Fireside Chat with Trovata & Square: Square’s Tim Murphy & Trovata’s Brett Turner

Well, very all the dramatic introduction to first ever treasury dragons fireside chat, a new format for us here at treasury dragons. And delighted to say so many of you joining us today across the globe. We have people from all sorts of unlikely time zone.

So thank you very much for being with us in particularly, thank you to Brett Turner of Trovata and Tim Murphy of square, both of you who’ve joined us such an absurdly earlier in the morning. So I can only say, thank you guys. I’ll be introducing all of you to Tim and branch.

And just a moment before we start just a couple of housekeeping things to run through so that you get the most of this event.

The first thing to bear in mind is it the whole events will be available on demand as soon as we finished. The whole thing will be online and you can review it at your leisure. So if you’re worried about taking detailed notes, no need.

You can see it again and they’ll be a brief report on treasury dragons tomorrow to go with that video. Other things to bear in mind, this is interactive.

I am over the next 40 minutes or so is to give you something more than just the case study.

We want to get into how the process works of Trovata working with square… square with quite complex treasury requirements.

We want to get inside that story and share with you how it was done and see what you can learn from that experience.

So if you have questions of your own, feel free to use the questions tab that’s up here on the top right of your screen. You can type those questions in.

And I’m not in the matter of a price, radio host will read them out to… to interview is later in the events. And final thing before we move onto the substance is a request. We have a small Paul. It’s really simple.

You can see it up there in the pole tab with just like to know where you are on your cash visibility journey. All you? Absolutely fine? Where are you… are you looking for something better?

Or maybe you’ve already solve your problems, in which case tell us and then we can get a measure of what’s happening in the audience.

And I can see already that some people are introducing ourselves in the chat. Feel free to do that. So I’m not gonna turn to add guests, Brett turn. It will be within just a second. But Tim, if I can stop with you and ask you really just to paint a picture. If you like.

We’re going to be talking about how you’ve interacted with Trovata and how you have got much better visibility of your cash across multiple Bank.

Accounts, but before we get into that, just paint a picture of you been at square for quite a while. But what was the situation before you engage with Trovata treasures? Don’t wake up and say, I know I’ll change everything for no reason. What sort of inspired you to the general? This isn’t working.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Mike. I’m I’ve been at square now for just under six years. I think I met Brett, maybe five years in or five years ago.

So probably just a year into my… my time with square, I’d spend time, you know, spent 20, some odd years and treasury departments and treasury functions, building treasury function from scratch, rebuilding treasury functions, you know, after… after significant changes have been charged with implementing treasury solutions, have been the decision maker on buying treasury solutions. Have, you know, used and implemented many of hated, basically everyone that I’ve ever worked with.

And it’s not that they don’t it’s not that they don’t…

Do the job. It’s like if you told me right now to install a VCR in this… this home.

I, you know, I get… I get it done by watching movie but it wouldn’t be anything. I’d be proud to show off the people, you know, Brett Britain. I came together.

He and I worked together an Amazon quite a few years ago, not very closely, but the former treasure of Amazon who had recruited me up there to begin with said, hey, I’d like you to, you know, meet bread. He’s thinking about an idea around treasury technology.

And having spent just a year at square, I’m seeing the art of the possible in terms of technology.

You know, I’d go in and look at what we were doing with API is with open banking with moving money so quickly, this really incredible operation to moving billions of dollars very… very quickly. I got to the treasury department.

They had just bought a treasury workstation for no other reason than a prior could controller didn’t want to log into two different internet systems to… to work with.

So I was, it was seven to see the same technology that I bought and hated before but, you know, it did the job and it was functional and I wasn’t gonna anything different about it. But right came in and gave me his, you know, gave me his vision. API is open banking, next gen technology, new thing. My eyes just went wide. I think he’d and I connected immediately on… on what this tool could be.

And, you know, kind have ever since I’ve been, you know, wasn’t a natural fit.

You know, kind of one guy in a briefcase was not going to be my treasury solution that day, but, you know, kind of working with Brett.

Working with this team is the team grew and expanded, being able to now run, you know, basically draw it is now running our treasury function.

It’s also kind of helping power the back end of a lot of other things that square. So it’s been just an incredible journey with technology.

And, you know, I… I, I’m so proud that we’ve been kind have indicated on this vision and, you know, how does the long winded way of saying, you know, who’s somebody like connected with immediately.

And like you say, people don’t really want to rip out there treasury system. Well, I was desperate to rip out my treasury system.

I just never had the system I want it to be able to replace it with until I met Brett. And, you know, kinda started this Trovata journey.

I absolutely want to come back to that in just a moment because a lot of viewers on this… on this event will be thinking exactly that look, we… we built a treasury management system. It’s there. It’s not great. But I don’t want the pain anguish you’re having to deal with it. Let’s come back to that in a second. Brett, can I come to you for a moment? So you were at Amazon, I think you run background is… is Tricia. You… you didn’t so to start out as a, as an entrepreneur is a small child. You know, you were… you were interested in, you thought we could do this better?

Hello. Right. Yeah. My background is a little different. So I actually have been a controller cpa and a CFO for… for many years.

So I, and I think too that was the one thing and connecting with Tim early on with really sort of the… the… the broader vision of this just I probably at our time at Amazon just kinda naturally having this… sort of this irreverence for the status quo, you know, at Amazon, they… they… they have this… this, could they still have it today, you know, biased for action, you know?

So that’s that… that whole notion of… of kind of never accepting the status quo.

But I… I think to immediate, yeah, I mean just being at square and what square is doing you just amazing, you know, techforward company, all that was happening and modern tech, which that’s kind of the I, I’ve been as a CFO and startups.

So prior to starting Trovata, which met or, you know, Tim early on which was, you know, really great.

And our journey to have such an incredible support and like we just came became, you know, candidate experience in some ways because he just knew where we were going any embraced, you know, which is fairly rare especially early on and… and kind of from a standpoint of all the… the aspects that kinda need to go through this disrupted change and digital transformation, that would still, you know, really early and even in those days is I was talking to the banks even because a big part of this was seeing that the bat was that or the banks are gonna open up on the wholesale side because that’s the other thing, what was happening in… in fintech was largely on the credit side, on the payment side and mostly small business and consumer. So the big that was, you know, it’s… it’s… it’s gotta hit wholesale. Eventually. It’s gotta hit more of the enterprise.

And that was really my background is in startups selling into the enterprise. So, you know, a little over 20 years experience.

I started out as a cpa, deloitte was a controller, kinda moved into tech companies pretty early.

I mean, I did want to at some point kind of starting to do my own thing but I took this track through finance because I really want it to, you know, learn accounting, great place to learn.

And so, but quickly grabbing a gravitated to startups and high growth tech.

You know, that’s where, you know, Tim and I met, you know, early on it, you know, a lot of time over most of my career in the Seattle area and so, but then spend some time at Amazon managing their SCC reporting.

So that, you know, that first half of my career was really around, you know, expertise and gap, financial reporting, both public and private but also kind of, you know, how did you appeal out all of the… the black box of data out of an ERP system and then utilize that, democratize that data from a financial reporting perspective to financial decision makers. That was sort of my, you know, thing early on. That would do that.

And I think that’s sort of follow on to after Amazon left and then moved into a CFO role.

You know, raised a lot of money, venture back startups, you know, three companies have one in telecom on an energy unwanted in cloud computing.

And that was sort of the other… the other segue into Trovata, just having a front row seat. My last startup into this company, second watch.

We became the first premier consulting partner to Aws when they’re launching their enterprise program.

So this whole journey to the cloud for the enterprise, you know, having a front row seat to that whole digital transformation on it. And then just seeing what was next. It’s gonna happen in banking. It’s going to happen in finance.

And then all along leading up to that, this finding, you know, some… some great folks who wanted to be a part of this journey, seeing that, you know, where this was going.

And all, you know, all these aspects of modern tech hadn’t really found their way into the banking side. We’re in finance. And so, and even in the…

Yeah, that’s a lot of that treasures will tell us it’s certainly a couple of years ago. This was true. Still true.

Now that they say my home life, in my domestic life, I can go on my phone. I can do my banking.

I can do everything and all I do is touch, I go to the office and suddenly I’m back in a world of don’t goals and endless multiple log INS and just unpleasant stuff. And which brings me back to… to… to you. And that was clearly a challenge there. What we’re aiming for here is let’s think of this as a therapy session.

Tell me a little bit about some of the things that you wanted to do but… but kinda couldn’t tell what you’ve mentioned. You were stuck with the legacy TMS, which was the equivalent of a VCR in an era when we should be on streaming platforms.

What?

Was some of the things that you thought, you know, what? I really wish I could do this and… and I just can’t…

I mean, the, you know, the… the access to data, the access to Richard data kind of the Real-time ability to, you know, I mean, kind of real time, you know, natural language search, being able to kinda instantly pull up a website, you know, kind have within seconds, type in, you know, landlord name and be able to see red payments going back four years. You know, that was the, that’s an exercise. It took, you know, 30 seconds.

When I played within Trovata, the first time that, you know, God knows how long you know, in the… in the legacy system, but that was kind of a dumb example.

It was much more about just building something that was future proof that you knew, you could use that data for in other places, square is consuming data.

You know, we’ve got four or five different, you know, product arms of the company that are all consuming Bank data in different ways.

You know, they’re locked into individual connections to the Bank, sometimes three or four connections to the same Bank.

You know, knowing the whole time what we’re able to do from a customer perspective, you know, kind of instant visibility to accounts.

I mean, our… our peer to peer application, you know, by… by sell bitcoin transfer by something in a register within seconds.

You know, that technology just felt like it must be available on the, you know, kind of treasury side, treasury banking side, but just no one’s ever make any effort to do it the market just, you know, the legacy companies in the space just seem to have no interest in kind of continuing to evolve those products with kind of real time technology. But, you know, this was that promise.

So was, and, you know, cash forecasting is always, you know, something that a lot of folks promise, you know, in… in these types of systems. But the way they go about it is always the same and it never works. And the answer is always this is my information consolidation system. I’m gonna call it up into a spreadsheet.

I’m gonna find the lowest paid guy on my team and making stare at that spreadsheet for the next 10 years of his life and see what comes out of it.

And this was the first time, you know, I think our artificial intelligence, machine learning, these are terms that don’t exist in the corporate treasury workbook. But, you know, I think we… we finally crack that not here.

So, you know, just this type of technology just being able to see what, you know, frankly a company like square which is only four years old, I think when I got there, you know, what they were able to do with a clean slate.

And this was the same type of thing just, you know, are you reek a moment? Of what new technology could bring to the space?

And for those who don’t know who maybe outside of the markets where square directly operates, you… you began as essentially payment services, providing payment opportunities for small companies that didn’t have, it gets a little bit. You’ve grown massively no, not much bigger.

Can we, it was a, it was a point.

Of sales solution.

And for farmers markets and gardeners, a dongle, you put it into your phone and you can accept credit card payments that way and we’ve evolved much more.

I mean, still a big company, you know, big customers, square is still generally a small business, but we’ve you know, we’ve obviously had some… some huge success in the us in terms of servicing small businesses. That way you kind of have a full suite of services that go along with that.

And then we’ve got a peer to peer application in the y called cash app, which is become basically a Bank in your hand and his head kind have massive success in terms of, you know, underbanked and, you know, new gentleman, he kind of new generation of… of folks kind of waiting in the financial technology. So, you know.

Those guys on the consumer side who were providing this great new modern technology and this great access. But in your own back end, this was still…

Yeah, exactly.

No, I mean square was.

And on, you can’t get a credit card machine from your Bank or too small, you don’t have credit.

You’re not able to do it, will facilitate that, you know, by the same token, you know, in general companies are not don’t have access to this technical, even the workstation that I hate companies don’t have access to it because they’re clunky to implement. They’re expensive. They’re complicated to use and setup. And if, you… you know… you know, you don’t have a treasury department, potentially, you know, you’re back to the banking portals and downloading spreadsheets and the whole thing.

Absolutely. So Brett, you were, this was a match, made it happen.

If you’d like you had a… a vision of the company that could use all this data and make it accessible. Was this is kind of an ideal client for you? Was it an early sort of showcase? How did, how was the fit for you when you first were engaged or discussing?

Yeah, I suppose just being and, you know, selling into the enterprise and how difficult it is working in regulated industries and could be previously disruptive technology and telecom and in energy, working with, you know, utilities there, these are hard spaces to get into… into obviously.

And so I think the other thing is just have an appreciation of how… how hard it is to move up market as a solution.

A lot of companies will start, hey, we’ll start as a small business and then we’ll just take it and move up market. You know, most of the time that can’t happen. And there’s just that kind of scale that’s why Quickbooks is Quickbooks. You know, an Oracle is Oracle. There’s just a radically different aspect to that. So, you know, one of the things that’s what I wanted.

I want to be able too couple of different things that also resonated with, yeah, you know, this aspect of democratizing data to the masses.

I mean, you look at even the TMS is, you know, being a bit of an outsider but learning from a lot of great g treasury like Tim and others.

But really these TMS is we’re designed just because at scale companies have to have something but they’re also really expensive and really long implementation times and, you know, really painful to go through those exercises which meant, you know, they’re kind of reserved for more of the, you know, the companies that are doing at least a 1,000,000,000 or… or greater and usually far beyond that to be able to have that scale to make it worthwhile.

And I think that was the thing is… is seeing if we’re going to have a big data platform, essentially, we’re going to change the whole way date data is transported, which is, you know, the big key to open banking.

And then that’s those two layers are so critical within the application layer on top, can also be monitoring and more consumer like just from a you why?

Because everybody is tired of sort of these, the… the clunky nous of the UI, then we could have something actually because it was really architected and built for scale. And that’s the reason why we really wanted to… to work with square.

We, if we could, you know, handled millions of transactions that at scale, then clearly, we could pretty much, you know, that it was a lot easier to go down market.

And so with that whole stack because we were designed and can do it at a fraction of the cost in this, so modern paradigm and tech, then we could really go down market and really make something that’s available more broadly and really democratize treasury, best practice treasury, take it out for the masses.

And we could, you know, has this sort of the… the aspect that also work for controllers because there’s things that are needed there to a little bit differently, maybe a little more of an F piano like bet. But also for the CFO is the direct method cash flow statement. There.

There’s all these a centralized, you know, cash or any of the things that everybody can benefit with and really centralize that in a centralized data center essentially for all of those, all of those stakeholders. So that common back playing for up and down market that everybody could really benefit from.

That makes absolute sense.

If Tim, in a way to put this blankly, you’re the first guy across the mind failed, you know, if anyone is gonna… is gonna sort of stuck on something and it’s going to explode, it’s gonna be, it’s. Gonna be you.

I’m interested to… to… to find out how the process began of actually implementing Trovata.

I met, guess I’m imagining you guys in a room with a… with a white board, but within square, did you have to get other players on board?

Was it just you able to say, you know, we’re just gonna do this and that’s going to happen or did you need to involve it? Maybe even procurement, maybe the… the wider finance function? Yeah.

You know, in the beginning it was, you know, was just, you know, I had… in my assistant treasurer has been in the space a long time.

You know, it’s been a space fairly long time as well has come from, you know, big companies is work with workstations, hates them all as well. So she wasn’t really advocate for me.

I said, you know, this is, I know this is, you know, kind of have, you know, garage project.

But if you’re interested, you know, you could help me out and start working with these guys and, you know, we made some of the, you know, we made some of the initial Bank connections, you know, JP Morgan was a key early partner of Trovata.

They’re one of our key banks, you know, they were looking for a place to use their API and kind of, you know, be a little more cooperative with us. So we were able to get them on pretty quickly.

So, you know, from, you know, basically as soon as the thing went live, we were able to start using it and then, you know, kind of to, you know, the… the benefit was also that as we started to use it, we could almost say, hey, this is the way we’d like to see it.

And the, you know, the… the, you know, the system kind of was built sort of the specs.

So it was, you know, impressive the further now, the further we went along, the more people we had to get involved.

We eventually have to confess to info sec that we had a second treasury workstation running in the background.

And… in the meantime, somebody in the meantime, somebody quit and I ended up taking over the procurement teams.

I never had to deal with them but we kinda work through those hurdles one at a time.

And, you know, most recently, you know, as we’ve started to implement the treasury cloud solution, you know, we, all of a sudden I started to hear from my business systems team, you know, getting a 12 people about this new system. They were working with Trovata. And that was kind of like guess what? We’ve been working with them for a long time.

So…

You know, now they’re almost a key piece of infrastructure but, you know, as we went along the journey that we’re kinda more and more people that we signed up along the way.

I completely understand that.

It’s that you mentioned the JP Morgan was… was early on board, but Brad, if I can send to you when you’re scoping out this project and it’s an important you’ve got a team. He’s… he’s on board. You know, he’s been both the concept, absolutely, gets it. What would be important first steps for you?

I mean, was there a, was there a scoping process that you have to say, look, you know, exactly how many data points, all that here, how many inputs, so we’re going to have to cope with and how we’re going to deal with that.

Just give us a sort of a short pulse rate of your first steps in this implementation. What did you need to do?

Well, I, you know, I think a lot of it was just the early days of building a startup.

You know, it’s kinda gets the, all the… the aspects of that, you know, you’re there’s just so many facets to it.

So that’s why I think leading up to this when you’re… when you’re introducing a solution and something as… as ambitious also being predicated and working closely with the Bank in the enterprise space, something at massive scale. I mean it doesn’t happen overnight.

It, it’s so there’s… there’s also sort of, you know, people are kind of seeing us. Wow. You guys are new. Your guys are coming out of nowhere.

It’s like, yeah, well, there’s you know, three years, it’s kinda breaking the pick on working with banks and working with, you know, all the aspects that is kinda climbing the mountain to get to this point and it’s… it’s a lotta work.

So those are the things is sort of that as the, from an entrepreneur perspective that are… that are hard.

But it’s… it’s also really exciting when we start to kind of kick in and hi, this is that really people start to see where we get going.

But I think that’s the early days of this we’re… we’re open banking, you know, wasn’t even coin does a term.

It was yeah, and… and often, you know, API is we’re educating, you know, folks within the Bank here’s what an API is.

And I think one of the things that finally, in some ways it did help because we’re able to really shape and focus on the application layer, shape this next Jan experience that was easier to resonate well, you know, to… to kinda see something right? And then meanwhile we’re really building out a lot of the infrastructure.

And in some ways that… that sequencing did allow us to, you know, buy a little time with the banks to kind of catch up released API.

And that’s really where that watershed event that happened to, you know, now it’s been well, you know, two three years ago. Now.

So when… when really when JP Morgan Bank of America and Wells fargo, or the first three banks globally to ever have an API that was publicly accessible. That would, you know, they’re having their specs on it.

So even though there’s you know, so much advance is of course the PSD too and all that on the consumer small business side is more advanced in Europe. But on the wholesale side, it’s still hadn’t happened in Europe.

And so, you know, really these three banks once they establish that, they also thought a little bit like we’ll API once we released an API then it’s like a field, the grave everybody welcome consume.

And that’s not the reality because most companies, they just don’t have the it resources.

And these… these API it’s… it’s not like, you know, stripes API, it’s not like, you know, or squares API is these are… these are much harder API to connect to use.

These are really difficult to do that, you know, deep integration kind of deep plumbing if you will of what needed to happen. And so, you know, really needed an intermediary like Trovata.

And so that’s where putting that infrastructure doing all of that integration for the, you know, as that intermediary partner fitting between the… the Bank and facilitating that bridging aspect for its customers really became a big part of how we have this Bank for a strategy and work because, and that’s why it’s you know, we’re you know, we have the banks is investors, you know, we have a very closely aligned model, whereas on the consumer and small business side, you have things aggregators like plaid, where are, you know? They’re sort of at odds with the business model of the Bank. And so we do that very differently and have something that’s very cohesive and collaborative and that’s sort of unlocking a lot of this value around open banking.

Have accidentally to fear Trovata, except, I guess a little bit in your technology opens up the possibility of switching banks more recently, I suppose in the long-term…

Yeah, it’s…

But other than that…

No, it’s not… it’s not really, it’s… it’s that’s sort of the, some of the early fear with banks is that well, that could make it fluid for it’s really hard for, you know, it’s been a moment, you know, just switching banks.

It’s not like a, you know, switching your subscription with them from net flicks, the disney plus or something. I mean, it, it’s… it’s really disruptive.

And I think that’s the other thing too is we’ve found is once Bank started to embrace, you know, fintechs on the wholesale side two or three years ago, certainly a little trepidation.

But seeing the stickiness when you’re able too have, you know, have the API, it’s really the banks path to becoming a tech company as best as I can.

And then they find having a Trovata really provides us a lot of sticking this because it’s doing things at the Bank or having a hard to hard time doing from a… from a tech perspective.

And then it keeps the… the… the client for a reason for not looking or shopping elsewhere. So it’s really provide a really great sticky… sticky notes aspect for the Bank.

Banks.

And I can say that a lot of you were watching, you can be reassured that’s great.

But if you’re comfortable now, I’m now gonna was Tim, what are all the banks work quarters cooperatives when it came to connecting and… and being helpful with this process? I’m just gonna guess that that’s maybe.

Hi, Rocky.

With the ones we’ve mentioned, you know, maybe JP Morgan Wells fargo completely open to this, but I’m gonna guess there was some banks that maybe we’re not as quick maybe didn’t get with the.

Revenue.

How, how was the experience for you?

I mean, each Bank was different.

I mean, we went through this exercise, you know, spread says, you know, the API is we’re… we’re new to them to, you know, JP Morgan we found a really good place where I think even with square starting up, they were initially, you know, a little bit hands off a little bit trepidation to kind of wait in with us to some of this kind of new technology but, you know, by about, you know, when we… we all connected with bread, it was, yeah. So let’s use the API. We get this vision. We’ll… we’ll do that.

They built.

It, well, they built it from scratch.

So it was, you know, a pretty easy and slick connection and that went… that went really well. You know, there was a second Bank.

You know, we’ll… we’ll keep nameless that, you know, hadn’t thought all of it through.

So, you know, with a day we turned it on and the millions of transactions started coming through, they had we’ll call it an outdated pricing model attached to it. So all of a sudden I got a Bill for 118,000 dollars.

I just play that slightly. I’d rather watch this on recalled just run that by me again.

I think it was 118,000 dollars when I first got the call. I believe I’ve I believe I’ve managed to get most of those charges.

Reverse driver pipe wouldn’t still be working here, but, you know, those were learning experiences. We went through it. So we… we shut that Bank off and then kind of put a pin in it. But when we turn it back on, it was everything was fine. So we… we… we did well there.

But, you know, honestly, that was an unlocked, you know, the day we… we realize that I finally looked at my analysis statement and realized I was consuming data from that Bank, probably in four different put three or four different places and I was paying for three or four different times. So we started to think about, hey, why am I paying for this data? Three or four different times? Why don’t?

I just take it once into Trovata, and then just pipe it directly into all my other banking applications, which was a huge kind have unlocked for us and thinking about what became the treasury cloud like why don’t I just do this for all my banks. I’ve got a treasury workstation and consuming all this data. What if I just strip the user interface out of it? Hand it to my back end systems team and let them consume data and other ways, which is what we ended up with, which was just a, you know, kind of have a massive step forward in terms of what?

That’s really interesting. So in layman’s terms, you effectively have multiple connections, multiple data connections to… to a single Bank because using different companies different.

The new we start.

A new, we started the new, you know, we had our consumer apple yet, are, you know, point of sale application.

We went directly to Wells fargo and JP Morgan we then built a peer to peer application and the first Bank to the like our peer to peer application. So they kick this off, we went to a second Bank. They built their own connection.

We started a payroll product in the y, they built their own connection and it’s… it’s easy to let them do that. They’ve got the it development resources.

But, you know, as we start to peel the onion apart and see why do I have all these data sources coming back and forth?

I’ll do it once and any new product, basically any country, anywhere in the world, whatever wacky thing they can think of like, hey, here’s, your Bank data. It sits right here at square.

It’s you know, all pipe directly in from Trovata, make one call this don’t worry about. No one wants to talk to the back end of a Bank to set up a connection.

Nobody and that’s just so, you know, it’s a… it’s a tedious process that we would have to and have had the source for ourselves internally. Now, we can focus on other things.

Which is great. And I think Brett this is what you refer to as a data lake. Am I using the… the… the terminology correctly? All this information is flowing in.

It’s… it’s held centrally and it’s accessible for whatever purpose… you… you… you… you wish to… to use. It has the experience of producing this for square. Given you any lessons in terms of things, maybe you change things you might do differently in the, in… in… in future.

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s I think it’s most of it’s really just accelerated a lot of the aspects of, you know, what we’re doing.

I think that’s what’s gets missed sometimes too is that, you know, we’re… we’re sort of in the final endings of the digital transformation of it still. And… and this is what happened.

You know, in my last startup, it was all of the easy workloads and that’s what’s happened. Then this is the maybe the… the moderate ones.

And then now it’s like and we’re in the final Linux where it’s the harder workloads and that’s where if some legacy solutions. And so when you kind of look at where do all these legacy solutions? You know, what are they?

And where they really sit well, they kind of sit in finance or treasury or accounting and it’s ERP and these kinds of things.

And so when you kind of look at the it folks with companies and they’re looking to, you know, they… they now are all in on cloud.

And so they’re looking at wanting to modernize all of their idea of the structure because they don’t want to support any of these legacy solutions. And so, they’re sort of circling the wagons of finance and treasury and kind of say, hey.

But when are we going to?

Be able to modernize here and we kinda need to get this in the cloud and we need to get you guys on the program, right? Because we don’t want to support the stuff. We don’t want to touch the stuff anymore. We’ve moved on and I think that’s what’s happening and big companies.

And so that’s what gets missed a little bit with Trovata, that’s where we started. I mean, that’s our… our a DNA is all about a big modern big data platform. And that’s why we have like can mentioned natural language search.

These kinds of things are… are really easier for us to… to do through the application layer.

But it all starts with that… that plumbing that really that transport layer, you know, it’s kinda like going from analog phone lines to the five gee, you know, think of swift and file base. That stuff empty 940 was embedded in 1977. I mean, come on. We gotta move on API. Now. I really unlocking and bringing that into the modern era.

So being able to have API and… and getting that access to speed of data, quality of data, having the data… the data platform to be able to give, you know, enterprise SL law, all of the quality of service, Rich it different API for… for it to access, you know, all of that stored and managed for you. That’s also a big companies, the it folks want from big companies.

And that’s why we had a really unique opportunity to really step into that with square and really meet their needs and building this, you know, this centralized, you know, Bank data lake that’s ideal.

And a lot of big companies now need and it really sets up it to support that well.

But also the treasury group to then be more of a resource to it because they’re democratizing that data internally for… for other groups who may not have access. So it’s both, you know, kinda often san defense in terms of what they can play to help out the company.

The team to… to… to that point there’s all sorts of opportunities once you have this… this… this data lake in place, how far are you along the sort of the… the journey of using this data and perhaps ways you haven’t thought of before maybe feeding it into different departments, making it available to different parts of the… of the business. Is that an ongoing project for you? Or have you not well?

Yeah, it’s an ongoing.

Project, I mean, we’ve got the finance department internally, the… the champion this because there’s… there’s obviously use case application feeding our ERP system, doing reconciliation at the top level.

But, you know, we, you know, is we connect with our different product teams and as they talk about how they’re going to scale their businesses, you know, we’re showing here this here’s your data right here, you know, and we can, we know we’ve connected to all your banks. All of your information is right here. So there’s nothing for you to build.

And I think what we’ve you know, kind have seen in the power of this as… as people start to kinda press on this and start to ask questions like, you know, the… the scope gets bigger and… bigger and is still kind of expanding.

You know, we’re in the process of opening a Bank of our own that will, you know, charter actually here in the state of Utah, but, you know, that, you know, if you think treasury technologies bad, you should see what the fed computer systems look like. And if we think about it, how could we interface directly with this?

Like why don’t, we just go straight to the source and figure out how to taken that data because there’s powerful things that, I mean, you know, the, it just gets your eyes get bigger and it gets more and more complex.

But the, you know, the exciting part is, you know, coming from treasury, you know, your tech resources are always the same number at any company at zero. So you can ever do anything here. Once you show them this piece of tracking treasury technology.

All of a sudden, you know, some of the better developers all over the company, want to start working with it, want to start developing it and, you know, you get an incredible amount of horse power that way. So, it’s been really exciting to see.

I mean the scope is, you know, expanding it a tremendous rate and, you know, provide is becoming increasingly important partner in the financial infrastructure and that’s you know, like to get to breath point. I never understood work data lake came from, but here we are.

I just…

Having…

That…

Data, I’m having an…

Yeah, he’s not.

The brand and he’s really good at the branding is not as.

To hire… quite technologically savvy, you’re comfortable floating you’re both on the data like I’m pushing in that window. I’ll stop… watching and maybe that, I think, you know.

You’re not don’t my case, my.

It sounds quite sort of tech heavy. It sounds a bit, you know, I’m really a numbers guy. I’ve done the treasurer.

I don’t really wanna get hands on and involved in all of this sort of… of API is and programming with your experience team isn’t something that’s any treasure could do. I mean, I know you were know, the use case but do you need to be someone who is technologically savvy to engage with this stuff?

I mean, I, you know, I don’t understand the API technology but that’s not what I’m here for.

I mean, I think that, you know, why I’ve enjoyed and florist and treasury roles is, you know, it’s a role that, you know… you know, treasury as its own thing.

You know, you kind of, you know, you’ve got the investments in this kind have high concept kind of back office stuff that you can do and people can sit in a tear it and, you know, play golf three days a week and meet with investment managers.

But I’ve always found, you know, the more exciting thing is to be able to use the treasury function and kind of dig into the business in different ways. You know, when I was an Amazon, I did the first like always got the third. I was the third guy on the team. So I got the third best projects.

So I did things like least the first truck for Amazon like that was, you know, we never done any directly saying and look, you know, look at on planes flying through this guy.

So being able to get an, and those different things was always more exciting.

So with this, it was much more about proselytizing and saying, look, we’ve got this data. I know we can use this in this company. I know they’re the it resources that can consume this. We just need to get these two things together.

And so it was much more about being a product champion for this internally.

And, you know, once you show people the technology, you know, no program or wants to go work on back office treasury stuff.

But this is all customer facing forward, you know, forward facing, you know, things that will have, you know, implications for our own products.

And I don’t think there’s a company… company, all companies all have a pretty good it team, you know, tech teams at this point almost regardless of where you are.

And I think that, you know, folks are able to introduce this technology and what it can do for, you know, for the business. I think that, you know, there’s gonna be a lot of uptake there.

So, Brett in a… in a moment, we’ve got some questions coming in from our audience today, but I just wanted to see the next stages for Trovata, you’re effectively democratizing this… this product.

Now, we’ve heard about this quite high end use case with a large tech savvy company.

But this isn’t something that’s restricted to, you know, big tech or… or early adopters.

This is something you’ll now offering to the to companies in the widest phase. We feel like conventional companies. You don’t just give me a flavor of… of kind of where you’re going after this.

Yeah. Absolutely.

I mean, we… we kind of started, you know, big companies, we actually started more mid market.

You know, quit square is certainly is… is on the larger end of the companies. We have a handful of… of… of large companies.

But so it sort of depends, we’ve been careful not to way too far up market just because right out of the gate, we didn’t want to tackle on, you know, to bigger companies that have, you know, 50 banks, you know, because it, the… the aspect of the API is… is still maturing, not ever Bank know 90 percent of the banks globally.

Now, if that’s why is that they… they have an API strategy API is are starting to roll out. It’s still in the early and things though.

So it’s not this ubiquity where you get all the benefits of the API yet because the banks are still, you know, rolling them out.

So meanwhile though when you’ve got customers and only have, you know, three banks or for banks or to even one Bank, you know, all the aspects of what, you know, we do from an application side and data side is still incredibly a creative right out of the gate.

You know, the stats are for our, you know, we have, you know, half our companies are, you know, public companies, half our private companies.

We have a… a good swath of companies that are in that, you know, 100,000,000 to 300,000,000 in revenue. We have a lot of, you know, on the upper end, upper mid market.

So going up to a 1,000,000,000 in revenue, two, maybe 3,000,000,000 revenue squares a little larger than that.

We have a handful of a little bit bigger companies in that, but you kinda look at those, that… that smaller segment, those are controllers. Those are cfos or director nephew day. And… and you know, you look at that.

And that side of it there’s… there’s just a ton of… of benefits for those folks, you know. So yeah, absolutely.

We… we definitely wanted to do something that was because we have this really strong data DNA. It’s something then let’s automate the heck out of all of these cash workflows, you know, up and down for all, you know, really the broader market.

Okay.

Now, if I wanted guys in a… in a few minutes, I’ll be asking you what you’ve learned, you know, is there anything you do differently after this experience? It’s a tremendous thing to have done. But we do have some questions coming in from the audience.

And if you’re happy with that, I’ll put a couple of those to you and we’ll see whether they… they fly or not.

So we’ll start with tap… tap, an act of our who says, Tim, this is one for you.

Do you see a scenario where you do all your corporate treasury sweets payments investments using third party apps rather than your banks web portal? So I guess this is not necessarily Trovata specific, but, you know, do you have the bug for third parties that are you moving away from Bank portals?

Yeah, I am. Yeah, I mean much of our businesses is already direct to banks.

I mean, part of the, you know, part of the founding ethos of square, it was to get people their money as fast as possible. So we’ve been trying to kinda cut out all the middleman as far as we can.

So get directly to get directly to the payments rails, get directly to the, you know, card… card services, get, you know, directly to Bank of England, you know, kind of start cutting out some of these middle layers.

So I think as much as possible, you know, we’re going to continue to do that in squares built on top of third parties. I mean, we’re not ourselves a Bank.

So, you know, the whole system exists on top of other people’s infrastructure in terms of finance. I think we’ll continue to do that.

I mean, the, what we’re doing with our Bank web portals right now is next to nothing.

I think, you know, we’ll do the occasional, you know, the occasional inner company, the occasional inner company wire.

But more and more we’re pulling stuff out and we’ll be putting it into applications like this.

So, yeah, ideally, I couldn’t even show you the water dongles I’m carrying around these days but ideally, you know, they’ll be… they’ll be one. So I think that’s you know, that that’s what we’re trying to get to?

Which is a great objective tap. And I hope that answers your question one for you. Brett from Larry brand. An interesting one.

Hey, Larry asks what are your next API processes the Trovata might tackle in the future? And then what’s the, what does the future look like? Once you’ve sort of perfected the API model that you good. It’s… it’s what are you gonna be doing that?

Yeah. I mean we’re already starting to essentially become a standard for this. I mean, we’re… we’re talking to a lot more banks now.

I mean, we, and I… and I see there’s another question about this even in Europe.

You know, we, we’re… we’re… we’re working on now 12 Bank integrations right now.

We’re going to be the process of and that was a big part of our recent fundraising where we’re expanding significantly are… are the speed at which we’re bringing on banks and the doing these API connections were now, you know, getting into a run rate of about three a month now. So we’re… we’re moving a lot more quickly through this process. So I think that it’s gonna continue to open up.

We’re we’ve been a little hesitant to try to, you know, we’ve been really try to be really transparent with clients, especially bigger companies and say, hey here’s, where we’re at. We’ve got, you know, let’s look at your Bank mix.

What of those we wanna make sure that we can both 60 together quickly if the Bank mix, if we haven’t quite adopted the many banks that you have, then let’s wait a little bit and we’ll come back. You know, we definitely wanna work with you.

But we’re also trying to be real and knowing that let’s focus on as the Bank sort of open up, we’ll continue to embrace those and it’s really going to open up our market and serving… serving more clients. And that way.

Thank you for that.

I hope that covers your question, Larry James cost or off to you need to convince the team.

I think we spoke about that earlier in terms of the… the… the team you had on both an interesting one from what Matt, hello, Whitman, who I think is referencing, you just briefly mentioned bitcoin early around team but Whitman, this is almost a completely irrelevant to the topic of today’s webinar.

But hey, since… since we’re here, we’ll with us, he mentioned bitcoin, is that something you’re looking at?

So I guess this is prompted by he loves decision to hold bitcoin as an investment for… for tesla side question, want the team, is it something you’re interested in? And then for Brett, is it something Trovata can handle? So let’s go with him first?

We are interested in… in our founder.

Jack Dorsey is made know a small… small mentioned of his interest in the technology as a financial enabler as, you know, potentially democratizing that, you know, and helping economic empowerment.

And so we, you know, you can trade it through square I’m just on cash app. If you’re in the us.

If you download that you can buy, you can probably a bitcoin bought within the next couple of minutes.

We bought… we bought 50,000,000 a bitcoin a few a couple of months ago and what was a really well time, I really well time purchase and quite a bit more yesterday.

So we’re very interested in this and it’s actually been, and if we want to do a future web webinar about enabling your treasury… your treasury function with bitcoin. We’ve done, you know, we paid some employee bonuses in bitcoin. We’re working on kind of an, our ap process or we can do things with coin. We’re holding it on the balance sheet.

We’re looking at kind of risk management around it and there’s all kinds of applications and we’ve had to develop cash flows and, you know, kind of similar cash positioning model around how we deal with bitcoin in and out, you know, our treasury team is around the globe.

So somebody’s gotta get up at three in the morning on Sunday to, you know, help us… help us trade. So it’s been a really exciting.

It’s been a really exciting second track that we’re working on in terms of, you know, enabling treasury with the client.

But yeah, Bretton, I were just talking about it a couple of days ago about what, you know, we should be able to see this in our treasury workstation like let’s you know, connect to the trading platforms. Let’s you know, start to see our own balances. Let’s see, you know, kind of our… our… our cash positions in bitcoin, you know, kinda by time zone and they gotta be a fantastic add to this is.

And which, thanks for that question that’s… that’s… that’s got a really interesting we’re still. So thanks very much. Bread from your perspective is a it’s a good question. You know, we’ll Trovata would be able to… to assimilate bitcoin Intuit state.

Absolutely. I mean, we can now that’s the… that’s the beauty about what we’re doing. We’re and I think a lot of our early customers see that?

Yeah.

It’s not, you know, we’re going to be constantly adding more functionality where we actually do weekly releases through the platform in terms of added functionality.

So the speed at which we’re adding stuff is… is moving so fast, but I think also your future proofing your data strategy.

So when it looks at, you know, actually integrating with, you know, more of a crypto holdings a group, you know, those companies doing that because it’s pretty advanced, typically have an API I mean, and the… and the data because we have such an open data model. All that stuff is… is… is really easy.

The… the power of normalizing all data that’s really our specialty managing big, you know, data at scale across all of these different kinds of good bad and ugly interfaces. All of that, you know, in terms of the color of the data as well.

It’s coming through all of that sort of making it all normalized, all consumable, essentially.

And we’re gonna continue to, you know, Trovata again really trove of data we want to really build really and make use of it. So you can manage it really… really easily.

The most intelligent financial centralized source of data for… for you and your company. And those… those are the things that are, you know, absolutely right? In our.

Wow.

Great. Thanks very much.

I’m sorry if we weren’t able to get to your question, Chris James, we… we couldn’t quite make it, but you can watch the replay afterwards and feel free to connect directly with us and Alexa before with questions to speakers.

So guys, I threatened you with that final question which is always a terrible and, you know, what have you learned?

What would you do differently after this puts a huge project really impressive. It’s Tim if… if I come to you and I guess I’ll give you the option. You can answer it either way. Either, what am I learned? All? What would I do different?

If I can do this again… I mean, we’ve you know, we’ve… we’ve learned a ton.

I mean, we really, you know, kind of advanced treasury function, you know, as I say from, you know, kinda Brett coming into the office five years ago with, you know, kind of have a white board and, you know, to have this in practice, powering the treasury function has been, you know, incredible. And I’m just, you know, thrilled to see the results. I mean, I’d… I’d love to have done it faster.

You know, I mean, I’ve paid, you know, the day he walked in, I was trying to think about how to cancel the contract with my existing provider, like would have loved to tear it up that day.

And then, I think, you know, I, every time I go to sign that check, you know, like a little tier comes out of my eyes.

So, you know, would have loved to, you know, stop paying them earlier than I did, but I’m… I’m… I’m you know, please just punch that they’ve… they’ve received the last dollar for me. So I think that… that.

Have now completely exited from your old CMS provider. There’s no legacy systems in place.

There is.

Because I still.

Running out the clock on my last contract. So there’s like 30 days or something like that. So I can pull all the data.

It’s so shocking.

The legacy providers and kind of how they think about the space because I’ve actually been, you know, doing webinars and talking about Trovata, you know, been involved with the company. I have yet to my client service officer just never calls.

Feel like.

After you’ve kind of publicly advocated for a different system. They’d… they’d like to see.

So, if you’re on this webinar and I can check and see if… if you are Tim’s concept, directly, give the guy a call. I mean, it’s reaching out to you play.

It’s a little…

Late now, but anyway…

I am, and… and I think that’s the other thing at some point Tim has been so great.

This is taking so many coverage customer reference calls that we… we kind of have to, you know, set them up on the… on the commissions. He’s been so great that they’re really be a proponent.

But I think that’s the fun thing about this is, you know, as… as companies start to lean into something that’s new and walk down that journey, it… it really is fun to kind of see the, you know, everybody’s eyes open up and then it’s usually we didn’t even having some on… on demos where it’s like wait a second. I don’t think you can really do this… this. Is this… this too good to be true? I think that’s the thing that, but those are fun because then as we sort of demonstrate that and we want to prove our way every day of the journey and serve our customers well in… in that journey, making them feel good about putting their trust and faith and… and taking the sleep, you know, because it really is needed and it’s… it’s you know, we have so many customers are… are seeing it and all the benefits really pay off.

I think this has been a really… really interesting conversation.

We could go on for another hour easily, but we did promise that audience 45 minutes.

And if you’re really desperate to go get a cup of coffee or do whatever else I pledge to you is that we will finish.

However if you want more information, you can go to the treasury dragons, WWW, dot, treasury dragons, dotcom, that’s a Trovata page there, there is a physical case study you can… you can download. And of course, if you need more information, contact Trovata directly. They’ll be, I need to place to help you understand more about this case study and more.

About what’s…

Possible we’ll be working with the Trovata again in the year ahead and look out for all our other providers.

If you’re interested in joining us again, you might like to have a look at the next session on Bank account management.

You could register for that now and that’s a straightforward treasury dragons fight between four vendors for supremacy and then interrogation by our treasury experts, the dragons. But until then, can I think everyone for attending really? We do appreciate your time with this questions. Just come in. It is a bit late. Sorry we are going to be able to get but, Tim ready. Thank you so much.

I know it’s Brett said you’ve… you’ve stood up several times to… to talk about this. Will be really grateful for you doing that Brad. Thank you to you for being here and sharing some of the inside view.

No apologies to toll for that being know powerpoint to tool during the last 45 minutes, we hope you enjoyed it. And we hope to see you again soon.

So, I hope for what, maybe one of the… the last times as we move towards live events, it’s time to say goodbye with the traditional Zoom way.

So, goodbye, everyone, we never do this any other time except on these workflows. But that way we’re done. Thank you everybody. Thanks, bye. Thanks.