Making payments solutions a marketplace with PayQuicker
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PayQuicker is a 15-year-old solutions provider in the global payouts market. It enables payouts in more than 200 countries and in 40 currencies, working with companies employing gig-economy workers and other contractors to simplify the remuneration process. Yesterday, PayQuicker launched Payouts OS, which lets PayQuicker’s payouts partners compete for client business, and solve clients' specific needs (speed, cost, etc.).
In an interview with The Financial Revolutionist, PayQuicker President Charles Rosenblatt explains the company’s newest offering, details the conditions that gave birth to PayQuicker, and outlines the future of payments and payouts.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Financial Revolutionist: So PayQuicker was founded 15 years ago. What was it about that point in time that necessitated something like PayQuicker coming about?
Charles Rosenblatt: Back in 2007, when Paul Beldham started the company, there were a lot of difficulties in making payments across the globe, and in getting cards in people’s hands across the globe. Groups needed to build huge treasury departments, even when that wasn’t their expertise. Outsourcing this process lets companies focus on their core business, not worrying about how salespeople and others get money into their hands.
Payments is not a simple industry. It doesn’t make sense at a corporate level for someone to go in and hire people with the expertise that they need in order to be able to do the payments, when you can have your CFO work closely with a group of folks who are experts in payments.
So it’s a question of efficiently allocating resources, and deferring an entire vertical to a different entity.
When we go to partners or clients, they'll have three, four or five folks working on payouts; by the time we're integrated, they’ll have one person working in that position, and they’ll reallocate the others to higher-value projects. So instead of someone spending seven hours trying to figure out the bank information on a fat-fingered payout, we can solve that issue in a matter of minutes. It’s a question of comparative advantage.
With that in mind: Why launch Payouts OS? And why now?
So we’re offering Payouts-as-a-Service to any industry across the globe that’s paying gig workers or marketplaces.
We’ve been the largest consumer of our own APIs for a number of years, having built an immensely strong back-end technology that was API-driven to be able to service the millions of customers and billions of dollars that we’ve been sending globally. We’re moving beyond the direct-selling segment, which we focused on with our legacy product, to additional segments like insurance, clinical trials, and gaming. We’re also leveraging a few partners on the back end, by bringing in more partners and creating an algorithm to decide the best configuration according to what the customer wants—speed, low cost, and so forth.
Where do you see that strategy leading you?
It allows us to work with any of these large payout providers or anyone who needs to do payouts across many places. We have a couple of large clinical trial companies that are going to launch with us to help us be the technology behind their global payouts for clinical trials. We have a gaming company who pays their developers and gamers around the globe. And we're in conversations with folks like insurance companies who want to do disaster relief payments and insurance payouts. And of course, conversations with some of the largest marketplaces and gig economy workforces.
All of those want a white-label experience. They don't want their brand to go second, and they don’t want to have the bank relationship. So we take over bank details and credentialize it in a PCI and GDPR compliant environment. We’re then aggregating the best payout partners across the globe, and they bid and compete for our clients’ business.
Have you seen white labeling work for you previously?
It’s allowed us to break into certain industries and allow people to own their own experience. We cater to that part of the market, which allows us to grow a nice large, healthy growing business. We feel there's a long way to go by actually helping the needs of our clients and being able to white label these things.
And the PaaS launch must drive prices down, which is a win for you and a win for your clients.
Even if you think of someone as big as Uber, and hypothetically I also have Meta as a client, Uber will get an economy of scale because they're getting the size of Meta on their side so we can drive prices down.
We do everything through one application and one API. So you get 10-plus top global banks. You get all these FX providers, you get cards, you get crypto with one API in one application. If you were to do it yourself, even if they were going to compete, your tech group would have to do eight integrations in order to get this done. And getting tech resources is very difficult
Where do you see PayQuicker and where do you see the payouts space writ large headed in the next few years?
I see PayQuicker providing the same service we do to the 300-plus clients we have today, but I see a new sector opening up through the Payouts OS platform. The thing I see about the industry, which coincides with this, is I believe people are getting more specialized as a whole. I believe companies are focusing on what they do well and not focusing on needing to do everything and be everyone everywhere. And that's the advantage of Payouts OS. Since it’s white label, it lets companies be smart about resourcing internally.
Any final advice for The FR’s readers?
Enjoy what you're doing, and have a passion for it. I enjoy going to work every day. The other bit of advice is to treat people with respect and integrity. You never know when you're going to see people again. The fintech community is a very small community. I can't tell you how many people I run into, whether it be at the Finovate conference I'm at now, or the thousands of people at Money 20/20 I run into, and how many deals I've gotten over the course of my time.
