Powered By Curql: How Credit Unions Can Win with Real-Time Payments

Speaker A: Hello everybody. Welcome to the Fintech Combine. I am your host, Chris Kovacs. And this is the series where we talk with, and yes, sometimes about community based institutions, their digital and business transformation projects. And we meet the innovators, entrepreneurs and fintechs that make it all possible. On this, our fourth episode in our Powered by Circle series, we're speaking with Mark Majeski, the senior Vice president of Faster payments at Alacrity, about how they are bringing faster payments and better member experiences to credit unions across the country. Circle is the investment fund created by credit unions that has now made more than 40 investments in fintech startups, bringing the very best applications to the credit union marketplace. They provide both investment to the fintechs, but they also bridge the gap and help them start to acquire customers inside the credit union space. For more information about Circle, visit Circle curql. So if you're ready, let's suit up and get out on the field. Mark, I am so happy to have you on the show today. Thank you very much for joining us. Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about your amazing background in payments.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's funny because originally I wasn't in payments, so that's how things work. Right. Um, so my entree into banking was actually in business intelligence. And so I was one of those analysts that take data from transaction data, uh, from banks and we analyze it and figure out what customers want and need. And so I did that, I started that at JPMorgan Chase. Um, and then a friend of mine said, hey, we're working on this new group called the Internet Group. And do you want to come over to that? Because I was analyzing data for Internet usage at the time. And so lo and behold, third hire, uh, within the Internet group because we didn't know what to call it. And uh, the year after that we had 300. So obviously that grew exponentially. So worked at, in product development and banking for JPMorgan Chase, Citi, SunTrust, which is now Truist, and TD bank, both in Canada and the United States. Um, at one point a friend of mine called up I used to work with at Citi, he called up from the clearinghouse and said, we're working on this new thing called rtp. Do you want to come over and help? And so yes, so I did that and then went to fis, where I was heading up a number of different products including Surprise, RTP and FedNow. Mhm. Now at Alacrity. Um, I've been here for about four years.

Speaker A: Okay, tell us a little bit about Alacrity and what they're bringing for credit unions.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of exciting and I think the world of payments is exciting right now. Now, uh, I'll just share with you that eight years ago when RTP was developed, um, there hadn't been a change in payments for about 40 years. So there's a little bit of a gap. Um, that's changed. Right. So when eight years ago, when RTP came into play Fed, now we have Visa Direct, we have Zelle, all these other new capabilities came in. And so what we looked at from an alacrity perspective is how can we accommodate banks, credit unions of all sizes to be able to utilize these new capabilities. Um, so as such we created a cloud based hub which then encompasses ACH, WIRES, RTP, FedNow, Visa Direct and also Zelle. So all the Rails that you would be interested in as a credit union are at your disposal. Do you have to add them all at once? No, we understand that businesses, right, and the way that credit unions look at their businesses, it's a process, right? It's not, you're not going to do everything at once. So what we designed in is the capability of adding additional Rails after you've already added the first one. And uh, once you do that in our hub, uh, makes it very, very easy to add another rail so you don't have to go in and do a huge project just to add a new capability. The other piece that's different is that we have many, uh, credit unions coming to us that are on a particular core. And the problem with that is in many cases you have to use your core provider to do payments. And so not all of them are enamored with that idea. So what we do at Alacrity is we integrate using APIs directly to their core, no matter what core they're on. So you don't have to be uh, core agnostic or with us. Right. You don't have to change your core because nobody wants to do that. All right? But uh, we can adapt to your core. And so if you are with a core, with XYZ company and you don't want to do payments with them, you, you don't have to. So lots of flexibility in terms of the amount or number of Rails that are available to you, but also in terms of marrying that to your infrastructure very, very easily.

Speaker A: What are you guys seeing as the drivers for credit unions making the decision to add new Rails? Right. So the capability of adding these many diversified Rails, uh, you know, what's really driving what's the business driver for them to add those new Rails to their payment systems?

Speaker B: Yeah. The first thing I'll say is Rails are not products. I see them as tools. So when I was developing products at banks, I would first develop the need. Right. Or the use case for my customer or member in this case and then go out and shop for tools because quite frankly you don't want to start with the tool and then go out and say how can I use RTP or how can I use FedNow? No, the approach that I've always taken is go in, talk to your customer or your member, figure out what they need. How are you going to make their lives better? How are you going to fill a gap once you do it, then go out and shop for the right tool. So what I was alluding to was let's say RTP and FedNow are the first ones that I want to use. But later I find out, you know what, it would enhance my product even more if I had Visa Direct to use in the same use case. That's where you start to build. So what most people notice, ah, and I've known this from my business intelligence days, is customers do what they want to do and mhm. They have needs that they want to do but they can't. Right. So talk to them. Mhm. Figure out exactly what they're looking for. What's happening in the market today is there's more receivers than senders. So there are a lot of firms that are out creating send type of or transactions to help them receive, uh, make their lives easier. Maybe expedited payroll. Right. There's some other things M. Uh, so what happens is what banks and credit unions are doing is, is they're looking at their customer base or their member base and saying what do we need? Right. Not just what other companies are going to provide our members with. That's good too. Right. Nothing wrong with that. But from a send perspective, figure out how you can wow them. How are you going to keep that member? Right. How are you going to make them happy? They're hearing about expedited payroll from their friends, uh, and colleagues at work. Make sure that you're enabling that for them or they'll go somewhere else. Because what's happening is payroll companies are given a list of banks and credit unions who can accept expedited payroll. And so people are seeing that list. If you're not on it, that could be a problem because what happens in most cases is customers or members will leave the bank. Not telling you why they'll just go to the bank that gives them expedited payroll so they get paid on Wednesday instead of Friday. That matters, right? So when you start to see these use cases, that makes a big difference.

Speaker A: So they're solving problems then in this case, with the member who's looking for. In some places, I can get my paycheck earlier. I can get paid earlier from my gig economy job or something else like this. So it actually is a defensive measure then to, to put out this service that says, hey, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to leave. We can actually provide the same service for you. Um, is there a, is there a particular size of credit union that you're seeing or, you know, community institution? Who is, who is, um, mo. Who right now is really expanding those services and doing that? Is this, is this something just for big credit unions or can smaller credit unions benefit as well?

Speaker B: You know, it's an interesting point. Um, I'm not seeing size, uh, being the determination. I see some very innovative smaller credit unions who are doing things that larger ones haven't even attempted yet. So it's m. All about, uh, there's a lot of flexibility here. And all you need to do is come in with a great idea and from a technology perspective, it's doable. So I don't see any shortages in terms of resources or people people or anything like that. That has stopped people. I think great ideas spawn greater ideas. And so what I'm seeing is a lot of smaller credit unions. In this case, I've seen them do amazing things. One of them in particular was going out on a limb and saying, I'm going to charge for rtp, right? And nobody else was going to do that, but they said, you know what? We feel there's enough value in that transaction where if I want to move money to you, Chris, on a Saturday, I can do it in 15 seconds, or you can wait till Monday and have it for free via ach. The interesting part of it is, and these are, it's a smaller credit union, but they came up with that idea. Long story short, they didn't get any complaints about the fee. People were using it at a, uh, massive rate and they're very happy with it. So I kind of equate it to Federal Express. If I take a box to Federal Express and I say I want it there tomorrow or second day or third day, I know that I'm going to pay more, right? For, uh, uh, the expedited portion of that. Um, everyone gets it, right? And the fact of the matter is they're using PayPal anyway and they're paying a fee. The fee structure is very, very similar to PayPal's. So guess what, it's not a surprise anymore. And the fact is they paid, um, they generated enough income in one year to pay for their entire RTP program.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: So what I'm saying is be different and look at your business and do what you need to for your business. A lot of people didn't want to charge because they figure, you know, it's a member benefit. Fine, you don't have to. Mhm. I think the cost of that transaction is low enough that you could easily do it. But putting on my banker hat, I like a free option and an expedited option. That's just my preference.

Speaker A: So if you were, if, if tomorrow you got the phone call and said, mark, you know, we need you to come in and run credit, uh, union for us. It's a $500 million credit union, doesn't have any experience doing any kind of faster payments. How would you, how would you start? What would you look at first?

Speaker B: Customer or member in this case? Sorry, keep saying customer. Mhm. Member, look at the member. I've always done it at large banks, small banks, whatever banks. Look at what your situation is. Let me give you an example. At alacrity, 72% of RTP transactions are done after bank business hours. 72%, that's huge. Right. On a national level it's 52%, but it's still pretty high. Right. So people are doing transactions two in the morning, three in the morning, whatever they want to, that's what people want. And so by reading that in the marketplace. So how do I justify instant payments? Because 72% of my transactions are being done outside of bank business hours and I can't do ACH and I can't do wire during that time. Right. So if I were to join a credit union, that's the first place I would look, is what do we have in place today? And I'll uh, look at the usage and then I'll also look at what people want to do. You have to talk to them.

Speaker A: I have to believe that if you're delivering services that members are looking for, that this is an opportunity to not just retain your existing customers, but to grow as well.

Speaker B: Yes. In fact, there are a couple of things we're seeing terms of measuring growth. This is a key item because if I'm trying to sell the concept of growing out or doing more in the instant payment space, I have to go to my upper management to explain to them why I want to spend more money. Right. So the fact of the matter is in terms of the growth, I think we're seeing growth in a couple of different ways and people are just now starting to measure it. First one is what my average balance level of uh, someone who uses instant payments. That's something you can easily measure. And the fact of the matter is people are measuring it today. I generally ask that when I talk to credit unions and uh, you give them that question up front because I want them to measure it. Right. And the point is higher deposit levels of instant payment users. Okay. That's coming across, you know, across the board. The other thing I want to see is how's it doing in terms of attrition? Right. Are you, are you slowing attrition overall or, or are you not. And then look at the growth rate of new members coming in. Has it increased since, since you started offering instant payments from. Again, putting on my business intelligence hat that's what I look for. Right. Let, let your customers activity prove out the fact that instant payments is the right thing for you.

Speaker A: Yeah. Because if you, if your institution isn't offering it, like why would I, you know, why would if, if 72% of people are looking to make transactions after hours, Right. Where are they going to go? Otherwise they're going to go to your competitors.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: Right. And they're going to tell their friends. So.

Speaker B: And the one thing I hear, the one thing I hear from credit unions is they don't tell us why they're leaving because quite frankly, if I were leaving a, ah, credit union, uh, because you don't have a capability, what are the chances that I'm going to change your mind? So probably not very good. That's a good point, honestly. Right. So why, so I won't do it. I'll just shift.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I'll go somewhere else. They're going to say, listen, for all good.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's not you, it's me.

Speaker B: Yeah. The other thing about growth I wanted to mention is what we're finding is on the receive side, a lot of credit unions have members that are receiving micro loans. So they're doing it through outside services and we can see the funds come in right through the receive portion. Again, putting on my business intelligence hat if you have enough customers that are interested and the data is telling you that, why not consider a microloan product? Because if your customers are doing it and looking for it, that's something easy that you can add and really deepen the member relationship. So look at what the transactions, uh, look what types of transactions are happening and see if there's opportunity for you.

Speaker A: Are there other types of trends that you're observing in the use of the tools that tell you kind of where the consumer's headed and what they're looking for next?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think uh, and I look at first at the receive side like what are people doing? Right? They're receiving funds and so. But I also look on the pay the payment side. What a lot of people are doing right now is they want to move money me to me. They want to move money from their, their credit union account to their brokerage account because they want to do mhm. A trade. The ability to do that in real time is really valuable and a lot of people don't really realize it but I've had people tell me that they wanted to do a trade on Monday morning at a certain rate where they believed that that stock would cost right on Monday they move the money. On Sunday funds were there ready to move on Monday morning and as a result of not waiting till Monday or Tuesday to receive the funds, they got a much better price on their investment. So at the end of the day it does matter. Um, so exit payroll is big. Um, we do see a lot in the ah, online gaming area. Um, really? Oh, quite a big uh, jump. And so what we've seen is um, I think remember if I look back about eight months I probably would see two or three players in the online gaming space. Fast forward to today. 16. Um, and in times when you have a lot of sports activity like the basketball final this weekend, uh, lots of activity. So um, we're starting to see a lot of activity around that and against the usual ones that are payroll and microloans. Ah, also a lot of movement from wallets. So they'll move money from their PayPal M account into um, uh, their member account.

Speaker A: Um. Mhm.

Speaker B: They do that a lot and they do use instant payments to do it. Mhm.

Speaker A: Is there a point where instant payments become a commodity like you? It's something you just have to have and move it around because it's such a deciding factor. If I've got many accounts right, there's some, there's some thought leaders out there who say the average American consumer might have 20 to 30 financial relationships between all the different things they do.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: If I don't offer the ability to move money between them based on my needs, am I really a player at all for the future of that business.

Speaker B: Yeah. Make a very good point. I always looked at it this way and said, who's my core financial institution? My core is the one that I'm putting my paycheck into now from there. And you make a very good point. I did a study when I was at Chase. We found at the time, this is many years ago, six, that the average person has six different financial institutions that they use, whether it be for, um, investments or retirement or credit card or mortgage. Right. And so, um, the core bank, everyone wants to be the core because that's where all the deposits congregate. But at the same time, to be a really good core institution, you have to be able to let people move money to these other organizations. They're not going to change that. Right. So why make it more difficult in that you don't want them to find a bank or a credit union that has more services, because then it's easier for them to disperse and plan the movement of that money, whether it be for that, that trade that they want to do, or whether it's to put it, uh, into the retirement account or pay the mortgage. Right. To make things very easy, being the core bank carries a responsibility, and that is enabling me to efficiently move money to my other providers, uh, because they're not going to go away.

Speaker A: Does that have an even higher importance for business customers and business members?

Speaker B: You know, in business, I've always found it's about liquidity. And so if I'm sending out invoices or I'm, um, moving money to pay bills, I don't want to pay them early. Right. I want to pay them when they're due. Right. But give me more flexibility to pay it when it's closer to the due date. Right. So that it's not late. And so getting money in through instant payments is great for, for Treasury. Right. It's getting money in faster and then they can get money out faster. It works, um, the same as it would for a consumer. Right. We're all consumers. We have a paycheck that comes in and we disperse it. Do I want to pay my mortgage early because I'm using a different method or a check? Not really. Right. Um, make it easy for me. And so it's the same thing on the corporate side. It's all about liquidity. It's about getting funds in receivables and faster and payables out when they're due.

Speaker A: One of the, one of the main concerns, right. About faster payments is that opens the door to faster fraud.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: How does alacrity protect against uh, that um, risk from occurring if I start to release these new services to my members.

Speaker B: Yeah. Like anything else. Right. First of all, I'll say there was fraud in every single way to move money and the biggest level of fraud is in check. All right, so not too surprised. I think that everyone's coining the phrase faster payments, faster fraud. Not necessarily, but you have to be ready. Right. So pretty much what we're experiencing is on the receive side, not too much fraud. Right. Because you're receiving the funds, not too much of an issue. However when you start to send, it's something to think about. What I look at is three layers of protection. So when I was doing other products at banks I would always look at the transactional level. I would look at the sender and receiver level to see if anyone is a bad actor on either side of that transaction. And I look at device. Device management is relatively new. Basically it says if Mark uh, deploys his phone with his left hand because he's left handed and somebody takes Mark's phone and uses, tries to use their right hand, guess what? It's not Mark. Right. So that's a good uh, sort of a front door type of activity. But if you combine all three of those together, meaning my transactional history, what, what does Mark usually do? And then look at Mark as a sender and maybe Chris as his receiver. Right. And, and, and look at that. There are systems that do that very well. And that's my three layer approach. When we look at it from a, you know, from an Alacrity perspective, there's two ways we look at it. One is if you have a system in place right now for wire and ach, it probably is not adequate for instant payments because these transactions are happening in seconds. Right? Mhm. If I do wire or ach, I have time to get the transaction out that day, day. So I can put transactions in a queue, I can review them and then release. You cannot do that. The expectation with instant payments is instant. Right. So uh, um, you probably have to look at another system uh to, to accommodate that it may be with your current provider who ah, who offers a module in instant payments. Right. Uh, if not go, you know, then you might go shopping. What we've done at Alacrity is we've taken another approach approach. One is we'll integrate with whomever you're using. So if you have a fraud system in place, we integrate with it. By the way, very similarly to how we integrate with your core. We use APIs. So at the End of the day, I'm getting the same score that you would and I'm able to decision that transaction within the Alacrity environment using your rules.

Speaker A: Hm.

Speaker B: Because the score itself is not going to change. It's going to be the same. Right. How you interpret that score is also the same because we're taking the way the financial institution would look at that score and applying the same rules to it. So makes it easier for the financial institution to accommodate that type of arrangement if they already have a free fraud system. But what if they don't? Right. Um, what we're looking at is a system that provides fraud, um, analysis as a service. So we are not, uh, a fraud company. Right. We are a payments company. So naturally what we've done is gone out and worked with experts in the industry, partnered with them, and we've created a system within Alacrity that, that any credit union can use, um, to, to achieve the same thing as if they had a system. Right. So you're taking an expert level system, you're bringing it into, um, Alacrity. You have those three layers that I was talking about. Right. And so all that's at your beck and call as you need it. So you have the same capability as anyone else who went out and bought that system individually, but you don't have the overhead of managing it, purchasing it, do the RFP to actually choose a provider. Uh, so it makes it a lot easier and it really puts all of what's needed to integrate instant payments into a package, a nice neat package. So I'll pause there.

Speaker A: So with the structure of the hub, right. That you mentioned, I'm assuming that means that when a, uh, consumer originates a payment, right. To send a payment, that they don't necessarily have to be choosing which rail to use. They're simply saying, I want to pay this person by this time this amount of money. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. I'll give you an example of the thing that I've always loved is I call it the FedEx model. I'm hooked on FedEx for some reason. And so what if you, you know, if you came into my credit union and you went into my transfers tab or my payments tab, and you told me, you know, Mark, I want to send money to, to John Doe and today is Saturday and here's how much and that I want to send it today. There's a lot of confusion in the marketplace about Rails. The last thing you want to do is confuse your member and give them five different options to do the same thing. It's very Very difficult to understand. And so what that type of environment does, and I'm starting to see this more and more, is I'm only going to show you the options that are available to you. I'm not going to show you on Saturday Wire and ach. Can't do that. Right. Why would I offer it? Um, but I'm going to offer you if your recipient, and we know this systemically, mhm is on the RTP network, I'm going to send an rtp. You don't have to know that. You just have to know that the funds are going to go and you'll get a confirmation back. That's all you really care about. You want, you want to know the price and you want to know that it got there. Right. Because it's Saturday. Person needs the money on the other side. Right. So, um, if you don't have. So let's go through the lineup. If you don't have, uh, so your recipient doesn't have RTP or FedNow, what are your options? Right. Maybe it's Visa Direct because of the fact that your recipient has a Visa or MasterCard in their wallet, or you know the account information and can send it that way. Or if the bank offer Zelle, then obviously do that. So it's about not confusing the member, but offering the best service and price available. And so that type of environment creates it. Uh, so I don't have to know what the Rails are. I don't care. Right, Right. I just want to send money to you on Saturday. So it's up to the financial institution to make that happen.

Speaker A: I was recently paying someone right through the business. I was recently paying someone something. And the, the, the. This kind of dance that we had to play between, well, I can do it through here. I can do it through here. I don't have this app, I don't have this service. I don't. Can't do this like it was a nightmare. So the ability just to, just to be able to say, pay this person and let it go. Right. And then I'm assuming on their side, if there's, if there's, needed, if there's needs that they have to have, that those are either entered by them or managed by them in order to be able to do that.

Speaker B: Yeah. Because what happens is we ask you when you go in to do the initial payment, we ask you for your recipient's information, which you already have because you have to send the money. So once you do that, the system on the back end knows what that recipient has. Uh, at its disposal in terms of being able to accept those funds. You don't have to ask the questions. It's already there. So if they already have RTP done, if they have Fed now done. Right. Um, there's always. I always say in that model, you never have to say you're sorry, because if it's. If it's Visa Direct, at the end of the day, so be it. Right? Right. So you never have to say no or I can't help you today. That's the key.

Speaker A: Is that orchestra.

Speaker B: Because that's about service.

Speaker A: Yeah, it really is. Because it was. It took an hour. It took an hour to figure out how I was going to pay this person.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Um, does. Does as part of that orchestration layer, then does. Does the. That fraud risk analysis also come in to say, you know what, because this is potentially more risky, I'm going to go through a less risky payment channel?

Speaker B: Not necessarily. Uh, and I'll explain why.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: All the fraud systems work on all the Rails, so it's not about one being more risky than the other one.

Speaker A: Um, okay.

Speaker B: Although it is a factor. Right. So, for instance, let me walk you through an RTP transaction. Here's what really happens. So once. So the. The credit union sends us a transaction, right. And what we do, because we have in. Because we integrate to their core, we take the funds from the sender's account out, uh, of the core and places it into the bank's gl. What then happens is we do the fraud check on behalf of the bank, or the bank might do it before it even sends it to us. Right. So they're comfortable with the transaction and then the rail is selected. So you bring up a good point. It's not. We don't look at the Rails as, uh, one being more risky than the other, because once the fraud detection is done and the analysis is done, it doesn't matter as much.

Speaker A: It covers it.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Oh, that's good. That's good. You helped launch, as you mentioned, RTP Fed now. Right? Uh, what were your lessons that you took away from that experience?

Speaker B: Yeah, it was interesting because imagine having to solve for the entire US Banking system all the problems or permutations of problems that could happen and have to be solutioned. Right. So, yes, there were many days in a closed room with a whiteboard trying to figure out exactly how you make everything, and I mean everything works. The one thing I'll tell you, that was a little bit of a misnomer when we first designed rtp. We designed it as a really good infrastructure, right. To be a great infrastructure in the United States, for instance, payments. And our assumption at the time was that credit unions, banks, everyone else will innovate on the send side and create these use cases for their members and customers. Customers. I m think what we're finding is that I think maybe the fintech plays a bigger role than what we anticipated. Meaning that I'm not seeing oftentimes we see, you know, we certainly see some financial institutions that are great at just coming up with new ideas and creating them and using the rail. There are others that aren't quite sure. And so at Alacrity what we're doing is we're looking at that UI experience because really when you're building on top of rtp, what are you really building? The product is the ui. You're creating that experience and that capability. So what we're trying to do is help people with that experience side because that really enables the product. You can't just throw or put RTP in front of someone and say okay, it's a product, it isn't. Right. It's a tool and it's a really good tool. Right. In terms of providing all the reporting, uh, the exception capabilities, etc. And data. But it's that use case, that use case and the UI and the user experience that's really the most important. And so what a lot of, what I see a lot of fintechs doing is we're starting to get into that area as well. So we're partnering with uh, online banking providers and so. Mhm. By partnering with them they're doing the ui, we're doing the back end, nice marriage. And it offers a really clean solution for um, credit unions that don't want to do that soup to nuts on their own.

Speaker A: Is that, is that kind of rollout of rtp, uh something that credit unions like? Do they, do they build it? Is it, is it one of those, do they think they can build it and they will come right Kind of thing or do they actually have to go out and spend more time kind of informing the member and explaining why this is there?

Speaker B: There are two tracks. Okay, so when you offer a new capability and going back to my marketing 101 days, you have innovators, fast followers, right. You have that normal thing. So where are we today? We're beyond the innovators. So the innovators will implement it and say I'm going to figure out how to use this. Right. Um, fast followers? Yes, the same. We're getting down to the level now where all the innovators and fast followers are already on. Now you're getting into what I call the Missouri folks. That is the show me state. So now they want to say, I'll do it, but you need to show me what kind of revenue I can get help, uh, me build a business case around it. And look, some things never change. In the banking side of things, we always had to have a business case and an ROI projection out to five years before I even got money to do a project. That hasn't changed. Right. So we're doing it. Alacrity is, we're very proactive and we actually act as a partner with our customers rather than just a vendor. And so we help them with work through and think through their business case and ROI projections because if they can't do that, they can't sell the project internally and get it done. So there's a lot of moving parts here. Right. But if done well, works extremely well. And as we get down that, that chain of people who wanted to be proved out that that something's really going to work for them, uh, that that takes a little more work. Right. And, and, and so you have to have answers to all those questions. But we're happy to work with people.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're, you're a little bit different than most of the fintechs that we talk to because you guys have been around for a while.

Speaker B: Yeah, we've been around for 22 years, um, as an institution. Um, so we know what we're doing, which is a good thing, but we also know that we have to expand our role and we have to be a partner. And I think if you ask many Alacrity customers what they like about us and is they're going to say we're a partner in their business. We do care that they're successful, we do care that they have a positive ROI after three years. Um, and if they want to expand what they've done, then we're here to do that. That's the, to me, that's the definition of a partner because any vendor, any fintech can come in and just hook you up to the network. Right, right.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah.

Speaker B: But you have to ask yourself, well, is there anything more than that? And so we really do, um, cherish our relationships with clients and so we work with them today and years from now.

Speaker A: Was it that spirit of partnership that brought you to Circle?

Speaker B: Yes, I think that the entire structure of Circle makes a lot of sense to me. And so look, it's credit unions who want to invest in the way I look at it, Partners. Right. Um, we're here for you. Right. We're here for credit, uh, unions, banks. Right. We're here to fill a void and to work with you in a long run. And I think when you invest in a company like Alacrity, uh, that's what you get, right? You get more of the same. Um, we're not taking investments and changing our organization. We're just making it better.

Speaker A: Mhm. Is one of the things that's growing in terms of need and discussion is cross border payments.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: What's Alacrity doing to support this emerging need?

Speaker B: I think two things. One is we've recently um, worked with some partners to ah, a with the Fed as well. So we're offering Fedwire. So that's one option. Um, on the international side, uh, we are working with a number of partners to, to do international transactions. I think in addition to that we're working with Visa, uh, for Visa Direct. And, and that's something that it's actually very interesting. It's more of a consumer type product but it can be used for businesses as well. It's something that I launched at TD bank maybe 10 years ago and we had an issue where we wanted uh, our consumers. Uh, we did an analysis again, put my business intelligence hat back on and we noticed that we no longer had any low um, value wires. And so we were trying to investigate what happened to that business. What we found out we saw a number of debits from westernunion.com um, taking funds from our customers accounts. So we wanted to reverse that trend. And so we looked at Visa Direct as an option, uh, to send money internationally. And it was a great solution. It helped us move money from Canada down to the US at the same time. For those people who had vacation houses in Miami, um, very, very flexible and operating outside of the wire infrastructure. So it's an alternative, it's easy, it's more consumerized than a wire. So those are the things I like about it. Um, and it can tell you when the funds got there. And by the way it does it in minutes, not, not days. Um, and it's predictable, right? The costs are predictable. So if I want to send you 500 British pounds, um, it's not going to be a situation where your bank's charging you on the receive side. So you only got 400 or 450. Right. Um, so you get what, what is sent. So a lot of surety. I think cross border is a like blowing up right now. Uh, because if you Also look at stablecoins. Right. So that's another thing that we're looking at where we're working very closely on it. I happen to chair the cross border work group at Faster Payments Council. We're doing a lot of research on stablecoins right now and I see stablecoins as a international play. Right across border play. Um, so we're investigating. The entire industry is investigating it. Even at Faster Payments, we're investigating it and doing a lot of white papers on it. So if I were to look on the horizon and say, what's next? Stablecoins is probably one of those things and it's, it's something a lot of people are discovering right now. Um, so there's a lot of back and forth in terms of research and data being shared. Mhm.

Speaker A: Well, and there's a, there's a massive opportunity there. The example I gave you, that it took me an hour to figure out how to pay somebody was a cross border stablecoin payment.

Speaker B: Right, Right. Yeah, I was trying to move, Yeah, I was trying to move money the other day. My, my daughter's going to grad school in Europe and I needed to pay, you know, pay for that. And yeah, I was like, I was trying to find a way. Well, me being a payments guy, I'm just trying to not only find the easier way but, but a better rate on my fx. Right. It's like you want to make it difficult, look at those two things and try to come out on top on both of those items. Um, not easy.

Speaker A: Yeah, borders are definitely breaking down.

Speaker B: Moving money in the future, next five years is going to be just as, uh, I mean I believe just as easy as a domestic payment. But we all have some work to do in the meantime to make that happen. Right? Right, Right, right.

Speaker A: Excellent. So if someone's interested in finding out more about alacrity and the services they can provide, Mark, how should they reach out to you? How do they reach out to the company?

Speaker B: I think the best way because we do a lot of work on our website. So I would suggest that if you want to reach out to us directly, that's a great way to do it. Uh, the other thing is I uh, do a lot of public speaking at conferences. Uh, so come up and talk to me if you see me. Right. The other is, um, so I'm doing uh, master classes. So I'm doing those in conjunction with Regional Payment Association. So if you're a member of say westpay or someone else, um, I'll be doing a two hour session on, uh, instant payments and all payments because I'm including the cross border ones now. Um, it's a two hour session. I think you get credit for it. Um, but we'll cover it. Soup to nuts in terms of whatever new, um, payment opportunities there are and how to navigate them. Very cool. Very cool.

Speaker A: Well, Mark, thank you very much for joining us today. This has really been very informative.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: That was a great episode with Mark. Mark, thank you very much for being on the show. If you like this content, please like and subscribe on your platform of choice. Thank you very much for being here. We will see you next.

Speaker B: Sam.