April 1, 2025 • 27 mins
Joe Mach, CEO of North America at Castles Technology, reveals how this fourth-largest player in payment terminals has captured massive market share while flying under the radar. Their secret? Over 60% of everything they sell doesn't bear their name - it's white-labeled for partners who trust them enough to put their own brands on the technology.
Castles' success stems from their deep technical expertise and customer-first approach. Based in Taiwan ("Technology Island"), they innovate faster than legacy providers, delivering not just hardware but comprehensive solutions tailored to specific industry challenges. Their movement from basic terminal management to true Mobile Device Management capabilities enables remote troubleshooting, geofencing for security, and even AI-powered predictive maintenance.
Looking forward, Mach identifies three transformative trends: the rising influence of specialized software vendors, seamless integration of AI with payments, and the emergence of SoftPOS technologies on consumer devices. These innovations address the expectations of younger consumers who simply won't tolerate friction in their shopping experiences.
As an "accidental CEO" who rose through sales and commercial roles, Mach's leadership philosophy centers on growth - not just for shareholders, but as a vehicle to create opportunities for employees. Listen now to discover how Castles Technology is transforming the payment landscape for merchants of all sizes.
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Episode Transcript
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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, joe Mack, the CEOof North America at Castles
Technology.
So, joe, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Good to be here.
Thanks for letting me join thepodcast.
I look forward to the next 20,30 minutes chatting with you.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Me too.
So, if you don't mind, tell ouraudience a little bit about
yourself, maybe where you grewup, where you went to school,
where you currently live, a fewthings like that.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Sure, where you currently live.
A few things like that.
Sure, chicago native, grew upthere, transplanted to Minnesota
about 25 years ago.
So one of my claim to fames isI'm the only person in the world
that knows how to say Chicagocorrectly, wisconsin correctly
and Minnesota correctly, so I'vegot the Midwestern accents down
.
People do ask me where I live.
My frequent response to that isDelta Airlines seat 10A or
(01:04):
whatever.
That seat is right behind firstclass.
You know I'm just one off of it.
But despite living in Minnesota, I've been commuting down to
Atlanta for about the last 15 to20 years.
So I tried to spend two tothree weeks a month in Atlanta
in various jobs that I've hadand then the rest of the time
kind of traveling nomad goingall over God's creation.
I think I'm sitting at like 3million miles.
(01:25):
We'll talk a little bit todayabout customer engagements and
kind of my philosophy ofbusiness.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Tell us about Castles Technology.
What does Castles Technology do?
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Castles is a great company.
It's interesting, Greg, I'mcoming up on almost my one-year
anniversary, so we'll probablytalk a little bit more about my
career at some point, but I'vebeen in this fintech retail
space for about 25 years.
Left payments, for a little bit, was running some companies for
private equity.
Castle came knocking on my door, asked me to join as CEO of
North America, which I accepted,and it's kind of funny.
(01:57):
When I first came here Ijokingly say that I kind of felt
like that frat boy at 11o'clock at night, after a whole
bunch of beers calling everybodyI know, I landed at Castles and
I started calling all my oldcustomers and partners and I
said, hey, I landed at Castlesand very frequently I got
Castles who, Despite the factthat we're the fourth largest
player in the payment terminalsoftware solution space, it's a
(02:20):
brand that not a lot of peopleknow.
So what we do is we enablecashless transactions, whether
it be in a retail, hospitality,large retail, small retail, etc.
And so we have the hardware,the software, the cloud services
, some of the technology thatwe'll talk about today that
enables fast and secure cashlesstransactions.
What's a bit unique aboutCastles is two things.
(02:43):
Number one, one of the reasonsa lot of people haven't heard of
us is we've got a stat thatover 60% of everything we sell
doesn't have our name on it, andso we're a very, very large
player.
We like to say that we're inthe business of yes, and so if
we have a relationship with thispartner that says, hey, we want
to have the product, but wewant to have it in this color,
with our name on it, we go noproblem.
(03:04):
If we have customers that cometo us and say, hey, we want that
, but we want it with a biggerscreen, or we want it a little
bit different, or we wantsomething that doesn't exist
today, we build that for them.
And so Christy, my VP ofproduct management, came up with
this saying of people trust usso much they put their name on
it right.
So a really big part of ourbusiness is building stuff for
(03:29):
some of the biggest players inthe world, and we'll talk about
some of those relationshipstoday.
What's unique about CastlesInside of North America that I
think is different from thetraditional players is about 50%
of our business is attendedpayments.
So think about you go into astore where there's a checkout
counter and there's a paymentdevice, but 50% of our business
is unattended right.
And so, when you think aboutthe explosion of unattended,
there's a stat I read six monthsago that referenced 7% growth
(03:53):
inside of the attended paymentspace, 11% growth inside of the
unattended space.
And so where we've been superstrong and there's reasons to
this is in the vending spacespecifically.
So you think about a decade agoyou'd go to buy yourself a Coke
or a bag of chips.
It was a cash transaction.
90% of the time you fastforward to today and 50, 60, 70%
(04:16):
of the time you're able to paywith your phone, able to pay
with a credit card.
It's been a massive shiftthat's happened Inside of that
space, inside of vending.
We've got somewhere around 55%to 60% market share.
We've got relationships withthe Cokes and the Pepsis of this
world.
More importantly, we haverelationships with some of the
biggest players Cantaloupe Iknow you've done some podcasts
(04:36):
with some folks from Cantaloupe365, Retail, Global Connect.
The list goes on.
We've been so successful inthis unattended space because we
don't just make a piece ofhardware and give it to a
partner and say, hey, go make itwork.
Really deep, deep domainexpertise that allows us to
solve exactly the problems thatare there for that use case.
And so what I've been focusedon on the unattended space and
(04:58):
then we'll come back to attendedbut what I've been focused on
in the unattended space for thepast year is saying, okay, we've
been so, so successful insideof the vending space.
How do we take those samethings and lessons learned and
take those solutions and moveinto other unattended use cases?
We're now involved in EV.
Charging is all the rage,although that's a relatively
(05:18):
small market when you thinkabout it still, but great
partnerships there.
But we're getting into like wehave a rollout going on as we
speak with one of our newproducts with an air and vac
company up in Canada.
So you go into a gas station,got to put air in my tires, I'm
going to vacuum it out Again,moving from cash to cashless.
And so we have Castleunattended solutions with our
(05:39):
cold weather package up inCanada at places where it gets
to minus 30, minus 40 degreesCelsius, right.
So again, building the rightsolutions for those use cases
and we'll do the same in parkingand we're going to go on from
there.
So we look at unattended as,even though it's 50% of our
North American business, we'rejust at the tip of the iceberg.
We believe there's unbelievablegrowth potential as we get into
(06:01):
these other use cases, asunattended continues to grow.
On the attended side, we arevery partner-focused.
We like to go in and say, hey,we want to be the partner of
choice, and so we've gotrelationships inside of North
America with the likes ofFreedom Pay.
We make things for Audioncompanies like Valor that sell
into the SMB space, and so it'sthrough these very strategic
(06:24):
partnerships and many, many moreare going to get announced over
the next year.
Two contracts are being signedthis week but really leveraging
those partnerships to go bothafter the SMB space the small
merchant, small, medium-sizedbusiness but we're also now,
through these partners, gettingpulled into some of the largest
hotel properties and some of thelargest retailers in the world.
So we see great growthpotentials on both sides of our
(06:46):
business.
Last thing I'll say is we are aglobal company.
We're headquartered in Taipei,Taiwan, which we like to refer
to as Technology Island, and aswe go through the conversation
we'll talk more about why that'simportant.
But from that, that is reallyour engineering, product and
manufacturing headquarters,headquarters.
Then we set up regions aroundthe world.
What's really interesting isthat our approach is not to just
(07:10):
set up a sales and marketingoffice when Castles looks to go
into a market.
We build the fullinfrastructure to be able to
support our partners.
I'm sitting here in Kennesaw,Georgia, in Transaction Alley.
We've got a full office here.
We've got a warehouse thatholds products Some of it's our
products, some of it'scustomer-owned product.
We've got deployment, keyinjection capabilities, services
(07:31):
like dropship programs,overnight replacements, full
infrastructure.
From an operations perspective,We've also built up a full
support organization techsupport, integration support.
One of my favorite stories isone of my old customers from a
previous life we met with andthey decided to engage and they
believed in the Castle story andso they started working on
(07:51):
integrations.
The CEO of the company calledand left me a voicemail and said
Joe, we got to talk right away.
Of course, my first thought washoly crap, what did we do wrong
?
When you get those calls andthose voicemails.
It's never good news.
So I call this gentleman backand we're chit-chatting.
I'm like so what's up?
He's like you guys called usback the same day.
I'm like did it take too long?
He's like no, we work with theother players.
(08:12):
We've never gotten a phone callback the same day ever, and so
really one thing we prideourselves on is being responsive
.
There's a saying and I forgetwho said it, but 80% of life is
just showing up, and that's thesame with support.
80% is just answering the phoneand making sure that you're
there for them.
So full support organization,full operational perspective,
management, product managementeverything is regionalized to
(08:34):
make sure we're delivering theexact solutions that are needed
for these markets.
We've got our Atlanta locationto service US, and just this
month we opened up our office upin Canada.
So we'll have the sameoperational support, technical
support, product support up inCanada as well for some of our
new partnerships.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So do you sell direct or is it all through
partnerships?
Speaker 3 (08:55):
We are 98% through partnerships.
We do have a little bit ofexception with Coke and Pepsi
relationships that have somelegacy things associated with
them, but really we are very,very, very channel-centric.
We can't be the partner ofchoice if we're competing with
our partners, and so we reallyvalue those relationships.
(09:15):
We think they're an extensionof what we do and they allow us
to scale our business rapidly.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
And how many people are here in the North America
office.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
So we're right around 100 employees, and that
includes a very large operationsteam, as you could guess, a
pretty substantial supportstructure that we just talked
about.
And then we've got sales teams,marketing teams, product teams,
focused on those two differentparts of our business, attended
and unattended.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Okay, and you talked a little bit about this already,
but I want to double click onit again what makes Castles
Technology unique?
What do you see as the coredifferentiators?
And if you want to split themup into those two markets, you
could do that.
But what makes it unique?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
and different, but I'd start with the focus on and
one of the things that I've seen.
As I mentioned, I was inside ofpayments for almost 20 years,
left payments for about four orfive years to run a
retail-focused company forprivate equity.
But in that five years that Ileft, the amount of innovation
(10:17):
and the amount and the pace ofchange is crazy.
Back in my early days inside ofFinTech, we would come up with
products and solutions andexpect to sell them for a decade
.
That's what we would base ourROI on.
You fast forward to today, theadvent of Android, all the
different form factors, all theinnovation that's happening.
The ability to continue toinnovate and release new
(10:37):
products is off the charts.
And so, again, coming back tobeing on technology island,
we've got that capability right.
We're in Asia Pacific from atechnology supply chain
perspective, but we're in a verytrade friendly and secure
environment so we can reallykeep up with that pace of play.
That, I think, is hard for someof the legacy players.
Innovation is key.
(10:58):
I've said my entireprofessional career.
Those that innovate the fastestwin, and so you're seeing this
proliferation of form factors,whether it be integrated
products on the countertop, themobile products moving into
tablets.
You think about soft pause, theimpact that's going to have on
our business and something I'dlike to talk about later on
today, but these form factorsand all the different ways that
(11:20):
people want to pay.
You've got to be fast, you'vegot to innovate and you've got
to be a company that peopletrust.
I would say the other thing iswe are a technology leader, not
a technology follower.
We believe in investing when wesee an opportunity and a trend,
versus waiting to be the second, third or fourth player.
Right, we want to be first tomarket.
Do we get it right every singletime?
(11:42):
Is everything a home run?
No, but do we have thecapability to go after these and
really drive that innovation?
One of the areas and I'd loveto talk about this more today as
well, for example, would behistorically, manufacturers of
hardware would have terminalmanagement software that would
allow you to do software updates, mids and TIDs.
Very basic functionality ofcontrolling all these different
(12:02):
nodes on the network.
Basic functionality ofcontrolling all these different
nodes on the network.
What I've seen our ability isto really move from TMS to true
MDM-like capabilities with thesepayment devices, and part of
that is because of thecapabilities of Android and part
of that is the innovation we'reputting into our cloud services
.
All of a sudden, think aboutthe ability of a help desk to be
able to remotely take overcontrol of a device out in the
(12:24):
field and fix and resolve.
It's super important andattended even more important and
unattended right, because ifit's down and there's nobody
there to fix it or changesomething and so, just like when
you sit there and your ITdepartment tunnels into your
laptop and fixes things, we nowhave that capability to do that.
We also have the ability to dogeofencing from a security
perspective, and there's somethings I'd like to talk about
(12:46):
later around understanding thehealth of the estate out there
and using AI to do somepredictions on potential failure
rates and where you can goreplace things.
So really driving that level ofinnovation and being a
technology leader.
And then the last thing, I thinkI'll go back to what I said
earlier we do want to be thepartner of choice, right?
60% of our business doesn'thave our name on it.
(13:08):
We want to meet our customerswhere they want to be met, and
so if you want our hardwaregreat.
You want our hardware softwaregreat.
Hardware software, cloudservices perfect, right.
Whatever our partners need.
That's what we want to provideto them, not force feed our own
agenda to them.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You've been in payments for a while in fintech
so you know it's a veryfast-moving industry.
Where do you see it heading,say, in the next three to five
years?
Speaker 3 (13:33):
That's always an interesting conversation to have
, and I should really look upsome of these quotes I reference
all the time because I know I'mnot saying them quite right.
But Bill Gates once saidsomething along the lines of we,
as technology leaders,overestimate the amount of
change that's going to happen inthe next five years and we
always underestimate the amountof change in 10 years, basically
saying our prognostication ofwhat it's going to be like in
(13:55):
five years.
We're so overshooting that, butwhat we miss is what is that
change going to be in 10 years?
If I think about retail today,it is changing rapidly.
For 100 years, retail was I'dgo into a store, I'd buy a
product, I'd take it to thefront counter, I'd pay.
Eventually, cashless came alongand debit came along and NFC
(14:17):
came along I'd pay for it, I'dwalk out the door.
If you think about what'shappened in this omni-channel,
this unified commerce world thatwe live in, all of a sudden,
the number of payment locationshas exploded.
Sure, I still have mytraditional checkout, a huge
push towards unattended againself-checkout type of solutions.
You also have mobile in theaisle, you have the buy online,
(14:38):
pick up in store, and so we'rereally seeing just a ton of
innovation and disruptionhappening from the typical
retail experience, and it'sreally about the experience that
these retailers are trying todrive.
So if I think about the nextthree to five years something
I've seen here in some meetingsI just had last week the first
thing I would say is the powerof the ISV probably a common
thing that you hear when you sitdown and do these podcasts, but
(15:01):
I'm amazed at the deep domainexpertise that some of these
ISVs have.
Met with one of our newpartners just last week and he's
focused on selling point ofsale into nail salons Just a
very specific use case rightPayments and point of sale and
you go.
Seems like a decent market.
There's 100,000 nail salons outthere.
(15:22):
It's just a mind-blowing statto me.
I'm like not 100,000.
And so I see ISVs, whether it'screating solutions very
specific for that type of usecase or there's many other
examples as well as what theISVs are starting to drive
inside of the large retail thetier one, tier two.
That's where so much innovationis going to continue to happen
(15:43):
as we think about this unifiedcommerce world Also starting to
see some what I would saypayments plus AI.
So we just finished up back inJanuary our NRF trade show and I
loved it.
So in our booth we tried tocreate experiences.
So one of the experiences thatwe showed our partners and
retailers walking through was asecure checkout closet, and
(16:07):
inside of this cabinet couldeither be vending items Cokes,
pepsis, potato chips or it couldbe items like headphones,
razors, things that have somevalue to them, and so what we
showed was the way to go fromtoday, I go into a retail store
and some of these high valueitems are behind lock and key.
When I want something, I haveto go find a store employee,
(16:29):
pull them over, say hey, can youunlock this?
I take the good they got towalk me up to the front of the
store.
The experience is terrible.
There's tons of friction.
What we showed was you wouldtake your phone, you'd take your
card, you'd tap it on a Castledevice that would unlock this
secure cabinet and then, usingcameras and AI, you would get
the item that you want, or youcould put it back and you could
(16:51):
take those items that you want.
Two, three items close the doorand by the time you're walking
away, your phone is buzzing withthe e-receipt sending your way,
and so that's really showinghow payments and AI are really
melding together.
The third thing that I see overthe next three to five years is
an explosion of soft pause.
I assume that's something thatyou've spoken with other people
(17:12):
about.
Soft pause allowing you to takesecure transactions on consumer
devices tablets, handhelds,phones and those type of things.
And again, another use case thatwe showed at NRF that I thought
was interesting and this is howthe technology gets adopted is
we gave the story of atChristmas I went and bought a
Christmas tree and when Igrabbed the tree I grabbed the
(17:33):
tree at this local hardwarestore.
They gave me a tag.
I had to take that tag insideto the cashier.
I had to wait in line.
I then had my receipt.
I had to go back out, get myChristmas tree, throw it on top
of my car and drive home.
Just a ton of friction, theft,all types of things.
So imagine being able to take asoft pause solution on a
ruggedized tablet maybe a zebraor honeywell that could handle
(17:55):
the temperatures up in Minnesotawhere I live, and be able to
take secure payments on thosethrough a soft pause application
.
But we also wrote theapplication so you could have a
defined amount of dollars or adefined number of transactions,
Because the big concern is whathappens if somebody walks away
with that device, and whatexposure do I have from a
security perspective.
So figuring out those type ofsoft pause solutions I think
(18:18):
will be a big trend and a biggrowth opportunity for the
payments industry growthopportunity for the payments
industry.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, you know, related to all of that is what I
hear.
And curious your thoughts issort of the new consumers moving
into the world, so the youngergeneration.
Whatever label you want to puton them, they have and you've
talked about this the frictionthat's in a lot of this buying
process.
They don't put up with it, theyjust move to the next whatever,
the next store, the nextsolution, whatever you want to
call it.
They're not going to wait for abusiness to offer modern
(18:49):
checkout solutions.
Just curious, are you thinkingabout how those consumers who
have that expectation of almostseamless the payment just kind
of disappears?
What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I would agree.
Right, I mean the expectationsand the experiences.
We know that we, as consumers,want to have unbelievable
experiences where I can buyonline and have it delivered to
my house or my apartment in acouple hours, which is just
mind-blowing from what existedjust 10 years ago.
The ability to be able to gointo stores and have an
incredible experience and beable to have this frictionless
(19:22):
checkout experience is huge.
That is probably one of thetrends, and when we started this
, I said, hey, we overestimatethe first five years and
underestimate the next 10 years.
I think, as we start lookingover the next 10 years, some of
these things to reduce frictionthey're not going to happen
overnight, but over the longterm they will.
Things like using biometricsfor payments.
We're at the early stages ofthat.
(19:43):
I think that's one of thethings that creates this
experience, reduces friction.
I think about frictionlesscheckout experiences.
What does that look like?
I gave the example of oursecure cabinet that could sell
various items, going to thatAmazon Go type of store and
enabling those type ofexperiences.
I think for the youngerconsumers, those are the things
that they're going to expectAI-powered shopping agents that
(20:06):
can help them find those things.
All of these things as we gomaybe not the next two, three
years, but as we start going,the next five, six, seven, eight
, nine years absolutely see someof those big trends coming into
our space.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
All right.
Well, let's switch gears alittle bit and talk about you,
so maybe walk us through yourprofessional journey and then
how you got your role theretoday.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Sure, I'm sure you've heard this before from other
CEOs.
When I first met the Castlesteam and came in here to
introduce myself, I did talkabout how I view myself as an
accidental CEO, and so I'll kindof back up from there and talk
about how this came to be.
But as far as my backgroundgoes, I've always been on the
commercial, product and strategyside of business, grew up in
(20:48):
sales, cut my teeth selling intotier one retail sales and I
learned so much early in mycareer, selling payment
solutions to the largest of thelarge retailers and taking a
territory that I managed from 20, 25% market share up to 80%
market share.
It really taught me theimportance of being that subject
(21:09):
matter expert, understandingthe ecosystem, being that
trusted advisor, and so in thatsales process it kind of defined
me and the way that I approachlife and the way that I try to
coach and lead the companiesthat I'm now in charge of.
I took that from being asalesperson and said to my boss
and this is part of the storyand said, hey, I've been pretty
good here.
I think I can spread this outthroughout the whole
(21:31):
organization.
And even though she wasn'tlooking for a new sales manager,
I talked her into hey, give mea chance, let me step up, let me
see what I can do.
Leading the whole region, thewhole US, from a tier one retail
perspective, was able to takewhat I did individually, coach
other people to do the same.
Then there was an opportunity tobe a general manager.
I saw some problems, identifiedthem and led that group and
(21:55):
continued to really transformthe business from a hardware to
a hardware, software andservices company.
And so every step of the way Inever had the intention when I
was a sales guy to go, oh, Ireally want to be a sales
manager.
But I always saw there was aproblem, there was an
opportunity and I stepped up tothe challenge just because
that's my nature and what Ienjoy doing.
Ultimately, that led to mebecoming a president of North
(22:15):
America, eventually president ofNorth and South America, and
then over the last 10 years I'veheld various CEO roles and so I
didn't start my career back incollege going, hey, I'm going to
go get my MBA, I want to be ona fast track to be a CEO.
I just love the commercial sideof business.
I love building partnerships.
That passion has provided methe opportunity to move up
(22:36):
through the organization and nowlead organizations and build
that same culture andtransforming and growth within
organizations.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
What are some things you're passionate about?
Maybe one work-related passionand one personal passion
Interesting questionProfessionally.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
I guess I probably touched on it a little bit.
But one passion I have isgrowth growing a company.
The growth is a little bitabout.
Certainly we have shareholders.
We need to make money and grow.
You're either growing orshrinking, so that's important.
You have to have money toreinvest into the company.
But why I'm passionate aboutgrowth is growth creates
opportunities, and this is whatevery company that I've led I
(23:14):
talk to the employees about thisand I'm sincere about it.
If we grow, it createsopportunities for employees.
Employees can learn and growwithin organizations and I tell
employees all the time teammates, my goal is that you grow so
much that you go and dosomething outside of this
company.
Time teammates, my goal is thatyou grow so much that you go
and do something outside of thiscompany.
And so, as I look around thefintech payment space in North
America and, quite frankly,around the world, I've got I
(23:35):
don't know if I'd say 100, but20, 30, 40 people that have
worked for me at differentpoints, that are now VPs, evps,
presidents and CEOs, some thathave gone on to do even greater
things than I've done.
And to me, that's why I like togrow companies, because if
you're growing the companies,you're creating opportunities
for other people to go growtheir careers.
The second thing with business,I love just trying to figure
(23:56):
out how to transform business.
If you just try to keep doingthe same thing and expecting you
can grow, you can't do it.
You always have to transformthe business for many of the
things we just talked abouttoday.
If you're not figuring out howto transform the business into
something different to preparefor the future, the company's
not going to be able to grow.
So I would say those would bethe two professional things.
(24:17):
On the personal front, I'mpretty competitive.
Just last week I had theopportunity to take a customer
to Topgolf and he made a jokeabout how competitive I was the
previous night.
So I guess what I would say onthe personal front is I like to
push myself physically and so Imay not be the best natural
athlete in the world, but 25years ago 20 years ago I had a
(24:37):
boss that did triathlons and heultimately talked me into doing
triathlons.
I ultimately ended up doingthem with my daughters.
I've always traveled a bunch,but being able to go home on the
weekend, go for a training run,a training bike ride or going
out and doing a lake swim withmy daughter.
It was a real bonding thing.
I just love to compete intriathlons and today I do a
bunch of running races with bothmy daughters they're 25 and 27,
(25:01):
10ks half marathons.
I always jokingly say that I gorun races with my daughters,
but really I'm at the startingline, they go run and finish and
then I eventually catch up withthem.
But maybe I'm not as athleticas I used to be as you get older
.
I still love going out thereand competing and I think that
carries over to the businessside as well.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
So one final question .
I'm curious your answer, givenhow you like to create
opportunities for people.
So if someone comes to you, joe, and they say, hey, I'm
interested in the payments orfintech space Maybe they're
right out of college orsomething and they say, what do
I need to do to be successful inmy career in payments?
What would you tell them?
The?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
first is, I think I'd go back to what I had to do
early in my career, which ismaster the ecosystem Payments is
not exactly a black and whitespace, and so to be successful,
you have to be a subject matterexpert within the payments and
the fintech ecosystem.
If you don't do that, you can'tget anywhere, and if you do
(25:56):
that, your value is unbelievable.
I'm sure everybody would saythis, but it's true.
Networking, it's getting toknow people.
I've mentioned I've traveled abunch.
The reason I travel a bunch isI believe that's how you build
relationships.
Building those relationshipsare key.
So networking, network, network,network, stand up, take
initiative, just like myself.
When you see a problem, don'twait for somebody to come to you
(26:17):
and say, hey, would you like todo this?
Go to your boss and say, hey,here's what my goal is.
I'm here today and for three,five years I'd like to be here.
Can you help map that out forme?
And then the last is work hard.
It's really about outworkingeverybody else.
If you work hard, youunderstand the ecosystem, you
network, you set goals foryourself.
That's how you can build anunbelievable career like I've
(26:38):
been able to enjoy inside ofFinTech.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Awesome.
We've covered a lot of groundabout the company, about the
industry, about you.
Is there anything else you'dlike to add before we wrap up
the show?
Speaker 3 (26:48):
I just always get such a charge out of talking
about the business, talkingabout leading castles, talk
about where the industry isgoing.
Enjoy these conversations.
I just hope that as peoplelisten to this, they see the
passion, hopefully get someinspiration around what I shared
.
But I think it was a greatconversation and I guess, greg,
when I say it was a greatconversation as I talked and you
listened, no, I enjoyed theconversation today.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Well, joe, thank you so much for being on the show.
I know your times are valuable,so I really appreciate you
being here today, absolutely.
Thank you, greg, great to meetyou today, and to all you
listeners out there, I thank youfor your time as well, and
until the next story.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
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, joe Mack, the CEOof North America at Castles
Technology.
So, joe, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Good to be here.
Thanks for letting me join thepodcast.
I look forward to the next 20,30 minutes chatting with you.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Me too.
So, if you don't mind, tell ouraudience a little bit about
yourself, maybe where you grewup, where you went to school,
where you currently live, a fewthings like that.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Sure, where you currently live.
A few things like that.
Sure, chicago native, grew upthere, transplanted to Minnesota
about 25 years ago.
So one of my claim to fames isI'm the only person in the world
that knows how to say Chicagocorrectly, wisconsin correctly
and Minnesota correctly, so I'vegot the Midwestern accents down
.
People do ask me where I live.
My frequent response to that isDelta Airlines seat 10A or
(01:04):
whatever.
That seat is right behind firstclass.
You know I'm just one off of it.
But despite living in Minnesota, I've been commuting down to
Atlanta for about the last 15 to20 years.
So I tried to spend two tothree weeks a month in Atlanta
in various jobs that I've hadand then the rest of the time
kind of traveling nomad goingall over God's creation.
I think I'm sitting at like 3million miles.
(01:25):
We'll talk a little bit todayabout customer engagements and
kind of my philosophy ofbusiness.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Tell us about Castles Technology.
What does Castles Technology do?
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Castles is a great company.
It's interesting, Greg, I'mcoming up on almost my one-year
anniversary, so we'll probablytalk a little bit more about my
career at some point, but I'vebeen in this fintech retail
space for about 25 years.
Left payments, for a little bit, was running some companies for
private equity.
Castle came knocking on my door, asked me to join as CEO of
North America, which I accepted,and it's kind of funny.
(01:57):
When I first came here Ijokingly say that I kind of felt
like that frat boy at 11o'clock at night, after a whole
bunch of beers calling everybodyI know, I landed at Castles and
I started calling all my oldcustomers and partners and I
said, hey, I landed at Castlesand very frequently I got
Castles who, Despite the factthat we're the fourth largest
player in the payment terminalsoftware solution space, it's a
(02:20):
brand that not a lot of peopleknow.
So what we do is we enablecashless transactions, whether
it be in a retail, hospitality,large retail, small retail, etc.
And so we have the hardware,the software, the cloud services
, some of the technology thatwe'll talk about today that
enables fast and secure cashlesstransactions.
What's a bit unique aboutCastles is two things.
(02:43):
Number one, one of the reasonsa lot of people haven't heard of
us is we've got a stat thatover 60% of everything we sell
doesn't have our name on it, andso we're a very, very large
player.
We like to say that we're inthe business of yes, and so if
we have a relationship with thispartner that says, hey, we want
to have the product, but wewant to have it in this color,
with our name on it, we go noproblem.
(03:04):
If we have customers that cometo us and say, hey, we want that
, but we want it with a biggerscreen, or we want it a little
bit different, or we wantsomething that doesn't exist
today, we build that for them.
And so Christy, my VP ofproduct management, came up with
this saying of people trust usso much they put their name on
it right.
So a really big part of ourbusiness is building stuff for
(03:29):
some of the biggest players inthe world, and we'll talk about
some of those relationshipstoday.
What's unique about CastlesInside of North America that I
think is different from thetraditional players is about 50%
of our business is attendedpayments.
So think about you go into astore where there's a checkout
counter and there's a paymentdevice, but 50% of our business
is unattended right.
And so, when you think aboutthe explosion of unattended,
there's a stat I read six monthsago that referenced 7% growth
(03:53):
inside of the attended paymentspace, 11% growth inside of the
unattended space.
And so where we've been superstrong and there's reasons to
this is in the vending spacespecifically.
So you think about a decade agoyou'd go to buy yourself a Coke
or a bag of chips.
It was a cash transaction.
90% of the time you fastforward to today and 50, 60, 70%
(04:16):
of the time you're able to paywith your phone, able to pay
with a credit card.
It's been a massive shiftthat's happened Inside of that
space, inside of vending.
We've got somewhere around 55%to 60% market share.
We've got relationships withthe Cokes and the Pepsis of this
world.
More importantly, we haverelationships with some of the
biggest players Cantaloupe Iknow you've done some podcasts
(04:36):
with some folks from Cantaloupe365, Retail, Global Connect.
The list goes on.
We've been so successful inthis unattended space because we
don't just make a piece ofhardware and give it to a
partner and say, hey, go make itwork.
Really deep, deep domainexpertise that allows us to
solve exactly the problems thatare there for that use case.
And so what I've been focusedon on the unattended space and
(04:58):
then we'll come back to attendedbut what I've been focused on
in the unattended space for thepast year is saying, okay, we've
been so, so successful insideof the vending space.
How do we take those samethings and lessons learned and
take those solutions and moveinto other unattended use cases?
We're now involved in EV.
Charging is all the rage,although that's a relatively
(05:18):
small market when you thinkabout it still, but great
partnerships there.
But we're getting into like wehave a rollout going on as we
speak with one of our newproducts with an air and vac
company up in Canada.
So you go into a gas station,got to put air in my tires, I'm
going to vacuum it out Again,moving from cash to cashless.
And so we have Castleunattended solutions with our
(05:39):
cold weather package up inCanada at places where it gets
to minus 30, minus 40 degreesCelsius, right.
So again, building the rightsolutions for those use cases
and we'll do the same in parkingand we're going to go on from
there.
So we look at unattended as,even though it's 50% of our
North American business, we'rejust at the tip of the iceberg.
We believe there's unbelievablegrowth potential as we get into
(06:01):
these other use cases, asunattended continues to grow.
On the attended side, we arevery partner-focused.
We like to go in and say, hey,we want to be the partner of
choice, and so we've gotrelationships inside of North
America with the likes ofFreedom Pay.
We make things for Audioncompanies like Valor that sell
into the SMB space, and so it'sthrough these very strategic
(06:24):
partnerships and many, many moreare going to get announced over
the next year.
Two contracts are being signedthis week but really leveraging
those partnerships to go bothafter the SMB space the small
merchant, small, medium-sizedbusiness but we're also now,
through these partners, gettingpulled into some of the largest
hotel properties and some of thelargest retailers in the world.
So we see great growthpotentials on both sides of our
(06:46):
business.
Last thing I'll say is we are aglobal company.
We're headquartered in Taipei,Taiwan, which we like to refer
to as Technology Island, and aswe go through the conversation
we'll talk more about why that'simportant.
But from that, that is reallyour engineering, product and
manufacturing headquarters,headquarters.
Then we set up regions aroundthe world.
What's really interesting isthat our approach is not to just
(07:10):
set up a sales and marketingoffice when Castles looks to go
into a market.
We build the fullinfrastructure to be able to
support our partners.
I'm sitting here in Kennesaw,Georgia, in Transaction Alley.
We've got a full office here.
We've got a warehouse thatholds products Some of it's our
products, some of it'scustomer-owned product.
We've got deployment, keyinjection capabilities, services
(07:31):
like dropship programs,overnight replacements, full
infrastructure.
From an operations perspective,We've also built up a full
support organization techsupport, integration support.
One of my favorite stories isone of my old customers from a
previous life we met with andthey decided to engage and they
believed in the Castle story andso they started working on
(07:51):
integrations.
The CEO of the company calledand left me a voicemail and said
Joe, we got to talk right away.
Of course, my first thought washoly crap, what did we do wrong
?
When you get those calls andthose voicemails.
It's never good news.
So I call this gentleman backand we're chit-chatting.
I'm like so what's up?
He's like you guys called usback the same day.
I'm like did it take too long?
He's like no, we work with theother players.
(08:12):
We've never gotten a phone callback the same day ever, and so
really one thing we prideourselves on is being responsive
.
There's a saying and I forgetwho said it, but 80% of life is
just showing up, and that's thesame with support.
80% is just answering the phoneand making sure that you're
there for them.
So full support organization,full operational perspective,
management, product managementeverything is regionalized to
(08:34):
make sure we're delivering theexact solutions that are needed
for these markets.
We've got our Atlanta locationto service US, and just this
month we opened up our office upin Canada.
So we'll have the sameoperational support, technical
support, product support up inCanada as well for some of our
new partnerships.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So do you sell direct or is it all through
partnerships?
Speaker 3 (08:55):
We are 98% through partnerships.
We do have a little bit ofexception with Coke and Pepsi
relationships that have somelegacy things associated with
them, but really we are very,very, very channel-centric.
We can't be the partner ofchoice if we're competing with
our partners, and so we reallyvalue those relationships.
(09:15):
We think they're an extensionof what we do and they allow us
to scale our business rapidly.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
And how many people are here in the North America
office.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
So we're right around 100 employees, and that
includes a very large operationsteam, as you could guess, a
pretty substantial supportstructure that we just talked
about.
And then we've got sales teams,marketing teams, product teams,
focused on those two differentparts of our business, attended
and unattended.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Okay, and you talked a little bit about this already,
but I want to double click onit again what makes Castles
Technology unique?
What do you see as the coredifferentiators?
And if you want to split themup into those two markets, you
could do that.
But what makes it unique?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
and different, but I'd start with the focus on and
one of the things that I've seen.
As I mentioned, I was inside ofpayments for almost 20 years,
left payments for about four orfive years to run a
retail-focused company forprivate equity.
But in that five years that Ileft, the amount of innovation
(10:17):
and the amount and the pace ofchange is crazy.
Back in my early days inside ofFinTech, we would come up with
products and solutions andexpect to sell them for a decade
.
That's what we would base ourROI on.
You fast forward to today, theadvent of Android, all the
different form factors, all theinnovation that's happening.
The ability to continue toinnovate and release new
(10:37):
products is off the charts.
And so, again, coming back tobeing on technology island,
we've got that capability right.
We're in Asia Pacific from atechnology supply chain
perspective, but we're in a verytrade friendly and secure
environment so we can reallykeep up with that pace of play.
That, I think, is hard for someof the legacy players.
Innovation is key.
(10:58):
I've said my entireprofessional career.
Those that innovate the fastestwin, and so you're seeing this
proliferation of form factors,whether it be integrated
products on the countertop, themobile products moving into
tablets.
You think about soft pause, theimpact that's going to have on
our business and something I'dlike to talk about later on
today, but these form factorsand all the different ways that
(11:20):
people want to pay.
You've got to be fast, you'vegot to innovate and you've got
to be a company that peopletrust.
I would say the other thing iswe are a technology leader, not
a technology follower.
We believe in investing when wesee an opportunity and a trend,
versus waiting to be the second, third or fourth player.
Right, we want to be first tomarket.
Do we get it right every singletime?
(11:42):
Is everything a home run?
No, but do we have thecapability to go after these and
really drive that innovation?
One of the areas and I'd loveto talk about this more today as
well, for example, would behistorically, manufacturers of
hardware would have terminalmanagement software that would
allow you to do software updates, mids and TIDs.
Very basic functionality ofcontrolling all these different
(12:02):
nodes on the network.
Basic functionality ofcontrolling all these different
nodes on the network.
What I've seen our ability isto really move from TMS to true
MDM-like capabilities with thesepayment devices, and part of
that is because of thecapabilities of Android and part
of that is the innovation we'reputting into our cloud services
.
All of a sudden, think aboutthe ability of a help desk to be
able to remotely take overcontrol of a device out in the
(12:24):
field and fix and resolve.
It's super important andattended even more important and
unattended right, because ifit's down and there's nobody
there to fix it or changesomething and so, just like when
you sit there and your ITdepartment tunnels into your
laptop and fixes things, we nowhave that capability to do that.
We also have the ability to dogeofencing from a security
perspective, and there's somethings I'd like to talk about
(12:46):
later around understanding thehealth of the estate out there
and using AI to do somepredictions on potential failure
rates and where you can goreplace things.
So really driving that level ofinnovation and being a
technology leader.
And then the last thing, I thinkI'll go back to what I said
earlier we do want to be thepartner of choice, right?
60% of our business doesn'thave our name on it.
(13:08):
We want to meet our customerswhere they want to be met, and
so if you want our hardwaregreat.
You want our hardware softwaregreat.
Hardware software, cloudservices perfect, right.
Whatever our partners need.
That's what we want to provideto them, not force feed our own
agenda to them.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You've been in payments for a while in fintech
so you know it's a veryfast-moving industry.
Where do you see it heading,say, in the next three to five
years?
Speaker 3 (13:33):
That's always an interesting conversation to have
, and I should really look upsome of these quotes I reference
all the time because I know I'mnot saying them quite right.
But Bill Gates once saidsomething along the lines of we,
as technology leaders,overestimate the amount of
change that's going to happen inthe next five years and we
always underestimate the amountof change in 10 years, basically
saying our prognostication ofwhat it's going to be like in
(13:55):
five years.
We're so overshooting that, butwhat we miss is what is that
change going to be in 10 years?
If I think about retail today,it is changing rapidly.
For 100 years, retail was I'dgo into a store, I'd buy a
product, I'd take it to thefront counter, I'd pay.
Eventually, cashless came alongand debit came along and NFC
(14:17):
came along I'd pay for it, I'dwalk out the door.
If you think about what'shappened in this omni-channel,
this unified commerce world thatwe live in, all of a sudden,
the number of payment locationshas exploded.
Sure, I still have mytraditional checkout, a huge
push towards unattended againself-checkout type of solutions.
You also have mobile in theaisle, you have the buy online,
(14:38):
pick up in store, and so we'rereally seeing just a ton of
innovation and disruptionhappening from the typical
retail experience, and it'sreally about the experience that
these retailers are trying todrive.
So if I think about the nextthree to five years something
I've seen here in some meetingsI just had last week the first
thing I would say is the powerof the ISV probably a common
thing that you hear when you sitdown and do these podcasts, but
(15:01):
I'm amazed at the deep domainexpertise that some of these
ISVs have.
Met with one of our newpartners just last week and he's
focused on selling point ofsale into nail salons Just a
very specific use case rightPayments and point of sale and
you go.
Seems like a decent market.
There's 100,000 nail salons outthere.
(15:22):
It's just a mind-blowing statto me.
I'm like not 100,000.
And so I see ISVs, whether it'screating solutions very
specific for that type of usecase or there's many other
examples as well as what theISVs are starting to drive
inside of the large retail thetier one, tier two.
That's where so much innovationis going to continue to happen
(15:43):
as we think about this unifiedcommerce world Also starting to
see some what I would saypayments plus AI.
So we just finished up back inJanuary our NRF trade show and I
loved it.
So in our booth we tried tocreate experiences.
So one of the experiences thatwe showed our partners and
retailers walking through was asecure checkout closet, and
(16:07):
inside of this cabinet couldeither be vending items Cokes,
pepsis, potato chips or it couldbe items like headphones,
razors, things that have somevalue to them, and so what we
showed was the way to go fromtoday, I go into a retail store
and some of these high valueitems are behind lock and key.
When I want something, I haveto go find a store employee,
(16:29):
pull them over, say hey, can youunlock this?
I take the good they got towalk me up to the front of the
store.
The experience is terrible.
There's tons of friction.
What we showed was you wouldtake your phone, you'd take your
card, you'd tap it on a Castledevice that would unlock this
secure cabinet and then, usingcameras and AI, you would get
the item that you want, or youcould put it back and you could
(16:51):
take those items that you want.
Two, three items close the doorand by the time you're walking
away, your phone is buzzing withthe e-receipt sending your way,
and so that's really showinghow payments and AI are really
melding together.
The third thing that I see overthe next three to five years is
an explosion of soft pause.
I assume that's something thatyou've spoken with other people
(17:12):
about.
Soft pause allowing you to takesecure transactions on consumer
devices tablets, handhelds,phones and those type of things.
And again, another use case thatwe showed at NRF that I thought
was interesting and this is howthe technology gets adopted is
we gave the story of atChristmas I went and bought a
Christmas tree and when Igrabbed the tree I grabbed the
(17:33):
tree at this local hardwarestore.
They gave me a tag.
I had to take that tag insideto the cashier.
I had to wait in line.
I then had my receipt.
I had to go back out, get myChristmas tree, throw it on top
of my car and drive home.
Just a ton of friction, theft,all types of things.
So imagine being able to take asoft pause solution on a
ruggedized tablet maybe a zebraor honeywell that could handle
(17:55):
the temperatures up in Minnesotawhere I live, and be able to
take secure payments on thosethrough a soft pause application
.
But we also wrote theapplication so you could have a
defined amount of dollars or adefined number of transactions,
Because the big concern is whathappens if somebody walks away
with that device, and whatexposure do I have from a
security perspective.
So figuring out those type ofsoft pause solutions I think
(18:18):
will be a big trend and a biggrowth opportunity for the
payments industry growthopportunity for the payments
industry.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, you know, related to all of that is what I
hear.
And curious your thoughts issort of the new consumers moving
into the world, so the youngergeneration.
Whatever label you want to puton them, they have and you've
talked about this the frictionthat's in a lot of this buying
process.
They don't put up with it, theyjust move to the next whatever,
the next store, the nextsolution, whatever you want to
call it.
They're not going to wait for abusiness to offer modern
(18:49):
checkout solutions.
Just curious, are you thinkingabout how those consumers who
have that expectation of almostseamless the payment just kind
of disappears?
What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I would agree.
Right, I mean the expectationsand the experiences.
We know that we, as consumers,want to have unbelievable
experiences where I can buyonline and have it delivered to
my house or my apartment in acouple hours, which is just
mind-blowing from what existedjust 10 years ago.
The ability to be able to gointo stores and have an
incredible experience and beable to have this frictionless
(19:22):
checkout experience is huge.
That is probably one of thetrends, and when we started this
, I said, hey, we overestimatethe first five years and
underestimate the next 10 years.
I think, as we start lookingover the next 10 years, some of
these things to reduce frictionthey're not going to happen
overnight, but over the longterm they will.
Things like using biometricsfor payments.
We're at the early stages ofthat.
(19:43):
I think that's one of thethings that creates this
experience, reduces friction.
I think about frictionlesscheckout experiences.
What does that look like?
I gave the example of oursecure cabinet that could sell
various items, going to thatAmazon Go type of store and
enabling those type ofexperiences.
I think for the youngerconsumers, those are the things
that they're going to expectAI-powered shopping agents that
(20:06):
can help them find those things.
All of these things as we gomaybe not the next two, three
years, but as we start going,the next five, six, seven, eight
, nine years absolutely see someof those big trends coming into
our space.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
All right.
Well, let's switch gears alittle bit and talk about you,
so maybe walk us through yourprofessional journey and then
how you got your role theretoday.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Sure, I'm sure you've heard this before from other
CEOs.
When I first met the Castlesteam and came in here to
introduce myself, I did talkabout how I view myself as an
accidental CEO, and so I'll kindof back up from there and talk
about how this came to be.
But as far as my backgroundgoes, I've always been on the
commercial, product and strategyside of business, grew up in
(20:48):
sales, cut my teeth selling intotier one retail sales and I
learned so much early in mycareer, selling payment
solutions to the largest of thelarge retailers and taking a
territory that I managed from 20, 25% market share up to 80%
market share.
It really taught me theimportance of being that subject
(21:09):
matter expert, understandingthe ecosystem, being that
trusted advisor, and so in thatsales process it kind of defined
me and the way that I approachlife and the way that I try to
coach and lead the companiesthat I'm now in charge of.
I took that from being asalesperson and said to my boss
and this is part of the storyand said, hey, I've been pretty
good here.
I think I can spread this outthroughout the whole
(21:31):
organization.
And even though she wasn'tlooking for a new sales manager,
I talked her into hey, give mea chance, let me step up, let me
see what I can do.
Leading the whole region, thewhole US, from a tier one retail
perspective, was able to takewhat I did individually, coach
other people to do the same.
Then there was an opportunity tobe a general manager.
I saw some problems, identifiedthem and led that group and
(21:55):
continued to really transformthe business from a hardware to
a hardware, software andservices company.
And so every step of the way Inever had the intention when I
was a sales guy to go, oh, Ireally want to be a sales
manager.
But I always saw there was aproblem, there was an
opportunity and I stepped up tothe challenge just because
that's my nature and what Ienjoy doing.
Ultimately, that led to mebecoming a president of North
(22:15):
America, eventually president ofNorth and South America, and
then over the last 10 years I'veheld various CEO roles and so I
didn't start my career back incollege going, hey, I'm going to
go get my MBA, I want to be ona fast track to be a CEO.
I just love the commercial sideof business.
I love building partnerships.
That passion has provided methe opportunity to move up
(22:36):
through the organization and nowlead organizations and build
that same culture andtransforming and growth within
organizations.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
What are some things you're passionate about?
Maybe one work-related passionand one personal passion
Interesting questionProfessionally.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
I guess I probably touched on it a little bit.
But one passion I have isgrowth growing a company.
The growth is a little bitabout.
Certainly we have shareholders.
We need to make money and grow.
You're either growing orshrinking, so that's important.
You have to have money toreinvest into the company.
But why I'm passionate aboutgrowth is growth creates
opportunities, and this is whatevery company that I've led I
(23:14):
talk to the employees about thisand I'm sincere about it.
If we grow, it createsopportunities for employees.
Employees can learn and growwithin organizations and I tell
employees all the time teammates, my goal is that you grow so
much that you go and dosomething outside of this
company.
Time teammates, my goal is thatyou grow so much that you go
and do something outside of thiscompany.
And so, as I look around thefintech payment space in North
America and, quite frankly,around the world, I've got I
(23:35):
don't know if I'd say 100, but20, 30, 40 people that have
worked for me at differentpoints, that are now VPs, evps,
presidents and CEOs, some thathave gone on to do even greater
things than I've done.
And to me, that's why I like togrow companies, because if
you're growing the companies,you're creating opportunities
for other people to go growtheir careers.
The second thing with business,I love just trying to figure
(23:56):
out how to transform business.
If you just try to keep doingthe same thing and expecting you
can grow, you can't do it.
You always have to transformthe business for many of the
things we just talked abouttoday.
If you're not figuring out howto transform the business into
something different to preparefor the future, the company's
not going to be able to grow.
So I would say those would bethe two professional things.
(24:17):
On the personal front, I'mpretty competitive.
Just last week I had theopportunity to take a customer
to Topgolf and he made a jokeabout how competitive I was the
previous night.
So I guess what I would say onthe personal front is I like to
push myself physically and so Imay not be the best natural
athlete in the world, but 25years ago 20 years ago I had a
(24:37):
boss that did triathlons and heultimately talked me into doing
triathlons.
I ultimately ended up doingthem with my daughters.
I've always traveled a bunch,but being able to go home on the
weekend, go for a training run,a training bike ride or going
out and doing a lake swim withmy daughter.
It was a real bonding thing.
I just love to compete intriathlons and today I do a
bunch of running races with bothmy daughters they're 25 and 27,
(25:01):
10ks half marathons.
I always jokingly say that I gorun races with my daughters,
but really I'm at the startingline, they go run and finish and
then I eventually catch up withthem.
But maybe I'm not as athleticas I used to be as you get older
.
I still love going out thereand competing and I think that
carries over to the businessside as well.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
So one final question .
I'm curious your answer, givenhow you like to create
opportunities for people.
So if someone comes to you, joe, and they say, hey, I'm
interested in the payments orfintech space Maybe they're
right out of college orsomething and they say, what do
I need to do to be successful inmy career in payments?
What would you tell them?
The?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
first is, I think I'd go back to what I had to do
early in my career, which ismaster the ecosystem Payments is
not exactly a black and whitespace, and so to be successful,
you have to be a subject matterexpert within the payments and
the fintech ecosystem.
If you don't do that, you can'tget anywhere, and if you do
(25:56):
that, your value is unbelievable.
I'm sure everybody would saythis, but it's true.
Networking, it's getting toknow people.
I've mentioned I've traveled abunch.
The reason I travel a bunch isI believe that's how you build
relationships.
Building those relationshipsare key.
So networking, network, network,network, stand up, take
initiative, just like myself.
When you see a problem, don'twait for somebody to come to you
(26:17):
and say, hey, would you like todo this?
Go to your boss and say, hey,here's what my goal is.
I'm here today and for three,five years I'd like to be here.
Can you help map that out forme?
And then the last is work hard.
It's really about outworkingeverybody else.
If you work hard, youunderstand the ecosystem, you
network, you set goals foryourself.
That's how you can build anunbelievable career like I've
(26:38):
been able to enjoy inside ofFinTech.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Awesome.
We've covered a lot of groundabout the company, about the
industry, about you.
Is there anything else you'dlike to add before we wrap up
the show?
Speaker 3 (26:48):
I just always get such a charge out of talking
about the business, talkingabout leading castles, talk
about where the industry isgoing.
Enjoy these conversations.
I just hope that as peoplelisten to this, they see the
passion, hopefully get someinspiration around what I shared
.
But I think it was a greatconversation and I guess, greg,
when I say it was a greatconversation as I talked and you
listened, no, I enjoyed theconversation today.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Well, joe, thank you so much for being on the show.
I know your times are valuable,so I really appreciate you
being here today, absolutely.
Thank you, greg, great to meetyou today, and to all you
listeners out there, I thank youfor your time as well, and
until the next story.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
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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