Latest / Leaders In Payments / Amir Wain, Founder & CEO of i2c Inc. | Episode #3

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Amir Wain, Founder & CEO of i2c Inc. | Episode #3 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the leaders in payments podcast where we talk to C level leaders from across the payments landscape.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payments space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm your host Greg Myers, and this is episode three,
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: the leaders in payments podcast featuring Armour wine, the CEO of[inaudible] AMR was born in Pakistan, came to the U S and has started three successful companies.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: In this episode he talks about[inaudible] and its role in the payments ecosystem as well as provides some great advice about getting out of your comfort zone to find success.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: So let's get started.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Hi Omer,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: thank you for being here and welcome to the leaders and payment's podcast.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Good to be here, Greg, and thank you for inviting me to your podcast.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: So let's dive right in.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Tell our audience a little bit about you, where you grew up, where you went to school, where you live, things like that.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: I was born in Pakistan and before I could legally purchase beer, hi, I came to the U S university of Texas or Darlington to do my computer science and engineering.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: So it was an interesting journey coming across the globe to a new place, not knowing anyone.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: And I thought know besides the education in the class[inaudible] being in a new place at that age was great learning for me.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: So really, really enjoyed my time and I learned a lot[inaudible] really I would call myself a serial entrepreneur because I never really worked for anyone right after college.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: And in fact, even during my last 18 months at college, me and a friend of mine, we were doing custom coding and doing projects for people.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: And as I graduated, aye went back to Pakistan to meet my parents and saw a tremendous opportunity in terms of exposing bothered or personal computing to the corporate world.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: And I'm talking 86 so IBM XT had come out, Lotus one two three was there[inaudible] it was a 10 X change on the old way of doing things and just showing people some use cases.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: And now all of this could be used was number one, extremely exciting and offered tremendous benefits to the other party.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: And so that kind of got me thinking about starting a business and we started with a training program of computer appreciation for the senior executives.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: And I started doing this know, multi-day course for the senior management at large organizations and from one drift further along to another dad got the business going.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: So everyone kind of loved the spreadsheet aspect but then they would have problems that couldn't be solved by a spreadsheet, inventory management, anything which has like a historical data and so on.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: So we started getting business for custom software development and from the, you know, it was more and more focused on the finance sector and we did a lot of work for thanks in that space doing custom software development.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: And you know, currently I am based in the Bay area.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I've been here since 2001 beginning of 2001 so just after the dotcom party ended.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: So it was a good time and it's been a fantastic journey since then.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: And I do see was my third business that I started.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: So between 86 and two times in one, the other two businesses that still operate successfully, one of them is traded on the stock exchange.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: That is run by management.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: You know, I met the board and spending most of my time at ITC that I'm very actively engaged with and since then I've invested in a couple of other businesses and help them get started.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: So absolutely entrepreneurship I think is one thing that I have kind of seen and heard in me throughout this journey.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds like a great story.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Now let's just jump into ITC.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Tell everyone what ITC does.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: So[inaudible] commerce is such an integral part of our lives.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Barter and cash and cards and it has the way to exchange value has changed over the period of time, but it's been there forever.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: So I do see is focused on facilitating the exchange of value between two parties.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: And that's hard to high level.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: So you know, in layman's term, basically it would mean there'd be process, credit cards, debit cards, mobile payments, reward and loyalty.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Anything that has to do with um, know commerce.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: The, I do see platform allows people to support that and we are the Intel inside so we don't go to the consumer but we bother many of the brands that people are familiar with that offer payment products in the market.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, great.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: So what would you say differentiates you or makes you better than your competition?
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: We all put it in a highly consolidated market where that are the few very large players servicing customers worldwide.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Now what size you become more rigid, you become more bureaucratic and it becomes difficult to do things and in an agile fashion.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: On the flip side, if you think about changes at the macro level, you know the timeframes are compressing things that are happening quicker and quicker.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: The product cycles are compressing.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Consumer behavior is changing.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Consumer is no longer willing to accept the standard product that you offer.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: They want custom product.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: And while we are trying to make payments and commerce simple, the infrastructure is becoming more and more complex and this is with the opportunity[inaudible] access for companies like to to come in and transform complexity.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Do agility and that is the core competence.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, I do see.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: And you know, how do you do that?
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: So there's several things that you have to do.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: So number one is you, you have to move from[inaudible] according to configuration.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: If you get into coding, the cycle times are much longer.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: If you design a system which is more around configuration, your cycle times improve.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: The architecture of the system has to be customer centric rather than account centric.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Many of the processing systems and payments, it's basically that is an account that has a balance and then debits and credits are posted.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: So these are like general ledgers, you know, that operate at speed to read kind flip the whole thing.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: And our architecture is customer centric, but a customer can have multiple ideas, let it be fingerprint, mobile number 16 digit card, et cetera, et cetera.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: And can have various, what we call entitlements.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: So it's not just[inaudible] credit line.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: It could be a discount at a store, it could be entry to a game park, it could be a variety of those things.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: This architecture two lines up with the needs of the market today and it is very, very difficult for people, you know, with the legacy platforms to be able to make that transition.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: And that's where I do see is resonating tremendously in the marketplace.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: The other thing is think about, let's just use credit card industry as an example.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: 75% of the market share[inaudible] top five flares and one wonders why?
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Because if you look at the banking products, their DDA and their debit card and the credit card, the most profitable product is the credit card product.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: So I as a bank, I do all the hard work.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: I have your checking account, I give you service, I have debit card.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: But then you go and you get credit cards from someone knows and you know from that perspective you are really letting[inaudible] competition takeaway the price business of your customers.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: [inaudible] you can't differentiate because the big processors will offer you the cookie cutter solution.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: So the same question that you're asking me, what's our differentiation?
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: I go to a regional bank, I go to a small bank, my credit cards going to have nothing different.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: In fact, these big five guys have enough resources.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: [inaudible] taken the legacy system and built some other bells and whistles around it to make a good competitive product.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: So I do see acts as the equalizer for the regional and midsize players where they can compete with the big ones and offer a product which is even more competitive.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: So you serve not just merchants, you serve issuers and banks and FIS, multiple markets, right?
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: We do.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: We have cardholders across 216 different countries and territories, all 29 times zones.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: When we look at our global database, that means all our customers, you know, cardholder data, we service every single time zone in the world.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: We have our applications deployed in 17 different languages, including Japanese and Chinese, which are two bytes, slightly more complex.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: So we are truly a global company.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Thousand plus people.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: I would say that we are big enough do matter, but small enough to care did ours much smaller companies too.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: But when you are in the payments business, you have to have a certain size in footprint.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: You need compliance people, you need InfoSec people, you need risk management people, then you need developers, then you need ops, then you need fraud management.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: So when you know 150 200 people companies, you know it comes up, it's very difficult for them.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: This is more like an[inaudible] infrastructure business.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: And that's why the consolidation, that's why, you know, when I was talking about the highly consolidated industry and few large players, because it is infrastructure business, you can't operate very well at a small scale.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: So ITC has gotten to a size where be at a viable entity.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: We are very profitable, we've been growing and we are still flexible and agile.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about the industry overall.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Where do you think it's headed in say two to three years and then maybe same question for out there 10 years from now.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: So you know, I, I see I'm not in the prediction business.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: And the reason I say that is, you know, whenever you predict, then you would place a bet based on that prediction.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: So I am let's say, uh, issuer.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: And I said, this is where the industry is going and I'm going to start making investments in our direction and this is what I'm going to do.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: And let's say the industry doesn't go in that direction, goes in a different direction.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Think about the amount of money that has gone in, in the wrong direction.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Think about the feedback loop and time to adjust.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: So could be a very expensive bad decision.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: So we step back and we say, okay, well we are in a highly unpredictable environment and[inaudible] that you know, that are driving that unpredictability.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: One is the compressed timeline.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Things change so quickly.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Second, consumers as they get wound access to inflammation are becoming more educated about what they want.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: You know, the gen Zs have their own way of doing things.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: So for us, okay, we got to be ready no matter what the future[inaudible].
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: And if you try to come up with an answer, you say, if I'm going to be agile, I should be able to deal with anything that the future breaks.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: I just need to be agile.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: So our focus is an R recommendation is that build agility as a core competence in the organization and then you will be ready for whatever may come your way.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Having said that, I think what you're going to see is a shift, two words, baking payments, invisible.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: We already see that quite a bit.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Uber, right?
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: I mean every time you do an Uber, right, you're making a payment, but you don't see it, right?
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: And that's a great experience.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: No one leaves home saying, I'm going to go make a payment today, right?
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: So thinking about how do you make payments frictionless, secure.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: All of us heard about all the security breaches and data breaches and so on.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: So it's extremely important that I can continue to trust, you know, in my method of payment as I move forward, that's going to be extremely important.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: And finally, I think the key is if you can figure out a way to convert dollar to dollar 10 that's a fantastic thing.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Everyone wins, right?
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: So how do I make your money go further?
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: And this could be something as simple as you know, having the right offers at the right time.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Merchants are willing to fund some of those offers as well.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: And um, this is just one example, but there is a lot of other interesting ideas in this general team as to how do I make your money do more for you.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: And I think companies who would solve for these three things, making the payment experience as frictionless and invisible as possible, making sure it stays, you know, super secure.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: And then thirdly, if they can make your money go further, there'll be the winner.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: And I do see his role in that future is really to provide the enabling infrastructure because people will use it to seize infrastructure, to come up with use cases and take that product to consumers.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: I do see it does not take the product to consumer.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: So again, Intel, think about Intel doesn't necessarily take the notebooks and the PCs and tablets, they do the processor insight.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Yup.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: I'm looking at a little logo on my laptop that has Intel on it.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: So great.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: No, that's great answer.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Very insightful.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Let's switch gears and let's talk about you.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: So tell us about your journey.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: You talked a little bit about it already, but tell us a little more about your journey to your role as the CEO there.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: So you know, as I said, I mean I never really, besides my first job at iHub, which I quickly graduated to burger King, you know, and so on.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: This is my first couple of semesters.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: I haven't really had, you know, what I would call a professional job.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: So I started out as the CEO of the first company and I think the CEO position while may be a lonely position is a great position in terms of learning because you see all different aspects off the business and if you are ready for such a challenge, it is a fantastic way to learn.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: So I learned tremendously on the job at the first company.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: [inaudible] the second thing you know I've always gonna tried to do is to not do things by the book.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: You should read the book but then you should try it too figured out.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: You know, how do I improve on it or make it a more custom[inaudible] which is more suitable for my context.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: And in that quest you develop a much deeper understanding of things and you figured out the why piece.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: The white piece is such an important element.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: You got to know why before you kind of figured out how and so on.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: So it's been interesting[inaudible] it has given me a lot of directions throughout my life to have something to build and grow and I've tried to create an environment where the team is also able to grow and be successful and you know, those companies are running successfully and my goal at ITC is the same.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: It should[inaudible] you something that's just going to be way bigger than any one individual and will last forever.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: What are some things you're passionate about?
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Could be work related or not.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Just something that you have a passion for.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: I would say questioning the status quo and trying to sort pushed things beyond where they are.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: And this could be both in personal and professional book, right?
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: That really kind of excites me and it's driven by when I see the gap between the human potential and where we live and operate, that Delta is huge and you can see that like pick up any professional sports.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Now those guys are normal human beings also look at their level of performance and look at an average person's level of performance.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: So there's a huge Delta, that professional player has done something to elevate the game many, many times beyond an average person.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: So if you think about our daily lives that is tremendous.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Delta[inaudible] are ability and our potential and where we operate and then questioning that and trying to figure out how do I, you know, push myself or you know, cried to do things, always has been very exciting for me.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: I'll give you a couple of examples.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: I've never been a long distance runner.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: And you know, as I was turning 50, I decided to run my first marathon.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Running anything beyond two miles was like a stretch.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: But it always fascinated me how people could run, you know, for 26 months they made cars for that purpose.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: But you, how do you do that?
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: So step-by-step, just going through that training and doing it was just great.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Never did biking.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: So then did a a hundred mile bike ride around the tower, which was interesting.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Classical music class or at Stanford[inaudible] is such, uh, I would highly, highly recommend, put yourself in a position where you are at the bottom of the class or you're uncomfortable with something.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't know much about classical music and you know, this was a class with a lot of people in that, you know, feel an interest and so on[inaudible] grounds you, it makes you realize, you know, and, and it's a great experience.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: So I would say challenging the status.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Trying to push yourself beyond your current limit is something I like to do in a catch me going.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: So you know, the payments industry over the last five years has been a very hot industry, a lot of investment, a lot of interest, a lot of publicity, mostly good and a lot of young people coming into the industry.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: So if you could give someone just starting out some advice, what would that be?
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: You know, I would say there don't, sometimes people when things are super hard, they start doing something just because they're taught, Oh, I should start a payments company because you know, payments is a hard industry and I'll be successful.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: I think that's the wrong reason to get into the payments.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: You got to think about[inaudible] your strengths are what you are passionate about and where can you really make a difference.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: And if that happens to be payment, so be it.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Also know that payments is a different industry that are many sort of it years within payments and some of them, uh, infrastructure or a larger play not ideally suited for, you know, someone doing something out of the garage.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Most of the payments startups that have done well have had tremendous amount of funding.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: So if you're looking to bootstrap something, Damon's probably is not the best industry.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: No around payments.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: You want to make an app that you can upload on the app store and people can download.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: But if you're talking about, you know, a more Damon[inaudible], which is a bit more complex, it becomes expensive and a longer initiative.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Betty, very quickly, so be clear as to what exactly do you want to do in payments.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Do you have the right resources?
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Do you feel that's what you want to do and don't do it just because payments is hard because there are plenty of failures in payments, salsa, we don't hit about the failures, but there are many, many failures.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: So you've got to have some sort of differentiation or some advantage that you feel like, I have this advantage.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Go off to this.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: I think that's great advice.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: You know, we're about to wrap up.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up?
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: I think Greg does is a great initiative.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: I think I wish you the very best.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: I hope that whatever I have shared, maybe someone will find one little piece of information that will help them because if you have to continue to improve the payments experience and continue to grow, we do need, you know, fresh blood people with a fresh viewpoint to come in and do things.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: And the more we can share knowledge among ourselves, I think the better we will be prepared for the challenges of the future.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: So I appreciate your effort and wish you the very best.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: No, I appreciate that.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: And I know your time is very important, so thank you so much for taking time out today.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: My pleasure.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: And to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: And until
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: the next story, thank you for joining us this week on the leaders in payments podcast.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Make sure you visit our website@leadersinpayments.com where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes.
• 21:53
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