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How Coinflow Makes Payments Settle In Seconds · The Stable Pulse

• 0:00
  Intro: Passage of the stable coin legislation drafted by the Senate, dubbed the Genius Act.
• 0:05
  Intro: Because analysts say a wave of competition can complicate things.
• 0:08
  Intro: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special guest today.
• 0:16
  Intro: This guest is a personal friend of mine who is an incredible founder and, in my opinion, an even better person.
• 0:23
  Intro: He's built a very powerful stablecoin enabled PSP, which is a payment service provider.
• 0:29
  Intro: So, Dan, welcome to the show, man.
• 0:32
  Intro: I'm excited to have you and I'm excited to chat Coinflow.
• 0:35
  Daniel Lev: Excited to be here, bright and early.
• 0:37
  Daniel Lev: Favorite thing to do is Friday morning talk stablecoins.
• 0:42
  Dante Reminick: Nothing better to do.
• 0:43
  Dante Reminick: Nothing better.
• 0:44
  Dante Reminick: So as you know, Dan, we always start out this show with a segment that we call braggadocious.
• 0:50
  Dante Reminick: This is your opportunity to brag about yourself, to brag about Coinflow.
• 0:55
  Dante Reminick: I know that you are a very, very humble person, but I want you to not be a very humble person.
• 1:01
  Dante Reminick: Tell us everything about you, everything about Coinflow, and do so in the most braggadocious way possible, please.
• 1:08
  Daniel Lev: Great, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09
  Daniel Lev: Um Midwest guys, so tr try to be it's humble, humble by roots.
• 1:15
  Daniel Lev: Um, but yeah, I'm Daniel, founder and CEO of Coinflow.
• 1:18
  Daniel Lev: My background has been basically a financial service in my whole career.
• 1:22
  Daniel Lev: Um, from PWC, where I was doing strategy for financial services, went and helped in scale of InTech from early stage series A until it became a unicorn series D.
• 1:32
  Daniel Lev: Started a gaming company.
• 1:33
  Daniel Lev: I built, sales, and sold that business.
• 1:36
  Daniel Lev: During that time at the gaming company, we were running contests for games, and people needed to get it paid out faster.
• 1:42
  Daniel Lev: We found out about stable coins pretty damn early, like this is 2021, and realized this is the best way to do programmatic payouts, but no one had access to or no one had ability to spend or use stable coins.
• 1:54
  Daniel Lev: So we then had to connect stable coins to real-time payment rails, and then realized you connect stable coins to payment networks that move instantly.
• 2:01
  Daniel Lev: You've now created this conduit and uh between real-time payment networks to allow businesses to move money instantly.
• 2:09
  Daniel Lev: So we sold that business, realizing like, wow, like we built this mini super powerful fintech inside of it and can give that same value prop to any business, which is move money instantly.
• 2:19
  Daniel Lev: And when you move money instantly, there's other problems that arise, like fraud.
• 2:23
  Daniel Lev: It's clear, it's great for businesses and users if you can get their money instantly.
• 2:27
  Daniel Lev: Um, but it's also great for fraudsters to get their money instantly.
• 2:30
  Daniel Lev: So, on top of that, we build incredible fraud tools that indemnify chargebacks and stop fraud.
• 2:36
  Daniel Lev: So, what Coinflow does is we enable payments to move instantly for businesses.
• 2:41
  Daniel Lev: So instead of waiting for money to come to you in one or two day business days, you get in five seconds.
• 2:46
  Daniel Lev: And we eliminate all chargebacks.
• 2:48
  Daniel Lev: Um, in regards to like the bragging part of the section, we between between cards, which is still arguably the biggest way for consumers to pay businesses, um, or it is not arguably, it is, um we move the most stable coins between car between accepting cards, settlement to merchants and stable coins by far, and are scaling very quickly.
• 3:09
  Daniel Lev: So we're definitely the category leader in the space of accepting real-time payment networks and traditional payment networks, and instantly settling funds to merchants and stable coins, and letting those stable coins be used.
• 3:19
  Daniel Lev: So spend, payout, etc.
• 3:20
  Daniel Lev: So yeah, that's a bit about us.
• 3:22
  Daniel Lev: Thousands of merchants, uh hundreds of different use cases, and been doing this for quite some time now.
• 3:29
  Dante Reminick: Love it.
• 3:29
  Dante Reminick: I have a million questions and a million different sort of routes that I want to take here.
• 3:35
  Dante Reminick: But I want to start at the very beginning.
• 3:38
  Dante Reminick: You launched Coinflow because you personally experienced the problem building your last startup, but you also launched it at what many believe to be the worst possible time in the world to launch a crypto company or launch a uh you know a stablecoin startup.
• 3:56
  Dante Reminick: Tell me about what it was like sort of in the early days of building out this hybrid sort of payment company and crypto company in a time that was very, very hostile towards both of those uh categories.
• 4:11
  Daniel Lev: Yeah, I mean I mean the sh the short answer is it sucked.
• 4:14
  Daniel Lev: Um but like that uh in hindsight it's it's also great.
• 4:19
  Daniel Lev: Because we we built built things that you it's you can't build that kind of team team spirit.
• 4:28
  Daniel Lev: You get the insights, you get really good feedback from early customers.
• 4:32
  Daniel Lev: And yeah, I mean look, we started a company, we sold the my last business around the same like the deal got final, the deal got ink the term sheet the same week FTX collapsed, and I stepped down as CEO, or I was like running both in parallel and started Coinflow the week of the FTX collapse, and our first funding round collapsed like because people didn't know it was we were raising crypto VCs and they didn't know if they were alive or their portfolio was live.
• 4:59
  Daniel Lev: And up raising capital pretty quickly after that.
• 5:01
  Daniel Lev: But it was tough.
• 5:02
  Daniel Lev: Like most people were it was pretty much crickets.
• 5:05
  Daniel Lev: Um, I've never seen the capital markets like that where people didn't even know if their if like they didn't know if their fund was exist gonna be exist alive, what happened, etc.
• 5:15
  Daniel Lev: So that was interesting first first few weeks.
• 5:17
  Daniel Lev: Usually don't start your company like, oh great, I'm gonna go to market, and like all the people that I have connections with, they're gonna at least want to have conversations and see what we're doing.
• 5:25
  Daniel Lev: And it it was just complete crickets that like people were not responding, they were you know, FTX Loom was over there.
• 5:34
  Daniel Lev: So once we got through that, which is an interesting fundraising environment, once we got through that, it was you know, we had bank relationships from the last company, but it started pe everyone started questioning like crypto.
• 5:47
  Daniel Lev: No one really knew about stable coins, so it was explaining what a stable coin was over and over and over again.
• 5:52
  Daniel Lev: And yeah, there was not many people that were bullish on the idea of connecting traditional financial rails to stable coins uh after FTX collapse, and crypto was a very naughty word.
• 6:02
  Daniel Lev: Anything adjacent to crypto was very, very bad.
• 6:06
  Daniel Lev: And it that extended for you know months and months and months, and then there was other crypto downfalls that happened as well.
• 6:17
  Daniel Lev: Um but at the same time through that whole period, there were people that were still like obviously building in crypto, and those were our early customers.
• 6:26
  Daniel Lev: Uh uh a big mental shift happened, at least for my what I saw, is like, okay, like like crypto is the the retail consumer does not believe in crypto right now, the banks don't believe in crypto right now, etc.
• 6:38
  Daniel Lev: So what people that who are founders who are building this space were like, okay, we have to be able to like use the technology and leverage it to be able to differentiate to our consumers, but without saying the word crypto, etc.
• 6:51
  Daniel Lev: So, like in that essence, Coinflow is perfect because what we do is we don't talk about outside of like the name coin being being in our name, we don't talk about crypto, we don't talk about stable coins.
• 7:01
  Daniel Lev: We just give value props like, hey, we we help businesses move money faster.
• 7:05
  Daniel Lev: And there's unique flows of funds that this is extremely beneficial.
• 7:08
  Daniel Lev: Marketplaces, gamified commerce, um, gaming, remittance, etc.
• 7:15
  Daniel Lev: And there were founders that were not many, but there were founders at the time that were building in that space.
• 7:19
  Daniel Lev: So we had a great cohort of like beta customers for like, okay, we actually really need this product right now because we need to limit all things of crypto, but we still need value props to go and compete in the market.
• 7:28
  Daniel Lev: So we were able to really build our product around those types of folks and get those insights that no one else would has been able to get or can get, and just compound our product on top of that.
• 7:40
  Daniel Lev: And that's why we're we're we're we're where we're at.
• 7:43
  Daniel Lev: Um, but yeah, there was not many folks being able to provide that infrastructure or wanting to use it, but it was the best set of beta cohort customers you could possibly get.
• 7:53
  Daniel Lev: And it only sparked and fueled our um our passion because we had people at the very, very bottom of the market.
• 8:03
  Daniel Lev: Well, at least we felt like how much worse could this get?
• 8:06
  Daniel Lev: Like it's if this isn't ext existential, like nothing probably is.
• 8:10
  Daniel Lev: And we had people paying and wanting to use our product and had more demand, um, and we could service.
• 8:17
  Daniel Lev: So there was this like ace asymmetric upside of like of alpha that we had as Coinflow.
• 8:23
  Daniel Lev: Like, okay, people want this in like the depth of the bear, and they're using it for non-crypto use cases and competing against businesses that are not crypto native and winning because of the because of things that we're able to do in blockchain technology, etc.
• 8:37
  Daniel Lev: So we're like, okay, every business will eventually want this.
• 8:41
  Daniel Lev: And you know, that's that's starting to play out um over the last few years.
• 8:47
  Dante Reminick: So you guys launched late 2022 during the collapse of FTX and you know the entire crypto space.
• 8:54
  Dante Reminick: Now, you know, fast forward 2026.
• 8:57
  Dante Reminick: What is it, what does Coinflow look like now?
• 9:00
  Dante Reminick: Can you walk us through sort of how Coinflow works in the back end?
• 9:05
  Dante Reminick: To your point, you advertise yourself as a payment company, not as a crypto company.
• 9:09
  Dante Reminick: Like I've gone to your website, I encourage other people to go to your website.
• 9:12
  Dante Reminick: You do not advertise crypto whatsoever.
• 9:14
  Dante Reminick: You advertise yourself as a payment company.
• 9:16
  Dante Reminick: As a payment company today, what are those flows like?
• 9:20
  Dante Reminick: How are you guys using stable coins?
• 9:22
  Dante Reminick: Give us the high level there.
• 9:24
  Daniel Lev: Yeah, for sure.
• 9:26
  Daniel Lev: So, really what Coinflow is, we are a next gen PSP, and another word for that is a network of networks.
• 9:33
  Daniel Lev: So we connect to different payment networks.
• 9:34
  Daniel Lev: You can think of this as like, you know, I have a bought a coffee this morning, so a card networks visa mastercard MX, bank networks in the US, we have ACH, in Europe you have Sepa, in Brazil, you have Pix.
• 9:45
  Daniel Lev: Some are instant, some are not, um, which we can talk about.
• 9:49
  Daniel Lev: But society payment networks.
• 9:51
  Daniel Lev: So card networks, bank networks, crypto networks is like a payment network, like stablecoins and crypto is just a payment network, Venmo, and no matter what payment network a user wants to pay with to a business.
• 10:02
  Daniel Lev: So if for that coffee, 500 pay with my Venmo balance, 500 pay with my UK bank account, 500 pay with my Visa card, Coinflow will accept that.
• 10:10
  Daniel Lev: And as soon as the payment's authorized, meaning like, hey, like there's you know, the network says there's money on that fund, on that account, we will instantly move that money in stable coins to the merchant.
• 10:21
  Daniel Lev: The merchant will receive that money and can do whatever they want with that money.
• 10:25
  Daniel Lev: Um, so that that's how Coinflow works.
• 10:27
  Daniel Lev: Those payment networks sometimes settle to us in one day, sometimes in five seconds, etc.
• 10:33
  Daniel Lev: And what we are seeing is payment networks are moving for faster settlement, whether that you know, and faster is relative.
• 10:42
  Daniel Lev: Some payment networks are already instant, some faster is like, okay, we've only settled historically five days a week.
• 10:48
  Daniel Lev: Now we're gonna do seven.
• 10:50
  Daniel Lev: And um, this is like an example of what Visa is doing, and they're leaving the pack for card networks.
• 10:55
  Daniel Lev: And you know what they're doing for seven-day settlement is in stable coins.
• 10:59
  Daniel Lev: So this we've created this middle layer where it's like uh think about as a middleware where we have liquidity, fraud, and ledgering to connect to these networks.
• 11:10
  Daniel Lev: And if they're not instant, which most aren't, we will then bridge that gap via stable coins and move the funds instantly.
• 11:18
  Daniel Lev: And the thesis is that more and more of these networks will go towards faster settlement times.
• 11:23
  Daniel Lev: Hopefully that's instant.
• 11:25
  Daniel Lev: But there will need to be this layer that does this F-axis ledgering and this settlement out to the to the merchants, and that's gonna be in stable coins because that's the only way to atomically meaning which atomically means per transaction, um, in that moment, move funds instantly.
• 11:41
  Dante Reminick: So you guys essentially provide composability to disparate payment systems, and you do so through the mechanism of stable coins.
• 11:51
  Dante Reminick: Is that fair to say?
• 11:52
  Daniel Lev: That's fair, that's exactly fair to say.
• 11:54
  Daniel Lev: And the yeah, that's exactly fair to say.
• 11:59
  Daniel Lev: And one thing to call out there is like disparate payment networks, they're only getting more disparate, and there's only more networks coming out.
• 12:06
  Daniel Lev: You're starting to see that some of these crypto networks are are becoming like, you know, they want to have become payment networks.
• 12:14
  Daniel Lev: They're seeing some digital global wallets becoming payment networks.
• 12:18
  Daniel Lev: Um Venmo, for example, in the US, is becoming more and more of a payment network itself, and they're starting to compete with the card brands.
• 12:26
  Daniel Lev: By now, pay letter layers are becoming like their own payment networks.
• 12:30
  Daniel Lev: Um, so there's more and more of these networks coming out, and commerce is also becoming more global.
• 12:36
  Daniel Lev: So by definition, this is becoming more disparate, and everything has different um settlement times, even if it's not, you know, it might be minutes, might be hours, might be days, but the merchant doesn't want to care, figure out like, you know, how do we have this crazy business logic on like how do we release goods, how do we give someone something, how do I pay my vendors?
• 12:59
  Daniel Lev: So Coinflow is like, hey, we'll give you everything instantly.
• 13:02
  Daniel Lev: We'll worry about this all about the composability, fraud, ledgering, et cetera.
• 13:08
  Dante Reminick: Interesting.
• 13:09
  Dante Reminick: So to repeat and clarify, you guys take in funds from any number of payment systems, card networks, ACH, right, you name it.
• 13:19
  Dante Reminick: You guys take those funds, convert them into stable coins, and then pass those stable coins to whoever the recipient might be, whether it be a merchant, a merchant, a supplier, a vendor.
• 13:29
  Dante Reminick: Are you guys waiting for those funds to settle?
• 13:33
  Dante Reminick: Like to your point, if I send a wire, that might take two to three days.
• 13:37
  Dante Reminick: I actually have to send a wire for the first time in a very long time yesterday.
• 13:40
  Dante Reminick: It sucked.
• 13:40
  Dante Reminick: Like every time I have to interact with the traditional banking system, it makes me more uh appreciative of stable coins.
• 13:46
  Dante Reminick: But are you guys paying out those stable coins before the funds settle?
• 13:51
  Dante Reminick: Or how do you guys manage that counterparty risk there?
• 13:55
  Daniel Lev: Yeah, that's right.
• 13:55
  Daniel Lev: We pay it out before they settle.
• 13:57
  Daniel Lev: So wire is a bad example because it's not like it's B2B payments mainly.
• 14:01
  Daniel Lev: We don't we we can do it, but let's let's remove wires from this and like dude, just call it ACH.
• 14:09
  Daniel Lev: Once we link your account and scan it, we'll pull the payment or authorize the pull.
• 14:15
  Daniel Lev: And our algorithm will say, like, hey, yeah, we we have really high confidence that you know there's finality in this payment, or there will be finality in this payment, and we release funds.
• 14:27
  Daniel Lev: And then in a day we get those funds, or two days we get those funds, and then rebalance this pool of stable coins we have.
• 14:33
  Daniel Lev: Um so that that is something that like we provide as a service.
• 14:38
  Daniel Lev: And the reason we have to do that is because some of these payment networks are slower than others.
• 14:42
  Daniel Lev: For example, like Visa's five days a week right now, it'll be seven.
• 14:45
  Daniel Lev: We already have this gap that can fulfill those funds um faster, but there's other payment networks that are instant, like we connect to um instant SEPA.
• 14:55
  Daniel Lev: So if you send me a SEPA payment, I can convert it into stable coins in five seconds.
• 15:00
  Daniel Lev: The SEPA might have arrived in 15 or 20 seconds or a minute, but it's more or less instant.
• 15:06
  Daniel Lev: Same with Pix in Brazil.
• 15:07
  Daniel Lev: Um so yeah, some payment networks are are slower than others, and we have to account for that.
• 15:13
  Dante Reminick: And are you guys when you take in the funds, convert it to stable coins, are you then settling directly in stable coins with the end recipient, or are you converting that back into a fiat rail before you settle?
• 15:28
  Daniel Lev: We we directly settle to our businesses, which are merchants in stable coins.
• 15:33
  Daniel Lev: Um, but I'd say like the biggest but in the caveat is like imagine your banking app, whatever whoever you use, or like your neo banking app, you know, call us Ven calls Venmo, China, whoever, right?
• 15:45
  Daniel Lev: If you have one Cash App, right?
• 15:47
  Daniel Lev: Um those funds are stored in you know in the fintech world, what's called an FBO for benefit of account.
• 15:56
  Daniel Lev: And it's it's not, you know, you you probably don't even know what bank that's at, right?
• 16:02
  Daniel Lev: So it's just being ledgered somewhere and displayed to you in a UI and saying, like, hey, these funds are here.
• 16:06
  Daniel Lev: The dollars are in some bank you don't even know, they're in the terms of service.
• 16:09
  Daniel Lev: I mean, you you can find out, but most people don't know or care.
• 16:12
  Daniel Lev: And that's kind of the UI that we provide.
• 16:15
  Daniel Lev: It's like, hey, these funds are actually in a wallet from like an infrastructure technical perspective, but from an end user experience perspective, it just looks like fiat or dollars on the screen.
• 16:25
  Daniel Lev: It doesn't say like, hey, USDC, blah, blah, blah.
• 16:28
  Daniel Lev: It just shows, hey, you have this balance.
• 16:30
  Daniel Lev: Sure, it happens to be in stable coins.
• 16:32
  Daniel Lev: And if you want to withdraw that balance, which you can do programmatically, asynchronously, or manually, you go on your platform just like you would, like our coin flow platform, just like you would on any banking app.
• 16:43
  Daniel Lev: It says your dollars.
• 16:44
  Daniel Lev: And just how you sent this wire this morning, it says, like, hey, withdraw.
• 16:47
  Daniel Lev: And it asks you, like, do you want to withdraw to a bank account?
• 16:50
  Daniel Lev: Do you want to withdraw to a wallet?
• 16:52
  Daniel Lev: Do you want to withdraw on stable coins?
• 16:54
  Daniel Lev: So it actually looks like when you're withdrawing stable coins, it you can perceive it as almost like a conversion, even though it's like already there in staked.
• 17:03
  Daniel Lev: Um, but yeah, we we let we display the balance in in a way that it shows us fiat, even if you ping our API.
• 17:12
  Daniel Lev: But under the hood, it's recorded as stable coins, and they are stable coins.
• 17:16
  Daniel Lev: So if you want to withdraw it in stable coins, you can.
• 17:18
  Daniel Lev: If you want to draw it in fiat, you can.
• 17:19
  Daniel Lev: Um but we we really do stress in the user experience that it looks like something they're already familiar with, because by far the majority of our customers don't know or care about stable coins, and it would confuse them.
• 17:30
  Dante Reminick: Yeah, 100%.
• 17:31
  Dante Reminick: And when I look at Coinflow, to me, one of your superpowers is your ability to interact with card networks.
• 17:39
  Dante Reminick: And this might be getting too much into the weeds, but for our audience members, anytime you use your credit card, Visa, MasterCard, Amex, whatever it is, and you swipe that card or tap it or whatever it might be, there is a what's called an MCC code that essentially tells the credit card company what type of good or service you are interacting with.
• 18:00
  Dante Reminick: And historically, it is very, very difficult to use a credit card to buy stable coins in any way, shape, or form.
• 18:08
  Dante Reminick: Like the conversion rates are very, very low because of what we call MCC 6051 that essentially tells your credit card, hey, you are buying crypto, right?
• 18:17
  Dante Reminick: This is a higher risk transaction than normal.
• 18:19
  Dante Reminick: So the conversion rates are very, very low.
• 18:21
  Dante Reminick: You guys, on the other hand, are masters at working with these card networks and have sort of found a way to uh to overcome the challenge of MCC 6051.
• 18:33
  Dante Reminick: Tell me more about that.
• 18:34
  Daniel Lev: Yeah, look, I mean, if you're selling crypto or selling stable coins, like there's no way to get around your MCC60 or 5.1.
• 18:41
  Daniel Lev: But as I said, most of our businesses aren't crypto businesses, and and the arc not the argument, but like the matter of fact is that they're not MCC is merchant category code, which in in layman terms means like, hey, what is a merchant selling and what should this be qualified as?
• 18:57
  Daniel Lev: If you're selling someone coffee, it should be like you know, beverages, right?
• 19:02
  Daniel Lev: If you're selling someone cookies, it should be food.
• 19:04
  Daniel Lev: If you're selling someone stable coins, it should be crypto.
• 19:06
  Daniel Lev: Um and that's that's exactly how we work.
• 19:10
  Daniel Lev: We are settling in stable coins, which is a currency.
• 19:13
  Daniel Lev: It's no different than like, hey, the cookie shop wants pesos because you know they're located in Mexico.
• 19:20
  Daniel Lev: So as a PSP, the merchant category code should be segregated from what a settlement currency is.
• 19:27
  Daniel Lev: And that's exactly how we interact and educate the card nowers and banks.
• 19:31
  Daniel Lev: It's like, hey, like what the merchant is selling is MCC, settlement currency, which can be you know pesos, which there can be like peso-back stable coins, right?
• 19:40
  Daniel Lev: Um, or US dollar stable coins.
• 19:43
  Daniel Lev: That is totally segregated and different than what the merchant is selling.
• 19:48
  Daniel Lev: Like if we are selling stable coins, we'll still code that as 6051, etc.
• 19:51
  Daniel Lev: But ultimately we're following the same principles and first principles that any other PSP is like what is the merchant selling?
• 19:59
  Daniel Lev: We will describe them as that to the card networks because that's what they care about.
• 20:02
  Daniel Lev: And settlement we'll do in the most efficient ways possible possible, which we believe is stable coins.
• 20:08
  Dante Reminick: You have mentioned a few times the word convincing a bank.
• 20:13
  Dante Reminick: I know from our past conversations you've had to do a lot of convincing banks.
• 20:17
  Dante Reminick: Can you tell everyone a little bit about sort of the relationship that you have with banks, what you need to convince them of, what that journey is like, etc., etc.?
• 20:27
  Daniel Lev: I mean, yeah, just what what I stated is like, you know, it might make sense to you, but when someone two years ago, three years ago heard stablecoin, they weren't thinking about like, oh, this could actually be used for settlement, it might be better.
• 20:42
  Daniel Lev: They just heard like risk, you know, in their risk compliance training, like, hey, if you hear crypto or stable coin, flag it.
• 20:49
  Daniel Lev: Um, and that that's that's all they they heard.
• 20:53
  Daniel Lev: So getting past that and explaining like why we're doing this, the use cases, how it is beneficial, why we're not selling crypto, but hey, like the users I the merchants are actually selling coffee.
• 21:06
  Daniel Lev: And the reason we're selling stable coins is because it's Friday, and I just bought this coffee, and the the Barista doesn't get tipped out till Tuesday because it takes two days for the card network to settle, and then another day for ACH.
• 21:18
  Daniel Lev: But if we get in stable coins, they can get their money on a Friday and use it for whatever they need.
• 21:23
  Daniel Lev: Um, so that's that was the the challenge, right?
• 21:28
  Daniel Lev: Like people didn't want to understand it because they just had alarms go off.
• 21:32
  Daniel Lev: Now, because we have the traction we have, the volume we have, and and stable coins are not evil anymore, they're like actually, hey, we need to have this it went 180 completely, like a year and a half ago, year about a year ago.
• 21:47
  Daniel Lev: Um where it went from if you say stable coins like flag it and figure out why they're doing something illegal, to like, oh my god, if we're not doing if we don't have stable coins.
• 21:59
  Daniel Lev: Strategy we're behind.
• 22:01
  Daniel Lev: So now it's not really convincing, it's actually helping the banks understand how they can use it and partner with us, which is like a crazy paradigm shift from like, hey, like, trust me, dude, we are doing something innovative.
• 22:12
  Daniel Lev: And let me explain why.
• 22:13
  Daniel Lev: To like being like, hey, like, I don't have time to explain to all these people that want to work with us how they can partner and work with us.
• 22:22
  Dante Reminick: Interesting.
• 22:23
  Dante Reminick: So have you had to go bank by bank to say, hey, you know, you're an acquiring bank for customers that we work with, you know, this is our flow, make sure to approve these transactions, or what does that relationship actually look like?
• 22:38
  Daniel Lev: Um, no, not that, because that's the issuing banks' responsibility.
• 22:43
  Daniel Lev: It's more like the card networks acquiring banks to trust this flow exists.
• 22:47
  Daniel Lev: So, like, if someone does ask, they can echo the same level of confidence and explanation that you know Coinflow has internally, which takes time, right?
• 22:57
  Daniel Lev: Um, train the trainer.
• 22:59
  Daniel Lev: And yeah, I I mean I years ago, it was more just like describing what we're doing, and when there is a cloud over the industry and there is not many use cases live, and it's very innovative, and then negative connotations, then it's more just like, hey, like trust us, this is like we're actually good characters, and this will a time will come where like stable coins are a thing that matter, um, which also gives credibility, right?
• 23:30
  Daniel Lev: Like, if we were doing that three, four years, like three years ago, um, when no one else wasn't, it's not like hey, like we we're doing stable coins now because stable coins are cool.
• 23:41
  Daniel Lev: It's like no, no, we had conviction the whole time and we we are pioneers in leading from the front.
• 23:46
  Dante Reminick: Yeah.
• 23:46
  Dante Reminick: You you've mentioned trust a lot.
• 23:49
  Dante Reminick: We also talked briefly about chargebacks, but that's one of the biggest, I would say, pushbacks to stable coins right now is around fraud and chargebacks and things like that.
• 24:01
  Dante Reminick: You guys have navigated this in a really unique way, in my opinion.
• 24:05
  Dante Reminick: Can you talk a little bit about how you guys are able to secure these types of transactions and to guarantee that type of trust that most of these credit card companies have worked to build?
• 24:19
  Daniel Lev: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:20
  Daniel Lev: So yeah, finality matters, right?
• 24:21
  Daniel Lev: Like in Sablecoin is a beauty, like there's finality in transactions, meaning as soon as you get it, it's yours, 100% guaranteed.
• 24:28
  Daniel Lev: Um, so we've had a build out with the traditional networks, and what that looks like is just like a really comprehensive fraud model that can predict if a transaction is going to be fraudulent or not and be charged back.
• 24:39
  Daniel Lev: And when our model is confidence, which it does a high majority of the times, we'll approve the transaction and guarantee finality.
• 24:51
  Dante Reminick: Got it.
• 24:51
  Dante Reminick: So you guys are able to deal with the risk of chargebacks and fraud and and whatnot, which I I think is super awesome.
• 24:57
  Dante Reminick: So we've talked about a lot like what Coinflow's capabilities are.
• 25:02
  Dante Reminick: Who are the people that are best leveraging this right now?
• 25:06
  Dante Reminick: Like when you think of the ideal client comes to you and says, Hey, please help me with this, who are those people that are coming to you and what do they need help with?
• 25:15
  Daniel Lev: Yeah.
• 25:16
  Daniel Lev: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:17
  Daniel Lev: There is there's a lot, thankfully.
• 25:20
  Daniel Lev: Um, I would say the superset is complex flow of funds.
• 25:23
  Daniel Lev: And arguably, like all flows of funds, and I mean this is a fintech podcast, people know what flows of funds are.
• 25:28
  Daniel Lev: But for the ones who are not fintech and listening, flows of funds is just describe me how money moves.
• 25:35
  Daniel Lev: And as commerce is more global and there's more parties involved, as AI gets involved, agents, whatever, right?
• 25:41
  Daniel Lev: Not even agents, but like gig economy, whatever, anything, there's more people that are touching the mix in the money.
• 25:49
  Daniel Lev: And if the money's moving slowly, there's more people involved, that creates a lot of complications.
• 25:54
  Daniel Lev: So, like a superset is complex flows of funds.
• 25:58
  Daniel Lev: Um what industries this means?
• 26:01
  Daniel Lev: Any marketplace.
• 26:02
  Daniel Lev: So, this this can be a marketplace for selling cookies online, it can be for selling t-shirts, uh, shoes, watches, whatever, right?
• 26:10
  Daniel Lev: Um, reminiscent fintech, that's like a huge category for stable coins, crypto, etc.
• 26:16
  Daniel Lev: Um, gaming is a big category.
• 26:20
  Daniel Lev: And then we're starting to do a lot in travel, travel's global, same thing.
• 26:24
  Daniel Lev: And then vertical SaaS, anything from you know, restaurant software, etc., is another area.
• 26:31
  Daniel Lev: So basically every category, right?
• 26:34
  Daniel Lev: People want their money faster.
• 26:35
  Daniel Lev: Um, flows of funds are getting more complicated.
• 26:37
  Daniel Lev: We're seeing demand and market pull across so many industries.
• 26:41
  Daniel Lev: And now, especially with AI and AI like commerce, where right now the use case that we're seeing is like, hey, top up into a wallet which needs finality and instant settlement, so then the ages can go do a bunch of stuff.
• 26:53
  Daniel Lev: And this isn't like crypto wallet, it's just like wallet that has access to funds.
• 26:57
  Daniel Lev: And stablecoin wallet underneath is the perfect example of this, where like Coinflow can pull those funds, instantly fulfill them, and then the Aegis go do whatever.
• 27:06
  Dante Reminick: Yeah, I I think you you touched on a really important point, which is no one is ever going to want their money slower, right?
• 27:14
  Dante Reminick: No one is ever going to want higher fees on moving money around.
• 27:18
  Dante Reminick: And you guys have sort of built your entire company on those basic principles of hey, we are going to consistently work at making your money move faster, making your money move cheaper, and you know, simplifying the flow of funds there, uh, which again, I think is super, super critical to your success.
• 27:37
  Dante Reminick: I I find it interesting that you sort of publicly position yourself against a lot of really, really big companies like Stripe and WorldPay and everything like that.
• 27:46
  Dante Reminick: You guys are growing rapidly.
• 27:49
  Dante Reminick: You're seeing a lot of success.
• 27:50
  Dante Reminick: What can you do better than a lot of the incumbents in the space, I would say.
• 27:58
  Daniel Lev: What do we do better?
• 28:00
  Daniel Lev: Um yeah, I mean, look, like it give you your money faster.
• 28:07
  Daniel Lev: You get to keep all your money instead of losing it to fraud.
• 28:10
  Daniel Lev: And we we work with multiple banks to orchestrate payments in a way that gives you more revenue.
• 28:16
  Daniel Lev: Um so all the all three of those things, which is like, you know, that compounds to make the business a lot more money, which and yeah, that's that's really it.
• 28:28
  Dante Reminick: Easy peasy.
• 28:29
  Dante Reminick: Easy peasy.
• 28:30
  Dante Reminick: I love it.
• 28:31
  Dante Reminick: I love it.
• 28:32
  Dante Reminick: And one thing that I found interesting about Coinflow is like you guys are a stablecoin company.
• 28:38
  Dante Reminick: You help people move money around the world with stable coins and you provide the utility of stable coins to others, but you as a company are also using stable coins to provide utility to yourself.
• 28:50
  Dante Reminick: Uh, can you talk a little bit more about how Coinflow is using stable coins to improve its own operations?
• 28:59
  Daniel Lev: Yeah, I mean, anyone who wants to accept stable coins for pre-funding for s or settlement, um we love those partners the most because then it's like all real time everywhere.
• 29:10
  Daniel Lev: And you know, some innovative banks like Crossroad Bank who we're partnering with um are starting to do that.
• 29:17
  Daniel Lev: So yeah, I mean it's internal treasury operations, really, is like where where we're seeing the most increase.
• 29:26
  Daniel Lev: But as time goes on, you know, settlement will happen in stablecoins, these networks receiving the funds will happen in stable coins.
• 29:34
  Daniel Lev: So then like our middleware ledger already has that built in.
• 29:38
  Daniel Lev: Um, so we're kind of already future-proofing, and we're starting to see slowly this trickle of networks either accept stable coins for settlement or for payout funding.
• 29:49
  Dante Reminick: So you you are seeing a demand in companies that either want to accept stable coins without you know the ramps or pay out directly in stable coins.
• 29:58
  Dante Reminick: Is that is that correct?
• 29:59
  Dante Reminick: Yeah, yeah, that's correct.
• 30:01
  Dante Reminick: And is there a type of archetype or use case for people that are you know natively accepting stable coins or that want to settle in stable coins, or is it across the board?
• 30:12
  Daniel Lev: It's it's user pull, right?
• 30:14
  Daniel Lev: If the company has users that want this, so I think like r places where stablecoin options are big, uh Nigeria, places in Latam, etc.
• 30:26
  Daniel Lev: Then inherently they're like, yeah, just give it to me in stablecoins.
• 30:29
  Daniel Lev: My users already want to hold in stable coins or whatever.
• 30:31
  Daniel Lev: Um that's really it.
• 30:33
  Daniel Lev: And more and more of that is happening.
• 30:37
  Dante Reminick: Is it happening in a specific part of the world, you think, or all over?
• 30:40
  Daniel Lev: I would say all over, all over, because we had a big prediction market that wants to settle in stable coins because they have market makers on the prediction market that will accept stable coins in between because they know it's efficient for trading.
• 30:55
  Daniel Lev: Um so I would say it's all over, but the you the reasons are different.
• 31:02
  Daniel Lev: Like some is retail demand, some is business demand from sophisticated players in the US, right?
• 31:07
  Daniel Lev: Um, but it's all over for sure.
• 31:10
  Dante Reminick: Interesting.
• 31:10
  Dante Reminick: And what are you guys obsessing over at Coinflow every single day?
• 31:14
  Dante Reminick: I know you're being smothered by demand.
• 31:16
  Dante Reminick: You know, everyone wants better, faster, cheaper money to our point before.
• 31:21
  Dante Reminick: But what are you guys focused on building?
• 31:23
  Dante Reminick: What's the next mountain that you guys need to climb?
• 31:26
  Daniel Lev: Yeah, I mean, we've we've connected a good amount of payment networks.
• 31:29
  Daniel Lev: Um there's many more geographies and regions we need to go into to make this like global payment network.
• 31:37
  Daniel Lev: Um, so that that's what we're doing.
• 31:39
  Daniel Lev: And then we are, I mean, it's an interesting time to be alive in terms of building stuff for sure.
• 31:45
  Daniel Lev: Um and it's really cool to see all these use cases, net new use cases in industries pop up that we can service.
• 31:52
  Daniel Lev: Um yeah, vertical expansion, geography expansion, et cetera, is what our main two focuses.
• 31:57
  Dante Reminick: And when it comes to integrating new payment networks, do you see these payment networks themselves actually start to use stable coins?
• 32:05
  Dante Reminick: Like I personally I know Visa has a stablecoin team, MasterCard has a stablecoin team, uh, Western Union has a stablecoin team, MoneyGram, like all of these sort of disparate payment companies are now, to your point, forced to start to take stablecoins seriously.
• 32:20
  Dante Reminick: Does that make your job easier, or is that a threat to you guys?
• 32:24
  Daniel Lev: No, no, no, not a threat.
• 32:25
  Daniel Lev: It makes our job easier.
• 32:27
  Daniel Lev: Um, like I said, we're we're in we're a network of networks.
• 32:30
  Daniel Lev: Like we want to, you know, if the coffee shop wants to accept MoneyGram as like a wallet type, can I having Moneygram send me the money in two or three days via fiat rails is way worse than like accepting MoneyGram as a wallet type and being like, hey, MoneyGram actually has instant availability and can send Coinflow stable coins.
• 32:47
  Daniel Lev: That's beautiful.
• 32:48
  Daniel Lev: That's great.
• 32:49
  Daniel Lev: Um, so yeah, we're in this unique position where we're not competing with all these players.
• 32:53
  Daniel Lev: We're actually like help we want to be able to aggregate all of them in the best way possible for our businesses and move money and allow those businesses to accept money instantly.
• 33:04
  Dante Reminick: Got it.
• 33:04
  Dante Reminick: So your inertia only increases as more people adopt stable coins.
• 33:09
  Dante Reminick: It seems like what I'm noticing from you know talking to various people around the industry is that the more stablecoin adoption happens, the easier it is simply because the hardest part of stablecoin payments is always the first and last mile, right?
• 33:23
  Dante Reminick: Is converting from fiat to stable coins.
• 33:26
  Dante Reminick: But if things start in stable coins, you're sort of solving that that first and and last mile issue.
• 33:32
  Dante Reminick: Yeah.
• 33:32
  Dante Reminick: Is that is that correct?
• 33:34
  Dante Reminick: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 33:36
  Dante Reminick: Cool.
• 33:37
  Dante Reminick: Cool.
• 33:37
  Dante Reminick: I love it.
• 33:38
  Dante Reminick: So you're seeing a demand of stable coins come up.
• 33:41
  Dante Reminick: You're seeing you know, more and more people want to move their money better, faster, cheaper.
• 33:45
  Dante Reminick: What are the biggest challenges that you guys are facing?
• 33:48
  Dante Reminick: To your point, probably not regulatory anymore.
• 33:51
  Dante Reminick: We've seen a lot of a lot of action, at least in the United States, on that.
• 33:54
  Dante Reminick: People are starting to trust stable coins more.
• 33:56
  Dante Reminick: What are the biggest headwinds that you're facing?
• 34:01
  Daniel Lev: Uh I think the hardest challenge challenge of like growing a hyper-growth business is like hiring.
• 34:08
  Daniel Lev: Like you want to be able to get the best people.
• 34:11
  Daniel Lev: It's a long journey.
• 34:12
  Daniel Lev: Um, but you also need people to fulfill this this demand.
• 34:16
  Daniel Lev: Um, so that's the biggest thing.
• 34:19
  Daniel Lev: So that's like if you guys, if you know anyone, if anyone's listening that wants a job at a rocket ship, like please please reach out.
• 34:24
  Daniel Lev: We're hiring every position.
• 34:26
  Dante Reminick: Well, what position every position?
• 34:27
  Daniel Lev: Every position.
• 34:28
  Dante Reminick: Across the full stack?
• 34:29
  Dante Reminick: All right.
• 34:29
  Dante Reminick: If you if you need a job, find Dan.
• 34:33
  Dante Reminick: That's right.
• 34:34
  Dante Reminick: But only only if you're good.
• 34:35
  Dante Reminick: Dan, I can tell you this for a fact, has very, very high standards on on hiring, as he should.
• 34:41
  Dante Reminick: So only if you have elite ball knowledge should you should you go to Coinflow and ask for a job.
• 34:47
  Daniel Lev: Ball knowers only.
• 34:49
  Dante Reminick: Ball knowers only.
• 34:50
  Dante Reminick: You heard it.
• 34:51
  Dante Reminick: Awesome.
• 34:52
  Dante Reminick: Dan, you're the man.
• 34:53
  Dante Reminick: I I really appreciate you coming on the show.
• 34:55
  Dante Reminick: I know that we've had these conversations in the past, and we're going to continue to have these types of conversations, but I'm glad that we finally got to recording it for our audience.
• 35:04
  Dante Reminick: I hope that you found this interesting, and I highly recommend that you check out Coinflow at Coinflow.cash.
• 35:10
  Dante Reminick: And uh, as always, stay stable.