September 24, 2025 • 25 mins
Dive into the transformative world of B2B payments with Brandon Spear, CEO of TreviPay, as he reveals how their platform is revolutionizing trade credit for businesses worldwide. Operating across 32 countries and primarily serving enterprise clients, TreviPay has created a comprehensive solution that manages the entire order-to-cash cycle - from credit applications and underwriting to invoice generation, collections, and cash application.
What sets TreviPay apart? Their global underwriting platform delivers real-time credit decisions while combating sophisticated fraud schemes that have become increasingly convincing in the AI era. By generating invoices on behalf of merchants, they enable powerful data management capabilities that solve industry-specific challenges. For automotive manufacturers, this means enforcing contract pricing across dealership networks, reducing pricing errors from one-in-three to approximately one-in-thousand. For businesses expanding internationally, it eliminates the complexity of producing tax-compliant invoices across diverse jurisdictions.
The pandemic marked a turning point for B2B payments, exposing the vulnerabilities of manual processes when employees couldn't be in the office. Rising interest rates further accelerated adoption as working capital became more expensive, pushing companies to optimize receivables management. These market shifts have positioned TreviPay for explosive growth - they estimate a $20 billion revenue opportunity emerging in their target markets over the next 5-7 years.
Perhaps most importantly, Brandon emphasizes that payment experiences directly impact customer loyalty: "Experience loyalty is becoming more important than brand loyalty." Businesses that offer accurate invoices and flexible payment options capture a larger share of wallet - a powerful reminder that even the most technical aspects of payments ultimately come down to creating exceptional customer experiences.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast,
where we talk to C-level leadersfrom across the payments
landscape.
We'll be discussing theproducts and services that
impact the payment space today,as well as trends and
predictions for the future ofpayments.
We will also hear stories fromour guests about their journeys
to the top.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Leaders in
Payments podcast.
I'm your host, greg Myers, andon today's show we have a very
special guest back, brandonSpear, who is the CEO of
TreviPay.
Brandon, thank you so much forcoming back on the show and
welcome, and I'm glad we'regoing to get to catch up again
today.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Greg.
I can't believe it's been acouple of years since we last
spoke, but it's good to be backon the show and thank you for
having me.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Absolutely.
So I looked it up, it was Mayof 2021.
You were episode 84, and I'm onepisode 432.
So it has been a while, so wehave a lot to catch up on Before
we dive into the company.
If you don't mind, let's talk alittle bit about yourself.
So tell the audience a littlebit about yourself, just a quick
snapshot maybe where you grewup, where you went to school,
(01:01):
where you currently live, just afew things like that.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, sure, of course I'd be happy to.
So, as you can probably tellfrom the accent, I didn't
actually grow up in the US.
I grew up in South Africa andmost of my background has been
in software and technologybusinesses of various flavors.
And then I actually was in arole in the early 2000s that
brought me to the US.
The company was headquarteredin Dallas, we were doing
(01:25):
procurement software and thatbrought me to the US about 20
years ago now, and Dallas wasthe first city that I was in.
And then subsequently I'vetaken on this role with TreviPay
, which was about 10 years agonow actually a little over about
almost 11 years ago now andthat role brought me to Kansas
City, which is where thebusiness is headquartered.
(01:45):
And so I've been here for thelast 11 years and, like I said,
mainly software and technologybusinesses.
Trevipay was my first forayinto a business that also had
payments as part of it.
There's obviously a big part ofthe business that's software as
well, but it was my first forayinto payments.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So I think we've talked about this before and you
were in Dallas, so now KansasCity.
So Cowboys Chiefs, or how doyou handle that?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
You know you've got to have an AFC team and an NFC
team.
So fortunately that's kind ofhow my wife and I are.
My wife is a huge Cowboys fan,lived in Texas for most of her
life and so a very big Cowboysfan.
So every four years it getscomplicated when they play each
other.
Then you basically have todecide who you're really
supporting.
But it's been fun having bothteams.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, I get it.
I'm in Dallas, so it's allCowboys all the time.
That's just the way it is here.
Well, thanks for sharing that.
So let's dive in and talk aboutthe company.
So remind the audience whatTreviPay does in and talk about
the company.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
So remind the audience what TreviPay does.
Trevipay is really focused onhelping merchants offer trade
credit to their businesscustomers, so it's B2B business
and it's really all around thatentire business process of
offering trade credit, which isusually referred to as the order
to cash cycle.
And if you offer trade credit toyour customers, if you're
producing invoices, then youhave to deal with things like
(03:06):
how you provide credit lines,how you manage credit lines, how
you actually generate thoseinvoices and deliver them, how
you deal with disputes, how youdeal with collections activities
and then ultimately, at the endof the cycle, how you deal with
cash application.
And we do all of this for thesemerchants using our platform.
It really, then, enables thecustomers.
We have to focus on what theydo best, which is selling their
(03:30):
products, selling their services, and not having to deal with
that order-to-cash cycle.
That's the service we provide,and we do it in a number of
different industries and we doit in 32 countries.
So the other angle we can bringto bear is help many of our
customers extend their offeringsinto a broader set of markets,
into a broader set of customers.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
So you mentioned it's pretty much all B2B.
Are there certain sizes ofcompanies that the product works
better for?
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, great question.
So, generally speaking, we havefocused on larger clients.
So we've focused on moreenterprise type of customers,
larger clients.
So we've focused on moreenterprise type of customers and
in most cases, that's reallybecause those are the types of
organizations that often havethe biggest challenges with this
.
It's also been just in terms ofour own energy and our own
return on investment.
(04:17):
It's been the best place for usto focus, because we
essentially get more bang forour buck in terms of sales and
sales and marketing when we workwith those types of clients.
So, generally, most of ourcustomers are larger.
So, to put a number on it,we're usually focused on
businesses that have more than100 million revenue.
That's sort of where we drawthe threshold for us.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
What's the pricing model?
So is it likesubscription-based, or how does
that work?
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah, great question.
So our pricing model is atransaction fee that's based
upon the percentage of theinvoice, and there's a couple of
things that influence what thatprice will ultimately end up
being.
We have, like I mentioned, aplatform that supports the whole
order-to-cash cycle.
We also have a number of whatwe refer to as intelligent
(05:01):
network apps, which you canthink of as essentially add-ons
or additional modules that makesense in certain industries or
in certain geographies, andthose are additional that not
all customers have but somecustomers choose.
And then the final component ofour offering is we're also
depending on the customer, themerchant, and what they're
looking for.
We're also able to facilitatethem getting paid early, and so
(05:25):
there's a working capitalcomponent to our fee as well.
So some customers of ours takeall three of those capabilities.
Other customers of ours mightjust take the base platform, but
it's essentially a transactionfee based on the invoice value.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Okay, what would you say is the biggest challenge
that you solve for yourcustomers?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, so it varies a little bit by industry, but
maybe if I can give you somepractical examples it'll help
bring this to life for you andfor your listeners.
So in some of the industriesthat we serve automotive is one,
for example automotivemanufacturers their challenge is
, when they're working withlarge national accounts, large
national fleets, how do theyhave a uniform contract price
(06:09):
when they sell to those fleets?
So you can imagine thechallenge.
If you're an OEM, you havedealerships that you essentially
sell through, because all ofthe parts and maintenance that
goes into looking after avehicle is done through the
dealership network.
But those dealers all run ondifferent software and so
there's no easy way to getcontract compliance across all
(06:31):
of those different platforms.
That's one of the bigcapabilities that we have, is we
would help those OEMs put in auniform contract price.
And so how this works is youcan imagine, if you're a large
fleet, somebody like UPS orFedEx you take your truck in for
maintenance as part of thatservicing process.
When the dealer actually goes tocreate an invoice.
(06:52):
They create effectively a proforma invoice.
They run it against ourplatform.
We check every line item on theinvoice for contract price
accuracy and then, once we'veconfirmed that, we actually
create the invoice on behalf ofthe dealer and then deliver it
to the correct place inside thatlarge national account.
So to give you a sense of this,before our solution goes into
(07:14):
some of these situations there'sas many as one in three
invoices that are incorrectbecause the pricing is wrong.
You can imagine what that doesfor a dealer in terms of delayed
payments and delayed workingcapital just a process that's
complicated and messy.
After our solution goes in,this tends to drop to about one
in a thousand invoices wherethere's a pricing problem.
(07:36):
So it significantly improvesthe lives of the dealers, the
lives of the fleets andobviously for the OEMs.
They're basically able to sellmore as a consequence.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And what would you say?
Differentiates TreviPay fromyour competitors out there?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
I think there's a handful of things that I'll talk
to.
So the first one is we have aglobal underwriting platform,
which you would think the bigcredit bureaus.
It would be easy to go and geta global solution.
It's actually really quitedifficult if you operate in
multiple countries to be able tounderwrite clients all over the
world.
So we have a globalunderwriting platform that's
(08:12):
very effective.
It's real time, it's completelydigital.
Many of the customers andindustries we serve they often
have manual processes still andpaper based processes, and so
you kind of completely transformthat onboarding experience.
The other thing that's happeningin that area is there's an
increasing amount of fraud there.
You can imagine, as you startto acquire more and more
(08:34):
customers online, there's moreand more scope for bad actors to
be looking to apply for linesof credit and what they do.
They're very sophisticated,greg.
It's really challenging becausethey do business impersonation,
where they actually pretend tobe a real business.
There's synthetic fraud, wherethey actually create fake shell
companies and they endeavor toget credit lines that way, and
(08:56):
it's a real arms race for manyof the customers we work with
that they just can't keep upwith the pace of these bad
actors and what they're doing.
And you can imagine, with theproliferation of AI and the
speed that AI is moving at,that's only getting worse.
And these bad actors, like Isaid, are sophisticated.
They can create completely fakewebsites.
I mean, everything looks real.
(09:17):
So helping identify afraudulent application through
our underwriting process is kindof a key piece of our secret
sauce, as well as the actualoverall underwriting process
itself.
And then the second thing that'sreally different about us is we
produce the invoice on behalfof our customers.
Now the reason that's relevantis it allows us to do some
(09:39):
really cool things with the data.
For example, I've mentionedthat situation with an OEM
that's got national contractpricing.
That's very hard to do if youdon't have a centralized
platform that holds thecontracts that can create the
invoice.
But we can also do some reallyclever things.
So, for example, if some ofthose buyers come to us and say
(09:59):
I would really like mytransactions aggregated by state
because that's how I pay taxesand so I don't really want to
get different invoices, I wantto get one aggregated invoice
once per week and by state.
Our platform is essentially in aposition where we can aggregate
the data that way, so we cancollect the information and
aggregate it and put it on theinvoice in a fashion that the
(10:22):
buyer wants to receive it.
And so creating the invoice isa key part of our secret sauce
because it allows us to do thosecool things for the data.
It also allows us to helpcustomers that want to expand
internationally, for example,but really don't want to figure
out how to create atax-compliant invoice in Mexico
or Canada or all the variousVAT-compliant invoices that are
(10:45):
required in Europe.
They don't have to deal withthat, so we do all of that on
their behalf.
So I'd say those two things areprobably the key
differentiators.
And then we have theseintelligent network apps that I
mentioned before, that we'vebuilt over the years, that are
particular to certain industriesor particular to certain
geographies, that really allowus to solve some of the
(11:06):
challenges that those clientshave in those markets or those
regions of the world.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Just as you were talking.
It made me think about you'resending these invoices on the
vendor side if they want to paya certain way.
I mean, there's so many paymentmethods now and then you guys
are doing business all over theworld.
Multiply what we have here inthe US times 30.
How do you handle that part ofthe business?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
worry about well, how am I going to accept payment in
all these different countries?
So we accept all of the majorpayment types around the world
in all these different markets.
We're also able to deal withforeign exchange requirements
and variations that ourcustomers might have.
So some of our customers, forexample, may want to get paid in
US dollars but have invoices inEurope that are in euros or
Swiss francs or Swedish krona,british pounds, and not have to
(12:03):
deal with that conversion andnot have to deal with the
currency risk, because obviously, if you create an invoice today
in pounds and you're onlygetting paid in 30 days or 60
days time, there's a potentialcurrency translation risk that
you might have when that paymentactually happens.
So we're able to deal with allof that complexity for our
clients too.
But to your point, we acceptwires, achs, checks, e-checks,
(12:28):
efts all of the various forms ofpayment in all of the different
markets.
And then our suppliers chooseand for the most part they're
getting reimbursed through ACHor FedNow or the other real-time
payment types that exist insome of the other markets.
They choose how they want toget settled, but there's only
one payment type that they haveto deal with and then we deal
(12:51):
with all of the rest of thecomplexity of all the payment
types that they buy us.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Okay, great.
Well, let's talk a little bitabout the future.
What is the maybe one biggestopportunity for growth for you
guys in the future?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
the things that we believe is going to happen over
the next 10 years or so is thatB2B is going to catch up to
where the consumer space is, andwhat do I mean by that?
Well, there's very little, orthere's a surprising amount of
manual processes that stillexist in B2B, and it's
everything from underwriting tohow you produce and deliver
invoices, to how you deal withcollections, that whole order to
cash cycle, and so we believethere's going to be enormous
(13:44):
opportunity to digitize all ofthat in all of the industries
that we serve, and we feel thatmomentum building it's one of
the most interesting things tohave watched.
I've been in the company overthe last 11 years and for a long
time we were talking about whatwe did, and you would talk to a
prospective customer and theyhad no idea that a business like
(14:05):
us even existed or that wecould do the things that we do,
and that's starting to change.
It feels like there's a shiftoccurring where more and more
companies are actually askingthis question like why do I do
this receivables process myself?
Why do I have to manage itmyself?
It's not necessarily a corebusiness competence.
Part of the catalyst for this,by the way, was during the
(14:28):
pandemic.
It really highlighted manualprocesses, because when people
weren't in the office, a wholebunch of those swivel chair
processes broke.
I think the second thing that'sbeen really interesting is that
, with rates increasing, havinghad essentially free money for
so many years, there reallywasn't as much of a focus on
well, how efficient is my backoffice around receivables, what
(14:51):
sort of job am I doing incollecting invoices on time, and
that is again kind ofcompletely pivoted.
As rates rose, more and morecompanies got stretched and
their working capital becameexpensive and so they needed to
do a better job managing it.
We're tremendously excitedabout the opportunity.
We think B2B is on the cusp ofreally automating the accounts
(15:12):
receivable processes, and we'rewell placed, obviously, to be a
part of that.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Well, what does success look like for you guys
in maybe the next three to fiveyears?
Speaker 3 (15:21):
We feel like to some extent, we're just getting
started, greg, because, like Imentioned, we've had all of this
initial kind of inertia toovercome in the B2B space.
But for us, we think and weactually commissioned one of the
big four management consultingfirms to do a market study for
us, and when they looked at themarkets we serve and the
(15:42):
propensity for those markets towork with partners like us and
so on, we believe, just in thespaces that we're in, that
there's a $20 billion revenueopportunity that's going to come
to market in the next five toseven years, and so we are doing
everything we can to get asmuch of a share of that as
possible.
That's the revenue opportunity,so it's not like the size of
(16:04):
the market or anything else.
That's actually the revenuethat could be produced there.
We couldn't be more excited.
I think that it's on the vergeof really breaking out and being
a significant part of theoverall payments landscape.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I used to work for a CEO and he talked about our
businesses Kind of we built thebest blender in the industry.
Now we just have to put morefruit in the top of it to make
it Sounds like that's sort ofwhere you guys are.
It's not about, hey, we got togo create a whole bunch of new
stuff.
There's just plenty of marketout there available.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
If you think about the various stages of market
evolution, we've got great proofpoints with countless early
adopters in a whole range ofdifferent markets and we're only
really now starting topenetrate the next stage of the
adoption curve, which arethey're not the early adopters,
(16:59):
they're the mainstream market,and that's where obviously most
of the volume is and where thereally big prize is.
And so we feel like we're inthe process of crossing that
chasm and coming a little morewell-known.
You might've seen, we did a bigannouncement yesterday we're
partnering with Walmart todeliver their whole B2B solution
to their clients.
(17:20):
When you get endorsements fromcompanies like that the biggest
company in the world, sayingTriviPay is a good partner for
us for B2B, that's the sort ofthing that's A inspiring and B
we believe endorses thesolutions that we have that we
think a whole range of customerscan benefit from.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Congratulations on that.
That's got to be a big win foryou, oh yeah, so when you step
back and look at the paymentsindustry kind of as a whole,
what do you think are the trendsthat are reshaping payments?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I think there's a couple of them, obviously, and
they're super topical, you know.
So, on the one hand, you've gotthe evolution of all the
real-time payment infrastructure.
The US has obviously been alittle bit behind Europe in that
regard, but, you know, fed nowis really accelerating and I
think that is going to becomethe future of how most people do
(18:09):
payments.
There's also the overlay ofwhat role do stable coins play
here, and it's kind of aninteresting blend between
government-backedcryptocurrencies and
private-based currencies.
I think it's going to create awhole bunch more efficiency in
international currency transfers.
I think that those businessesare going to be significantly
(18:30):
transformed over the nextseveral years.
We spoke a little bit about it,but I think AI is going to be
transformative here.
It's going to be transformativein a lot of back office areas.
We're definitely seeing it inour teams and how we're
deploying it for our customers.
But I also think that it'sgoing to accelerate what I was
(18:51):
talking about around fraud andsome of the bad actors, and that
the speed with which you canstand up a fake website or you
can pretend to be a realbusiness all of those things are
just going to go so much fasterand it does feel like there's
going to be a bit of an armsrace there.
How do you keep up withpreventing or being careful as
you onboard new customers and Ithink that's going to make its
(19:14):
way into payments ultimately isjust being very aware of these
bad actors and what they can do.
So I think, between stablecoins, real-time payments and AI
and its role in fraud, thoseare pretty significant trends
that we're watching very, veryclosely.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, on the stable coins.
Are you kind of viewing stablecoins and I hear this a lot from
banks is they kind of viewstable coins as just another
method of payment?
I mean, is that kind of how youview it, or is it deeper than
that?
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I think, ultimately, that is what it will become.
I think what's transformativeabout it is that it's going to
operate at an entirely differentcost level.
So that's a part of it.
And then I think the secondpart of it is you're going to be
in a position where you canleverage some of the other cool
things that blockchains can doaround smart contracts.
And if you think about some ofthe processes that exist in B2B
(20:09):
where you have to sign a proofof delivery to make certain that
something was actuallydelivered, you can imagine how
those processes start to getdigitized.
If you're selling something tosomeone overseas and your
payment is going to be premisedon when it's delivered, when
that signature happens, it couldhappen digitally, and then the
funds are released immediately.
(20:29):
There isn't a process of sayingplease send me the money.
The money is essentially almostlike in an escrow, waiting for
the right triggers from thesmart contract.
So I think it's going to betransformative in that regard,
because if you think about ourpayment infrastructure today,
it's really just about movingthe money with a little bit of
data on the side.
I think the paymentinfrastructure in the future,
(20:50):
you're not only going to havethe ability to move the money,
but you're going to be able todo a lot more with data and
leverage.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
things like smart contracts and other triggers
that can basically determinewhen the funds flows occur can
basically determine when thefunds flows occur, yeah, and
then it seems that around AI,obviously it's a buzz and
everybody's talking about it,but it seems to be the fraud
application I hear about all thetime in payments.
I think that's a real use case.
But the other area that I hearabout a lot is anything that has
(21:19):
a lot of data, and you'redealing with tons of data that
AI is really going to betransformative.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
It definitely is.
So, to give you a sense of whatwe're doing in this regard, we
have a number of customers andwe sort of sit on top of all of
their transactional data withtheir clients and we've built
machine learning models that arenow providing feedback to our
customers on we think thiscustomer is about to check.
(21:44):
So our primary customer is themerchant and we've built these
ML models that now allow us togive this feedback to our
clients to say, this customer isdisplaying the characteristics
of someone who would churn, andthen we're using that and
rolling it into a loyaltyprogram where they can go back
to that customer and say, hey,if you spend this amount of
(22:06):
money in the next 60 days, 90days, you'll get a rebate or
some other variation on a themethere around loyalty.
And all of this is now justhappening in real time because
of the machine learning modelthat we've built.
And if you think about how thatextends out going forward,
we're pretty excited abouthelping our customers figure out
where the white space is withintheir client base.
(22:27):
Obviously, churn is an easierone to get at because if
somebody was buying at a certainlevel, their buying is
declining or they're spendingless, and you can identify that
relatively easily.
But what we're particularlyexcited about is a new model
that we're in the process ofbuilding, where you can compare
buyers to one another that havesimilar characteristics and say
(22:48):
this buyer is buying a basket ofthese 15 things on a regular
basis, but this buyer is onlybuying 10 of them.
Why are they not buying theother five?
What is causing them to not buythe other five?
And that might be pricingstrategy, it might be marketing,
they might not know, and sothere's a whole really useful
set of information you canprovide back to say there's
(23:10):
white space here.
These are existing clients, butthere's white space within
these existing customers.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, that's fascinating, Brandon.
A couple of final questionsbefore we wrap up.
If you could kind of look backto your younger self, maybe just
starting your career, what kindof career advice would you give
yourself?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
It's so interesting because my career was kind of
serendipitous and I don't knowhow yours unfolded, greg, but I
felt like I got lucky at times,like I was in the right place at
the right time, and I think thebest advice I could give myself
is just be comfortable with thejourney.
It's not always the destination.
There are going to be thingsthat you do and decisions that
you make throughout your careerthat you have no idea what the
(23:51):
long-term impact of that isgoing to be, and so just enjoy
the ride.
Enjoy the journey, because youwill learn something from it,
and then that will prepare youfor whatever comes next.
And so be patient and let itcome at you rather than worrying
about what the destinationmight be.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, I think that's great advice.
So if you could have ourlisteners think about one thing
related to payments as kind of atakeaway from this conversation
, what would that be?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
So for us, we have definitely developed the view
that the way you allow yourcustomers to pay and, more
importantly, the way you producethe invoices, the content for
them to pay, can be a realdriver of loyalty.
Let me explain what I mean bythat.
If your invoices are alwayswrong or don't have the right
data on them, or don't allowyour customers to easily approve
(24:40):
it for payment, then ultimatelythey will spend less money with
you because, at the end of theday, we believe that experience
loyalty is actually becomingmore important than brand
loyalty.
Customers want a goodexperience, and so the easier
you are to do business with, thelarger your share of wallet
you'll have with your clients,and payments, believe it or not,
(25:02):
is a big part of that.
Allow them to pay the way theywant, allow them to easily
improve and approve yourinvoices and get the invoices
right, and then you'll get alarger share of their spend.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Well, brandon, I think that's a great way to wrap
up the show, so thank you somuch for being on today.
It was great to catch up withyou again, so thanks for being
here.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
It was a real pleasure.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
It's always fun sharing with you.
Greg, thanks for allowing me onthe show Absolutely, and to all
your listeners out there, Ithank you for your time as well,
and until the next story.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in
Payments podcast.
Make sure you visit our websiteat leadersinpaymentscom, where
you can subscribe to the showand where you'll find our show
notes.
If you enjoyed listening,please share on your social
channels as well.
Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast,
where we talk to C-level leadersfrom across the payments
landscape.
We'll be discussing theproducts and services that
impact the payment space today,as well as trends and
predictions for the future ofpayments.
We will also hear stories fromour guests about their journeys
to the top.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Leaders in
Payments podcast.
I'm your host, greg Myers, andon today's show we have a very
special guest back, brandonSpear, who is the CEO of
TreviPay.
Brandon, thank you so much forcoming back on the show and
welcome, and I'm glad we'regoing to get to catch up again
today.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Greg.
I can't believe it's been acouple of years since we last
spoke, but it's good to be backon the show and thank you for
having me.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Absolutely.
So I looked it up, it was Mayof 2021.
You were episode 84, and I'm onepisode 432.
So it has been a while, so wehave a lot to catch up on Before
we dive into the company.
If you don't mind, let's talk alittle bit about yourself.
So tell the audience a littlebit about yourself, just a quick
snapshot maybe where you grewup, where you went to school,
(01:01):
where you currently live, just afew things like that.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, sure, of course I'd be happy to.
So, as you can probably tellfrom the accent, I didn't
actually grow up in the US.
I grew up in South Africa andmost of my background has been
in software and technologybusinesses of various flavors.
And then I actually was in arole in the early 2000s that
brought me to the US.
The company was headquarteredin Dallas, we were doing
(01:25):
procurement software and thatbrought me to the US about 20
years ago now, and Dallas wasthe first city that I was in.
And then subsequently I'vetaken on this role with TreviPay
, which was about 10 years agonow actually a little over about
almost 11 years ago now andthat role brought me to Kansas
City, which is where thebusiness is headquartered.
(01:45):
And so I've been here for thelast 11 years and, like I said,
mainly software and technologybusinesses.
Trevipay was my first forayinto a business that also had
payments as part of it.
There's obviously a big part ofthe business that's software as
well, but it was my first forayinto payments.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So I think we've talked about this before and you
were in Dallas, so now KansasCity.
So Cowboys Chiefs, or how doyou handle that?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
You know you've got to have an AFC team and an NFC
team.
So fortunately that's kind ofhow my wife and I are.
My wife is a huge Cowboys fan,lived in Texas for most of her
life and so a very big Cowboysfan.
So every four years it getscomplicated when they play each
other.
Then you basically have todecide who you're really
supporting.
But it's been fun having bothteams.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, I get it.
I'm in Dallas, so it's allCowboys all the time.
That's just the way it is here.
Well, thanks for sharing that.
So let's dive in and talk aboutthe company.
So remind the audience whatTreviPay does in and talk about
the company.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
So remind the audience what TreviPay does.
Trevipay is really focused onhelping merchants offer trade
credit to their businesscustomers, so it's B2B business
and it's really all around thatentire business process of
offering trade credit, which isusually referred to as the order
to cash cycle.
And if you offer trade credit toyour customers, if you're
producing invoices, then youhave to deal with things like
(03:06):
how you provide credit lines,how you manage credit lines, how
you actually generate thoseinvoices and deliver them, how
you deal with disputes, how youdeal with collections activities
and then ultimately, at the endof the cycle, how you deal with
cash application.
And we do all of this for thesemerchants using our platform.
It really, then, enables thecustomers.
We have to focus on what theydo best, which is selling their
(03:30):
products, selling their services, and not having to deal with
that order-to-cash cycle.
That's the service we provide,and we do it in a number of
different industries and we doit in 32 countries.
So the other angle we can bringto bear is help many of our
customers extend their offeringsinto a broader set of markets,
into a broader set of customers.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
So you mentioned it's pretty much all B2B.
Are there certain sizes ofcompanies that the product works
better for?
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, great question.
So, generally speaking, we havefocused on larger clients.
So we've focused on moreenterprise type of customers,
larger clients.
So we've focused on moreenterprise type of customers and
in most cases, that's reallybecause those are the types of
organizations that often havethe biggest challenges with this
.
It's also been just in terms ofour own energy and our own
return on investment.
(04:17):
It's been the best place for usto focus, because we
essentially get more bang forour buck in terms of sales and
sales and marketing when we workwith those types of clients.
So, generally, most of ourcustomers are larger.
So, to put a number on it,we're usually focused on
businesses that have more than100 million revenue.
That's sort of where we drawthe threshold for us.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
What's the pricing model?
So is it likesubscription-based, or how does
that work?
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah, great question.
So our pricing model is atransaction fee that's based
upon the percentage of theinvoice, and there's a couple of
things that influence what thatprice will ultimately end up
being.
We have, like I mentioned, aplatform that supports the whole
order-to-cash cycle.
We also have a number of whatwe refer to as intelligent
(05:01):
network apps, which you canthink of as essentially add-ons
or additional modules that makesense in certain industries or
in certain geographies, andthose are additional that not
all customers have but somecustomers choose.
And then the final component ofour offering is we're also
depending on the customer, themerchant, and what they're
looking for.
We're also able to facilitatethem getting paid early, and so
(05:25):
there's a working capitalcomponent to our fee as well.
So some customers of ours takeall three of those capabilities.
Other customers of ours mightjust take the base platform, but
it's essentially a transactionfee based on the invoice value.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Okay, what would you say is the biggest challenge
that you solve for yourcustomers?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, so it varies a little bit by industry, but
maybe if I can give you somepractical examples it'll help
bring this to life for you andfor your listeners.
So in some of the industriesthat we serve automotive is one,
for example automotivemanufacturers their challenge is
, when they're working withlarge national accounts, large
national fleets, how do theyhave a uniform contract price
(06:09):
when they sell to those fleets?
So you can imagine thechallenge.
If you're an OEM, you havedealerships that you essentially
sell through, because all ofthe parts and maintenance that
goes into looking after avehicle is done through the
dealership network.
But those dealers all run ondifferent software and so
there's no easy way to getcontract compliance across all
(06:31):
of those different platforms.
That's one of the bigcapabilities that we have, is we
would help those OEMs put in auniform contract price.
And so how this works is youcan imagine, if you're a large
fleet, somebody like UPS orFedEx you take your truck in for
maintenance as part of thatservicing process.
When the dealer actually goes tocreate an invoice.
(06:52):
They create effectively a proforma invoice.
They run it against ourplatform.
We check every line item on theinvoice for contract price
accuracy and then, once we'veconfirmed that, we actually
create the invoice on behalf ofthe dealer and then deliver it
to the correct place inside thatlarge national account.
So to give you a sense of this,before our solution goes into
(07:14):
some of these situations there'sas many as one in three
invoices that are incorrectbecause the pricing is wrong.
You can imagine what that doesfor a dealer in terms of delayed
payments and delayed workingcapital just a process that's
complicated and messy.
After our solution goes in,this tends to drop to about one
in a thousand invoices wherethere's a pricing problem.
(07:36):
So it significantly improvesthe lives of the dealers, the
lives of the fleets andobviously for the OEMs.
They're basically able to sellmore as a consequence.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And what would you say?
Differentiates TreviPay fromyour competitors out there?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
I think there's a handful of things that I'll talk
to.
So the first one is we have aglobal underwriting platform,
which you would think the bigcredit bureaus.
It would be easy to go and geta global solution.
It's actually really quitedifficult if you operate in
multiple countries to be able tounderwrite clients all over the
world.
So we have a globalunderwriting platform that's
(08:12):
very effective.
It's real time, it's completelydigital.
Many of the customers andindustries we serve they often
have manual processes still andpaper based processes, and so
you kind of completely transformthat onboarding experience.
The other thing that's happeningin that area is there's an
increasing amount of fraud there.
You can imagine, as you startto acquire more and more
(08:34):
customers online, there's moreand more scope for bad actors to
be looking to apply for linesof credit and what they do.
They're very sophisticated,greg.
It's really challenging becausethey do business impersonation,
where they actually pretend tobe a real business.
There's synthetic fraud, wherethey actually create fake shell
companies and they endeavor toget credit lines that way, and
(08:56):
it's a real arms race for manyof the customers we work with
that they just can't keep upwith the pace of these bad
actors and what they're doing.
And you can imagine, with theproliferation of AI and the
speed that AI is moving at,that's only getting worse.
And these bad actors, like Isaid, are sophisticated.
They can create completely fakewebsites.
I mean, everything looks real.
(09:17):
So helping identify afraudulent application through
our underwriting process is kindof a key piece of our secret
sauce, as well as the actualoverall underwriting process
itself.
And then the second thing that'sreally different about us is we
produce the invoice on behalfof our customers.
Now the reason that's relevantis it allows us to do some
(09:39):
really cool things with the data.
For example, I've mentionedthat situation with an OEM
that's got national contractpricing.
That's very hard to do if youdon't have a centralized
platform that holds thecontracts that can create the
invoice.
But we can also do some reallyclever things.
So, for example, if some ofthose buyers come to us and say
(09:59):
I would really like mytransactions aggregated by state
because that's how I pay taxesand so I don't really want to
get different invoices, I wantto get one aggregated invoice
once per week and by state.
Our platform is essentially in aposition where we can aggregate
the data that way, so we cancollect the information and
aggregate it and put it on theinvoice in a fashion that the
(10:22):
buyer wants to receive it.
And so creating the invoice isa key part of our secret sauce
because it allows us to do thosecool things for the data.
It also allows us to helpcustomers that want to expand
internationally, for example,but really don't want to figure
out how to create atax-compliant invoice in Mexico
or Canada or all the variousVAT-compliant invoices that are
(10:45):
required in Europe.
They don't have to deal withthat, so we do all of that on
their behalf.
So I'd say those two things areprobably the key
differentiators.
And then we have theseintelligent network apps that I
mentioned before, that we'vebuilt over the years, that are
particular to certain industriesor particular to certain
geographies, that really allowus to solve some of the
(11:06):
challenges that those clientshave in those markets or those
regions of the world.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Just as you were talking.
It made me think about you'resending these invoices on the
vendor side if they want to paya certain way.
I mean, there's so many paymentmethods now and then you guys
are doing business all over theworld.
Multiply what we have here inthe US times 30.
How do you handle that part ofthe business?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
worry about well, how am I going to accept payment in
all these different countries?
So we accept all of the majorpayment types around the world
in all these different markets.
We're also able to deal withforeign exchange requirements
and variations that ourcustomers might have.
So some of our customers, forexample, may want to get paid in
US dollars but have invoices inEurope that are in euros or
Swiss francs or Swedish krona,british pounds, and not have to
(12:03):
deal with that conversion andnot have to deal with the
currency risk, because obviously, if you create an invoice today
in pounds and you're onlygetting paid in 30 days or 60
days time, there's a potentialcurrency translation risk that
you might have when that paymentactually happens.
So we're able to deal with allof that complexity for our
clients too.
But to your point, we acceptwires, achs, checks, e-checks,
(12:28):
efts all of the various forms ofpayment in all of the different
markets.
And then our suppliers chooseand for the most part they're
getting reimbursed through ACHor FedNow or the other real-time
payment types that exist insome of the other markets.
They choose how they want toget settled, but there's only
one payment type that they haveto deal with and then we deal
(12:51):
with all of the rest of thecomplexity of all the payment
types that they buy us.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Okay, great.
Well, let's talk a little bitabout the future.
What is the maybe one biggestopportunity for growth for you
guys in the future?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
the things that we believe is going to happen over
the next 10 years or so is thatB2B is going to catch up to
where the consumer space is, andwhat do I mean by that?
Well, there's very little, orthere's a surprising amount of
manual processes that stillexist in B2B, and it's
everything from underwriting tohow you produce and deliver
invoices, to how you deal withcollections, that whole order to
cash cycle, and so we believethere's going to be enormous
(13:44):
opportunity to digitize all ofthat in all of the industries
that we serve, and we feel thatmomentum building it's one of
the most interesting things tohave watched.
I've been in the company overthe last 11 years and for a long
time we were talking about whatwe did, and you would talk to a
prospective customer and theyhad no idea that a business like
(14:05):
us even existed or that wecould do the things that we do,
and that's starting to change.
It feels like there's a shiftoccurring where more and more
companies are actually askingthis question like why do I do
this receivables process myself?
Why do I have to manage itmyself?
It's not necessarily a corebusiness competence.
Part of the catalyst for this,by the way, was during the
(14:28):
pandemic.
It really highlighted manualprocesses, because when people
weren't in the office, a wholebunch of those swivel chair
processes broke.
I think the second thing that'sbeen really interesting is that
, with rates increasing, havinghad essentially free money for
so many years, there reallywasn't as much of a focus on
well, how efficient is my backoffice around receivables, what
(14:51):
sort of job am I doing incollecting invoices on time, and
that is again kind ofcompletely pivoted.
As rates rose, more and morecompanies got stretched and
their working capital becameexpensive and so they needed to
do a better job managing it.
We're tremendously excitedabout the opportunity.
We think B2B is on the cusp ofreally automating the accounts
(15:12):
receivable processes, and we'rewell placed, obviously, to be a
part of that.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Well, what does success look like for you guys
in maybe the next three to fiveyears?
Speaker 3 (15:21):
We feel like to some extent, we're just getting
started, greg, because, like Imentioned, we've had all of this
initial kind of inertia toovercome in the B2B space.
But for us, we think and weactually commissioned one of the
big four management consultingfirms to do a market study for
us, and when they looked at themarkets we serve and the
(15:42):
propensity for those markets towork with partners like us and
so on, we believe, just in thespaces that we're in, that
there's a $20 billion revenueopportunity that's going to come
to market in the next five toseven years, and so we are doing
everything we can to get asmuch of a share of that as
possible.
That's the revenue opportunity,so it's not like the size of
(16:04):
the market or anything else.
That's actually the revenuethat could be produced there.
We couldn't be more excited.
I think that it's on the vergeof really breaking out and being
a significant part of theoverall payments landscape.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I used to work for a CEO and he talked about our
businesses Kind of we built thebest blender in the industry.
Now we just have to put morefruit in the top of it to make
it Sounds like that's sort ofwhere you guys are.
It's not about, hey, we got togo create a whole bunch of new
stuff.
There's just plenty of marketout there available.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
If you think about the various stages of market
evolution, we've got great proofpoints with countless early
adopters in a whole range ofdifferent markets and we're only
really now starting topenetrate the next stage of the
adoption curve, which arethey're not the early adopters,
(16:59):
they're the mainstream market,and that's where obviously most
of the volume is and where thereally big prize is.
And so we feel like we're inthe process of crossing that
chasm and coming a little morewell-known.
You might've seen, we did a bigannouncement yesterday we're
partnering with Walmart todeliver their whole B2B solution
to their clients.
(17:20):
When you get endorsements fromcompanies like that the biggest
company in the world, sayingTriviPay is a good partner for
us for B2B, that's the sort ofthing that's A inspiring and B
we believe endorses thesolutions that we have that we
think a whole range of customerscan benefit from.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Congratulations on that.
That's got to be a big win foryou, oh yeah, so when you step
back and look at the paymentsindustry kind of as a whole,
what do you think are the trendsthat are reshaping payments?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I think there's a couple of them, obviously, and
they're super topical, you know.
So, on the one hand, you've gotthe evolution of all the
real-time payment infrastructure.
The US has obviously been alittle bit behind Europe in that
regard, but, you know, fed nowis really accelerating and I
think that is going to becomethe future of how most people do
(18:09):
payments.
There's also the overlay ofwhat role do stable coins play
here, and it's kind of aninteresting blend between
government-backedcryptocurrencies and
private-based currencies.
I think it's going to create awhole bunch more efficiency in
international currency transfers.
I think that those businessesare going to be significantly
(18:30):
transformed over the nextseveral years.
We spoke a little bit about it,but I think AI is going to be
transformative here.
It's going to be transformativein a lot of back office areas.
We're definitely seeing it inour teams and how we're
deploying it for our customers.
But I also think that it'sgoing to accelerate what I was
(18:51):
talking about around fraud andsome of the bad actors, and that
the speed with which you canstand up a fake website or you
can pretend to be a realbusiness all of those things are
just going to go so much fasterand it does feel like there's
going to be a bit of an armsrace there.
How do you keep up withpreventing or being careful as
you onboard new customers and Ithink that's going to make its
(19:14):
way into payments ultimately isjust being very aware of these
bad actors and what they can do.
So I think, between stablecoins, real-time payments and AI
and its role in fraud, thoseare pretty significant trends
that we're watching very, veryclosely.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, on the stable coins.
Are you kind of viewing stablecoins and I hear this a lot from
banks is they kind of viewstable coins as just another
method of payment?
I mean, is that kind of how youview it, or is it deeper than
that?
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I think, ultimately, that is what it will become.
I think what's transformativeabout it is that it's going to
operate at an entirely differentcost level.
So that's a part of it.
And then I think the secondpart of it is you're going to be
in a position where you canleverage some of the other cool
things that blockchains can doaround smart contracts.
And if you think about some ofthe processes that exist in B2B
(20:09):
where you have to sign a proofof delivery to make certain that
something was actuallydelivered, you can imagine how
those processes start to getdigitized.
If you're selling something tosomeone overseas and your
payment is going to be premisedon when it's delivered, when
that signature happens, it couldhappen digitally, and then the
funds are released immediately.
(20:29):
There isn't a process of sayingplease send me the money.
The money is essentially almostlike in an escrow, waiting for
the right triggers from thesmart contract.
So I think it's going to betransformative in that regard,
because if you think about ourpayment infrastructure today,
it's really just about movingthe money with a little bit of
data on the side.
I think the paymentinfrastructure in the future,
(20:50):
you're not only going to havethe ability to move the money,
but you're going to be able todo a lot more with data and
leverage.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
things like smart contracts and other triggers
that can basically determinewhen the funds flows occur can
basically determine when thefunds flows occur, yeah, and
then it seems that around AI,obviously it's a buzz and
everybody's talking about it,but it seems to be the fraud
application I hear about all thetime in payments.
I think that's a real use case.
But the other area that I hearabout a lot is anything that has
(21:19):
a lot of data, and you'redealing with tons of data that
AI is really going to betransformative.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
It definitely is.
So, to give you a sense of whatwe're doing in this regard, we
have a number of customers andwe sort of sit on top of all of
their transactional data withtheir clients and we've built
machine learning models that arenow providing feedback to our
customers on we think thiscustomer is about to check.
(21:44):
So our primary customer is themerchant and we've built these
ML models that now allow us togive this feedback to our
clients to say, this customer isdisplaying the characteristics
of someone who would churn, andthen we're using that and
rolling it into a loyaltyprogram where they can go back
to that customer and say, hey,if you spend this amount of
(22:06):
money in the next 60 days, 90days, you'll get a rebate or
some other variation on a themethere around loyalty.
And all of this is now justhappening in real time because
of the machine learning modelthat we've built.
And if you think about how thatextends out going forward,
we're pretty excited abouthelping our customers figure out
where the white space is withintheir client base.
(22:27):
Obviously, churn is an easierone to get at because if
somebody was buying at a certainlevel, their buying is
declining or they're spendingless, and you can identify that
relatively easily.
But what we're particularlyexcited about is a new model
that we're in the process ofbuilding, where you can compare
buyers to one another that havesimilar characteristics and say
(22:48):
this buyer is buying a basket ofthese 15 things on a regular
basis, but this buyer is onlybuying 10 of them.
Why are they not buying theother five?
What is causing them to not buythe other five?
And that might be pricingstrategy, it might be marketing,
they might not know, and sothere's a whole really useful
set of information you canprovide back to say there's
(23:10):
white space here.
These are existing clients, butthere's white space within
these existing customers.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, that's fascinating, Brandon.
A couple of final questionsbefore we wrap up.
If you could kind of look backto your younger self, maybe just
starting your career, what kindof career advice would you give
yourself?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
It's so interesting because my career was kind of
serendipitous and I don't knowhow yours unfolded, greg, but I
felt like I got lucky at times,like I was in the right place at
the right time, and I think thebest advice I could give myself
is just be comfortable with thejourney.
It's not always the destination.
There are going to be thingsthat you do and decisions that
you make throughout your careerthat you have no idea what the
(23:51):
long-term impact of that isgoing to be, and so just enjoy
the ride.
Enjoy the journey, because youwill learn something from it,
and then that will prepare youfor whatever comes next.
And so be patient and let itcome at you rather than worrying
about what the destinationmight be.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, I think that's great advice.
So if you could have ourlisteners think about one thing
related to payments as kind of atakeaway from this conversation
, what would that be?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
So for us, we have definitely developed the view
that the way you allow yourcustomers to pay and, more
importantly, the way you producethe invoices, the content for
them to pay, can be a realdriver of loyalty.
Let me explain what I mean bythat.
If your invoices are alwayswrong or don't have the right
data on them, or don't allowyour customers to easily approve
(24:40):
it for payment, then ultimatelythey will spend less money with
you because, at the end of theday, we believe that experience
loyalty is actually becomingmore important than brand
loyalty.
Customers want a goodexperience, and so the easier
you are to do business with, thelarger your share of wallet
you'll have with your clients,and payments, believe it or not,
(25:02):
is a big part of that.
Allow them to pay the way theywant, allow them to easily
improve and approve yourinvoices and get the invoices
right, and then you'll get alarger share of their spend.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Well, brandon, I think that's a great way to wrap
up the show, so thank you somuch for being on today.
It was great to catch up withyou again, so thanks for being
here.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
It was a real pleasure.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
It's always fun sharing with you.
Greg, thanks for allowing me onthe show Absolutely, and to all
your listeners out there, Ithank you for your time as well,
and until the next story.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in
Payments podcast.
Make sure you visit our websiteat leadersinpaymentscom, where
you can subscribe to the showand where you'll find our show
notes.
If you enjoyed listening,please share on your social
channels as well.
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