Ep 15: Shadi Haddad - Till Payments

In episode 15 Dexter is joined by Shadi Haddad, CEO of Till Payments.

Till are the payments people behind payments, enabling millions of transactions across the globe.

Founded and head quartered in Sydney,Till payments is another example of Aussie entrepreneurship and innovation in the payments sector.

And with a Series A raise in late 2019, Till is now in scaleup mode and rapidly growing.

Shadi talks through the journey so far and their growth plans, plus his thoughts on why Australia is a world leading innovator in payments.

https://tillpayments.com/

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Transcript

Dexter Cousins : 0:47

Welcome to the FinTech Australia podcast, brought to you in partnership with tier one people, Australia's leading FinTech executive search consultants. I'm your host, Dexter cousins. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Shadi headed CEO of tail payments, till all the payments people behind payments, enabling millions of transactions across the globe every day, founded and headquartered in Sydney. tilde payments is another example of entrepreneurship and innovation in the payments sector. And with a series a raise and late 2019 till is now in scale up mode and rapidly growing. Shadi, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Dick stuff really good. have you here, tail payments? Can you tell us a little bit more about what you guys do?

Shadi Haddad : 1:49

Yeah, so till we sort of pride ourselves as being the leader in the multi step payment journey. And what that really is about is about bringing together all the channels where customers accept payments into a single unified platform view, everything from origination, right through the customer experience and settlement. And so for us, we've been a trusted provider for many multinational technology vendors, and their customers for a very long time. What we have now bought to market is our own merchant services to support it. So we can now originate a transaction and settle it and do all the technology in between, which is a really exciting prospect for us.

Dexter Cousins : 2:28

Absolutely. Now, you guys launched I think way back in 2012. Is that right?

Shadi Haddad : 2:33

Yeah. So by accident, running a fairly large IT company, and, yeah, in sort of november of 2012 I was approached by our customers and they said, Okay, we're gonna go tap and go, can you help us? And at that time, I knew nothing about payments. But what was evident was there was a huge shift coming. And believe it or not, we were one of the first companies to introduce tapping go contactless payments here in Australia, largely in the unattended sector for Pocky. And transit.

Dexter Cousins : 3:06

Oh, wow. And it's, it's really struck me actually the amount of innovation that we've got in the payment space in Australia. We seem to be punching well above our weight on a global perspective, shoddy

Shadi Haddad : 3:21

look, absolutely. I think what's good about Australia is a marketplace and guess why we are the leaders in payments in my view, you know, we run a market, they're highly regulated, largely controlled by, you know, four major banks. And so, you know, most of the schemes feel a lot more comfortable testing new technology, new concepts and new environments. Here in Australia. And so we sort of get a first look at, you know, the future, if anything of where payments are going to go. And that I think that thinking in that that opportunity provides a lot of opportunity to innovate and ahead of, I guess, some of the markets, you know, I think, if you look at our natural journey as a business, we started here in Australia, you know, servicing the tap and go mandate from MV, mv CO, and we grew into UK and Europe shortly after that, and now only sort of seven years on growing into that same journey into the US. And so I think if you look at Australia as a an innovator and a leader in payments, we're definitely, you know, first to market into becoming most of the next generation payment technologies.

Dexter Cousins : 4:32

You mentioned there. It's been a seven year journey, what have been some of the big challenges you faced on that journey, think

Shadi Haddad : 4:40

pivoting to ensure that we will remain relevant. But I think attracting talent has been one of our biggest challenges. And speaking, frankly, and I believe that space, you know, we move at such a fast paced environment and being going from startup mode to operating sort of in 12 countries servicing 500 cities around the world and about 1000 customers today. We've had to move and groove really quickly. Yeah, I mean, really hard to find the right, you know, calibre of people that are willing to, you know, wear multiple hats and get on the journey and understand that, you know, for a startup or scale up, you know, you've got to wear multiple hats. And you've got to be willing to pivot, you know, and I think what's happened over the last couple of years, and specifically the last four months is we've really found our groove in terms of what we provide the market, what our core sectors are, what our core products are, where we're going and it's a much easier mode of operation when we have really clearly defined product offerings and innovation agendas. And so, you know, for me, I think the biggest challenge was people, I think we're slowly getting around that we've got a great culture here. Now, we have a great facility that allows our staff to collaborate, you know, both socially, but also from a, you know, from a work perspective, we're very inclusive. So we have, you know, all of our families in and out of the office as much or as little as they want to be, we celebrate our people, you know, every month. And I think we've built that, you know, we have some key values which are ingrained on all of our collateral and on our walls, which, and they translate to force. So, you know, yeah, we call ourselves the tool force, and they basically represent our values.

Dexter Cousins : 6:35

Right, and it's resulted in you actually attracting some really great people that the business Yeah, particularly in the last 12 months. It's it seems like It seems like in this last 12 months, you've kind of come out from nowhere. But it's been a, you know, one of those kind of overnight successes that takes close to a decade. What What have you you touched on this before Shadi around, you found your slot with the product? What are you seeing as the opportunities for you to move forward?

Shadi Haddad : 7:03

Because I think what, what people are looking for, and I guess, just to talk to that point around, sort of sitting in the background, and not not really having much of a public profile, you know, if you sort of look around the world today, you know, our technology is embedded into, you know, vendors that serve us over 500 cities around the world today, and millions of consumers touch our systems on a daily basis. You know, to me, that is a testament to our ability to deliver and being a trusted adviser to very large multinational vendors, in steals against their customers with confidence that you know, if they're big enough to trust us And put their faith in our technology to deliver a payment experience and service for their customers. When we come out of the shadows, we, you know, we can hand on heart so that, you know, you're now dealing with people that power a lot of the world's commerce at the moment, you know, in a number of key sectors. And, you know, creating that public profile for us is a huge agenda for us to see because we now provide the end to end stack from, you know, transaction origination right through to acquiring and settlement. And we're not just sitting behind the shadows anymore. We're not just being embedded into other vendors technologies, we're now offering the technology direct to merchants. And what's been good in, you know, the last 12 months is that we've really seen that we can come at the opportunity from both angles from a technology perspective, but also a commercial perspective. Now that we have the acquiring component and bring the two together and really take the customer on the journey. You know, get some more Quinn's early and then sort of really get them on the journey to know what the ruins are once they start to embed the technology and use it on a day to day basis.

Dexter Cousins : 8:53

Right. So how many people are in the business now, Shadi?

Shadi Haddad : 8:56

Today we operate in two countries from from a people perspective. So there's roughly about 25 people here, all working from home largely except for the core team during the pandemic. But we have three people in our London facility and the rest are here in Sydney at Macquarie Park. Our intention, once things settle down in the US is to establish a light footprint over there to serve as a US growing customer base. But over the next 24 to 36 months, I think we'll see that number almost doubled.

Dexter Cousins : 9:32

I guess his success has also resulted in some key investors coming on board as well. You had some success. I think it was end of last year earlier this year. What's the growth plans for the business? Yes. Correct. So we completed our series

Shadi Haddad : 9:45

I, in December of last year good timing with the pandemic not far, far behind. And I guess what that did was it bolstered our ability to grow and invest in people, systems further innovation. And more importantly, it opened up the doors to some very large merchant opportunities. That would have typically been a knock on the door scenario where as we're being ushered in, through our significant investments, into some of these opportunities as a trusted provider, to people that they already trust in and already know. And so, you know, some of these investors are not just some of the biggest here in Australia, but they have multinational footprints. And for us, the next 12 months is about making sure that we attract the right people, the rights and you're already in talent to drive our delivering innovation agenda. And also drive out growth and acquisition of customers. And make sure that we've watched that growth intrinsically so that we don't, you know, we don't fall away from the exceptional customer service that we provide our customers today. I think what's different about us to a lot of other companies we over invest in the early stages of our relationships with our, with our prospects and our customers. And what we find is that by intrinsically doing that, and knowing the ins and outs of how they run their business, it makes it easier for us to map our solutions. So that we're ingrained in their, in their everyday work. And we're pretty hard to dislodge after that.

Dexter Cousins : 11:24

Yeah, great. So you talked touched on this before around values and culture. What are what are some of the values,

Shadi Haddad : 11:32

our values translate to the terms force, they're pretty much broken out like this focus on the customer and the rest will follow. One team one family resting rate So think and moving passion, act, create, break, iterate, always strive for exceptional innovation and exceptional with nothing else. Everything we do needs to be exceptional. And so we know we live and breathe those values in and out of this business, whether it's staff, partners, suppliers, and customers, one of the first things we introduce them to is the others Benny's.

Dexter Cousins : 12:10

How do you assess that? Because it's um, there's some stuff there that pretty difficult to spot from a resume that Have you got any tricks or kind of tips you can share with people as to how you go around identifying whether someone's right, fit for you or not.

Shadi Haddad : 12:28

Look, we we have very frank conversations with people very upfront. And we like to do that because we need to get to outcomes one, we see the panic in their faces.

Dexter Cousins : 12:40

I was gonna ask you actually A candidate or we see one.

Shadi Haddad : 12:49

And so those frank conversations tend to drive, typically the suitability of candidates, what we do like to do is, you know, show the path because the entry point is not always, you know, the same exit point. And in a scale up startup environment, we tend to see that lots of people in our business start somewhere, but really, really moving evolve, you know, in the business, in their own personal development, and then potentially throughout the industry. And that's a really important part of your when we attract people really understanding what they, you know, what they hope to aspire to and achieve, personally, professionally, and make sure that that we can map that what is the big vision for to look at today. So, so I think I mentioned we operate in 12 countries. So we have customer customers in 12 countries today, we want to have a physical presence. You know, in, obviously Australia, the UK, Europe, the US, you know, we are on a path to some form of major liquidity events, we'll be raising some more capital early next year to and when I say more capitals of significant capital to really drive growth and acquisition. We're on the hunt for some m&a opportunities. So you know, if we can merge or acquire other innovators in our space, they're in similar sectors looking to hopefully get the same outcomes. But ultimately, it's potentially at least in here in Australia, or an acquisition of some sort, where young, dynamic group of people, so people sort of say to me, you know, when do you want to get out and I sort of say them, we're just getting started, you know, so that this is not a short term play for any of us. The Quarter team have been together for a very long time, and are looking to stay together for a very long time. So we kind of see our first capital injection as an opportunity to really ramp up the next phase of our journey. And that's what we're saying. I want to be very clear that we are not going anywhere.

Dexter Cousins : 15:04

Yeah, great. And it's, I mean, we've got so many great examples here in AWS, after pay zip. It's um, you know, there's, there's huge opportunities in this space.

Shadi Haddad : 15:14

Completely, you know, some of them some of those organisations, like the octopus and the zips and I follow their stories and their journeys really closely, because I believe, you know, what they have done, he's proven, you know, what an Australian company can do. And, you know, sort of blowing the horn, you know, with all of our Australian values and showing how we can pick up some creative models and take them anywhere in the world and that will work and I guess also demonstrate writing that, you know, we know how to innovate and we know how to deliver. And, you know, we're hoping to do the exact same thing. You know, hopefully on a similar path to, you know, the trajectory that those guys have gone on.

Dexter Cousins : 15:56

Yeah. Excellent. And Shadi, any, any news that you want to share or any kind of exciting stuff that you've got coming up?

Shadi Haddad : 16:03

Yeah, look, I think we'll be making some major announcements in the press, actually, believe it or not, in a couple of weeks, largely around a capital raise, but more importantly, around the types of people that have joined our business. And so we've managed to attract some, some pretty heavy industry veterans into the business to help sort of steer the ship and really gotten us on this next path that we're entering. And all I'm going to say stay.

Dexter Cousins : 16:30

Shadi. It's been great to have you on the show. Thanks very much. It sounds you know, it's just awesome to see what you guys are doing. And, as you mentioned, just another example of Australia, punching well above its weight in the FinTech industry.

Shadi Haddad : 16:44

They really appreciate the opportunity and yeah, looking forward to seeing more great stories come out.

Dexter Cousins : 16:50

Yeah, we'll, we'll have to get you back on and share them.

Shadi Haddad : 16:54

Absolutely.

Dexter Cousins : 16:58

Well, that's the end of the show, folks. Thanks for tuning in. And thanks to our partners FinTech, Australia. Remember to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google and all of your favourite players. And check out the show notes for additional info on our current opportunities. And if you'd like to sponsor the show, or you're looking to hire game changing FinTech talent, check out Tier One People team.com or contact talent at tier one people.com