3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Josep Elias, Chief Strategy Officer at CloudPay

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This was an especially illuminating episode of #HRTechChat. Chief Strategy Officer Josep Elias joined our video podcast to discuss the company’s new offering for earned wage access (EWA), CloudPay NOW. EWA is another term for on-demand pay, and CloudPay NOW is “the only earned wage access solution that can be deployed in 130+ countries,” the company’s website notes.

Interestingly, CloudPay is bucking the trend in on-demand pay by targeting the entire world (or most of it, anyway). Much of the growth in EWA of late has been in the United States, but EY estimates that “a total of approximately $1 trillion is accrued in employer payroll accounts on any given day,” as noted in a report published in September 2020.

That report by EY is a good read all-around regarding the potential for on-demand pay and the impacts of its unavailability. Additional research elsewhere adds grist to the mill. Nearly half of employees will tolerate no more than one mistake or problem with their paycheck, according to The Workforce Institute at UKG. And, according to a 2020 survey by the American Payroll Association, more than two-thirds of employees would experience financial difficulty if their paychecks were delayed by just one week. Just as worrisome, data from CareerBuilder shows that nearly fourth-fifths of people (in the United States, at least) live paycheck-to-paycheck.

Notably on this last point especially, as Josep pointed out, it’s a dynamic just as apt to dog the six-figure set, not just entry-level or low-wage staff. It would be a major mistake to attribute a gathering momentum in the growth of solutions for on-demand pay, or EWA, solely to a growing appreciation for employee sentiment and wellbeing vis-à-vis their pay. This is one factor undeniably driving adoption, sure, and socially conscious vendors want to meet the need. Swoop up and out another 20,000 feet, however, and you’ll notice something….

Cultural expectations among the newer generations have changed. Generation Z (a.k.a. Zoomers) genuinely wonders why it takes one or two weeks, sometimes a month, to get paid and in just a few ways (e.g., direct deposit to a bank account or, perhaps, via pay card). These limitations fail to align with their expectations of flexibility, instancy and immediacy. To the younger generations, their expectations are compelling.

But expectations such as theirs alone still would not constitute enough of a groundswell to bring EWA to all. No, it’s the technology that has caught up, as well, to eviscerate heretofore entrenched limitations  — because, let’s be honest: No matter our age or station in life, we’ve all at some point wished we could get paid right away without incurring some penalty or taking a risky loan out against income that we’d already earned and needed or just plain wanted right then and now, but couldn’t have till the next payday. Together, the technological and regulatory landscape have only recently made the wish possible. The old impediments that made our agreed-to conventions tolerable in the realm of getting pay are falling away rapidly, and so will the traditional pay period, eventually.

Josep’s insights into the relationship between people and their pay are deep and intriguing. I highly encourage you all to watch. To learn more about CloudPay NOW, you can visit CloudPay’s website site.

Our #HRTechChat Series is also available as a podcast on the following platforms:

See a service missing that you use? Let our team know by emailing research@3SixtyInsights.com.

Transcript

Brent Skinner 00:04
Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of HR tech chat. With us today we have Joseph Elias. Who is the Chief Strategy Officer at CloudPay.

Josep Elias 00:18
Welcome. Thank you so much for it. It’s a pleasure to be here with you. Oh, yeah,

Brent Skinner 00:24
I’m The pleasure is all ours, really. We’ve weighed 3Sixty Insights, we’ve been having a few conversations with you over the course of the past few months. And, and we’ve really touched on a lot of really interesting, interesting things around global payroll, which is what CloudPay does in the cloud, just as the name suggests, and, and today, I think we’re going to take some time to discussing a new product that you folks have launched, which is very innovative, and very helpful to global organizations. To me, it’s called CloudPay Now. But before we get to that, yeah, yeah, really looking forward to discussing it as OnDemand pay for the global scene, so to speak. But what I’d like to kind of delve into first is, you know, your, your career is very interesting. And you joined CloudPay around about three years ago, and I’m just curious, that was following a successful year career in the payroll industry. And I guess my question is, what, what compelled you What was your rationale to inspire you to come to CloudPay?

Josep Elias 01:43
Oh, that’s an interesting question.

01:47
The,

Josep Elias 01:48
you know, I promised myself when I left ADP, after 15 years, that I’ll do anything but working on the payroll space. And so do my promises. I’m someone that I don’t myself, Well, I found a company at the time that was having an amazing product. But not yet broadly recognized by the market or not probably targeting the right market segment, within the global payment space. Because was, was it This was nuts, align the size and the growth of the company with the product and technology that the company was coming at the top. I mean, obviously, within those three years, this has been become even better. And I think we have been able to staff, the company with an amazing team. That has been definitely changing. Turning around all this situation. And now we’ve been winning several awards and innovation for the last couple of years. And this has been rewarded by the market as well, with the phenomenal growth that we are experiencing nowadays.

Brent Skinner 02:58
Excellent. I mean, yeah. You know, from the outside looking in, it looks like he definitely joined the right place. CloudPay has been in global payments and payroll for I didn’t know this about two decades, which is very impressive. Yeah, very,

Josep Elias 03:17
I was going to, I was going to tell you what probably was very attractive to me of the company was the intrapreneurial atmosphere that you can breed at Club a know starting from, for our CEO to the entire organization is very innovative. No one will ever tell, you know, to test to try something. Nowadays, never stupid idea to try out. And this is something that I was very, very attractive to me. Oh, that’s,

Brent Skinner 03:50
you mentioned that entrepreneurial attitude. And I’ll tell you, from my very first conversations with CloudPay, I, I definitely felt that saw that heard that from the start very much a startup atmosphere and just exudes startup and innovation. Yeah. So I can see that makes total sense to me. I’m getting into CloudPay Now, which is the new product which is OnDemand pay, what was the rationale? What drove CloudPay, after you know, being in business for two decades successfully in delivering cloud based global payroll? What was the rationale to move into OnDemand pay for the global payroll market? What was the thinking there?

Josep Elias 04:46
Well, I hope I’m not going to sound too emotional into this because it’s very touchy for me, we started this idea because you We think that it’s a pandemic problem. Nowadays, a pandemic, it’s a very fashionable word, unfortunately. I don’t know if you’re aware, but we have 3.2 billion people working in today’s world, that’s the workforce. The World Bank is saying that 70% of this 3.2 billion people is suffering from financial distress. And for us was shocking when we realized that the issue was similar to, you know, the starving issue we were having come from third countries in the world, which is not that they don’t have food is that the food is not getting into the right place at the right time, and is having similarly today with the financials of people like us, you and I, today, we are living out of savings, meaning you get your salary, you Penny, you save the rest, and you use these savings to go pain during the month, while you get paid again, if it’s every other week, or weekly, or, or with this, the vast majority of the world monthly. So we want that, to do something to improve employees quality of life, to help employers improve the quality of life of their employees, beyond, you know, some of the benefits that we’ll know about probably today, like, you know, pension schemes or healthcare, or whatsoever, we definitely are massively needed. But this is something that is affecting not just a portion, it’s just all of us.

Brent Skinner 06:45
You know, I mean, the research out there, I was kind of just grazing Google, so to speak, right? Taking a look the other day, and, you know, the research definitely, definitely supports what you’re saying. I mean, I think it was the I actually have it written down here. Hold on one second. 69%. And I think it was from 2020. The American Payroll Association, even worse, right? I mean,

Josep Elias 07:14
the amount of people who’s asking for a pay lon, yeah.

Brent Skinner 07:18
Oh, yeah. And you can see why because that 69% number from the American payroll, it’s, that’s a number of people, I think it’s just in North America. But I’m sure that similar elsewhere, that they would experience significant financial stress, if their paycheck were delayed by a week. And that’s, that’s across the board. It’s sort of, you know, the words escaping me, but it’s not just, it’s not just wage earners and low, low entry level people. There’s another stat out there, that that I that I found, and, oh, I don’t know, the, the when we when we, when we post this, so I’ll put in the introduction, but there’s 78% of the workforce lives paycheck to paycheck and, and, in also,

Josep Elias 08:11
on top of this data you might be looking for is 30% of these people is earning over 100k

Brent Skinner 08:21
Yes, that was the numbers looking for Yeah, this is not

Josep Elias 08:24
just a blue car issue, so to speak. I mean, it’s something that impacts everybody. But for me, I mean, I didn’t know this until yesterday, I was absolutely shocked to hear a testimonial that was explaining in Kansas was going to pay law a payday loan and will ask for a few $100 the cost of those $300 was $900 Wow. Oh, it’s massive like they and this is just becoming worse because of you know, the brutal capitalism that we’re living the unexpected events like a COVID-19 pandemic or unexpected we have more good to have more than expected fixtures to the goods that we have. What is hard to play

Brent Skinner 09:21
the payday loans you know, not to get too editorial here but I’d love to see the payday loan industry just go away. Maybe there’s a few of them that uh, that it probably, but you know,

Josep Elias 09:36
that but definitely I am proud of people that how can I help those people who are suffering from not having any other choice then then getting those very, very expensive? I would say financial services No. No, it is, for me conceptually big able to provide the employee what is entitled or she’s entitled to when they need it is going to be a right, it’s not going to be a benefit anymore. It’s going to be the right the moment you and I will be on a device or device and say now it’s when I want to use my own wages to pay my grocery or to pay my doctor, whatever. There’s no, there’s no way back, because that improves your saving ability. Die improves the Castro, in your domestic finance, that improved overall economy because you move with money faster and more frequently, which overall improves the economic driver. So it is like a window in sort of effect happening all over the place. So it is it is something it’s going to happen. You know, what’s

Brent Skinner 10:59
interesting about this is almost the democratization of No, that’s an overused word. But I think it feels like the democratization of pay. I mean, we’ve talked about this previously, but just to kind of cert, bring it to the surface here. You know, a lot of sort of our conventions around pay have been dictated by, you know, logistics, and it’s been, it’s, nobody is not really been, anybody, there’s nobody sitting at the top saying, we’re going to only pay people once per month, or once every week or every two weeks. And, you know, it is because of the systems that have been in place, that’s what the systems have been able to the extent to which they exist, systems been able to facilitate, right. So now we’ve gotten to this point where technology makes it possible for people to be paid at any time. And that it’s a little bit more than technology. There’s other factors at play as well. But the confluence of these factors that have made it possible for people to be paid at any time. And, and when you think about it, going back to what you were saying, and this was what I wanted to tie in is, you know that it’s a Right, right, it’s going to become a right. Individuals, right. And that’s absolutely the case. You know, it’s always been an individual’s right, it’s just that the logistics have finally caught up to being able to make that right. a reality. It’s very, very interesting. I mean,

Josep Elias 12:26
I don’t know, it changes dynamics, I think as well, no, it changes the dynamic off of dough, let me let me start maybe by global economy, notice try to go and drill down very quickly here, where today is 1 trillion was $1 trillion that are owned by employers to employees in any given day. This is economy This is money that is not into play. On today’s world. Right. So that will that will help the global economy. Yeah. Right. I think everybody will agree on that. On top of this, that, if you go into the US is barely 300 million billion sorry, that our stock so this is money that the employer is holding on behalf of the employees, without any benefit from the employer, even the opposite? Yeah. So when you look at today’s market, and what is happening is, well, the first step is being Well, those are sophisticated with technology, they have found a way to change payday loans, to digital lenders. Right? This is faster, cleaner and way cheaper than pill. But people start questioning themselves and also the entities that are supporting the governments that will need to regulate all this space one day as well to say, Well, hold on. Why, and this is the fundamental question for I don’t know why the every would pay for something that is yours. Yeah. Are you Are you sure? I mean, I try sometimes I think of I can, I love to price. This is like not serious at this stage. Right? Like, okay, this is my money, the knowledge enables me to have access to me, okay, Am I understanding maybe services around these which might have a cost that might be then sponsored by the employer or not that those are different models will definitely support the sponsorship from the employer, because there are a lot of benefits as well as I’m going to tell you for the employer that you were there and I can use this channel for many other things. No, I’m hearing also nowadays, a lot of boys say Oh, but You know, people might make a misuse of that. Or they might know if someone is a gambler, having access to the money will make him gamble more. First of all, I don’t know if this is true. Secondly, today, if this is the issue is doing gambling with a payday loan, which is definitely worth it withdrawn, right, right. And third, well, I have a device and a channel that is attractive and critical for this person, where I can have influence and I mean, on well being positive influence, not mentally, financially, you know, physically, and so on, on top of, we can, I mean, we offer freshness to our customers, as well as their benefit to use that channel to communicate directly with those with the employees. I mean, between you and me, I hope HR, my HR department is not going to look at that. But,

16:02
you know,

Josep Elias 16:04
the last emails you written the week are those, you know, corporate announcements, HR announcement, all those sort of things, because we all up to our aircrafts in how many miles we need to deal with on a daily basis. So, you know, we also bring in the opportunity to be innovative, to our customers, using the technology to share stuff with their employees on a much more appropriate channel, that could be a mobile device. So,

Brent Skinner 16:36
you know, what’s interesting about this, and I agree with everything you say, I want to go back to that that piece. And there’s some other things we want to get to but this is a super interesting point that you made around, you know, it is a concern, right, you know, you don’t want to give, you don’t want somebody who’s maybe predisposed to addictive behavior to have easier access to money. It, you know, sort of as an objective thing, that could feel their addiction, right, whether it be gambling or something else. But what’s interesting about that is, I mean, a lot of people, you know, you look at a waitstaff, you know, they get paid and tips cash at the end of every day, you know, I mean, that’s, so this, this already exists a B, there’s a and I think it comes from a good place a well meaning place, but there’s sort of a postulated sort of paternal a paternal instinct, that’s, that’s at play there. You know, if you’re the employer Somehow, I think it’s a misunderstanding of the relationship between the employer and the employee, right, with the employee kind of assumes that well, is my responsibility to make sure that my employee does not engage in that’s, that comes from a good place but it’s not it that’s not really defensible logically at the core.

Josep Elias 17:59
Yeah. We’ve got killed the so I, my, my sentiment of what I’m hearing in the different forums and charts about those topics, which they’re starting to be predominant. Not that is today, kind of the is something that is becoming very, very hot. But no, it’s not in the mouth of everybody. Yeah.

18:24
It’s very defensive,

Josep Elias 18:26
the attitude in the employers are taking a very, very defensive, like, I don’t want to be responsible off, I want to feel bad because of whatever happened. Well, our approach is double. So we are first of all, we are preventative meaning we can mean they employ our customer, in this case, the employer can set up groups. Now, how many times can you withdraw a month or a week? What is the amount? What’s the maximum amount of withdrawal or the maximum amount in total during the cycle? We can also add controls about certain moments in the day. So like, I don’t allow you to do withdrawals between 11pm and 6am. Or not on Saturday night or Sunday night or I mean, we all this technology enables you to help you out. That’s what we call prevention. Yeah. The good news is that we’re we can monitor I mean, we can monitor and on top of these, by the way we can even block transact direct transactions done to certain, you know, certain merchants that could be online gambling, or casinos or other sort of detail, not aggregate content.

19:42
Yeah. Right.

Josep Elias 19:46
So all of these is something that we can help the employer to be preventive for that employee. We recommend as an approach to first observe And then to act. And right. I mean, you don’t want to, I mean, in this society of freedom, the very last thing you want is to start getting something that already that person believes should have access to and doesn’t have. Right. So we need to be also very tactful here. And then the other thing is the positive. Right? We have been from day one. And it’s been a lot of emphasis from our early adopters, on how valuable important is to provide positive perspective of well being to the person to the entire human being that is consuming this. So we started with financial will be but I mean, it was sort of I know, it sounds ridiculous question. But we ask ourselves, well, what’s the point? Am I okay, making you feel better about your financials, because I’m explaining ways to save money using real cases, and you’re on data, right that I can do, and you have a headache, right? Maybe we need to do something right to make sure we you having a better day overall, right? Not only from a financial perspective, and we know, that was the beginning. So we have invested a lot of money on, you know, linking, we have our own content, but also we can link content to the well being programs that a lot of companies are putting in place, you know, to make sure that employees become happier, more loyal and more productive. If you think of, I’m going to give you a very quick example. So one of our first customer is rough right now. And I remember we were describing this case with them, which is if I’m a man could be a father or mother. But I used to have to repeat the example with a mother. I’m a mother of a 10 year old. And it’s Friday, I work on a reform shop. Right? I’m the person that is selling the dresses to the people that comes into the stores, then I’m closing the day, and I’m working tomorrow, Saturday morning. And on my way to the school, you know, I’m just thinking, you know, it was not a bad day, but tomorrow, what am I going to do? Can I extend my night? And sort of have a family good time? Or do I need to wake up too early? Or you know, you might normally you go driving and thinking stuff, right? Let’s imagine you go to school, you pick up your kid and your kid is mission to this. So the first thing you do that Friday afternoon is go read and write and we know that that this is painful. Double time. So one person because it’s very expensive. Well, nothing against this, this dentist, but yeah, you’re right. It’s a reality. I mean, we all suffer from this. So this mom, today, if you might not have the money in is you have the money to someone. payday loan, the company, a friend, a cousin, a mom, whatever. Right? loves the embarrassing of you know, all this nervousness of asking how much was will push me, you know, the itinerary mindset that comes to you on No, son, please don’t do this again, how come you bring you to not only Sure thing is happening? Could you imagine? What is the reaction of this person? Saturday 11am I’m in the store, someone comes in to buy a dress? What are your chances to surprise? No, absolutely not. Now, my mind is somewhere else. Right. So if you think of these in terms of cost of opportunity, the retention, the productivity, the improving absenteeism that we are seeing on the customers that are using this and also the industry as well, that is kind of developing it. It’s absolutely unprecedent the cost of the benefit from an employer perspective, although we are not the only one is offering to the employer more than directly to the employee versus the value that this is bringing to the company’s absolutely unprecedent compared to any

Brent Skinner 24:24
absolutely correct. I love that example. By the way. In in well CloudPay now is for any type of worker, let’s focus on that. Let’s just put a fine point on you know, the typical floor associate at a retail right, you know, they have, they have very stressful sort of odd hours in retail. You know, see, everybody says Have a great weekend. Retail workers are like Yeah, okay. For me, yeah, exactly. I am actually careful not to say Have a good weekend to retail workers, even though I my instinct is just to say that nice But I realized that it’s not necessarily something that they’re going to be enjoying that person, you’re absolutely right, that person is not going to be in a frame of mind to be anywhere near as effective as possible to, help sell that dress. And that’s what the and that’s what the employer needs from that person. It goes back to this, this, this concept that I think first came out in Harvard Business Review many years ago, the service profit chain, is this idea, not an idea. It’s been shown through research. I can’t cite it right now. But there’s a bunch of it out there that the more engaged in the happier and satisfied in their work in lives work life balance, that they’re your retailers, employed floor associates are that, that the happier the customers will be? Because they’ll the floor associates will be more engaging with the customers. And so it leads to repeat business. It’s just a nice cycle their apps? Yeah, absolutely. Good. I want to just shift gears here for a second, because there’s something very interesting about CloudPay Now, in terms of how we’re, we’re CloudPay is releasing that this and it’s everywhere, you know, worldwide, the OnDemand pay has been very, you know, has been growing and very strong growth in the in the US specifically. Which is great. I’m sure we have a compelling rationale for going global with this. What is that? What, what kind of compelled CloudPay to go to release to target the entire world with

Josep Elias 26:42
the CloudPay now? Indeed. So we’re very fortunate to be the first one we offering this globally. And the rationale behind why we put extra effort and maybe not be the first ones coming out into the market to offer any wages, was because we wanted to do this globally, mainly for two reasons. The first one is, well, we believe this should be a benefit, as I told you before, from the employer to the employee, it doesn’t make much sense that you as an individual, have you pay into access to your own stuff, like, you know, you will not probably accept this in any other good, right? I can have my phone. Yeah, don’t worry, I’ll pay you five bucks for that. One that doesn’t sound very linked to this also is that our target market as a cloud, I mean, as a payroll company, or multinational companies. For us, it’s hard to imagine something that is so touchy, so personal, to the individual to the me ri that, you know, a company offers, this is a benefit in the US, and not in 20 other countries in the world that you have sort of creating place a Class B, employees are to speak. No. I mean, I was reading an article saying it’s kind of ironic, that the country that is fasting, the fastest to adopt this, the one with more pain on stores, spurs per square foot, or prohibitin. And so is the US, which is the richest country in the world, or the second richest country in the world. So what about No, there’s other places like North South America or Mexico or Southeast Asia? Africa? I mean, what do we have developed goes beyond just in wages, we can we can make money available for you on your smartphone. So I don’t know if you are aware, but I was talking to some people in South Africa. And one of the biggest issue they have in the country to pay employees is that a most of the employees might not be able to have a bank account. mainly for two reasons. One of them I think it’s going to be recurring because of the pandemic, which is people is living outside of the door run all the centric parts of the cities and is going to Corbin is cheaper is more peaceful and is better quality of life. So then you’re going to be farther from banks. And it’s all because they don’t fulfill the Client Profile requirements that might that institution might require. And not having a bank account, it means I need to pay them on cash, and I cannot pay them on cash because they will be stolen or they will be wrong before they go home. Because it’s driven, resilient and secure. So when we told them that we could do, you know sort of pain to porn, if I might say, solution for them, that was a game changer for them and say what You cannot imagine what this can do for the country. No. So there are a lot of user cases beyond what you know, the regular surface might illustrate. One of our customers was about to pay their employees was supposed to be paid on Friday, and money will not arrive until Tuesday. Well, we use CloudPay now to allow those employees to have access to their main wages during the weekend. So no one was not having no money during the weekend, right. So, I mean, there’s many applications that can dramatically change the perception your employees have your own brand. So we couldn’t imagine that this could be turned negative. No, I mean, if I am XYZ company, and I’m in 20 countries, and I know in my country, I need a service like this, like 70% of the world. And I see that, oh, they offering this in the US and I’m in Italy, and I don’t have it. I mean, my perception of my grind is worse than what it was before I knew that. Yeah. So what are you supposed to be having a positive impact might end up being a negative impact?

31:13
Yeah,

Brent Skinner 31:14
oh, I can see that. You know, what’s interesting, too, is that I think that the back in the background, the path, well, not so much the background, but the pandemic for the past year and a half plus, I think we’re seeing a lot of sort of shifts in logistics when it comes to employment. And a lot of folks are, so give an example. And I’ll confess, I don’t know how much this is actually happening. But I imagine it is happening, you might have a high level executive who, who lives in Australia, right? Or, or would like to visit fam has family in Australia, and, but is working in the United States being paid in the United States, right. And, and so, but if they go to Australia, they have to quarantine if they then they can’t leave and that there’s all these, these, you know, I’m just using it as an example. These are these stipulations around what they can do. And so they might decide, you know, what, I just want to work remotely from Down Under. And so I need to be paid, you know, via your global payroll system, my employer, as an Australian person, right. And, you know, maybe an high level executive might maybe a high level executive might not need CloudPay now, like, you know, the OnDemand pay, but imagine it’s not just high level executives, it’s probably other folks are making around, you know, 100 $150,000 USD a year, who, who are in that same situation, and would need that, that capability so that that’s another that’s another trend that I don’t see going away, even with the

Josep Elias 33:03
fact it is true that I’m going to use my own example. I mean, I’ve been obviously using which axis for obvious reasons, but I would say I don’t need it for my day today. But you know, what, I have a stack of money in the bank account. Because it’s what I used to be leaving during the month. And normally admin, especially if my wife was the one driving the accounting home things got

33:40
it sort of

Josep Elias 33:41
doesn’t that I feel is exaggerated, because that’s not our normal expanding earmarks. But what if I could use my phone right to, to pay out of my end wages, and a single time I need so I’m leaving out of what I’m earning, I could use that money to do investments. I could use this money to you know, improve my financial income home or to do other stuff or to give it to a charity or whatever anyone wants to do with it. With today even you don’t need it meaning or I’m not living paycheck to paycheck. Boy but that’s it. I mean, you know, I feel bad because these people means is living from savings and your savings are not supposed to be there for you to use it on your day to day basis. Right your savings out there or, you know, back have a safety net or for investment wherever you might want to use him saw when I was telling you before the I’m 100% convenience that this is changing the behavior On how people is spending money, and how people is going to be saving money, no matter what is your economic or social condition? I have no doubt about it, it will change the way you manage it, not to say, to talk about the millennials and the generation that are coming now, which everything needs to be instant, right? I mean, they, I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be hard for them to understand the rationale of what do I need to work 30 days to get paid for a while? I cannot really do that.

Brent Skinner 35:35
What is that all about trade? Right? Yeah,

Josep Elias 35:38
I can buy something I need to pay today.

Brent Skinner 35:41
I can imagine millennials you know, yeah, that’s and definitely Zoomers Generation Z. They’re, you know, what, what is this? I have to wait 30 days from my pay stuff. That doesn’t make any sense. What we’re talking about it and this is this kind of puts a fine point on it. And I’m glad you mentioned this. This is really a revolution. And this is just a revolution in in the dynamics of pay. This isn’t about. I mean, it is about giving people who need it more immediate access to their pay. But that’s not that’s just a very nice byproduct of, of the main thrust here. And that is that is a revolution in the in the dynamics and logistics of pay, which is inevitable, we’re annexure inexorably marching toward that. person, young, I think came out with a market cap recently of $1 trillion, for OnDemand for earned wage access. Do you have any thoughts about that? I mean, that’s pretty. 1 trillion. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s pretty huge, although trillion dollars, isn’t what it used to be, I guess. But it’s still a lot. What is your? What are your thoughts around that? I mean, that that’s pretty that’s, that’s big.

Josep Elias 36:54
Yeah, the I mean, that is it is true, also that that sort of the data that I have, that is $1 trillion in a given day, and wages, sitting somewhere. This is why I believe this is going to be a revolution that is absolutely unstoppable. You have from one side, the force of the individual who needs it, right to say 70% of people needs it. And on the other side, you have the forces of the macro economy, saying, Well, what the hell are we doing with $1 trillion a day that are not being moved to spend or invest? Right, so and that will create sort of a perfect storm, to try to normalize this because that means there is more acquisition power for globally right for the people with these incomes and measure ability to spend money or to save money, and you are resolving also the issue of the timeliness, we’re talking before versus when I pay versus when I get my money. And so not only there is more morning, late into the macroeconomy, but also you move in more often, right? It’s much more number of transactions, which is drives the macroeconomy factors to go higher, which is normally what governments and, you know, big companies are looking for. So the fact that all this data is being revealed, it’s bringing a lot of people questions are saying, Well, I mean, who can grab this? I mean, now between you and me, who could grab this trillion dollar that is sitting out there? I mean, I definitely would like to have a piece of that. So, you know, it’s going to be a lot of interest on moving this forward. And I think we’ll create the morality that the system needs. No, it is true that today, this has been position. unfortunate. And I think ironically, it’s been positioned as a help for people that have low incomes.

39:12
and

Josep Elias 39:14
I are reaching into the prospects and customers that I’m talking to. And hopefully I can do it today to grow their audience that, you know, there are amazing opportunities in the thunderstorms. And this is one of the that if you as a company can look at this strategically, it might give you any critical competitive advantage in the war for talent in the retention and productivity against your competition. The fact that you embrace that opportunity, make it as a benefit and ensure that this is reflected to improve the awareness and the sympathy towards your brand and your culture. And as you said, No, it is proven it’s Do you think that you know, happy employees make happy customers and happy customers makes a better balance sheet. So it is sort of an ABC, very simple process. But, you know, it will be for the brief one brief that are taking the first steps that I would take it the most of the advantages of this membrane.

40:24
Yeah.

Brent Skinner 40:27
And I would say just that, um, this is looking at earned wage access, as, as you know, and more holistically as being a revolutionary, sort of next step in the relationship between employer and employee when it comes to pay, how pay is processed and when it’s processed, and how easily it’s processed, rather than just a benefit for even though it is a great benefit for folks who need the money now, I’m looking at it the broad more broadly. I mean, that’s sort of the that’s at the vanguard of you know, this is the outer edge is the vanguard of looking at pay as more than just a number that goes into the GLM.

Josep Elias 41:18
The other way around, why are we doing payroll is to pay? Yeah. So if we solve the pay issue, right, if I pay you every day, why do I need to do payroll weekly? Or bi weekly, or even monthly? I mean, right? Yeah, I have some Mr. Tory regulation that I need to fulfill, right, and I need to be compliant with but they’re not monthly. On the conference, you do payroll monthly, normally, you have 45 days or 50 days to report back to social security to the tax authorities to the different, you know, departments of the government that might need data out of the employer, or the employer or the employee. Could you imagine today, where you do payroll, let’s imagine his modeling, because I think it’s easier and more illustrative, but it absolutely applies to any other frequency. So if I do 30 days a month, I normally have a cut up by the 15. So that means in my best chances, I’m only calculating then to 12, labor base out of 22. So that means I’m paying you a full month’s knowing data of half a month. Good imagine we can change this to say, you know what, I’m going to calculate payroll on the 15th of the next month. So I created the entire month, it’s a much easier process, less error, much, much less stressful, by the way and much more accurate. For the employee, it’s, it’s a no problem, because in the meantime, I’m having access to the body, which is what I need, I don’t care if you need to do payroll or not what I want is my morning.

Brent Skinner 43:02
I think that they were the point at and I’m looking at the time here, I think we’re at the point at with payroll, that the technology, the capability of technology is just we’re at the point where we can really start just making it just setting you know, there’s a term here in the US set it and forget it, you know, it’s almost, you know, we’re moving toward that you know, it and maybe set it but don’t forget it, obviously, we don’t want to forget, we but we could theoretically if we want it to because we can forget it. Now we can actually focus more on it from a from a far more strategic standpoint.

43:40
What’s next for

Brent Skinner 43:41
CloudPay? I mean, you’ve, you know, you’ve released CloudPay Now what? What are some of the things on the horizon that that you that you’re able to share?

Josep Elias 43:52
That’s a tricky question. So yeah, we’re working on a couple of I think incredible things as well maybe not as visual as clubbing, which is an avenue you can touch and see and feel and breathe, sort of. But so we are working on now we have the capability to pay globally. Now we are looking on wage on how we can pay as we say everyone, anywhere, anytime, and we want to do this instantly. So today for you, I mean for any multinational company to be an employee abroad, that is not in the head worse, and we say normally it takes between three to five days. And that’s the time the body takes to go from point A to point B. Well, we are working on I mean, we already testing and very successfully with some customers. Well we can do this in any country for over 50 different currencies. And we do it in 20 seconds. So that means is instant, right? I mean, the time that you say applies to any wages, if you look today of the providers that are providing better say, parties pay OnDemand, whether in wages, because there are some complications, or where the money comes in, and they charge in the employee, for instance, as well, and so on. But never mind, that’s not relevant at this stage. You know, they, it takes you three days. And if you want it, within two days, you pay a fee. And if you want it in the same day, you pay another fee. Well imagine we can do this, and say, to someone that is in an exotic country like Sri Lanka, right, as a, hey, I’m an employee, of we have one customer with a large corporation is right, there’s all of that company, Company A, I’m going to ask for my end wages. By the time I click confirm, and I go to the screen of what’s the status of my transaction, you know, I might the money might be already in my, in my in my car, though, in my phone. And these can happen the same when I want to send it to mom. So these revolutionize as well and changes what we know today as remittance. My, when I can send money to the family, in a different currency abroad, and instance, oh, then you can start imaging on, you know, gift cards, send us money instantly and collected in your phone and ready to be consumed. You can think of a bunch of friends that want to do something collectively, and that just basically, you know, all pulling money into one single place. So then they can just expand it without the need of, you know, taking note of who pays what and make crazy calculations. We all know when we do the sort of groups and all this can disappear with the technology that we are building behind the scenes for the collaboration of, of visa no as one of our partners here. So I think the conjunction of both things, if we can position it correctly, as well and provide the right message and make something that behind the scenes, it is complex, make it very easy to consume. As I told you before, I think I think we’re changing the paywall forever. And also the way people is transactional with money. I don’t know if this has happened to you. And I promise that with this, I’ll be quiet. You know, I realized the other day that it’s maybe six months that I have in touch available

47:55
All right, I

Josep Elias 47:55
don’t go with coins pockets. Right? That the only thing I’m using is plastic or contactless

Brent Skinner 48:06
I am definitely the same way you know, unless I’m planning to go through some tolls on the highway. Which I don’t get on the highway too much and I don’t have one of those transponders in my car. I Oh gosh, where’s I got to go to the ATM have a you know, just pick.

Josep Elias 48:26
All right. And it’s kind of embarrassing. You need to pay for that small amount with the credit.

Brent Skinner 48:32
Yeah. Yeah, this is this has been a fantastic conversation thing. Thank you so much. Just up for joining us.

48:45
Yeah,

Brent Skinner 48:46
yeah, great stuff. Change changing payroll forever. I think that’s a great, great phrase to end this on. It is definitely looking forward to the to the future of payroll. So looking very bright.

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