Visa prep

Question 1

What is your business model?

Answer 1

We charge a %age of transaction value that is processed through Safepay. There is no integration fees or annual fees.

Future: from Value added payments features we look to extract more revenue.

Question 2

Who is your competition? or How are you different from (large competitors)?

Answer 2

we think competition is good, in the ecosystem is healthy for any market. and keeping the space hot.

we want to collab with the right team to help our customers

2) Existing banks
3) Other fintechs

Existing Banks: Our largest competitors are 2 banks that offer an online payment gateway to merchants. How are we different? we are more accessible to all kinds of merchants, we don’t charge prohibitive onboarding fees or annual fees, and we onboard faster than them. We are API focused to create custom integrations for emerging business use cases.

we charge per transaction so as the businesses that use safepay grow, we grow with them.

Fintechs: - We are working to solve different problems, there is so much work that needs to be done, instead of treating each other as competitors, the general mindset is to collaborate and grow the proverbial pie.

• collaborating with multiple fintechs to maximise digital payments. Payfast/ nift/ haball.

Question 3

How do you plan to scale

Answer 3

For us scaling means giving as many businesses as possible the opportunity to accept online payments. being a technology first company this means investing in talent to create:

• documentation that is accessible to businesses of all sorts
• SDKs and libraries that make it easy to integrate
• new and innovative payment experiences tailored to businesses running in this country

providing payment experiences non existent in the market

Question 4

How do you ensure transactions are secure?

Answer 4

• PCI DSS compliant
• Secure redirect to our own hosted checkout page, removing the burden of security from the merchant.
• Vet thoroughly during onboarding to prevent bad actors from entering our network.

Question 5

What obstacles could affect your ability to attract customers, scale up, etc?

Answer 5

Out of our control: Regulation change

In our control: what our competitors release and staying ahead of it
-Managing our growth, staying on top of customer service and day to day execution as we grow.

Question 6

The market: numbers:

Answer 6

• Mobile subscriptions crossed 164 million in 2020,
• 44 million debit and credit cards in the market,
• the number of Smart phones in the market are 81 million

Issuing side,
- people are mobile accounts, issuing cards for their transacting needs, trend that will evolve, while we don’t see cash going away, the reliance of cash and market share of cash will decrease.

Question 7

Why now?

Answer 7

we are experiencing a moment in time where a number of factors have put Safepay at the right place at the right time.

Regulatory environment is favourable

Covid 19 Impact leading to acceleration of digital payments.
Events such as the Covid 19 pandemic can cause lasting shifts in behaviour. As SARS demonstrated with China, the post Covid world will be more digital

• Mobile phone and 3G/4G/5G penetration: Rising smartphone adoption . Number of smartphones in Pakistan have nearly doubled in the last 2 years, reaching 81 million
• Demographic shift, median age is 22. Digital Business Owners are young, ambitious and globally knowledgeable

Question 8

Visa: general

Answer 8

Visa is the gold standard in digital payments and what we need to push the needle forward.

We want to be able to process payments visa payment network,
-We’re aspiring to be the easiest way for a business to accept payments online.

• International transactions-
• Domestic payments are happening, but the majority of people trust visa brands, we will process local payments too but for now the way forward is this. Imp strategy.
• Remittances, transactions, donations. Diaspora pays with the visa payment network.

Question 9

Visa products we are interested in:

Answer 9

Cybersource aligns neatly with what were working towards.
Cybersource:
Payment acceptance
Payment security
Additional services like currency conversion, global tax compliance,
Fraud management

Visa click and pay: This could be introduced through Safepay. With the lack of PayPal and AliPay, Visa cick and pay can gain market share very quickly.

Question 10

How safepay fits in:

Answer 10

We see safepay at the heart of the interoperability between all the fintechs

We want to give merchants one point of integration so they can reach as many customers using different payment options

Question 11

Target market:

Answer 11

• Retail & E-Commerce
• Media & Entertainment
• Transportation
• IT & Telecom
• Food & Beverage
• Freelancers
• Education & Learning
• Healthcare
• Marketplace Platforms
• Fundraising Platform for NGOs
• Home-based Registered Business

Question 12

safepay mission:

Answer 12

• Empower Pakistani businesses by making online payments simpler with cutting edge technology, security and a better user experience
• Our team wants to make a meaningful impact in Pakistan and we want to do this by solving what we believe is an essential problem

Question 13

customer journey paying through safepay

Answer 13

Safepay securely gathers the payment details, validates them, and forwards them to the relevant payment institution

Data Validation, Real time fraud protection, 3D secure authentication

Customer completes security steps- (OTP)

Transaction approved by card scheme

Customer returned to merchant’s website

Receipt sent to both customer and merchant

Question 14

onboarding KYC verification

Answer 14

-Onboarding and KYC verification: We will manage onboarding of merchants by screening them and vetting them with an extensive KYC process.
Ensuring businesses are selling goods and services that they say they are selling.
Performing relevant checks to comply with AML/CTF requirements.

Question 15

stripe inspired pak based opportunity

Answer 15

The explosive expansion in access to opportunity facilitated by the internet. The number of Pakistanis who can start companies has grown.
We’re making improvements in the payments infrastructure.

Question 16

regulatory landscape/ govt

Answer 16

We work very closely with the relevant team at the Central bank, and by pursuing regulation, and it gives us the opportunity to build what we want to.

Enabling environment for digital payments
Regulatory environment provided by the State Bank of Pakistan has allowed the digital payment ecosystem to grow exponentially.

what is raast:
Raast is Pakistan’s first instant payment system that will enable end-to-end digital payments among individuals, businesses and government entities within seconds. Not only that it will help bring down the high cost of the transactions making small-value retail payments cheap.

Emergence of EMI’s
Alternative digital payment methods, mobile wallets
Suspension of fee charged by banks on inter bank transfer
Launch of RAAST
Launch of Roshan Digital Account Initiative

how will raast impact your business mode

there can be a depression in fees, but we’re banking on the number of merchants, more people joining the digital economy.

Question 17

Team

Answer 17

11 people and growing

We’ve hired engineers with backgrounds in payments but we’ve been able to leverage our relationship with Stripe to get the right advice when needed.
Right payments engineering talent to achieve our product roadmap.

Question 18

current products

Answer 18

payment methods are through bank transfer and mobile wallets

Safepay checkout- e commerce store
quick-links- process payments with just a link and no website needed.

plugins-

Question 19

product roadmap

Answer 19

-recurring payments, marketplace payments- ( explain marketplace payments)

Question 20

beta period

Answer 20

We were processioning payments through a relationship with a local bank which is connected to cybersources.

Question 21

terms of service- growth

Answer 21

One of the areas we want to grow into from basic things like recurring payments to more complicated models for marketplace payments.
Ultimately we want to build the foundation to allow other companies to create innovative businesses we haven’t thought about

Question 22

What is the merchant dashboard?

Answer 22

Our proprietary tool designed to quickly show merchants their performance in accepting online payments through Safepay,

Aggregated information all in one place,

Payment details on rejected transactions,

Smart notifications through account settings,

Easy Transfers Integrated with all banks in Pakistan,

Exported data Merchants download their transaction history in CSV format for deeper analysis (e.g. create customised marketing for particular customers) and reconciliation,

Easy refunds: direct and no long calls to the bank,

Customisation for branding

Question 23

Sales process

customer acquisition strategy:

Answer 23

trust of big names,
inbound- quite well known in the startup community

outbound- doubled down on going to customers of big businesses of all sizes, and ultimately we have benefited a lot from word of mouth.

we grow with them.
were confident that our product led sdoltuion will help us get marlet share

Question 24

presentation: answer in 15-30 secs

Answer 24

For complex questions, it’s fine to say something like, “The short answer is yes, we plan to do [XYZ.] For the long answer, let’s talk after this event.”

Question 25

For example, let’s say your product is so early that it is not yet in market, and a judge asks what obstacles you see to shipping on the timeline you presented.

Answer 25

“Good question. Like many startups here, we need a fintech license to formally launch in the Ethiopian market. From our work with the government so far, we are confident we will receive our fintech license by [date].”

Question 26

Do not lie to the judges and audience. If it’s something you honestly do not know the answer to, say something like,

Answer 26

“That’s a great question. I know that the person on my team who leads [engineering/product/marketing] has the answer. What I can tell you is that…”

^^ fill in the rest of that sentence with what you do know, and say it with confidence!

Question 27

PCI DSS

Answer 27

Payment card industry ( confirm with ziyad)

founder normally handles that.

Question 28

how does a customer onboard safepay

Answer 28

• Sign up for a Safepay account by creating a Sandbox Account
• Merchant chooses to download and install the right plugin for their online store
• Merchant sends documentation for Safepay to conduct KYC and AML checks, and enter into legal agreement

-The whole setup process takes less than two weeks
A merchant can now accept an online payment from their customer online

Question 29

time

Answer 29

kyc docs with our financial partners, we’d rather be cautious in onboarding, than compromise and get a bad actor

Question 30

why are you doing the pitch

Answer 30

When we made it to the CEMEA finals, we discussed between the 3 of us and who felt most passionate about doing this. That was me :) even though the guys put up a strong front.

Question 31

marketplace

Answer 31

B2B2C- marketplace:
Connect is a set of programmable APIs and tools that lets you facilitate payments on your software platform, build a marketplace, and pay out sellers or service providers globally—all while having Safepay handle payments compliance

one entity collects the payments from the customers of the platform, then the business needs to also pay the submerchant, while collecting its income. We’ve been watching this space grow in Pakistan, and our solution is to build for this problem for all businesses entering this space, this will help them save costs, operational overheads while we handle payments.

Question 32

Cash

Answer 32

cash will always have its place, but as digital payments provide access, and ease of financial accounting and transparency, cash is not necessarily an inconvenience

Question 33

are you going into card payments

Answer 33

thats not in our product roadmap yet, were a small team with limited bandwidth so we need to grow in a focused way. Were actively working with our clients and aware of what their painpoints are

Question 34

what makes you different?

Answer 34

we’re a team that enjoys solving big problems. were not looking for quick wins, were in it for the long haul and really digging out feet in building a strong foundation so we can build something bigger than ourselves

Question 35

prize money

Answer 35

• current business expenses in some areas where we have been holding back and being prudent
• -more imp is the partnership with Visa. Gold standard in digital payments

Question 36

license

Answer 36

18 months.but we can operate with the in principle approval which were on track to receive any day now

Question 37

next 5 years

Answer 37

the internet as a whole, and what it can achieve is still in its earliest days. we are seeing the business model change.
- vision is to make it easy for anyone anywhere to participate in the internet economy.
easier to do cross border business
- talking to our customers

we feel as if we continue to keep the trust of our customers and have the ear of our customers, were on the right path, we have a long term approach. So much of the foundation that we are building right now, will come to fruition in 5 years. We want to build infrastructure to power businesses which will come up with i innovations we have not even thought about.