Latest / Leaders In Payments / Yaacov Martin, Co-Founder, CEO of Jifiti | Episode 252

Transcript

Yaacov Martin, Co-Founder, CEO of Jifiti | Episode 252 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast, where we talk to C-level leaders from across the payments landscape.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: We, historically, were engaged in larger types of transactions longer duration loans, larger loans that were properly underwritten, often regulated, and so on and so forth.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Therefore, the movement into the world of B2B, which naturally embodies or includes larger types of financing programs, was not that far into us.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: That was Yakov Martin, the co-founder and CEO of GIFTY.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: He is my special guest this week on episode 252 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: I'm your host, Greg Myers.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Through their white-labeled platform, banks and lenders embed their loans at any point of sale transaction.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: The merchant and the lender maintain a direct relationship and GIFTY facilitates the solution.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Yakov provides a great overview of the BNPL space, discusses B2B financing and talks about where this space is going over the next few years.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: We've got a great episode ahead, so let's get started.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Hi Yakov, thank you for being here and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: It's a pleasure to be here.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Great, let's dive right in and let's start talking about you a little bit, and we'll jump into your professional career in a minute.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe where you grew up, where you went to school, where you currently live, a few things like that.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I was born actually in Silver Spring, maryland.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: My parents moved from the US to Israel when I was about a year old.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: I went through schooling here in Israel, where I'm speaking to you from at this moment.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: My parents made sure to speak English to us at home and did a lot in order to keep that up.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Essentially, I grew up pretty much bilingual All the way through 12th grade and then military service and law school.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I did it all here in Israel.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: Okay, well, let's go ahead and jump in and talk about Jifity.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: If you don't mind, tell our audience what the company does, sure?
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Jifity today enables consumer finance, point of sale finance, buy and out, pay later.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: However you want to call it, the common denominator of all of those terms is giving access to consumers and small businesses to loans when and where we believe they need it most, which is usually at the point of a transaction, whether that transaction takes place online, in store, on the phone, wherever it may be.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: That's where we want to give access to the right type of financing product.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: You bear with me.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: I'll add just maybe two or three qualifications.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: I think it's important to note that Jifity is not a lender.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: We are not a balance sheet lender.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: We don't lend.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: We provide the technologies that connect between merchants, consumers and banks and lenders and allow for those types of transactions and offers to take place in real time seamlessly.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: We operate today in about 11 countries.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: By the end of this year, we'll be live in 15 countries.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Obviously North America, including the US and Canada, and then mainly Western European countries.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Are there specific verticals that you focus on or types of businesses?
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, Our business was concentrated on B2C and retail B2C and expanded into some other interesting service provider verticals such as medical, dental, but that was in addition to some of the more what we would call classic verticals such as furniture, fitness, consumer electronics.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: What's interesting is that over the last year we've really taken a pretty significant step into the B2B world where small businesses are in need of financing and sometimes even tailored and customized type of financing programs.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: That has served as quite a significant expansion of our business.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: You mentioned, you're the technology behind it.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Would it be the case we wouldn't see your brand name when we go to check out, say, an e-commerce website?
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: That is correct.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Some people say that it is an area that does not have the same type of glory that some other brand names do because we're always behind the scenes.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: I actually enjoy that a whole lot more.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: But we enable or we facilitate for brands, both in the retail space and in the payments and finance space, to come together and really make that offer accessible to those who need it.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: How big is the company?
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: In terms of size, we today have about 110 team members.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: They span, like I said, quite a few countries.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: However, I would say the majority is still based out of Israel.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: We have a group out in Europe and then a team in the US as well.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: There is expansion that is constantly happening.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: It's a very tight-knit group, regardless of distance.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: I think people here feel very, very close to each other.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: We make it a priority to try to bring people together and to try to get people to meet face-to-face as much as possible.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Here in Israel, where our headquarters or head office is based, we have a culture of work from the office primarily.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: People work from home occasionally, but the vast majority of the work is Done in collaboration face to face, physical human beings, real interactions Okay great.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: I think most of our audience will be familiar with the traditional consumer side of the bnpl.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: I mean such a hot topic in the last I don't know two years, but you did mention the b2b side, so I want to dive a little deeper into that.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: So maybe give us a use case one or two of like what happens there, like what is a small business looking for and is it the same types of lenders?
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: Is it the same technology?
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: maybe give us a little more detail there sure, and it's interesting because the expansion into the world of b2b Is not so far off from the areas that we decided to Facilitate her to deal with in the b2c world.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: What I mean to say is that from the very beginning, as opposed to maybe some of the by now, pay later world that was focused on smaller types of transactions, splitting it into two or three payments, we historically were engaged in larger types of transactions longer duration loans, larger loans that were properly underwritten, often regulated, and so on and so forth and therefore the movement in the world of b2b, which naturally in bodies or includes larger types of financing programs, was not that far into.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Us are thesis has always been that traditional financial institutions actually have a tremendous amount of expertise and experience in underwriting and risk management.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Even if we were to look at the cost of their loans and payment programs, you can imagine that a traditional tier one bank has a more efficient cost of capital and therefore they're able to offer more competitive rates.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Sometimes then fintechs out there who need to raise those type of balance sheets out in the market.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: The downside is that, historically, tier one banks were not as agile, were not as able to make their offers accessible in real time, quickly and seamlessly, because that usually involves a whole different set of tools or skill sets, expertise in the ecosystem of retail terms of their technologies, in terms of the reconciliation and so on and so forth, and that was really the piece that we brought in order to complete that connection between what we consider to be superior lenders and the brands and the merchants were in need of those types of programs.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: The reason I give this Lengthy background is because it then becomes a little bit easier to explain both the verticals, the use cases that we've Delt with and I'm doing that in a moment and the movement from there into BW or to include not only B2C but also B2B use cases.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So I mentioned verticals such as furniture and that's, I think, pretty obvious, I assume, to our listeners when a person is looking to make a significant purchase of a kitchen and doesn't necessarily have the cash flow to pay it all in cash.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Obviously, both the merchant looking to make the sale and the consumer looking to complete the purchase are looking for ways to bridge that gap.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: It only makes sense to offer finance.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: But then, even in the world of B2C, some of the areas that really get us passionate are areas of, for example, medical procedures that need to be Financed, distance learning, tuition.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Those are all transactions that we believe that can actually significantly improve a consumer's well-being, life, surroundings, and so on and so forth.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Those are the type of the transactions that we really look to enable and to facilitate, to match, in a way, the right type of financial offering to the type of transaction and the consumer.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: If I were to take that into the world of B2B, in the world of B2B you were mostly focused on small businesses.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Small businesses who often seek finance in order to grow their business, in order to maybe sometimes to bridge seasonality and be able to keep their employees on board, almost like working capital.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: All of those types of transactions we believe are important, or the access to those type of financial products, are super important to small businesses and if it's done properly, those small businesses can really grow and thrive, employee additional people.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: There's real value in tailoring or matching the right type of financial solution to those small businesses.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: So, from a business model perspective, is it SAS based?
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Is it transaction based?
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: A little bit of both.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: How does that work?
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so our business model has always been anchored in a transaction based percentage, if you will, and the reason that we chose that business model is because we found that it created the right type of alignment between all parties.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Meaning we, as jiffy behind the scenes, are extremely motivated to make sure that the transactions go through, that the right offering is presented, that any type of a testing is applied or optimization is applied, because that ultimately feeds our mouse, so to speak, as well.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: And then when the lender wins and the merchant wins and the consumer wins or the small business wins, we too are rewarded.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: And you know this better than I do.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: This space is incredibly competitive and I think there's been a lot of focus on it.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: There was a lot of money raised initially, a lot of activity, a lot of press.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: So what differentiates you from your competitors out there?
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: I'm going to try to paint a bit of a picture, like you said, of the recent history of buy and out pay later.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: And again, even the term buy and out pay later can mean different things to different people.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: We today are engaged in what we prefer to call embedded lending, and that lending can include, like I said, any type of payment program, anything from paying two, paying three, which is a little bit less of what we do.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: We do that, but it definitely accounts for a much smaller portion of our portfolio.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Most of what we do concentrates on installment loans, revolving lines of credit, generally a higher average ticket.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: Now, the reason I spelled all that out is because we obviously, over the last few years, until not so long ago, have seen a real rush.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: So consumer finance has been around for years, for decades, but from about 2017, 2018, all the way through 2021, we really saw this explosive growth, especially in the world of fintechs who were actually offering the finance we're offering, the buy and out, pay later programs the pay in two, pay in three, pay in four and, as you mentioned, greg, some of that explosive growth translated into explosive valuations.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: So we saw valuations of Klarna, for example, as a market leader, of course, reach over $50 billion, and we saw IPOs, and we saw Firm's IPO, which was a very successful one.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: We saw other M&A activity that took place, for example, with afterpay at a valuation of $29 billion real money, as you said, real, real large valuations and it kept on growing all the way until the end of 2021.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: And then, at the end, in December 2021, something very interesting happened, which should have been expected, and that was that many regulators around the world all of a sudden took notice.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, they didn't take notice obviously in December.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: They took notice way before, but they made it public at the end of 2021.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: And what they made public was nothing more than just saying that they are conducting research, they are probing and their reason was obviously valid.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: The regulator is tasked with managing the debt to income ratio on a macro and micro level and they realized that so much of this activity, specifically in the world of by now, pay later, was concentrating on smaller types of transactions was all happening below their radar because it didn't even reach the threshold that normally the regulator looks at and that became concerning to them.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: They didn't necessarily know if there was absolute reason for concern, but just the volumes that were being processed below the radar, so to speak, were ones that warranted this probe and the research that they then went on to conduct.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Now, what's interesting is that that obviously sent a message to the industry, definitely to the very, very large brands, to say, okay, you've been doing this and this has been bringing you sales, but just so you should know, we have to look into this a little bit more and we will come up with our conclusions.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Obviously, immediately after December 2021, the economy shifted.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: The downturn took place at the beginning of 2022, and we're probably living through it to this very day and that combination in the world of by now, pay later created what I like to call the perfect storm, not necessarily in such a positive, perfect way, but rather it rattled many of the players.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: So, from the beginning of 2022, all the way until now, we've seen shrinkage, especially in the area of venture funded companies, who were in the business of lending, of providing by now, pay later themselves, and those valuations that we mentioned before shrunk to their original size from 50 odd billion dollars all the way down to six share prices crashed by sometimes as much as 95, even 97% Around the world.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: This wasn't only in the US.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Nevertheless, the larger players survived and they continued to grow, but obviously had much, much more realistic and conservative types of valuations.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: And this created a very interesting dynamic because, on the one hand, the work that was done in previous years created an expectation, created a demand, both for merchants and consumers and small businesses to have alternative finance methods or payment methods at the point of sale.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: The fintechs made it easy and seamless and quick, and that has almost become the standard.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: So the market demand continued to grow but the supply shrunk because many of the smaller by now paylaters did not survive even this perfect storm as I described before.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: So it created a very interesting delta between the market demand and the supply that was previously being given by the by now paylaters.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Another very interesting factor to take into account is these fintechs who were in the business of lending themselves, as I mentioned before.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Obviously, they needed to raise essentially two different buckets of funds.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: One is their operational funds, just like any other startup, any venture backed entity, and the other one was a balance sheet During the good years of 2019, all the way.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: It's funny how we refer to those years as good years.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, the world was going through COVID, but from funding perspective.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Money was cheap, very cheap and available and money was almost thrown at some of these companies and they were able to raise balance sheets at minimal cost and their value was being determined based on their rapid growth.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Nobody was really looking or at least the venture world wasn't looking enough at profitability.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: They were looking at growth, growth, growth.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: So they were able to raise these balance sheets.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: They were able to lend them out, sometimes even when the business union economic didn't completely make sense, but the growth was impressive and brought about those type of valuations.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Now, after the market shifted the cost of capital when sky high and the venture world was starting to measure once again Ventures based on profitability and not on growth, now, if you weren't able to show a Positive business unit economic when your cost of capital was as low as it was, how are you going to do that when, all of a sudden, the cost has just shut up?
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: So it really created stress.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: But, on the other hand, the strong, by not pay later, fintechs made many, many adjustments that allowed them to survive at least to this day, and not all did.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: As I mentioned before, this delta that I mentioned before with regard to the market demand versus the supply or the cost, created an incredible opportunity for the tier one, traditional banks and lenders, to enter this industry or reenter, I would say, this industry in a real way.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: I'll pause there because I've been babbling, but that's the way that we see this industry, this world and then tell us how you took advantage of that opportunity so we, to begin with, we're working with Regulated financial institutions, banks and lenders sometimes non-bank lenders who were much more interested in these types of Longer-duration loans, regulated loans, deep underwriting this void that was created obviously gave them a massive opportunity to jump in.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Now, to some degree some of these banks, at least our prospects.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: We're sitting on the sidelines during those years of 2018, 2019, all the way through 2021, seeing this explosive growth of the market and, to some degree, also feeling like others were eating their lunch.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: But there was some hesitation as to what to do and how to do and how much of it to do, and After this perfect storm took place, many of them understood it's now or never.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: We have when I say we, I'm putting myself in the shoes of banks and Regulated financial institutions.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: We are regulated, so there are no fears there.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: We have experience in underwriting.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: We have a more efficient cost of capital.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: What we are lacking often is the ability to implement quickly and make it easily accessible and make it seamless for the merchants, for the small businesses, for the consumers, and that's where our partnership all of a sudden Resonated and got many of these tier one banks to say okay, the time is now.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: We're going to partner Jifity you bring us the technology, we'll bring the balance sheet and the underwriting and let's turn this into something real.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: That's what we've been doing.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: So we were doing this before the perfect storm took place or during those years, and Everything intensified at the beginning of 2022.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: So I think this is a great kind of segue into the next question, which is, really we've set the stage where, where we've come from, where we are today, what does the future look like for the embedded lending space?
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: What I like to say, even in terms of our mission, is we really look to bring the bank to the customer rather than the customer to the bank.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: I mean that, in a way, for us, says it all in terms of embedded lending, and more and more we're seeing the embedded characteristic Create a real impact not only on one industry or multiple industries, but actually in almost every industry, because our Financial activity is not separate to so many other activities that take place right.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: So these could be leisure activities, professional activities, educational activities, any.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: In almost every industry that you think of.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Payments and transactions play a real essential piece of what makes the world go round, and if once upon a time this was Limited to cash and then maybe cash alternatives, but in any case those were Transactions that, from a cash flow perspective, took place immediately.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: The idea of embedded lending is instead of having a separate type of industry where you are lending, so customers or small businesses are Going through a finance type of process and then applying that finance elsewhere.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: This embeddedness allows for it all to take place not only in real time, but allows for that perfect matchmaking.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: How do you bring the right type of bank or the right type of product of a bank to the right type of transaction and you make it available when and where it matters most.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: And that's affecting us in every walk of life and we see that finally, I think reaching a stage where it is almost a given meaning.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Today, serious financial institutions understand they can't just Expect customers to come to them.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: They need to meet the customer when and where it matters most.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: That's where we think it's all going.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: Okay, you hear that a lot in just Removing the friction from payments and how that started with Uber and that continues.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: It's sort of the same thing, right?
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: It's that user experience it ends up coming back to.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: No one sets out their day to make a bunch of payments, right, so we make that as easy as possible.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Meet them where they are when they want it, make it as easy and frictionless as possible, and it certainly sounds like that's part of the bigger future.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: It's here now, but it's only going to get better and easier.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think and again, we probably don't have sufficient time to really go into this but I think this also has something to do with financial literacy, because the more we get these type of more sophisticated payment plans embedded With a sleek, easy, clear, transparent user experience, in a sense what we're doing is we're educating the public.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: The public has options the public can discern, can differentiate and Can learn actually as to what works well for them with their whatever their own Own personal situation may be.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: So I think that if this is done properly and that's maybe where regulation can also play a part In order to make sure that it's not served up in a way where they're you know, sometimes the frictionlessness can also lead to almost irresponsible borrowing or lending right, because if it becomes just too easy to click and click and click and there's no real underwriting process, then you can get in over your head.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: So this has to be done properly.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: But if it is done properly, I think that what we will find is that the general public will have a greater degree of financial literacy than it currently does.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that angle of it and I hope that that does become a bigger part of the future around the whole financial literacy part.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Well, let's switch gears for a minute and talk about you.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: So tell us about your journey to your role there as the co-founder and CEO.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: This journey is also planted in relationships and team members and so on and so forth.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Gifety actually did not start as an enabler for consumer finance.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: It was still in the area of payments, prepaid retail.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: We set out originally to develop solutions for retailers in the prepaid and gifting sphere gift cards, gift registries tackling many of the issues that we tackle today in consumer finance as well.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: By the way, that line of business is still live and kicking and growing within the Gifety organization, but the challenges are very, very similar.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: It is the seamlessness, the integration into retail ecosystems, platforms, technologies, etc.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: However, my journey started actually when I met a childhood friend in a mall here in Israel.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: He knew that I was involved in a few other ventures and pitched me an idea At some point.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: I said to him please hold on.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: I ran home and I brought him a business plan that I wrote about eight years prior that, believe it or not, was describing almost one-to-one his idea with regard to gift registry.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: He got excited and said well, I'd love to do this with you.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: I said to him well, I'm really busy right now.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: I don't think I have the bandwidth.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: He called me three weeks later and he said listen, I'm going for it.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: At that point I said well, you're not going to go for this without me.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: I jumped right in.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Soon after we had a third co-founder who joined us.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Then one thing led to another.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: I will say that from the very, very beginning, and really with the first additional team members who joined us, I mentioned before that we are a tight-knit group, very much family-oriented, family-like.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: I think to this day it's retained that type of characteristics.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: People here tend to be committed, loyal to one another.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: I measure things often by WhatsApp groups, especially here in Israel.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: The entire country runs on WhatsApp.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: Actually, I think that's true for many countries outside of the US.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: But the most active WhatsApp group that I have on my phone is the company's non-professional forum, meaning it's a social forum where people like interacting, asking each other how their last vacation was, in a real, genuine manner.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: That's something that we hold very, very dear, because we think it's what has kept so many people committed to this mission.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: They sometimes say about Jiftee that people who joined never leave.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: I guess it's true.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Obviously, we grow, so we have people who have just joined recently, but a very, very large number of team members have been here for over six, seven, eight years.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: That's wonderful.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: I enjoy that every single day.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: What are some things you're passionate about?
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: Maybe one business passion and one personal passion.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Take, for example, the industry that we're in or the products that we offer.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: I must say I think I speak not only for myself, but for many here at Jiftee.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: What gets us out of bed in the morning maybe I hinted at this before is not us being able to facilitate another purchase of another pair of sneakers for a 16-year-old when it's their 10th pair of sneakers, just because they can now split it into three or four payments.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry to say that is not what gets me out of bed in the morning.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: What does get us out is giving access.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Giving access to responsible, competitive financial products that can really impact people and small businesses around the world, because we do understand how crucial finance is, how crucial it is to make the right type of decisions when it comes to finance.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: If we can take the best of both worlds meaning these competitive and regulated and responsible loans that are offered by tier one financial institutions and make that available in the same sort of seamless way at the point of sale, online, in-store, on the phone, wherever it may happen, that is what gets us up in the morning Outside of work.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: I had a conversation with somebody yesterday where I was asked a similar question in another context, I started thinking about extreme sports and so on and so forth.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: The truth is that, at the end of the day, the thing that keeps me most passionate and busy and adventurous is probably family.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: I have five kids of my own, and they range 18 to 5, so that keeps me on my toes as well.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Any moment I'm not working, I'm, in one way or another, a father.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: I think that is definitely my passion outside of work.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, great.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: So this next question is really about advice.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: So let's just have the scenario where someone has just graduated from college or university, they look at this industry whether you want to call that fintech, payments, lending, whatever you want to call it and they come to you and they say, hey, I want to build a career in this industry, and they're right out of school.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: What advice would you give them to be successful?
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: I think that this is probably true both, for, like you said, any graduate or even an entrepreneur who is contemplating jumping into things sees problems like solving them.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: There's a great degree of courage that is needed because there's a great degree of fear, and the fear is really a fear of failure.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: I'm speaking from personal experience.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Obviously, when I look back, I often find that the reason for me jumping into certain things was actually a necessity.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: I got married young.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: Everybody teaches you that it's extremely important to treat your wife well.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Nobody really told me that I also need to pay the bill at the supermarket a day after my wedding, and you have to figure that out.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: Then often I jumped into things because that was a way to start when I still hadn't completed my degree, and so on.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: But I would say that it is absolutely fine to be fearful and to have the fear of failing, but it is absolutely necessary to not conquer the fear but jump head in despite the fear.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: So know that you may fail and that's okay.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: And as long as you take something from that, you are really moving up, and that is true whether or not you're seeking a job that you feel, maybe, that you're a little bit less than qualified for, or you may be rejected altogether, or starting a business that may fail.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Or then, of course, raising funds where, all of a sudden, you're taking additional responsibility on your shoulders and we feel that responsibility day in and day out.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: And nevertheless, the job is to live side by side with that fear and be able to take those courageous steps and, like I said, as long as you're able to take perspective and really learn from every single one of those downfalls, celebrate the highs, celebrate the lows.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Nobody promised or guaranteed that this would be an easy journey and it's not emotionally, it can be a real roller coaster.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Embrace it, embrace the roller coaster.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Obviously, easier said than done, and I say it right now.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: I'm really speaking to myself, still over 10 years into this world of venture, but it's an incredibly important stance to take when things get hard.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: All very, very sage advice.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: I appreciate you sharing that Well.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: We've covered a lot of ground so far.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up the show?
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: First of all, I wanted to thank you, greg.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: This has been a pleasure, loved your questions, easy to talk to and easy to answer.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for being on the show.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: I know your time's very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, and to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Make sure you visit our website at leadersinpaymentscom, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes.
• 32:06
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