But because we've not seen that
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  wave of pay facts, we've seen more dynamic use cases, devices
• 2:08
  using parts of our platform and Isvs.
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  But the way we position ourselves to the pure tech play
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  in the market is a technical ally to the more traditional
• 2:17
  acquirers that are probably struggling to compete with the
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  likes of Stride, the likes of Adian.
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  So we really wanted to help those acquirers go to market.
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  But it became clear to us very early in my journey, the race in
• 2:28
  Europe wasn't really necessarily the pay FAC race.
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  That was just one piece of the puzzle.
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  The race is to deliver embedded payments.
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  But when you actually look at companies that are trying to
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  deliver embedded payments, we're not really seeing great progress
• 2:42
  being made in our opinion because we spend a lot of time.
• 2:44
  So we set out to solve the embedded payments challenge,
• 2:48
  which we are now doing. So we have a standalone platform
• 2:52
  today which enables A PSP to have their own dedicated
• 2:55
  platform, but we're now developing the ability to drop
• 2:58
  in our platform into software natively, which we can talk
• 3:00
  about later. It's quite interesting that I
• 3:02
  think from my time selling acquiring, when people talk
• 3:08
  about RPF, it's always been, oh, it has to be a minimum turnover
• 3:10
  of 250 million to be to be a pay FAC.
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  And people start realizing very quickly there's not that many
• 3:16
  businesses that just going to start processing 250 million.
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  That thresholds then come down and down and down to to a point
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  where people are just desperate for anyone to be a pay FAC.
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  Please come on, be a pay for. I'm going to be a resell of our
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  services, which is not as easy as what what you mentioned
• 3:30
  before as what people think it's going to be.
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  No, just just get in. If you look at the UK market,
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  the capital that you need to put to one side just become what, an
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  authorized payment institution, something like 350K with the
• 3:40
  bonds and things you need to put up.
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  So you need to be really committed and you need to have a
• 3:45
  merchant base in place already. I'd say before you go and become
• 3:49
  a pay fax, starting from a standing start would be
• 3:51
  challenging. So graduating from referrer to
• 3:53
  ISO to pay FAQ, It's a nice transition, but just starting
• 3:57
  from the standing star it's really hard to do.
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  Can we blame some high risk providers for damaging the pay
• 4:02
  FAQ model because they're passporting on these acquiring
• 4:05
  licenses? Yeah, just hammering high risk
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  through it, right? So our take on that is when you
• 4:09
  go and talk to acquirers about pay facts, they absolutely want
• 4:13
  to work with pay facts. They see the opportunity, but
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  sometimes they're afraid to support a new pay FAQ because
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  like we need the visibility. Sometimes they only want to work
• 4:21
  in really lower sectors because it's just so afraid of getting
• 4:24
  burned because they have been burned in the past by high risk
• 4:27
  providers. But again, all those challenges
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  are solvable. You don't have to lose
• 4:31
  visibility of what you're processing just because you're
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  working with pay facts. But it's a good point.
• 4:36
  And how would you say that embedded payment model differs
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  from a more traditional payment integration?
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  Is it kind of leaning into the fact it's more of AB to B?
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  Approach, well, my take on like a traditional payment
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  integration from my I've done it earlier on in my career is a
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  software company can embed a payment gateway like a check out
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  page. And so whether it's AB to B
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  space B to C, they are literally serving a payment page and
• 5:00
  trying to make it a little bit easier for merchants to set
• 5:03
  payments. That for me is the most like
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  simple process. But what that means is then the
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  merchants have other interfaces where they need to go and manage
• 5:11
  their business from a payments point of view.
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  They might have a banking provider, they might have a
• 5:15
  payment gateway and a bunch of other stuff.
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  Embedded payments for me means actually embedding the full
• 5:20
  payment stack into your software to make your merchants life
• 5:23
  easier. So not just having a payment
• 5:25
  gateway, but serving the transaction data table with the
• 5:27
  ability to manage transactions, the ability to maybe manage
• 5:32
  chargebacks, the whole onboarding, Jenny.
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  So it's actually taking everything that you'd expect to
• 5:36
  see in a payments platform, but serving it natively in your
• 5:40
  software so that the merchants don't really know what's
• 5:43
  happening. You know, they're just seeing
• 5:45
  payments as as part of that software.
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  B to B to B to B to C. Yeah, yeah.
• 5:49
  So you, you mentioned around the benefits, what's the challenges
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  of trying to because not many players are doing it today,
• 5:55
  right? Yeah, that's true.
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  I think just going back to the benefits there, if that's OK,
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  because I think it's important when you look at the successes
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  that are being done, I think it's Isvs that have really taken
• 6:07
  on that technical burden themselves.
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  So Shopify, no secret and there's loads of public
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  information on them in the Financial Times, it's an article
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  that says something like 60% of their total revenue comes from
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  processing payments. Toast, another example, I think
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  something like 80% of their revenue comes from financial
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  services. And then when you look at JP
• 6:27
  Morgan did the sector spotlight on embedded payments and they
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  say that any vertical focus SAS company has the opportunity to
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  convert 50% of their total revenue from payment processing.
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  So if you're a software company doing like £1,000,000 today, you
• 6:43
  could be leaving £500 on the table from not embedding
• 6:45
  payments. So the opportunity is huge.
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  And yes, there's challenges, but if you're the software company,
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  you can be stickier just by offering payments to use
• 6:53
  customers and then the benefits to the merchants.
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  I think we've kind of already spoken about those, but having
• 6:57
  everything in one place, getting easy to get set up.
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  Ultimately you just want to, when you're starting a new
• 7:03
  business, a small business, say if you're opening a gym, the
• 7:06
  first, one of the first things you're going to do other than
• 7:08
  buying the leasing the premises is getting the software to run
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  your gym to manage your customers.
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  The last thing you think about is processing payments because
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  outside of our industry, people don't really care about
• 7:18
  payments. That just needs to work.
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  So when you're when you're signing up for your software, if
• 7:23
  it just comes with payments and bill, you haven't got to go
• 7:25
  elsewhere to find a provider. It's just giving small
• 7:28
  businesses a much better experience.
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  Also removes that element probably of that was the point
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  where you know, we've seen this over the years working with
• 7:35
  different acquirers, PSPS, whatever where you're absolutely
• 7:38
  right. Like payments does become that
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  after four, it's it's suddenly, oh crap, we've forgotten
• 7:43
  payments, which is pretty cool to running our business, right?
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  And then there would have been a process of going and getting
• 7:48
  quotes, speaking to lots of different providers.
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  Then you're doing an independent gateway integration.
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  Potentially you need a web developer for that.
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  If you don't have the in house resource, the timing becomes
• 7:58
  stressful because it's become an after thought and then you're
• 8:00
  panicking out. Or we can be able to actually
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  take payments. These SAS platforms, these Isvs
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  have seized on an opportunity at that moment to say you don't
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  need to worry about that. You know, then you get into that
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  conversation with our merchant of record where there's even
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  less heavy lifting potentially, although the platform takes the
• 8:15
  liability, right. But they can set someone live
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  with payments pretty much instantly because they've got
• 8:19
  the active integration embedded into their software.
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  And with the embedded payment model, even like you say, you
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  can still get a merchant ID generally very, very quickly
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  these days, even without being a pay fact.
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  So the question in there ultimately is that has driven a
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  higher price point probably for payments for the end merchant
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  for these SAS providers that you see in that trend.
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  Absolutely. But I think it's a good thing in
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  that when you're in payments, it always feels like in certain
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  sectors that can be a real race to the bottom, like you just
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  competing on price all the time. But actually merchants, if
• 8:51
  they're getting a good experience, getting a good
• 8:53
  service, a good solution, they're quite happy to pay a
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  premium. Yes, it might not need to be
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  1.5%, it could be maybe 1% or something.
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  So I think one of our missions is making great technology
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  available to more payment service providers so they can go
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  to market with no compelling solutions, which was seen maybe
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  fairer pricing, but it definitely doesn't need to be a
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  race to the bottom. Because if I'm signing up for
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  software, if you're taking a fee for every pound that I process
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  over euro dollar probably don't mind that so much.
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  So they're not looking at it as a metric.
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  And I also think if you couldn't commercialize payments as a
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  software company gives you some really nice plays that you can
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  use when you go to market. So depending on what your
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  mission is, the software company, if you just want to
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  scale on mass your software, why not gives the software a for
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  free as long as they're taking your payment processing
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  solution, let them sign up for your software for nothing a
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  month. It's quite interesting the the,
• 9:46
  the payments interest we see as a commodity a lot of the time
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  because you're just selling gateway and acquiring and all of
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  a sudden that same merchant is then using five other providers
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  for five other functionalities of their business.
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  And that you mentioned embedded payments, trying to bring it all
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  together and actually the cost of every single one of these
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  different services you're using may seem expensive when you say
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  off the bat, but actually you'll have one product to do
• 10:13
  everything for you. And I think when you talk about
• 10:17
  Shopify in particular with this, what have they got so right with
• 10:22
  embedded payments? Why are they the market leader?
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  From my point of view, they've done a lot of heavy lifting
• 10:28
  themselves. So the Isvs are software
• 10:30
  companies that have really won here.
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  They've become payments companies.
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  They've hired the right expertise.
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  Because when I see smaller mid sized Isvs, they might think to
• 10:39
  hire maybe a commercial person, someone like myself, before
• 10:42
  starting shape right to go and help them win customers, to win
• 10:46
  merchants, to convert them onto ISO models and things.
• 10:48
  But if you actually want to start building into your
• 10:50
  product, need to hire product people, tech people, maybe risk
• 10:53
  people. And so you need to have a lot of
• 10:55
  money to invest to get the right people in.
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  And you need to be able to sweat that out for a year or two or
• 11:00
  three years maybe to make it successful.
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  So big companies can do that, Like big Isvs are able to do
• 11:06
  this. But when you're medium small
• 11:09
  Isvs, you still have the opportunity, but you probably
• 11:12
  can't go and hire five people to make this work.
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  You kind of need to be able to take some steps to make it
• 11:17
  possible. So there's lots of different
• 11:19
  commercial models that can wrap around embedded payments, which
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  I think is sometimes what Isvs get a little bit hung up on.
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  They think they need to go the whole hog when actually they
• 11:28
  could just dip their toe and start making some money from it
• 11:31
  through working through some different commercial models.
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  So I think mid size Isvs don't want to build loads of tech,
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  they just want a way to simply embed payments and get going.
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  But PSPS aren't really doing enough to meet them in the
• 11:45
  middle. So if I can just keep rolling
• 11:48
  with this, because we, we've seen lots of acquires, if they
• 11:51
  got really legacy platforms, they might not even have APIs to
• 11:54
  do merchant onboarding. You spoke about it earlier.
• 11:56
  Yes, it's becoming more and more common, but there are still like
• 11:58
  paper based application forms for some acquirers, which 2025
• 12:02
  that just shouldn't be the thing, right?
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  But what acquires of race to do is provide a suite of APIs.
• 12:08
  And we know this first hand, right?
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  So an ISV might be happy to integrate a checkout page, but
• 12:14
  when you say to them, here's an onboarding API, they still need
• 12:16
  somewhere to collect the data from the applicants and then
• 12:19
  they still need to submit it and get the response back.
• 12:21
  How's that MID somewhere? And then when you say to them,
• 12:24
  what about the transaction data? Where's that going to sit in
• 12:26
  your software? Here's an API to collect all the
• 12:28
  information, but you still need to do a lot of heavy lifting
• 12:30
  even if there's a suite of API's.
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  So Isvs aren't willing to go that whole way of embedding
• 12:37
  everything. You need to have a full stack
• 12:39
  payment solution. That's how we see.
• 12:41
  It and how do you handle that? I mean, you've obviously gone
• 12:42
  from selling to merchants and platforms to selling very be to
• 12:46
  be the other way to acquire as to PSPS and you, you're almost
• 12:51
  asking them a difficult question because you're, you're leading
• 12:53
  to to a degree with your APIs aren't very good.
• 12:56
  All the stuff that sits around them isn't, isn't very strong,
• 12:59
  right? We're here to help you solve
• 13:00
  that problem. Starting with a, a slight
• 13:03
  criticism is a difficult sales pitch, right?
• 13:05
  How do you navigate that? Got to find the right people,
• 13:08
  got to find the right people. So we've been really fortunate
• 13:11
  to get some real key stakeholders.
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  And then you just hang on to move all your might and make
• 13:16
  sure they don't leave that company.
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  Or if they leave, you follow them because it's it all.
• 13:20
  It takes a few people to really get it to understand it and be
• 13:22
  open to the fact that maybe they're not capable of building
• 13:26
  or not capable, but they're just busy, aren't they?
• 13:28
  If you're a big acquirer, just keeping everything up and
• 13:31
  running is a big task to create new innovation is actually
• 13:36
  really hard to sometimes having an external technical partner,
• 13:39
  someone like Shape can really help them pivot.
• 13:42
  We do get the objections, you know, we just want to they'll,
• 13:45
  they'll take a look at our platform, think we'll just go
• 13:47
  and build that. Six months later they come back.
• 13:51
  So you just kind of have to run that course, show them what they
• 13:53
  could have, let them go and try and work out how to build it,
• 13:56
  run an RFP maybe. And then they come back and say,
• 13:59
  actually, yeah, that's quite hard to do, Cambridge AS.
• 14:01
  Well versus buy debate. All the time.
• 14:04
  Every day. But but another way to look at
• 14:07
  this, you know, you've got when you do in your sales, which
• 14:09
  Justin, you talk a lot about in all your content, which is great
• 14:12
  by the way, you have chief product officers, chief
• 14:15
  technology officers, founders, chief revenue officers, They're
• 14:18
  all really important in the shape cell.
• 14:21
  You need all of them to buy into how shape can help that acquire
• 14:25
  a win, but the one thing that seems to be popping up all the
• 14:28
  time is that acquirers already decided that they want to be
• 14:31
  winning embedded payments and we can help that acquirer winning
• 14:34
  embedded payments through direct to market Isos pay facts
• 14:37
  referred any commercial more than they want to support, we
• 14:39
  can help them with. So really, as long as we get in
• 14:42
  the door once they see our platform, it's quite an easy
• 14:45
  conversation to have. So this isn't meant to be too
• 14:48
  much. For find out, one thing I've
• 14:49
  I've definitely seen obviously from a direct sales perspective
• 14:52
  is I'm speaking to more and more businesses that are now
• 14:55
  utilizing their platforms that they use from CRM perspective
• 14:59
  because they've started to monetize payments.
• 15:02
  We've probably flipped delivery and said, I now feel like I'm
• 15:05
  trying to sell to embedded platforms even though it
• 15:09
  normally goes directly to the merchant because there's
• 15:12
  probably more reliance for some businesses on their CRM platform
• 15:16
  than there is on their payments provider.
• 15:18
  So actually our monitors having to change great for Grant, not
• 15:21
  so good for direct sales is you're now trying to convince
• 15:25
  these platforms who probably aren't monetizing payments that
• 15:27
  much that they should be monetizing payments.
• 15:30
  Web development agencies, the key place for this, right,
• 15:34
  They're building businesses, websites.
• 15:36
  I've not even thought actually I could go and speak to a payment
• 15:39
  supporter here. They're just integrating to A or
• 15:40
  B and then moving on with it. I would call them like the new
• 15:44
  age gatekeepers of of who have called them the new age
• 15:47
  gatekeepers of payments. And I did work in direct sales
• 15:51
  team for a long time. Not sure I'd want to go back
• 15:54
  into that world at the moment. And that's not just because I
• 15:56
  work in partnerships, it's because I've seen that
• 15:59
  evolution. You talk about Jim SAS, but you
• 16:01
  can apply this to so many SAS verticals where now these
• 16:05
  platforms are that may be starting as an independent sales
• 16:09
  organization or as an ISO. They get a bit frustrated with
• 16:12
  that clunky onboarding process that you talk about and you
• 16:15
  think, well, let's take this to the next level with a fully
• 16:17
  embedded solution. And when you get to that stage
• 16:21
  as a payments company selling direct to merchant, you now have
• 16:25
  a very, very hard line gatekeeper to that end customer.
• 16:29
  Because if I'm grant the BD on the road back in the day and I
• 16:33
  go and knock on that gym's door, the first thing they're going to
• 16:36
  say is, hey, you're going to need to speak to our gym
• 16:38
  platform because all of our payments run through that.
• 16:41
  And that narrative is kind of trickling across lots and lots
• 16:44
  of different SAS verticals at the moment.
• 16:45
  I don't think you need to worry too much, Justin, that the
• 16:48
  direct sales function, like we've done this before together.
• 16:51
  The bigger businesses want that direct support.
• 16:53
  They need advice, they need consultancy, they need to be
• 16:55
  steered, and they probably want recommendations on what software
• 16:58
  to use, which you can help them with.
• 17:00
  But when you're trying to target thousands of small businesses,
• 17:03
  no one's going to go around and see every single business.
• 17:06
  You find the software that they're using and work with that
• 17:08
  software company to deploy the right solution for thousands of
• 17:11
  small businesses. I feel like when I go and speak
• 17:13
  to merchants, some of them want to try and build themselves, but
• 17:18
  it's a similar, it's a similar challenge to what you'll
• 17:20
  probably have. When you're saying depends what
• 17:21
  is is, well, it's working, not great, it's working.
• 17:26
  And for us to now build on the side, it's going to cost us a
• 17:28
  lot of money and a lot of time. Yeah, I think it depends on the
• 17:31
  vertical and the use case. Like when I'm thinking embedded
• 17:34
  payments, my mind goes to leisure centres, gym software,
• 17:38
  software to run your vet software to run your pharmacy,
• 17:41
  things like that, where embedding payments into their
• 17:44
  software is the key. When you're looking at a bigger
• 17:47
  business, they probably, if they're really sizable business,
• 17:50
  they're probably using multiple software platforms to run their
• 17:53
  business out there. And so I think then yes, they
• 17:55
  might need to do some building of their own to bring everything
• 17:58
  that they're doing together. Where we're trying to solve is
• 18:00
  that vertical software platform that's got thousands of
• 18:03
  businesses using their software, but they always want to take
• 18:06
  payments for it as well. Does that fall into the the
• 18:09
  buzzword of Omni channel as well when it comes to the platforms
• 18:13
  they're using? Yeah, I hate buzzwords.
• 18:15
  Come on to that later. But yeah, Omni channel, I think
• 18:19
  you have to be offered Omni channel.
• 18:20
  I don't think if you're looking to support small businesses,
• 18:23
  very, very few are doing just bricks and mortar or just
• 18:26
  online. I think you need to be able to
• 18:28
  offer both if you want to go on to market en masse and that
• 18:31
  would. Definitely benefit from that,
• 18:34
  right? Because you go in store, you're
• 18:35
  paying your your insurance excess and then you're getting a
• 18:38
  link to pick up the tablets and you're going online to pay for
• 18:41
  your appointment. And actually that must be a real
• 18:43
  headache for a finance operations department when
• 18:46
  you've got 1 customer that within three days is paid 3
• 18:49
  different channels of of payment.
• 18:50
  So being able to have a platform to bring it all in.
• 18:54
  Yeah, to reconcile that is an absolute mission.
• 18:56
  Yeah. And they quite often, they don't
• 18:58
  actually know what money they've got.
• 19:00
  My partner's got her own hypnotic business.
• 19:03
  Small thing, but she does really well.
• 19:05
  Shouldn't say anything bad about her here, right?
• 19:08
  But honestly, she works with, but I won't name them a payments
• 19:12
  company and they're really good, one of the best at what they do.
• 19:14
  But she actually doesn't know what money she's got coming in
• 19:16
  and when because she just finds it quite hard to track
• 19:19
  sometimes. And I think offering small
• 19:21
  businesses that transparency is actually really key.
• 19:24
  And I think it's quite hard to find in in payments.
• 19:27
  There's a little bit of a, you know, I will say laziness to it
• 19:30
  in the sense that you create this all singing, all dancing
• 19:33
  embedded solution. And then you maybe say, oh,
• 19:36
  well, 10% of our throughputs on point of sale, but that 10% for
• 19:40
  the finance team or whoever's, you know, responsible for
• 19:43
  reconciling. It's a real pain in the ass to
• 19:44
  be honest, because you can see it in dentist or go to the
• 19:47
  dentist. It's a standalone device.
• 19:49
  They put it out and like that reception person is that having
• 19:52
  to go into a system to confirm the payments being made.
• 19:54
  But then how does that all flow back to the finance team if
• 19:58
  you're going to integrate APSP and go down that embedded route?
• 20:03
  You then probably unfortunately have to go and get accredited
• 20:06
  with a specific terminal range from whichever manufacturer you
• 20:09
  decide to to go into that process with.
• 20:12
  The acquirer has to then approve your accreditation.
• 20:15
  Like you start having those conversations.
• 20:17
  I understand sometimes why an ISV is then like let's just do
• 20:20
  ECOM. It's quicker, it's easy, it's
• 20:22
  fast for it to market. It is an easier place to start.
• 20:24
  Yeah, sure. But then they may never get
• 20:26
  round to the the POS side. That's the danger, yeah.
• 20:29
  But I think if you're, if you're outsourcing a lot of the product
• 20:33
  build, then it's easier to say yes and go in steps.
• 20:35
  If you're having to burden your own tech team building onto your
• 20:39
  own road map, then there those slippages definitely happen.
• 20:42
  Yeah, OK. And so we, we talk about, you
• 20:46
  know, embedded payments being such a big win, there are Isvs
• 20:52
  that have still stayed within that ISO sort of bucket if you
• 20:56
  like. What's keeping them on the
• 20:58
  fence? Is it development resource?
• 21:00
  Is it not having companies like you that they can come by from
• 21:03
  and not enough in the market? Like why are they still stuck in
• 21:06
  that position? I think there's lots of
• 21:09
  different reasons for all these different companies.
• 21:11
  My, my biggest thing would be the, the product side.
• 21:15
  So showing an ISV, a bunch of APIs that they've got to go and
• 21:18
  work with doesn't really do enough.
• 21:20
  I think PSPS need to go further. They need to kind of meet these
• 21:23
  software companies halfway. So one thing that we've now done
• 21:27
  with our platform for instance, which other companies are
• 21:30
  welcome to do as well. We've taken our platform which
• 21:33
  is fully configurable, got loads of automation, all this good
• 21:36
  stuff that we spent a couple of years building, which is that
• 21:38
  standalone platform. And yes, there's AP is to
• 21:42
  integrate with, but we've now created or due to really soon
• 21:46
  embeddable web components. So any part of the shape
• 21:48
  platform in three really short steps, like copying a script in,
• 21:52
  dragging it. I'm not a tech guy by the way,
• 21:54
  but they can literally just drag in one line of code into their
• 21:57
  software and have any element of the shape platform appear in
• 22:00
  their software is like a native solution.
• 22:02
  So if you want to just drop, drag and drop a transaction
• 22:05
  table into your software, it's really simple to do so.
• 22:08
  We can enable software companies working with any PSP.
• 22:12
  If the PSP is working with shape to embed proper chunks of
• 22:15
  payments capability into their software in moments.
• 22:18
  They don't have to like plan it into a road map and like spend
• 22:22
  the next six months building out a payments proposition.
• 22:24
  Just drag and drop this stuff in.
• 22:26
  So I think payments companies need to be going further to meet
• 22:30
  the ISPs from a product side, you guys will have some good
• 22:33
  take on this. I think ISPs see payments as
• 22:36
  like a huge unknown. Like what does it even mean?
• 22:40
  Like do I need to get regulated PCI?
• 22:43
  Like what level of PCI do I need to get to?
• 22:45
  That comes out all the time when we're talking to software
• 22:47
  companies. Like it's nowhere near as scary
• 22:49
  as what these guys think it is. But that I think, I don't know
• 22:53
  if there's scaremongering going on, but it definitely is the
• 22:55
  case that there's a huge risk, a perceived risk, which actually
• 22:59
  isn't there. And if you work out how heavy
• 23:02
  and I see wants to go with payments, you can work out the
• 23:05
  right commercial model that's right for them.
• 23:06
  The product, product requirements can be quite
• 23:08
  similar in terms of like onboarding A merchant and
• 23:11
  whether you're operating on a merchant record model, Payfal
• 23:14
  model. Also, you can still onboard
• 23:16
  merchants quite quickly. It's just where that decision
• 23:18
  logic, the automation lies. So I think you just need to
• 23:22
  spend time educating Isvs on the fact that the risk isn't as big
• 23:27
  as you may think it is. I think the merchant record, but
• 23:29
  it's probably, you know, we've seen definitely a rise in the
• 23:33
  number of merchant of records that we're seeing in market.
• 23:37
  And they use a dynamic descriptor to avoid chargebacks.
• 23:40
  So you have to have their name and then they'll put some
• 23:43
  abbreviated name of either of themselves or the end customer
• 23:46
  that they're processing for on that statement descriptor.
• 23:48
  So that me buying my pair of trainers still thinks I'm buying
• 23:52
  them from the trainer retailer, not the merchant record for
• 23:54
  filling that. That's quite old school.
• 23:55
  Though, isn't it? It's quite old school, this
• 23:57
  whole, although people raise that dynamic descriptors is is
• 24:01
  really modern. It's actually really simple
• 24:03
  things that we're having to try and tell a customer.
• 24:07
  On your bank statements, it's going to say you brought your
• 24:09
  trains from 123 limited. You can only have 16 to 21
• 24:12
  digits. Like when you think how far
• 24:14
  payments has come and modernized, there's still so
• 24:17
  many issues when it comes to dynamic descriptors.
• 24:21
  There's something we can do. So actually you could have more
• 24:23
  than 16 digits. Yeah, I think some acquirers
• 24:27
  will allow you have up to 25 that includes your space.
• 24:33
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• 24:40
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• 24:52
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• 24:55
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• 24:58
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• 25:02
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  You really won't regret it. You know all that.
• 25:07
  So it's limited when you've got to get 2 business names in
• 25:10
  there. It's definitely restrictive.
• 25:11
  But I think the other thing for me I'll mention a record is the
• 25:15
  understanding of taking on that chargeback exposure, right?
• 25:17
  You are responsible as the merchant of record or you can
• 25:20
  call it Payfat light. Some would probably turn
• 25:22
  merchant a record even to be a version of Payfat light these
• 25:25
  days. But you're taking on a huge
• 25:27
  amount of liability if you're merchant of record and you scale
• 25:29
  so you know from 10s of customers to hundreds or
• 25:32
  thousands, your potential liability, but also from an
• 25:35
  acquirer supporting you as a merchant of record, they are
• 25:39
  taking on innate risk as well because they don't necessarily
• 25:42
  know again, who your end customers are.
• 25:44
  So it's kind of a weird breakout segment of payments merchant
• 25:48
  record and maybe it probably needs more eyes on it, But I
• 25:51
  like what's your what's your view on that as a kind of
• 25:53
  interim product? Yeah.
• 25:54
  Not to go too heavy on it, but the way you finish that needs
• 25:57
  more eyes on it. I definitely think the merchant
• 26:00
  record model needs a closer look.
• 26:03
  I think we see companies doing it where maybe they shouldn't
• 26:05
  always be doing it. I think because becoming an
• 26:09
  authorized payment institution, pay fact if you like in UK and
• 26:13
  European markets is a significant challenge.
• 26:16
  People are seeing Mor as a shortcut to doing that and it's
• 26:19
  kind of giving them a light touch.
• 26:20
  Pay fact light if you like, but actually people are maybe not
• 26:25
  always doing it the right way. To some of these are slipping
• 26:28
  through risk and. Compliance.
• 26:30
  I think so. Mass merchant of record piece.
• 26:32
  Yeah, I don't want to my cause on the headlines, but we speak
• 26:35
  to lots of different consultants and there's so many merchant of
• 26:38
  record models in marketplace and things like that now where
• 26:41
  probably shouldn't be. It should be taking, people
• 26:43
  should be taking a closer look at that.
• 26:44
  Model and is that partially linked as well to when you talk
• 26:48
  about marketplaces particularly again payment companies or not
• 26:52
  enough payment companies probably building out split
• 26:54
  payment functionality at source. So the, the Emis that sit behind
• 26:57
  payments have have risen to us a huge scale in the UK where
• 27:00
  there's lots of different Emis in the market that will allow
• 27:03
  you to have multiple funding accounts, settlement accounts,
• 27:07
  payments accounts for disbursements.
• 27:08
  And these these Isvs have or platforms have basically built
• 27:12
  that payout functionality themselves behind their front
• 27:14
  level merchant record merchant ID.
• 27:16
  Maybe that's on us as a payments industry that we've not
• 27:18
  delivered that split payment functionality at scale across
• 27:21
  multiple providers quickly enough.
• 27:23
  Really, it's not that difficult to achieve over, is it?
• 27:25
  Splitting payments I think is actually quite an achievable
• 27:27
  thing to deliver, but I also think it's a point of
• 27:30
  onboarding. So onboarding and verifying
• 27:33
  thousands of small businesses can cost money, especially when
• 27:39
  you're relying on manual processes to do it.
• 27:40
  Like who is going to want to onboard and verify thousands of
• 27:44
  small traders manually? And these acquirers that want
• 27:47
  that business, they know the easiest way for them to do that
• 27:49
  is through that version of record model where they're not
• 27:52
  having to verify every single sole trader on that platform.
• 27:56
  But perhaps they should be. And perhaps if they had the
• 27:58
  right tools to do it, they would.
• 28:01
  So I actually think that comes back to product capability.
• 28:04
  Like all the tools are there, this amazing onboarding and
• 28:07
  verification solutions on the marketplace.
• 28:10
  I just don't think they're being used.
• 28:11
  And one thing we found, you know, when we started Shape, we
• 28:14
  launched our own boarding and verified modules.
• 28:16
  First we thought, let's sell these solutions before the rest
• 28:19
  of the platforms ready because they're good in their own right.
• 28:21
  But what becomes quite clear is big payments companies don't
• 28:25
  like spending much money on boarding customers.
• 28:28
  Like they don't want to spend huge amounts just to on board a
• 28:31
  customer. Like it's one of the parts of
• 28:33
  the business that they don't want to say neglect, but maybe,
• 28:37
  maybe it is neglect. They like having the processing
• 28:39
  volume but getting customers onto their books quickly.
• 28:42
  They never invested heavily into it.
• 28:44
  What's crazy, if I rewind 15 years ago, my role when I first
• 28:48
  came into payments was getting a paper application and typing
• 28:51
  every single part of that paper application into a system.
• 28:55
  You put address details KYC, put in the driver license number,
• 29:00
  you press submit, it goes to another system and creates a MID
• 29:03
  within 24 hours right right now. 15 years ago you would get a mid
• 29:07
  in 24 hours. 15 years ago go through Carbridge.
• 29:10
  I don't believe you. And and still now it's still
• 29:13
  taking for most businesses to go through that process 24 hours if
• 29:18
  not longer. So, so we talk about how well
• 29:20
  payments has has come on over time.
• 29:22
  It's still taking 24 hours with 95% of payment businesses to get
• 29:27
  that mid life. And yes, it's probably cheaper
• 29:30
  now where you're, you're, you're cutting the cost of of paper
• 29:33
  applications etcetera. But it's still the time and
• 29:35
  effort is going in via different systems.
• 29:38
  So maybe we we think. For systems, but also different
• 29:41
  people in different departments potentially looking at the
• 29:43
  application like you talked about them not wanting to spend
• 29:45
  money. What's the cost of three
• 29:46
  different members of staff maybe having to look at one single
• 29:49
  application versus an automated tool that does it for you?
• 29:52
  But there's not much that a human can do in terms of that
• 29:56
  decision making process that you can't program like software to
• 30:00
  do for you. So you can still take into
• 30:02
  account what every single department wants to happen when
• 30:04
  the merchant application comes through.
• 30:06
  But you can build rule sets that automate that decisioning and
• 30:09
  you can automatically approve all of your customers that are
• 30:12
  on a happy path. But even then, just like the
• 30:14
  outliers that you still want to get humanizing it to make a
• 30:17
  final decision like so you can still like automate and not in a
• 30:20
  day, like in real time. You should be able to, let's
• 30:22
  face it, as companies doing it. Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:25
  You can do it in real time and still maybe take a day to look
• 30:29
  at the others. And one thing that we advise
• 30:32
  against because it doesn't need to be the cases providing mids
• 30:36
  whilst doing your deeper checks whilst they're processing.
• 30:40
  So before you settle funds to your merchants or sub merchants,
• 30:44
  don't carry on doing your verification checks.
• 30:46
  You can do it all upfront before you give them a mid.
• 30:49
  I think people don't do that because they're scared of of
• 30:51
  duplicating work, but it's the same way you say when a
• 30:54
  merchant's going through getting them, they're also integrating
• 30:57
  at the same time. Yeah, yeah.
• 30:59
  Right. And they should be working
• 31:00
  parallel with each other when it comes to onboarding, especially
• 31:03
  low risk business which is leading down happy path like you
• 31:06
  mentioned. Yeah, why do we have to wait for
• 31:08
  a minute before onboarding or before implementing and vice
• 31:11
  versa? Yeah, in the in the software
• 31:13
  world, the businesses that are using the software aren't
• 31:15
  integrated into anything. They're just going to pay for
• 31:17
  some software that's embedded. 1 is that best one?
• 31:19
  Is that future? Yeah.
• 31:21
  So what capabilities or or partnerships specifically do you
• 31:25
  think are helping certain PSPS to outpace others in the market?
• 31:30
  Well, the commercial models for sure, right.
• 31:32
  So if if you're a pay FAC and you're going to market offering
• 31:36
  pay FAC as a service, which in my mind is basically software
• 31:41
  companies referring A merchant into the pay FAC.
• 31:43
  I think it's got a nice name, but it's not really that
• 31:45
  different to ISO models and things like that.
• 31:47
  It's still referring a business to another payments business and
• 31:51
  there might be some nice onboarding tools.
• 31:53
  But I definitely think the emergence of Moi, whether you
• 31:55
  like it, you know, we've spoken about it already.
• 31:58
  There's lots of different commercial models which are
• 32:00
  helping, but I think it's more about the product capability and
• 32:06
  we are seeing more pay Facts coming to market, offering a
• 32:09
  better suite of APIs, which makes a big difference.
• 32:12
  When we look at the success that the US has had, clearly there's
• 32:16
  more Pay Facts and Pay Facts as a service, but I still think
• 32:19
  that the product capabilities that we have available in the UK
• 32:21
  and European markets are really good.
• 32:23
  I think the regulatory side of things is, is a big hurdle for
• 32:26
  us. If you look at I think PSE, the
• 32:29
  consultants, they published an article which said of UKS, MB S,
• 32:33
  22% of them have received a finance off finance offering
• 32:38
  software, whereas in the United States it's like 61%.
• 32:42
  So you can see how much further they are ahead at embedding
• 32:44
  financial products, probably because a little bit like to
• 32:46
  touch on the regulation, right? But I think there's a lot of
• 32:50
  work we need to do. But I don't think the owner
• 32:52
  should be on the software companies.
• 32:54
  I think it should be on the PSPS, the payments companies to
• 32:57
  build out more product capabilities.
• 32:58
  That's a really good point there because we've talked about
• 33:00
  embedded payments specifically, but embedded finance,
• 33:04
  overarching embedded payments and what's your take on way that
• 33:07
  the way the market's kind of shifting towards that embedded
• 33:09
  finance model as well? So I see, I would say this
• 33:12
  because this is where I sit, right, but the embedded payments
• 33:15
  is like the gateway to all the other embedded finance products
• 33:18
  that you could be offering. And if you think car, I don't
• 33:22
  like it all throughout money making, right?
• 33:23
  But let's face it, you're doing this to make money as a software
• 33:26
  company on you, right and get sticky keep your customers.
• 33:29
  But if you can successfully deliver a payment strategy, why
• 33:32
  can't you start lending to those businesses a year from now?
• 33:36
  Why can't you start issuing cards to like assuring wallet
• 33:39
  solutions and things? So I think if you can deploy
• 33:41
  successful payment strategy, it's just the start that you can
• 33:45
  start offering so many more financial products.
• 33:47
  You say, yeah, but I've seen payments companies lending as
• 33:50
  quickly as as a week these days as well, right.
• 33:53
  So they don't need that much customer data and that there's
• 33:56
  probably, you know, we haven't talked about AI and we we have
• 33:59
  to get something in there about it.
• 34:00
  But some of the benefits of AI and open banking as well that
• 34:03
  that can potentially be helping in that embedded lending sort of
• 34:07
  part of the market is quite interesting as well.
• 34:09
  Open Bank is a huge piece down open finance rise.
• 34:12
  You'll see in the business, you'll see in the process and
• 34:14
  see individuals behind the business.
• 34:16
  You should know whether or not you want to be able to lend that
• 34:18
  business. Yeah, you'll see them in real
• 34:20
  time. Yeah, the, yeah, the AISP side
• 34:23
  of open banking absolutely love being able to do that income and
• 34:26
  expenditure assessments of of consumers and things like that
• 34:29
  to be able to make a decision of whatever you want to lend to
• 34:31
  them. I think it's amazing.
• 34:33
  Are you partnering in that area as a shape?
• 34:35
  We are like, I don't know how much you know about shape, but
• 34:37
  like we don't, we're not a payment gateway.
• 34:39
  We integrate with gateways. We integrate requires banking
• 34:41
  providers, but we've always wanted to be not just partner
• 34:45
  agnostic, but payment method agnostic.
• 34:47
  So open banking providers, not just for ASP, but the PISP side,
• 34:51
  it was crypto, but now stable hood.
• 34:53
  And like we want our platform to process any type of payment
• 34:56
  anywhere in the world. So yeah, partnering with those
• 34:58
  providers is really key. And on the verification side of
• 35:02
  things, we're not trying to build all ourselves.
• 35:04
  So our platform is there to do the workflow, the automation,
• 35:07
  but we plug into different data providers.
• 35:10
  You've got the likes of some sub doing like amazing things.
• 35:12
  They spent fortunes building some of the world's best
• 35:15
  verification software. Why would we go and try and
• 35:17
  replicate that? Let's just integrate and work
• 35:19
  and build around that kind of stuff.
• 35:21
  When we talk about the the future, what do you think the
• 35:24
  future trends or innovations are likely to to shape the next
• 35:28
  phase of payments? So with my shape hound, if
• 35:31
  that's OK, I like to think that the embeddable web components
• 35:34
  that we're building, they're really going to help the more
• 35:36
  traditional legacy acquirers call what you like, level up
• 35:39
  their go to market and compete with those new tech first
• 35:42
  disruptors that are not disruptors anymore that conquer
• 35:45
  in the market. So it can help them maintain
• 35:47
  pace. But you mentioned AI, So we try
• 35:51
  not to follow buzzwords and things like that.
• 35:53
  Like we didn't just want to say that we were doing AI just for
• 35:55
  the sake of it, because we didn't just want to add like a
• 35:57
  zero on to our valuation. So we spent some time, it's not
• 36:01
  a bad thing, but not just for the not just for throwing the
• 36:04
  term around. So with AI, we wanted to bring
• 36:08
  it to life in a practical use case, right?
• 36:10
  So we're going to be launching an AI assistant, which in really
• 36:14
  old school terms, this is broken into two parts.
• 36:16
  So once an installation with it. So our platform is all around
• 36:19
  automation, right? But to get it to automate, you
• 36:22
  first need to configure to configure your pricing plans,
• 36:25
  deduction plans, assessment plans, your onboarding rule set,
• 36:28
  which takes time. But this AI assistant will
• 36:31
  understand the PSC as the PSP as they're going through their own
• 36:33
  boarding journey with shape. So they will go and scan
• 36:36
  everything that we can find about that PSP as they're being
• 36:39
  on boarded and then serve preferences to them in the
• 36:42
  platform, say based on the verticals that you're looking to
• 36:45
  work into. We think that this would be a
• 36:47
  good risk policy to have in place.
• 36:48
  So we're going to make it really easy for them to configure our
• 36:51
  platform. And the other part of the AI
• 36:53
  system is an optimization wizard.
• 36:55
  We're not going to call them Wizards, by the way, because
• 36:57
  it's an old school hike, but this will be 7 recommendations
• 37:00
  to them for payment processing. So for instance, I don't know if
• 37:05
  you change this setting here, you could be making this much
• 37:07
  more money. Or if you were sending this
• 37:08
  transaction to Sequire, you could be getting the higher
• 37:10
  acceptance rate. So we're going to be applying
• 37:13
  this AI assistant to help PSPS be more efficient in how they're
• 37:16
  processing and getting up and running.
• 37:18
  And we're trying to make configurable automation even
• 37:22
  more configurable. So when we first started showing
• 37:25
  the platform to PSPS 2 years ago, although we made it as
• 37:28
  configurable as we could, people always come out like, oh,
• 37:31
  because if that could be there, Because if that could.
• 37:33
  Be the ocean, right? Oh yeah.
• 37:35
  But we've taken that and we kind of got annoyed by it at first,
• 37:39
  but then we thought, well, actually there's some good stuff
• 37:41
  here. So we're now building more
• 37:43
  workflows into the platform. So the ability to be able to put
• 37:46
  a contract being served here, this verification check here,
• 37:49
  but this verification check actually happens here.
• 37:51
  So just making the platform more configurable.
• 37:53
  So they're the things that we're selfishly doing and working on
• 37:57
  and have to talk to people about those.
• 37:59
  But I mean, you guys would be close to the action on this, but
• 38:01
  AI agentic commerce clearly seems to be something that
• 38:04
  people need to be gearing up for, seeing that all over my
• 38:06
  social all the time. I find it interesting when we
• 38:09
  talk about the term AI because what you mentioned there
• 38:12
  business, we're still trying to do it 10:15, 20-30 years ago,
• 38:15
  but we kind of call it machine learning or data analysis where
• 38:18
  it's doing the exact same thing is just trying to use more up to
• 38:22
  date AI to do it right. Yeah.
• 38:25
  What's the rise of the new platforms, right And the scale
• 38:28
  at which they can do it, the speed at which they can do it, I
• 38:30
  think that's been the difference.
• 38:31
  I mean, at Gentek Commerce, we, we talk about a lot as payment
• 38:34
  providers. It's still, I mean, it still
• 38:37
  scares me to be honest with you. I mean, I was on a panel, a
• 38:40
  compliance event a few months ago and I was kind of saying,
• 38:42
  you know, you see those examples where children get hold of a
• 38:45
  mobile phone and they go and buy a load of stuff on an app.
• 38:48
  Well, this is a whole nother level of that, right?
• 38:50
  If you remove some of the biometric layers that we've put
• 38:52
  in it's protection for payment solutions in recent years or
• 38:56
  OTP's one time passcodes, you now have a potential situation
• 39:00
  where a child could can maybe get hold of that AI solution.
• 39:03
  And unless it's using voice recognition, I'm sure there'll
• 39:05
  be be lots of stuff considerations going into this,
• 39:06
  but it could be an enabler for more fraudulent activity.
• 39:10
  Or, you know, we have to kind of take the benefit of it growing
• 39:15
  commerce globally and seeing more payment volume probably
• 39:18
  coming through our platforms as a result of it.
• 39:19
  But we'll also have to fight higher levels of of fraud
• 39:22
  potentially as well, with fraudsters using AI as a a new
• 39:25
  tool in their kit as well. Yeah, I agree.
• 39:28
  I think when I look at it with a payments hound, I get really
• 39:31
  excited by all these things. But when I'm there as a consumer
• 39:33
  using AI to go and find me a new pair of trainers or something
• 39:36
  like it never actually really nails it.
• 39:39
  It never actually gives me. It gets you 90% there.
• 39:42
  I think if even if you're using AI to create video content or
• 39:45
  photos, it gets you close really, really quickly.
• 39:49
  But then you still need to do a lot of work to get to that
• 39:51
  finished product. So trusting AI to actually make
• 39:54
  a purchase, I still think there's quite a long way for me
• 39:57
  as a consumer, not Jack Co founder shape, but as a
• 40:00
  consumer. There's a long way to go to
• 40:02
  being able to trust AI to make purchases for you.
• 40:05
  The payment space that you understand, the fraud activities
• 40:08
  that happen. No, I don't think it is.
• 40:10
  It's not. I'm not thinking fraud.
• 40:11
  I'm just thinking I don't trust a robot to go and buy things for
• 40:16
  me. Like I wouldn't let my kids have
• 40:17
  access to my wallet. But would you have trusted 15
• 40:20
  years ago for your car just to take you and buy something
• 40:24
  without you having to put your? Pin number in or watch it
• 40:26
  online. I honestly would have, but I
• 40:27
  think there's like generational waves here, isn't there?
• 40:29
  So I never even thought twice when those things have come out.
• 40:32
  I thought, yes, easy. You know, we in payments, we
• 40:35
  talk about consumers wanting security safety when they're
• 40:38
  processing payment. I don't think consumers ever
• 40:41
  really think about these things in might well add demographic
• 40:44
  sorry into that goes wrong. Like you post quite a bit around
• 40:47
  chargebacks and things like that.
• 40:48
  Like it's only when things go wrong do you care about, you
• 40:52
  know, your path of recourse, your safety, security.
• 40:56
  When everything's working, consumers don't care about
• 40:58
  paying. It was.
• 40:58
  Consumer driven though, isn't it?
• 41:00
  Right. Yeah, it's consumer driven.
• 41:02
  Yeah, everything like I think that's why if you look at open
• 41:04
  banking, the PISP side of things really striking to gain
• 41:08
  traction. Right.
• 41:08
  Sorry, I didn't mean to steal you.
• 41:09
  No, no. No, that's fine.
• 41:10
  That's why I was going. With it, but but if consumers,
• 41:13
  you know, if you look at open banking from a consumer point of
• 41:15
  view, if I'm going to buy a coffee like into Apple Pay and
• 41:19
  someone's trying to force me down the open banking route,
• 41:21
  like why am I going to go down that path when I can already
• 41:24
  just tap my phone and walk out of there like really quickly?
• 41:26
  Like what are you solving for a consumer?
• 41:29
  Definitely. Well, it'd be remiss of us not
• 41:32
  to mention some recent news that we saw come out from you guys as
• 41:35
  well. So correct me if I've got this
• 41:38
  wrong, but you guys have been selected for the JP Morgan Chase
• 41:41
  Fintech Forward program. Can you talk a little bit about
• 41:44
  what that is, how it came about and what it means for you guys
• 41:48
  moving forward? Yeah, sure.
• 41:49
  So we thank you first Evo for calling out over since starting
• 41:54
  shape, I've always looked at different accelerator programs
• 41:56
  and I think one thing we were able to raise a fair amount of
• 42:01
  capital quite early on and a lot of accelerator programs are
• 42:04
  about kind of early stages. How can you like create a pitch
• 42:09
  that how can you get an idea is to get funding?
• 42:11
  And they always felt like we were a little bit too far on.
• 42:14
  And then you can look at others and they kind of lose focus.
• 42:16
  They're a bit too broad brush. And I never felt that they would
• 42:18
  actually do anything for us. And the JP Morgan one flashed up
• 42:22
  on my LinkedIn and then a couple of people forwarded it to me
• 42:25
  saying, think this one is really relevant for you guys And the
• 42:29
  people that sent it, you know, I trust their opinion.
• 42:31
  I thought, OK, we'll throw our name in the hat for it.
• 42:34
  But the reason why there's a couple of things that is trying
• 42:38
  to set out to achieve. So we've really focused on small
• 42:41
  businesses in the UK and we've spoken about software companies
• 42:44
  and making thousands of small business to have better payment
• 42:47
  experiences. So I think that's something
• 42:49
  that's really core to our mission and hovering, having the
• 42:52
  network that is JP Morgan shouting about what we do, I
• 42:55
  thought that would be pretty cool to have.
• 42:58
  And they're really focused on the next generation of payment
• 43:01
  infrastructure. And that's a huge wave in
• 43:04
  payments now. Like people in payments are all
• 43:05
  about this infrastructure as a service, having a processing
• 43:08
  Ledger as a service, all those cool things.
• 43:10
  So we thought this is probably the most relevant accelerated
• 43:13
  program where we're going to see it's relevant for where we are
• 43:16
  in our funding journey. So it just seemed to tick all
• 43:19
  the boxes of what we need. And I'm not going to lie, like
• 43:23
  although we're doing great things that shape, if you go out
• 43:25
  across the whole world and say to people who shape, we are
• 43:28
  still a very, very small business.
• 43:31
  So it's all very well building great capability, but if no one
• 43:34
  in the world knows about it, what's the point?
• 43:36
  So you need brands like JP Morgan to really accelerate your
• 43:39
  growth to put us on the map. And how involved is a process
• 43:42
  getting into something like that?
• 43:43
  You know, so you have for a time and resource internally it
• 43:46
  putting your name in the hat for something like that?
• 43:47
  Is it quite an involved process? I can say.
• 43:50
  So the process was an initial form, an online journey, which
• 43:53
  you fill in the content. I don't know, we turned it
• 43:57
  around in a few days. Then once you get through that
• 44:01
  stage, there's a more deep dive, but again, it's an online form
• 44:03
  that you fill in. Then the final stage is an
• 44:05
  interview, which was half hour, which was quite.
• 44:08
  They basically told us what they wanted to cover and I built a
• 44:12
  deck and talked them through everything they wanted to cover
• 44:13
  and they had no questions at the end of it, which they're quite
• 44:16
  surprised by. Say.
• 44:17
  I think it was a smooth process. It was a sensible 1, whereas a
• 44:20
  lot of other accelerators actually isn't much for a
• 44:23
  process. If I think if you put your hand
• 44:25
  up and say we'd like to go on it, you can some quite often get
• 44:29
  a yes, like this was actually a closed door.
• 44:31
  It felt like this. And how long you in the program
• 44:34
  for? Three months.
• 44:35
  Three months, OK. So how do you see that kind of
• 44:37
  opening doors from the kind of new funding and growth of the
• 44:40
  business? So the the program itself, when
• 44:44
  you look at all the sessions like it's really intense, lots
• 44:47
  of in person stuff. But they're spending a lot of
• 44:50
  money on us meeting with some really good technology companies
• 44:53
  and product companies to help us advise on our road map where
• 44:56
  we're going to make sure that we bought our platform truly full
• 44:59
  scale. So it's not just around finding
• 45:01
  new partners to grow in terms of a commercialization point of
• 45:04
  view or to find new investors which they're doing a great job
• 45:06
  of helping us with. It's actually just to make sure
• 45:08
  we are ready for that next stage of growth through just as
• 45:12
  strategic expertise and things. But yes, we want access to their
• 45:18
  network. Clearly we do.
• 45:19
  We want to be talking to them as an acquirer because we think
• 45:24
  surely we can be working together in some ways there.
• 45:26
  But everyone in the network, everyone knows JP Morgan, right?
• 45:29
  So we want to be talking to everyone that knows them that
• 45:31
  might be interested in our solution.
• 45:33
  It's not me for them as well, right?
• 45:34
  Because they get a look under the hood of lots of different
• 45:37
  payments as well. To buy kind of thing.
• 45:41
  It's really good. I mean, we're revealing
• 45:43
  information with them as part of this program that we would never
• 45:45
  normally reveal, like proper deep dive into architecture and
• 45:49
  things we're happy to share because why wouldn't we want the
• 45:52
  help? We would never share that with
• 45:54
  anyone else. So yeah, you're right, it's a
• 45:55
  good play from them and they're taking us to the slush in
• 45:59
  November as part of their. The slush.
• 46:03
  What's the slash? The slash.
• 46:04
  Helsinki, yeah, you know, you're, did I say the slash?
• 46:08
  I don't know, sorry, it wasn't on my recent list.
• 46:11
  So I checked it out. Oh, So yeah, it should be on
• 46:13
  your list. Slush is basically where
• 46:15
  founders meet investors. So it's a huge start up
• 46:18
  community where loads of founders go talk to those
• 46:21
  investors and ultimately there's a name of finding money.
• 46:24
  We went last year, but more just to kind of scope it out, see
• 46:27
  what it's like. But it is a really cool event if
• 46:29
  you just go and just to kind of see what it's all about, see
• 46:32
  where the next like phase and innovation are going is cool.
• 46:35
  But this year we're going to be attacking it, you know, really
• 46:37
  trying to have some good solid conversations with investment
• 46:40
  companies and things like that to.
• 46:42
  Might be a new podcast venue. For us.
• 46:44
  There you go, you'll. Find some cool companies there.
• 46:45
  Yeah, sure. And what does the next couple of
• 46:47
  years look like for shape? What's your vision?
• 46:49
  Global domination? That sounded really arrogant.
• 46:53
  OK, So Jack, you are the inaugural participant in our new
• 46:59
  end segment, The Shelf of Shame, where we invite our guests to do
• 47:04
  you think room one O 1 back in the day old BBC programme,
• 47:07
  right? Anything that that really grinds
• 47:09
  your gears, it can be in your own sector, payments, fintech
• 47:12
  business in general. What would you like to nominate?
• 47:16
  Justin and I will then vote on it and if we agree, it will go
• 47:19
  to the shelf of shame. They'll never return again.
• 47:22
  You know me, right? Because we've worked here
• 47:24
  before. I whinge a lot about lots of
• 47:25
  things, A general one for me. So I've always been someone that
• 47:31
  commits to things, right? So if I say I'm going to do
• 47:34
  something, I do it. And I think you 2 are the same,
• 47:37
  right? We've worked together, we know
• 47:38
  how we work, but in the industry there seems to be, it seems to
• 47:44
  be acceptable to say you're going to do something and not do
• 47:48
  it. And I think when you look at
• 47:50
  what that means in payments or in any company that's delivering
• 47:54
  technology and stuff, it's over promising and under delivering.
• 47:58
  And I think when you're looking at if I can type back to
• 48:00
  embedded payments, hopefully you can see what I'm doing here is
• 48:02
  when you're a software company wanting to embed payments,
• 48:05
  you're working with partners. And if people within those
• 48:08
  partnerships aren't doing what they say they're going to do,
• 48:12
  trust is going to fall down and it's just not going to work.
• 48:14
  So my thing to put on your shelf is people not doing what they
• 48:18
  say they're going to do. So I know it's not like a catchy
• 48:21
  one liner, but for me it's really important because why
• 48:24
  can't you just do what you say you're going to do?
• 48:25
  To me it seems really simple, but it seems to be that that
• 48:28
  kind of business, professional etiquette, call it what you
• 48:31
  want, is just lost on lots of people do.
• 48:33
  You think some people just find get a little bit nervous of
• 48:35
  saying no, so they will say yes, take it back and then I'd rather
• 48:39
  ignore it than. Perhaps I I don't think it's
• 48:41
  that. Do you mean in a commercial
• 48:43
  sense though? So no, I, I.
• 48:45
  Mean, I mean in life in general, so.
• 48:47
  You're just saying over promising in general is your
• 48:50
  nomination. It's, it's more just do what you
• 48:53
  say you're going to do. So that's about promising.
• 48:56
  If you say you're going to do something, do it.
• 48:58
  OK. Where's that suit with you?
• 49:00
  It's too weak for you, I can tell.
• 49:02
  I think that's it's, it's a broad.
• 49:05
  You said, you said broad. You know, just.
• 49:07
  Tell us a buzzword you. Don't like just take one for
• 49:09
  your initial list of three and we'll put that on the shelf.
• 49:11
  But now I think I'm happy to to put that on there.
• 49:14
  Yeah. You sure on there?
• 49:15
  Yeah, over promising and. Put it on the shelf.
• 49:17
  Imagine if we saw this the. Payments well stop over
• 49:20
  promising and delivering. I was worried that it was going
• 49:22
  to be like a Graham Norton chair, but if I didn't get it
• 49:24
  right, he's going to fire me back.
• 49:26
  We could have done for that answer to me, right Jack?
• 49:30
  Great to have. Thank you very much.
• 49:31
  Thank you for joining us guys. Appreciate it.
• 49:33
  Thanks a lot. Well done.
• 49:34
  Thank you.