Boosting Revenue and Solving Payment Failures in Africa: Payment Orchestration Explained with Nader Abdelrazik

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast. Welcome to the Unlocking Africa podcast, where we find inspiration for the inspirational people who are doing inspirational things to unlock Africa's economic potential. Today we have Nader Abdelrazik, who is co-founder and CEO of MoneyHash which is Africa's first

[00:01:14] all in one flexible payments orchestration and revenue operations platform that covers all of your payment needs. Welcome to the podcast, Nader. How are you? I'm good. Thanks a lot for having me. Very excited.

[00:01:31] Fantastic. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today. How's your week been so far? Very busy, which is a common answer for a founder but quite productive. Everyone is probably going to zone off for summer, so if you get a sharp in all of the knives,

[00:01:53] getting ready for Q4. So that's where we are right now. Brilliant. Hopefully during this conversation, we'll discover what's being keeping you busy and occupied. So before we get into the conversation, introduce yourself and tell us

[00:02:08] a bit more about Nader Abdelrazik. Of course. As you put it beautifully in the intro, one of the co-founders and CEO of MoneyHash, we're the first payment orchestration company in the region but also we're one of the very few early ones to the market globally anyway,

[00:02:32] which is an entire new category of business that helps merchants manage payment better and upgrades infrastructure better. But we'll get into that most of the podcast so I will switch to talking a bit about my background. So prior to MoneyHash, I actually have a more

[00:02:49] of a career in academics so I have spent a lot of time in research and teaching between Egypt and the US in the academic track doing master's degrees and research projects. And after that, switch to the third world, working in fintech and blockchain for a while

[00:03:07] before starting MoneyHash. So a bit of theoretical and practical blends, which is good and I'm currently based in the New York area where I'm running the company Headquarters. And we have a team across nine countries with a fully remote company focusing on Middle

[00:03:29] Eastern Africa as our main market. So yeah, that's me and the company in Utschia. As you mentioned, you spent a lot of time in academia, worked in fintech and blockchain,

[00:03:40] which has led you to what you're doing now at MoneyHash. So if we can take it back a few steps, it'd be great if you could share the story behind I guess the founding of MoneyHash and what actually inspired you and your co-founder to start the company.

[00:03:56] Yeah, 100%. I mean, it was COVID myself and my co-founder were in a transition period from a previous job. And we're kind of like thinking what we'll do next. And if there is a problem that was bugging us a lot, and there was really related to

[00:04:15] the APIs and the technical maturity of payment infrastructure in our wonderful regions that we're really passionate about and really excited to see its growth. So what we kind of observed that any company scaling in the region usually have a lot of

[00:04:31] operational things to navigate between compliance, between scaling, between talent and stuff. And the least you can do for these companies provides them with the proper plumbing. They need the pipes to work, right? Like the things that brings them the money that brings them

[00:04:47] the tech need to be reliable, need to be easy so that they can focus on their products, they can focus on their business. And our observation working in payment, working fintech that that's not the case. There is a lot of wonderful payment companies in the region,

[00:05:01] but the merchants themselves has a lot to do. So they can't leverage everything they see in the market and switch between providers and try different payment methods. And this

[00:05:12] is kind of like a big opportunity for them to do, but comes at a much higher cost of an effort and delays and stuff. So we thought what if we build like a middle layer that abstract all the

[00:05:26] complexity and pains of interacting with the payment ecosystem and make it all simple, clean, high quality, merchant driven. So the big merchants that are scaling and building our region and building the ecosystem and the economy of the region can access a very reliable and clean

[00:05:45] and high quality piece of tech that manages the most important piece, which is plumbing the money for them, which is the payment and gives them access to the entire ecosystem and gives them full flexibility, full reliability. So they can focus on what matters most, which is their

[00:05:59] day-to-day business and product operations. And that's basically what really drove our excitement for that. And aside story to the founding story, which is Mustafa, my co-founder and I, we just had a fantastic chemistry and work happen. So we were really excited to work together. So

[00:06:19] this kind of like drove momentum that we could do something together. And there is a problem we're passionate about seem to be the right cooking to start. So you mentioned that COVID was the catalyst behind money hasher and you detailed how you identified the need for a payment

[00:06:37] orchestration platform in the region. In the initial stages, what were the challenges that you faced trying to find a solution to the problem? I mean, when we started, the idea started to materialize in the last quarter of 2020 and the real start was in early 2021. And at that

[00:06:59] time, payment orchestration wasn't a thing globally. And it's not common for the region to have companies that are starting a new category of business, usually like 90% of the companies in the region are working on a model that is established globally somewhere in the US or in Europe and

[00:07:18] your kind of buildings equivalent to it to Africa and the Middle East. But for you to start a software infrastructure company in a business category that doesn't exist much globally has a double edge. It's sort of one hand, there is an opportunity that we're building a new category

[00:07:33] and this allows us to think originally and to start to bringing up things that the entire ecosystem didn't see before. And on the other hand, you don't have a standard, you don't have a benchmark.

[00:07:43] So you kind of have to do a lot of things from scratch. And there is a higher risk in all the business decisions you're taking. And there is very limited data. So you kind of like have

[00:07:53] also like a little bit of shooting in the dark and how you materialize your product strategy, how you spend some money raising, how to frame the product in the early days. As you can see,

[00:08:04] like from the progress the company achieved, we were lucky and had a good momentum in some of these decisions. But overall, like the hardest part is figuring out how to establish a category of business that is that doesn't exist in the region and have limited exposure globally

[00:08:23] was the main thing. But it was fun because when you don't have any a benchmark or a global example to copy, it really forces you to think originally and it really forces you to build things that without limitation, that that was very, very nice problem to have.

[00:08:40] Interesting. So as you mentioned, you created a category that doesn't exist. So I was wondering, we've found a benchmark or reference point, how did you kind of hone in on what your vision and mission for money hash is?

[00:08:57] Yeah, because when you don't have a benchmark, it's very freeing because the entrepreneurial pursuit itself is about solving problem for a customer. Yes. And when you have a global benchmark, you kind of have an idea of what the solution is. When you don't have a global

[00:09:14] benchmark, it's exciting because you can figure out the solution on your own, which is harder. But it gives you the freedom to really focus on the problem. So you understand the problem

[00:09:25] better than others in that case, because you don't need to look at the version of how someone else understood the problem. You can understand it really on your own deeply, especially if

[00:09:35] you're data driven and as a company, I do a lot of talking with the customer and being a customer facing and not just be obsessed with your own ideas. And that's what we did. From the beginning, we started reaching out to friends who are running startups and other

[00:09:52] founders and other companies telling them that we have a very, very basic experimental product that we want you to start playing with. You don't need to think about what you will pay. You don't... We just need to keep hammering on how difficult is it for you to manage

[00:10:10] payments internally with your existing partners? Where is exactly the problem on the technical side? Let us talk to your developers. Let's talk to your product team. Let's talk to the decision makers and map the supply chain together. And in parallel to that as well, this is something really

[00:10:29] different. The region doesn't have a lot of pan-regional businesses. And what that means is you have a lot of businesses that will base its main operation and main focus on one country as they expand into other countries. But what's beautiful about the payment ecosystem is it has,

[00:10:47] especially in Africa, Middle East, there is a lot of businesses that happen between countries and expansion is a very big deal in which a business in Nigeria would want to sell to customers in Kenya or customer in Ghana. Customers in Egypt will buy products from Saudi

[00:11:05] or buy products from Morocco. So there is an original play that didn't exist much in the payment space and businesses has a lot of ambition in it that is unsatisfied. So another

[00:11:17] challenge we picked on how we can build across the region from day one, which seems to be like a big challenge to address. But we noted once you address it early on in the life cycle of

[00:11:28] the company, you kind of don't need to address it later. It gets much easier for us to now onboard the business which is based in South Africa but want to process payments in Rwanda and want to

[00:11:39] expand to Egypt down the line. The payment infrastructure can help them do all of that in that case. So I think there was a lot of things to balance, but the freedom of

[00:11:51] not needing to look at a global benchmark helped us kind of pick our own battles and to create more studying and thoughtfulness in it. Brilliant, you touched on an important point which is the unique way that the payment space operates. So I guess looking in from the outside,

[00:12:10] it can sometimes seem like the digital payment space is a bit overcrowded and it can be confusing for people who are well versed in that space. So for those who aren't familiar with the digital payment space, can you give us a top line explanation of how the money

[00:12:29] hash platform differs from other payments to gateways in Africa? And what exactly is payment orchestration? 100%. I'm going to explain this on three layers. One layer is just to get kind of like the basic of how payment gateways and online payments work because that

[00:12:49] will be very important to kind of understand the other two layers. So the first layer is you know, like when you stand inside a store and just to get cash out of your pocket and give it

[00:12:58] to the merchant to buy like a banana, what happened there is you're ready because you are in the store and you see the merchant and you have the product in hand. There is a trust

[00:13:08] element that's happening and there is a transaction that is happening from one to another. With online payment, you went on their website, you understood you got the product and stuff. But in order to hand the cash, there is always someone in the middle or multiple people in the

[00:13:23] middle that need to establish this trust, to establish that you're a real person, to establish that this merchant is a real merchant and has a real product and then to figure out how to move the money. So any payment method in the world has this model

[00:13:39] in which there is one, two, three facilitators to validate the customer, validate the merchant and move the money between the customer and the merchant. In the case of payment gateways for card payments, this is global networks like Visa, MasterCard or local networks managing a

[00:13:57] relationship between the bank that issued the card, the bank that acquired for the merchant, the customer and the merchant, which is like the famous four-party model. If you have a wallet or like a carrier-based or like something like M-Pacer or Vodafone Cash

[00:14:12] or whatever, then Vodafone Cash is the middle person that will validate the customers that have a Vodafone Cash wallet, validate the merchants that have the wallet and move it from wallet to wallet. So there is the facilitation of payment and validation of customers there.

[00:14:26] So that's on just understanding the different dynamics of the payment. When we go to the second layer, which is the ecosystem, there is the region because of the adoption of banking came late. Adoption of digital technologies came late and got accelerated by

[00:14:41] COVID. As you said, there's too many options. There's too many payment methods, too many payment provider companies, too many infrastructure companies that merchants, regardless of their size, now need to figure out who to work with, which payment methods are relevant

[00:14:57] to my customer, how their pricing work, how the impact my unit economics, how I can improve the experience, how, how, so like there is a lot of things for the merchant to answer on how they

[00:15:09] consume and present these solutions to their customers. So when there became, there's too many solutions in the market that causes a fragmentation to the market, which means any decision you're taking, integrating with a particular company or selecting a new technology,

[00:15:26] if this solution didn't account for your short and long-term need and kept you flexible and kept you reliable, then you spend an asset, you spend the money and resources into creating this work

[00:15:39] that later you might change or it might not grow correctly and all of that. And this is where the payment orchestration came in. The payment orchestration act as a layer of abstraction. So you do all the effort to connect to the payment orchestration. And then the payment

[00:15:53] orchestration acts as a router or a switch in the middle that when you send the payment request, it kind of defines intelligently which payment provider should process this payment. Is this a high fraud? Low fraud? Is this a high fee? Low fee? What is the probability

[00:16:11] of success or failure? What the customer should be seeing? What happens if the customer left is a cart? What happened if the customer saw I feel like an error thing? So that empowers the

[00:16:21] merchant to give the merchant so much control that they now can take so many decisions and refine so many pieces of their business without needing a lot of work on their side. So to summarize

[00:16:33] something quickly in the end, like MoneyHash and all payment orchestrators are usually a layer on top of payment gateways that enhances the merchant ability to control and customize their work with the payment gateway. So it's a customer that works with FlutterWave,

[00:16:51] can work with FlutterWave and can work with FlutterWave and MoneyHash. When they add MoneyHash to the mix, it makes the relationship with FlutterWave much more customizable, much more powerful, much more scalable than a traditional integration with FlutterWave. So that's like a quick example.

[00:17:10] Amazing. So it's almost like a smart, automated broker. It does quite a few different activities, has a few different responsibilities within the chain of the payment gateway. Okay, amazing. Thank you for that. So I guess you've touched on a few elements there in terms of the trust,

[00:17:30] the facilitation of payment, the ecosystem and also the value that it provides specifically to businesses on the continent. So what is the technology that is driving all of this activity in the background? I think in the payment orchestration space is very similar to any

[00:17:50] software company. So there is traditional back end and front end work to be done to do the plumbing. The real innovation in it is like how you build your architecture and how you make it modular

[00:18:01] and simple and reliable and scalable as well, giving that the region has too many payment methods and too many partners that you need to learn a lot of different APIs and different models of operation. But the technology is quite a mature technology of building just

[00:18:17] the infrastructure there. There is other elements that is coming into play in which decentralized networks on the blockchain to leverage this stable coin for settlement, AI-driven work that can enhance the data reporting, enhance the intelligence of systems

[00:18:36] managing the payment flows or managing the payment intelligence in general. I would say all of these are like complementary technologies that powers the real infrastructure, but the real infrastructure is a traditional back end plumbing and we ourselves in MoneyHash call each other

[00:18:52] internally the plumbers of payment. We're really setting up pipes that work well and making sure you have like hot and cold water and have the right experience basically. Thank you for that and I guess link to that experience as we've discussed during our conversation

[00:19:09] today is in terms of how you add value and one of the unique ways that you add value is in addressing payment failures. So maybe we can touch on that because that's something I find quite interesting and unique in terms of how does MoneyHash address payment failures

[00:19:26] and also what impact do you believe this has on businesses on the continent? 100%. Well let's do a very brief dive into the payment failure problem. When you have a complicated banking system in each country and this banking system was evolving, this means

[00:19:44] the kitchen that manages the payment in the back end has too many variables. There is the risk variables, there is the KYC variables, there is the fraud variables, there is debit or credit, prepaid or postpaid, customer balance, merchant balance, merchant category, merchant rule. So

[00:20:00] there's like multiple factors that impact should this payment happen or not and each bank issuing bank of cards or acquiring bank dealt with these rules different which means when a customer puts their card inside a payment form and click pay what looks like the failure might

[00:20:19] happen because just insufficient fund or just because it's a high fraud or something. In reality, it's 40-50 factors in the back end being calculated together that has so many glitches and so many unpredictability in it. So when you introduce a system like MoneyHash that sits

[00:20:37] in the middle and kind of receives this transaction and do this calculation based on deep payment understanding, we can figure out which route for the payment that will make sure this payment succeeds doesn't fail. And if it fails, should we just show the customer

[00:20:54] a failure message or should we let the customer wait a second or two and try again in different techniques with different providers till we get the right mix of all of these factors together. For our region, this is a big deal globally there is like one of 10

[00:21:09] transactions fail globally so the success rate is around 90% 80 something percent. In the region, 30 to 40% of transactions fail and this is because bank systems outdated, risk engines outdated, payment gateways integrate particular versions of acquiring and processing and sometimes

[00:21:31] don't upgrade, don't mix glitches and digital maturity. That means if you have like 100 millions of dollars coming to you as a merchant, there is 30 million of them that might go in limbo

[00:21:42] of failures and the customer need to call you and the global statistics is like two of three customers doesn't try again if the payment fail. It's just a switch merchant. You just

[00:21:52] go to like I'm gonna work with someone else. And we are in the digital age now you're not like standing inside the store and you're trying to pay so if the payment fail,

[00:22:01] you're not gonna leave. In the digital world, if the payment fail, you might get a message from your friend and just like get out of the app, you might open another app to customer churn is

[00:22:11] a big deal. So usually when money hash works with a merchant we actually calculate for them the ROI we will create for them that every new will recover from fixing failed transaction from fixing churn problems so that this leaking that is happening in their money pipes

[00:22:30] doesn't happen anymore or happen to the minimum. And there is a level of failure that needs to happen, right? You need to block the right transactions. You need to block the things that are actually fraud. You need to block the things that's actually high risk

[00:22:43] or the customers that are really not charged back risk and a lot of other scenarios. So we're not saying we eliminate failure. We're eliminating the wrong failure. Interesting. So what would you say is your success rate of addressing payment failures? Yeah, so this really differs use case

[00:23:03] to use case. But in general, we anticipate on average a 10% revenue uptake to our customers. That's on average. So if you're a merchant processing 100 million, if you introduce the money hash in your payment flow, we can anticipate a 10 million plus or minus of boosted revenue

[00:23:26] by refining your payment infrastructure to address the different scenarios. It really differs it can go as low as like 5%, 4%, 3% for businesses that are like an established market with a proper tech and they invested a lot of their payments to address some problems,

[00:23:44] but not all problems. And sometimes it can go to 200%, 300% if you're in a sector like gaming, for example, which like high risk and it's mixed with script to payments and stable coins and things to like banks and really scared to process any transaction thinking that this is

[00:24:01] like a money laundry transaction or fraud transaction or something. So you have a lot of refinements to do that actually any refinement you'll do will have a significant boost to your revenue in that case. But we stick with the standard which is like a 10% revenue recovery

[00:24:19] improvement and then there is a lot of business opportunities to explore on top of that. So I mean without mentioning names, do you have any examples of clients that have significantly benefited from using money hash? No 100%. I mean we work with lots of startups,

[00:24:39] lots of scale ups, lots of enterprise across the entire region all the way from West Africa, North Africa to the GCC and in Saudi and UAE and multiple others. So we work with one of our

[00:24:52] very early and deep customers which is Foodix. So Foodix is a restaurant management company. So they do like the point of sale and payment and management of restaurants and they are present in I think over 20 markets in the region. This is like

[00:25:10] Nigeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and we help them boost the payments, scalability and optimization across all of these markets. We work with the crypto exchange like Rain in UAE which we caused them multiples of recovery in their systems through refining

[00:25:31] these factors of all the crypto purchases that happen across the region. I mean many of the names are mentioned in the logos on our website of course but the real thing we finally managed

[00:25:45] to feel and get excited about is like we're serving the entire region which we're very proud of that we're working for the region and we were present across the region and that's very exciting.

[00:25:55] Thank you for sharing that. You've given some great examples there so I'll get specifically from the client perspective. What type of feedback do you tend to receive from your clients and how does that tend to shape the development or the direction that the platform is going?

[00:26:13] I think in general we usually get faced by surprise which is I think is something we didn't anticipate because like in the start of order they tell you build the things and they will come.

[00:26:28] Just like build something and they will come for it as they have the problem or something. In reality you're building on top of a history in which the entire region didn't see a lot of complicated reliable software companies coming out of the region. We're usually consumers of

[00:26:45] global platforms like HubSpot and Slack and Zapier and stuff. When you think of software you don't think software in the region so when money has shows up in your doorstep until you we have actually a big plumbing system that works across 45 countries and has 12, 15 libraries

[00:27:04] of technical high quality pieces that you can stitch together and build your logo system of payments that were out and optimize and improve reporting and stuff. It does sound like you're saying fiction. It doesn't make sense. This is not common to be built and built by the region

[00:27:23] and say that it's high quality and actually when they test it it performs. We usually get by a lot of surprise and mistrust initially from the customer because they are not used to

[00:27:33] that so this seemed to be new and with this newness comes excitement and fear but the moment you address all of these fears and kind of demonstrates the value the customers establish a lot of trust

[00:27:47] with you that allows them to explore doing way more than what they told you in the beginning. This has been our example. With Fudix for example in the beginning we're discussing like few secondary markets to enter and process the payment for them till we see how it works

[00:28:07] and the moment we went live with one market all of a sudden we're discussing all the markets, we're discussing all the systems because that's it. Once we put the fear behind us it's now opportunity only. In the time we're talking in right now there is payment orchestration

[00:28:23] companies everywhere. The term is getting a lot of recognition. We kind of positioned as a leader in the category given our first move advantage and our expertise and team quality and everything so we face much less resistance than before and have more to demonstrate as well giving the

[00:28:43] customer successes we have already. That's great to hear. You talked about building trust with clients. Do you think that client centric approaches contributed to your ability? You recently raised $4.5 million despite a global funding slowdown?

[00:29:03] Yeah, no 100%. I think I know that because also I want to avoid the buzzwords because all the companies theoretically should be customer centric and all the companies will say they are customer centric. I would say that in addition to being customer centric we are

[00:29:20] quite deep when it comes to understanding and building payment systems. You need to be customer centric but you need to be an expert in what you're doing. If I'm going to go to a big merchant

[00:29:32] in Nigeria and tell them I'm going to sit between you and fantastic companies like Flutter, Wave and Paystack and I'm going to make them and you perform better. I need to be spotless.

[00:29:44] I need to be like a really good infrastructure that works as good if not better than every single PSP and every single merchant technology. This does not get achieved by just being customer centric.

[00:29:58] It's by you being a student. You need to learn every single API in the region and learn every single payment variation to be ready to answer as much questions as possible and even ask

[00:30:09] questions before your customer. I think big part of the trust that our investors showed us and our customer showed us is like it's not an issue of do we have a product that solves the problem.

[00:30:20] They know that this team and this product will solve any problem if they told us about it and explained it and we will be able to investigate it and learn it. It's more of capability

[00:30:32] than just being able to be customer centric. It's obsession with the problem to the level of being a hungry student to it. This is good as to the team that I feel like I'm just a facilitator

[00:30:45] to their work. I feel like I'm just the front of the house after the chef's in the kitchen. So I'm just making the menu look nice. I wear a suit and I show up in these podcasts to talk

[00:30:58] about it. I'm sure you do a lot more than that. I guess that leads on to my next question in terms of in line with the ability to raise the $4.5 million, was the specific strategies that you

[00:31:12] put in place to achieve this milestone? I mean I think and I will try to answer this question in layers that help other founders maybe earlier than me kind of think about it.

[00:31:26] Listen, raising money is not an achievement in any way. It looks an achievement because it's hard and it gets celebrated because it does show that the company achieved a new milestone and it's ready for new challenges. However, it's still the failure rate of startups is 9 out of 10

[00:31:48] with all the funding they can get in the world. So there is no funding that will help you hack execution and team culture and everything else. It does help you accelerate, help you navigate

[00:31:59] this but it doesn't address the things. In fact if it will address these things you need to have done a lot of work that is successful already that only what's left for you is the resources,

[00:32:11] which is really the case. But in establishing such an important piece and all startups in the region I do believe they are way underfunded. They go through 10-20 X's of global startups

[00:32:26] just to convince an investor to come in. Big part of the game is endurance, big part of the game of like for how long can you handle rejection? For how many knows because you're going to get

[00:32:40] knows too many. The issue is like how many you can deal with because you will find an investor somewhere that matches your culture, excited about your problems. There's too many, there's too much out there. There's a lot of gunpowder as well that happened during COVID and

[00:32:55] there is a lot of different variations of VCs and different ways to fund yourself. Hundreds of hundreds that you need to talk to them but then the founder all of a sudden need to talk to hundreds of them, rejection hundreds of knows to get one or two yeses

[00:33:10] and do that while running the company. That's the actual difficulty of this task, not the task of getting the money itself, the task of managing the process and the lints of it

[00:33:23] and the mental tool that this will have while you're doing it. And big part of how we did it is like you need to run a very good process that balances you focusing on the customers

[00:33:38] and getting the feedback from the customer and working with your business in parallel to the fundraising, having a very clear structure to how you're doing it. A really good way to communicate, to document and communicate the feedback you have with your team because many

[00:33:52] of the time it will be you will think like you receive a feedback from a VC and if you fix this feedback you will get funding. In reality is the only feedback that matters is the feedback

[00:34:02] of the customer. So you need to really, really care about the feedback of the customer and then run a process of fundraising that really focus on numbers, really focusing on like pitching as much

[00:34:13] as you want pitching to the right to the right VC is trying to penetrate this wall. And with time the more you get into a groove, the more you get into your process, the more you refine

[00:34:24] your process it gets much easier in time in terms of running the process so you now can focus on bigger challenges in the due diligence, bigger challenges in the type of investors you're dealing with. But yeah if you're obsessed with the feedback customer and you're running a proper

[00:34:42] process that complements your mental health and endurance with proper structure and good thoughtfulness I think it's just an issue of time. I really like the point that you raise in terms of money will not guarantee success as a startup.

[00:35:00] There's a lot more that goes into success than raising money. I guess one area that is key to success is strategic partnerships and you've recently secured a partnership with Visa. So I was wondering if we can go into that in terms of how you believe the partnership

[00:35:20] with Visa will influence money hashes growth trajectory. 100% I think when I was saying customer centric in addition to the obsession with the real problem you're fixing and trying to be an expert in it, in the partnerships you're framing

[00:35:42] you need to establish strategic partners that give you access to things your customers can't access easily. So most customers access majority of the payment infrastructure through their payment gateway which means they access a lot of these layers in a way that is abstracted by the payment

[00:36:01] gateways and they have to consume it in this in this way while there is a much richer and diverse set of products that sit on with large companies like Visa and Mastercard and the likes

[00:36:14] of them that can help merchants strategically and can be combined with what the payment gateway is doing. So us establishing this trust on the scheme level, getting the trust of the scheme

[00:36:25] to work with a company like money hashes also a big signal to the market that like who is money hashing and what is the quality of their product that they work directly with the scheme

[00:36:34] is a big is a big trust signaling but in addition to it just empowering the merchants with things that they couldn't have done on their own is something we're really excited about.

[00:36:47] In particular to the announcement of working with Visa, we do work with them a lot on improving the success rate and the security of the systems so things like network tokenization, 3DS 2.0 these are like sections that like you can look up online they are an upgrade to how

[00:37:07] syndication and storage of card information happens that has a significant boost to authorization rate and a significant reduce to fraud rates which is very important and us being trusted by a big partner like Visa and facilitating the rollout and adoption of these products

[00:37:26] is a big testament to the team. You touched on the importance of partners that give you clients access to products or services that you couldn't on your own so how would you plan to leverage this specific partnership to expand your reach and also capabilities?

[00:37:46] I think there is a fantastic network effect that kind of work in our behalf there because you work with the partner and the partner give you a particular leverage that you offer to a customer and the customer give you particular insights that you use to access more partners

[00:38:01] and the partners bring you more customers and you kind of have this dim ball machine especially when you are kind of like a middle software that is truly agnostic so it does partner with companies but works with everyone and open to works with everyone and doesn't have

[00:38:18] particular biases on how he takes that decision so when you have this openness and you have an ecosystem approach the opportunity is kind of like unlocks itself from that perspective so we're really big believers in the network effect, we're really big believers on

[00:38:32] partners bring opportunities with the customers and the customers bring more challenges that open up questions with new partners and we kind of keep going in this two-sided game to keep a close the loop of development if that makes sense.

[00:38:47] It definitely makes sense as you mentioned the network effect to reach more customers which will expand reach and capability but also to expand reach and capabilities you need capable talent so how do you go about attracting and retaining top tech talent particularly as you

[00:39:08] mentioned in a region where heavy tech businesses such as yourself are scarce? No, 100%. I think our recipe for talent is three pieces one is pay well as much as you can

[00:39:26] try to pay I think that as I said startups are not funded well in the region I do believe also talent is very underpaid so you need to do your best on hiring people that has a multiplying

[00:39:40] effect that can wear many hats to you so that when you appreciate them and pays them well and pays them over market they are achieving the impact of two three people that if you would have paid them

[00:39:51] the average or grow average you will not get the same result so try to hire strategically hire people that can bring impact of multiple people and then pays them well so they can

[00:40:02] get appreciated and give them stocks in the company and have them grow with you and have this belonging is very important especially in markets like Egypt and Nigeria in which there is big currency fluctuation and the economy is going through rough periods in which talent need

[00:40:20] to protect themselves and figure out how to get paid in foreign currency and how to get paid stable salary and handle like an ongoing weekly inflation right so there is an important piece

[00:40:31] to handle that is the first component we try to pay well at least in the critical role so that people are appreciated and have belonging and ownership of the company the second component is I think it's a differentiator for money hash which is

[00:40:48] in building a sophisticated piece of tech and being a first to market and category definer that gets the talent excited to work with us because you're going to you have the opportunity to think originally you have the opportunity to work in ideas before

[00:41:03] others work on it and address them uniquely which has big learning opportunities so always for companies hiring in the region try to think like what would be unique about your company that talent can be excited about to embed in their career is there something new for them to

[00:41:20] learn as their products they will work on that they wouldn't work on in other companies and in our case like given how much how many markets we work with and how many payment system

[00:41:30] we plug in every talent we have is just like learning so much about payments that if money hash didn't make it they are payment stars and the third most importantly is just embrace turnover like you will try to retain talent but also understand the talent switch jobs and

[00:41:51] go from companies to companies to earn a better living and get a better company or career and all of that and I think we from the beginning told our talent that like you know what if you want to

[00:42:03] leave the company and go to another company we can help you we don't mind just let us know and we'll manage the transition you do you you do what's best for you and we will do what's

[00:42:15] best for us and what's best for you as well so big part of it is like just being open with the talent and like do your best to retain them but also be open to the fact that

[00:42:26] people need to do what they think is best for them and you need to do what's best for them as well out of trust and then take care of the company and so we have a machine in which we try to

[00:42:37] be able to replace quickly talent if they left we didn't have a lot of turnover anyway so that that was a good problem to have but was just to open on the fact that people can explore

[00:42:47] opportunities and be be happy about well where they are or not and tell us openly is something important to us I mean do you ever find talent that leave and then eventually come back I mean we're

[00:43:02] too young for that to kind of see it because you people's change jobs for too many reasons we have like for example a talent in in Egypt that just wanted to switch to working globally they had

[00:43:18] a like a particularly exciting traveling opportunity in which we help them nail and go and and do it and we feel like through the simple relationship we build with him that it seemed very clear that

[00:43:31] like once they get senior and they're exploring things then if we have a position opens there is like a really good relationship for them to come back and contribute after the year in the very

[00:43:40] variable knowledge abroad so we have we can see like reciprocity return is reciprocity in that case that's a great thing to hear so you mentioned talent that wanted to work globally I know you're very passionate about addressing brain drain issues or challenges that we see on the continent

[00:44:01] so maybe if we look at it more for nurturing the next generation is there anything specific that you're involved in or doing to nurture the next generation of talent within the region

[00:44:14] yeah I think in reality the more and more companies that show up in the region that build sophisticated tech and good opportunities for talent to to learn from and I mean I see there is a

[00:44:27] big value of a lot of the talents that work in money hash work globally and some of them live abroad and still learning from international companies so nothing against talent contributing to companies outside of the region but we need to have as many opportunities locally for the local

[00:44:45] talent to also find places to work with that they when they go pursue international opportunities they just pursue it out of conviction not necessity yes that's a very important piece yes in my point of view so if like if someone will go to work in San Francisco

[00:45:01] with a stripe or square and try to understand payment in-depth and understand the US market I want them to go do that because they want to learn about this not because in the regions

[00:45:12] they can't find the proper opportunity in payments and that's why they have to shop outside and with that you also need to embrace like a nature of global talent in that case so we work

[00:45:24] with we work very remotely so we hire wherever we want that gives flexibility as a startup to select which market and which salary bands and stuff which allow us to be to be able to over

[00:45:35] spend and under spend dependent on the strategist of the of the situation but it also give us access to a much much wider pool of talent some of them are a regional talents that live abroad

[00:45:47] some of them are are expats that live in our region and some of them are fantastic local talents when you bring this diversity to your system you kind of bring a lot of context that when

[00:45:58] you blend together if you have the right culture and dynamic in place can be quite powerful so you've discussed the patterns and trends that you've seen with talent movement both locally and globally

[00:46:13] so if we stick on the theme of trends are there any trends that you're seeing in Africa's payments orchestrations based that you're currently excited about I mean in payment orchestration particularly we are the trend like orchestration itself is a trend right

[00:46:29] so and I think embedding orchestration was like the likes of AI or the likes of settlement networks on the stable coin and embedding other technology and stuff were kind of like in the cusp of like seeing the strength to pick up in the region and

[00:46:46] merchants being more comfortable working with orchestrators are getting excited about orchestrators we see a lot of trend on real-time payment and central banks pushing to have a local reliable real-time payment networks we see this is a big big thing happening in the next five years

[00:47:06] which is quite quite major for economies trying to make seamless money movement for the nationals and their businesses which I think is very exciting we see a big trend of expansion of global companies into the region trying to localize

[00:47:23] the businesses which I think is bring a good diversity and good competitiveness so no negative thing about that so I think these are kind of like the major trends there is definitely technological trends and business trends market by market

[00:47:40] on there but I mean like across all of them new business categories is being established new regulations is emerging especially with adoption of open banking and crypto that will see more and more synergies between different categories of payments that will work together interoperably

[00:47:59] and open new business cases so that's that's quite exciting thank you for sharing that so if we go from current trends and look at the future gas future of Africa where do you see Africa

[00:48:12] in the next five years with regards to the ability to integrate payment solutions from multiple service providers across all major African markets well I will tell you something and instead of how I see Africa I will tell you how I want to make it

[00:48:32] I like that approach you know because I don't I don't want to look at it from a passive perspective I'm now in this fortunate place in which I'm one of hundreds of founders I'm still in the early

[00:48:43] stage of course but there is fantastic gross businesses and stuff which we're trying to get the region to where we are economically and giving that they have academic background we know that Africans in the next five to ten years will explode globally it has the largest

[00:48:57] young population it has a fantastic thriving economies all of them are growing in a much faster rates than previous economies before which is a normal thing giving that we have this access to talent this access to tech and all the mistakes that haven't before us we can

[00:49:13] avoid so I think the region is going to grow significantly and giving that I'm from Egypt I'm really hoping Africans the Middle East are kind of gonna gonna be a one unified continent from an economic perspective because I do believe they can benefit from each other's wealth versus

[00:49:33] economies of scale on the consumer side so there is a lot to to unpack in this inter-regional or like country to country kind of opportunities and my hope is like to to build a big technical powerhouse for the region to rely on and to generate talent and to

[00:49:53] generate more startups and if I fail to do that giving the statistics on the start of at least people can learn from what where we went and build on it brilliant brilliant brilliant so if

[00:50:04] we look closer to home where do you see yourself and money hash in five years time who had I mean I really think the the place we are the group of investors we have the group

[00:50:19] of talent we have the product we are the customers the trust ecosystem everything we're kind of positions position to take this to a whole new level and I think in the next five years we're hopefully gonna become one of the largest hopefully public company or a super

[00:50:35] large private company that is really building quality tech in the region I'm a first time founder so I'm hoping to be leading that but in the same time I don't know like if if I'm qualified to play

[00:50:50] the role in every stage so what will happen to Neddler in five years is that Neddler is learning how to grow up year by year to manage the challenge that is new to him

[00:51:02] and so so in that case if if he learned it well and grow well he will he will be leading that and that would be exciting and and exhausting in the same time of course I look forward to

[00:51:17] seeing that growth you know you've achieved so much in such a short space of time and I'm sure you'll achieve greater things in the next five years so you're exercising times for money

[00:51:28] hash and looking forward to that by class quote of the week as people we often have quotes mantras proverbs or affirmations that keep us going when times are good or when times are challenging

[00:51:40] do you have one that you can share with us today there is two I'm I'm using very frequently lately one is a company wide and one is like personal one so one of the company wide is like our

[00:51:54] we discuss as a company that we are we have an internal slogan and this internal slogan is called it's a professional team sport so we try to explain to our team and encourage them to think of this as

[00:52:08] this is the team sports you need to excel as a player but you need to excel as a team and you need to understand you're in a professional league now so every step we take in every position

[00:52:17] we take in the market we have to defend it and we have to defend it really well and we have to work very hard to be on top of the top of the chart of that league and be promoted to the next

[00:52:27] league year to year and that kind of like drives a lot of how we want to think about the future and on me personally there is a there is a really famous documentary about Steve Curry

[00:52:41] the fantastic basketball player and it has a it has a fantastic song that says small fish big bond big splash and I'm always think about about myself from this perspective given my background and coming from like a poor to middle class family and just like learning

[00:53:02] in public schools and and with the limited resources and now I'm like a startup founder and getting access to fun then working with fantastic talent and stuff I feel very fortunate

[00:53:12] so I gotta remind myself of how small I am but also the fact that like the small fish can always make a big splash so I kind of like very inspired by this documentary I'm very inspired by this

[00:53:23] particular song because it kind of like represents me in a way fantastic thank you for sharing that with us Nadir I really enjoyed both of those so yeah two very unique quotes or mantras or affirmations

[00:53:39] to live by so brilliant and they're both unique to yourself as we come to the end of today's conversation which has been a fantastic and very enlightening conversation I was wondering do you have any closing remarks or final course to action for people who are interested in

[00:53:54] the work that you're doing at moneyhash or people who just want to maybe explore a bit further about payment orchestration 100% I mean I really think if you are a growing company and have ambitious scaring plans think about the top two three problems you're going to face in the

[00:54:14] payment and how much effort and and how much lack of knowledge about them because they are all black boxes once you feel like comfortable asking these questions shoot me a message we're going to

[00:54:25] answer them together even if you're not a customer of moneyhash what have we just happy to help so just reach out to us with any payment questions look at our website if you saw anything relevant to you or something you're even working on building yourself we're happy to

[00:54:40] to offer knowledge and support and most importantly establish this trust so maybe we can work awesome awesome thank you so much for joining us today Nadir I think it's been a very as I said earlier enlightening conversation for myself it's amazing to hear how you're shaping payment

[00:55:01] infrastructure in Africa and also beyond and I guess for our listeners as Nadir mentioned if you're interested in learning more you can visit the moneyhash websites maybe connect with on social media link then twitter to find out a bit more but yeah it's been an absolutely

[00:55:18] pleasure having you on the podcast today my question I call us really appreciate it thanks a lot for having me take care bye bye thank you to everyone who has listened and stay tuned to the podcast

[00:55:30] if you've enjoyed this episode please subscribe share or tell a friend about it you can also rate reviewers in apple podcast or wherever you download your podcast thank you and see you next week for the Unlocking Africa podcast