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Paul Weingarth – Slyp Ep 195.

November 1, 2024 · Hosted by Dexter Cousins

We have a great Fintech Chatter Podcast for you this week, a transformative piece in more ways than one. Dexter Cousins caught up with Paul Weingarth, Co-founder & CEO of Slyp, Australia’s only independent startup backed by all four major banks.



About This Episode

12 months ago Paul and Slyp were in a challenging place. Paul’s health and fitness had suffered with the stress of running a startup and Slyp were facing capital runway challenges. Things weren’t looking great.

After a week of playing the victim (and a good talking to himself), he decided enough was enough and he needed to change right now! By focussing on his health first, the past year has been phenomenal. Paul is back in his best shape since his Uni days, shedding 25kg and doing his first triathlon. And Slyp has bounced back from its challenges with the launch of Go Rewards!

This is one of our favourite-ever episodes. Paul first appeared as an early guest – to see first-hand his journey and to be able to share it with you through the podcast is something we’re really proud of!

About Slyp

Since Slyp launched in 2017 they have made it their mission to bring brands closer to their customers. The digitising of receipts and connecting the “SKU to Who” has allowed them to grow their market presence. Their DNA has always been about enriching the customer experience and helping retailers unleash the power of their POS data, to drive targeted engagement opportunities with their customers.

Go Rewards Powered By Slyp

They recently launched Go Rewards the first turnkey, full-stack loyalty platform that drives smarter commerce allowing retailers including, Kmart, Country Road Group, Chemist warehouse and countless others, the opportunity to harness the power of consumer buying, getting to “Know & Grow” their customer relationships.

About Paul

With a career rooted in digital commerce and payments, Paul previously led PayPal Australia’s growth team. His expertise and passion lie in customer experience, with a vision to revolutionise payment experiences, delivering step-change value to both retailers and their suppliers.

Outside of work, Paul has reignited his dedication to health and fitness, recently competing in his first triathlon.

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Links from this episode.

Paul Weingarth on Fintech Chatter.

More on bank partnerships and payments on Fintech Chatter.

Full transcript.

Lightly edited for readability — filler words removed, wording otherwise unchanged.

Dexter Cousins
Fintech Chatter podcast, brought to you by Tier One People, the leaders in executive search for fintech.

Hello and welcome to Fintech Chatter, the podcast show where I connect with fintech leaders for a bit of a chat. I’m your host Dexter Cousins, and do I have a special episode for you today. Today’s guest is Paul Weingarth, CEO and co-founder of Slyp. Founded in Sydney in 2016 by Paul and Spiro Rokos, Slyp is a global company supported by Australia’s four major banks. Their journey began with a simple idea: transforming paper receipts into a digital format. This innovation laid the groundwork for what Slyp is today, a company dedicated to making life easier for people and helping brands connect more meaningfully with their customers.

I chat to Paul about the launch of their new platform, which is already delivering great results to customers only 6 weeks in. What makes today’s show so special is Paul’s personal transformation in tandem with Slyp’s journey. Paul has been an early supporter of Fintech Chatter and, as guest number nine, we’ve since become good friends. It was only 12 months ago I had a catch up with Paul where Slyp and his personal health were on the line. It’s been inspiring to watch Paul transform himself and lead the transformation of Slyp in tandem, and I’m really grateful to Paul for being so vulnerable and sharing his personal journey with you all.

Before I speak to Paul, if you’re new to the show make sure to give us a follow on your favourite podcast player, and if you’re coming back, thanks so much for your support.

That is fantastic to be here again, I to say it, third time on the show I think. For very first one was April 2020. You just made a huge announcement at a Tang. We were all in lockdown wondering what the world was going to be. But look, before we came to talk and reminisce, tell me a little bit about Slyp and your role at the business.

Paul Weingarth
Yes, so as you mentioned diar, we were very fortunate to get capital and investment from strategic investors, being the big four major banks. So NAB, Westpac and CBA.

Dexter Cousins
Are you still today the only tech to?

Paul Weingarth
I believe so, I believe so, yeah. So we’re on a mission to help connect retailers with their customers through a variety of channels, and the bank channel is one of them. But really at the core of what we do at Slyp, it’s all about taking retailers’ point of sale data or receipt level data and connecting that receipt data to a payment and to a customer, to deliver whole range of different value propositions to enrich that payment experience for the customer and to bring retailers and their customers closer together to build those first party customer relationships.

So in a nutshell, we have a little, over a nice glass of wine when one, about five years ago when I was in San Francisco, I came up with this one-liner of what we do. Ultimately what we do is we connect SKU to who. So we connect SKU level receipt data to who the customer is, and then we enrich that transaction moment with digital receipts, with loyalty rewards and a bunch of other data and insight capability, again to bring retailers and their customers closer together.

And also by connecting the SKU to the who, to the customer, what’s in the basket, not just how much they’ve paid where, but what they’ve purchased, we could add a whole new dimension to that commerce ecosystem, because we can actually start to bring in, and this is what we’re starting to do now, which we’ll cover no doubt later, is we can bring in the suppliers of those retailers into the ecosystem, because we know what brands those customers are purchasing. So this is a really fundamental shift in adding a new dimension into that commerce ecosystem, so really excited about that.

Dexter Cousins
Awesome. Now, we are going to talk about that in a bit more depth, because I think it’s a really poignant kind of journey, not just personal but from a business perspective as well. Because if I kind of cast my mind back to when Slyp first hit the scene, it was kind of part of that, what I call that fintech 1.0 movement, where it was, hey, we’re digitising receipts. To hear you talk about this thing that’s way bigger, right, broader and ambitious, I think is kind of really, you know, it’s a perfect example of how fintech in Australia has had to grow up very, very quickly.

And at the same time, despite there being so many challenges around things like funding and just the market itself, have had to get bold and ambitious at a time when maybe when we should have been bold and ambitious, no zero interest rates. So I’m kind of, I can’t wait to talk to you more about that, but before we do, maybe if you just tell us a little bit about kind of some of the customers that you’ve worked with, I guess the size of the organisation, where you’re at now, just to give listeners a little bit of an idea around the scale of the kind of Slyp in the business.

Paul Weingarth
Sure. So we act as Switzerland in the middle, and we sit at the intersection of payments, retail tech and fintech, effectively enriching that transaction moment to bring retailers and their customers closer together. As I mentioned earlier, that can happen in a variety of channels, whether it be the banking app, whether it be the merchant’s own app, whether it be our new app that we’ve developed on behalf of our retailers and their customers called Go Rewards, which we’ll talk about later no doubt.

But really you think about where we started, was always around building a digital receipt standard that could be taken astray and obviously offshore as well, but our focus is very much on our home ground here in Australia. And part of what we’ve had to develop over the last, what, eight years it’s been now, feels like a little bit longer than that because there’s always battles that you need to go through on this journey, you have your highs and your lows no doubt.

But really where we focused initially was building the right infrastructure to be able to connect into the variety, several point of sale systems that retailers use, and those point of sale systems have traditionally held the keys to the kingdom when it comes to accessing receipt level data in a structured real-time format. So we spent years building that infrastructure and those pipes into those point of systems, and then our first proposition, and I suppose our leading proposition, was all about getting that data out of there to enable digital receipts to get rid of paper. There’s 10.6 billion paper receipts every year in Australia and we’ve made a dent in that, but there’s a long way to go.

And I suppose we wanted to create a really seamless, frictionless experience for customers around digital receipting, by linking the digital receipt to the payment card and ultimately display that to the customer without having to check out and add that friction at checkout, I should say. We’ve processed billions of transactions. We work with the largest retailers in the country, your Kmarts, all the way through to your big fashion houses like Country Road Group, pharmacy chains, so from fashion to pharmacy, Chemist Warehouse. So some really big category leaders that have leveraged our point of sale and data capability to enrich the transaction moment through receipts.

But now we’re evolving, and the long, the grand plan was always to start with digital receipts, but we go back to our very, very first pitch deck, it was all about unlocking even more value beyond receipts. Receipts are always our landing pad, and connecting that SKU and who to first deliver good hygiene, a digital receipt, better experience. But now it’s about how do we actually help customers, particularly in a time like now where everyone’s doing it tough, not just consumers with the cost of living challenges out there, but also retailers. We’re seeing, yesterday we saw another retailer going to receivership. It feels like every month. And they need to get better and more sophisticated at engaging with their customers and nurturing those customer relationships. So yeah.

Dexter Cousins
It’s interesting to mention that, because I think this has been, there’s been warning signals of that for a long time. If you think of the outsourcing of just something simple like the takeaway delivery.

Paul Weingarth
Yes.

Dexter Cousins
You don’t have that data, right? Uber has it, whoever.

Paul Weingarth
That’s right. And they get capitalise on that and profit from that, yeah. And this is one of the things that we see, that as you aggregate, like an Uber Eats for example, or any of those order ahead platforms or delivery platforms, or a lot of, most aggregation platforms, solve a really big customer problem, which is an ecosystem of merchants all under one roof, in one app, and a consistent, seamless experience. The challenge for those small guys and even the mid-market and the upper larger enterprise guys is they actually get disintermediated from their customer.

So what, great for the customer and providing that utility of aggregation. The challenge is, and they’ve got a great marketplace there of customers or po customers booo or the aggregator apps do to connect with merchants, merchants don’t know who that customer is. And so one of the things we want to do with our next product that we just released is enable customers to get what they need and have a great experience around utility of aggregation, but without the disintermediation of the customer and that inry tower.

Dexter Cousins
I’m going talk about the new product, because you and I had a conversation about a year ago, and I think kind of, you know, I got the sense that it was, hey, we need to do something different but we’re not sure what. Is it AI, is it this, is it that? Kind of, you start to kind of get drawn into where the money’s going and where the buzz is.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah.

Dexter Cousins
So to be sitting here with you now, to not only be talking about, we’re launching it, but we’ve launched it, we’ve had massive success already with our flagship customer, and then hear you talking about the actual premise and what it does, is really, I think it’s reassuring, right, that you’ve kind of, you were able to take, at a time where there’s so much noise and you’re getting pushed and pulled in so many directions, to have the clarity to go, this is what it is, right.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah.

Dexter Cousins
And what I mean by that is, you talk all about data, you have me from AI once.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah.

Dexter Cousins
And I think that conversation, I know you even say to me, are you going to do something in AI, and we were all, yeah, well I tried crypto, I, that’s it.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah, yeah. It’s been, and look, it’s been a wild journey. And I think one of the things, we built a lot of trust with hundreds of, some of the retailers I’ve mentioned before, we’ve got hundreds of retailers on our platform that trust us with their data, and that’s been fundamental to us being able to get the traction that we’ve had with leading retailers all the way down to small medium-sized businesses as well. And I think one of the things that became really clear to us was this need for those retailers to build direct relationships with their customers. Why is that? One is they need to be way more efficient in how they acquire customers, but also retain and grow that customer.

And for us, we were listening to this, and some of our first retailer, Supabarn, that’s gone live 8 weeks ago, they already had a loyalty platform, but it just was not up to scratch. It was built probably in the early 2000s, hadn’t done a lot of maintenance, it was from an existing system and provider that wasn’t really a core focused around loyalty, and definitely wasn’t built in the era of AI, that’s for sure.

So we listened to what, and we heard from our bunch of our retailers, was kind of send this moment where all these different retailers saying, hey, what are you guys doing around loyalty? Which you’ve got all of our receipt data, can you help us connect with the customer and build us an app to connect with that end customer, and build us a loyalty platform that delivers out of the box personalisation, using the SKU and the who data to deliver customers relevant content? Can you deliver us a platform that unlocks the ability for our suppliers who supply us to connect with their customers and help us fund some of the value propositions and incentives to keep our customers shopping with us?

But importantly, it’s not about polluting that in shop art with just spray and pray deals, it’s about getting really personalised content to that shop art. And I think the beauty of AI and machine learning now is that there’s a lot of this stuff that you can pull off the shelf. You’ve got to build all the great capability, utility around that to drive great customer experiences and make it really technically simple for retailers to turn this stuff on, because they are really busy, and it’s got to be super efficient and feasible and commercially viable as well.

So we listened to that, and our retailers are coming to us saying, we need help, can you help us, we trust you. And then we said, okay, wave your magic wand, what do you want? And it was, you know, a turnkey solution, out of the box personalisation, first party relationships, we need to know who our customer is, need to feed that information into our marketing automation platform so we can talk to that customer. And so we said, okay, that’s great, we’ll take some of that, and then let us go and speak to your customers.

So I stood out the front of stores, my design team, my product team, handing out vouchers and getting to interviewing customers and asking them, hey, wave your magic wand, customer, what do you like about this program you see today at the store? What you could wave your magic wand, what would you change? And there are a couple of things that we heard, and we did research, quantitative research, we did a lot of research and design thinking on this.

Dexter Cousins
You personally did the research?

Paul Weingarth
I did that with my team, yep, absolutely. I’ve been out in the store signing people up to the app. You have to be out there in the front line, and it gives me energy. Like we had a customer the other day that came out, I signed her up, she did one shop at our first merchant, Supabarn, and she signed up to the app in less than a minute, did a shop, scanned a card, and she had a $20 voucher sitting in there for her next shop. She said that would have taken her about nine months to get that $20 voucher she got off her first shop.

And that was because we brought the suppliers in. So she bought products that were on member bonus, that was funded, so it might have been a $10 cash back or a $20 cash back, or even a combination of little $2 cash backs, thousands of SKUs through the store had member bonus. One shop, she got a $20 voucher, which would have taken, as I mentioned, months and months to get, and she literally was like skipping out of the store, she was so happy with herself. And that for me feeds the beast.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah. So if you’d have interviewed me, I would have said I’m sick of having a scun flipping fly.

Paul Weingarth
That’s what we heard, yeah. So two, the other thing, just to close that out. First thing was, I want it to be of value, because there’s a simple equation we heard actually when it comes to loyalty and rewarding customers and driving stickiness, which is value that the customer gets, minus the friction to get that value, equals engagement and equals stickiness, right. So you could have a program that might be, again, just fictitious, 10 points per dollar and really high friction, you get low engagement. You go to a program that has one point per dollar and little to no friction and you get really high engagement.

So what we heard from customers was, we want one app and we want one tap, right. We don’t want to sign up to every single loyalty program, have all these siloed agreements and relationships that have different methods to access those programs. We want it consistent, we want it uniform, we want it aggregated in one app, and we also want it connected to our payment as well. We don’t want to have cards for all these different apps. So that’s something that’s coming soon in our platform, but one app was really, really key.

And also around privacy, that was one of the other key things that we heard from customers, which was, we don’t want to have to go to all these different channels to unsubscribe or resubscribe from programs. We want one channel to be able to manage, promote, control our privacy. So we’ve built it AI first, privacy first, mobile first. It’s really, really fundamental, and that’s what we heard from customers.

Dexter Cousins
Awesome, yeah. Now, I want to kind of take you back again a year, right, because the conversation that we had was very different to the one that we’re having today. And I’ve got to say, as somebody who, you know, consider myself a friend, I walked away and I was a little bit worried about you and I was a bit worried about Slyp. Now, for those who aren’t watching in the video, I’m sitting in front of what a Hollywood star. You look amazing.

Paul Weingarth
Thank you very.

Dexter Cousins
A year back, you kind of, you looking more like me. But not only were you kind of in bad shape, kind of physically and health-wise, but kind of Slyp was at a precarious kind of moment as well. You were making changes like everybody else had around kind of reducing numbers of staff, what did the future look like? And I always feel great and energised when I talk, and I came away that day too worried about you and, hey, I hope it’s going to be okay.

We had a conversation I think about three months later and you told me about the idea that you’ve got for the platform, and I was like, he’s back, he’s back. I genuinely was, and I would have said to you, this is amazing idea, do it, do it, do it. And I want you to share that journey, right, because I can’t put in words the transformation, not only kind of a personal transformation but also a company transformation, and how they’ve been in tandem, right. And it’s stellar, like, I mean, it is an absolute transformation.

Paul Weingarth
Thank you.

Dexter Cousins
How on earth did you get from that point to kind of today? It’s less than, it’s 12 months exactly, yeah, right, that conversation.

Paul Weingarth
Firstly, thank you very much, it’s very kind of you, they’re very kind words, and you’re right, it has been a very challenging year. But early last year we had some things, some projects that didn’t go our way. The market, the capital market were in free fall as well. The good times, it was cloudy, it was rainy for the macro, but also for us, we weren’t immune. And for me personally, it was really challenging. I, you know, very stressed, looking at how do I, you’ve got investors coming at you, staff going, hey, where are we at, what are we doing here, how do we evolve? You have retailers, your partners, pressuring you all the time to be better, and your personal life too. Everything gets impacted.

And then for me, I wasn’t sleeping well, I was stressed, I had inflammation through my body, I was overweight and I didn’t feel like, I was heavy on my feet, and that ultimately translates into your mind. And yeah, so I had probably a week where, and I’ve always been an eternal optimist, it’s been of my DNA, probably irrationally optimistic, but I try to keep the rational brain intact and mind.

But for me, when things don’t go, and this is the one thing most founders or anyone that’s in a startup can probably relate to, is that there are so many highs and so many lows all within a given hour or a given day or a given month, and the highs are never as high as they probably should be, or they feel like they are, and the lows are never as low as feel like they are as well. And being able to regulate that and maintain your energy levels as much as possible is absolutely critical.

So for me, when I had some pretty tough lows, you got two options in life, and this is my view, is you can either navigate and find a solution, or you can be a victim and say, why me, how did this happen, this didn’t go my way, find all the excuses. And I reckon I had about, for the first time in my life, about a week of being the victim. Yeah, and then I was like, you got to pull yourself out of this, for yourself, your investors, for your partners and most importantly for the team as well.

So where do you start? Like, I suppose for me, and the other thing is there’s no instant gratification, there’s no quick fix. And so you’re going to roll again and you’re going to go harder and smarter and learn from some of the things that didn’t go your way, either in your control or out of your control, take ownership of them and navigate. And so for me, that started with transforming my health, my physical, which led into my mental, which led into my happiness and my energy, which then unlock my creativity, which then transpires, your vibe attracts your tribe, right, so transpires into the team, into your customers.

And so, yeah, and one of the things I sort of set off when I started this transformational journey 12 months ago was, one, I want to measure all the data, because I’m very data driven. So I basically to P back into micro wins, rather than, like, it’s a big amount, physically, mentally, spiritually as well, there’s definitely some soul searching that goes on. But I want to build some new muscles in how I think about the journey, how I think about my health, putting myself first, making sure I carve out time. I don’t put any meetings in before 9:30 these days unless it’s an overseas call once in a while. I make sure I prioritise my physical health, because that unlocks my mental health, just to say, unlocks my energy, creativity and my all around happiness.

And so part of doing that, setting many goals every week and every month, but also now doing my first tri one next week as well, which is like, I thought I was going to be doing a, yeah, it’s a biggie, it’s the new to try. So a little bit nervous about that, but I’m gonna continue on this journey because it becomes part of life. I’ve been working on the physical, working out pretty much every morning for the last year, doing meditation is really important as well to clear your mind and to sort of de-stress. I’m very fortunate, I live down in Bondi, so I’m down at Bondi Icebergs gym, I can have a sauna and a swim in the beautiful ocean, rain, hail or shine, I’m down there.

And I think one of the biggest things that’s been my shift is embracing being uncomfortable, particularly in the physical. And I think as we get, you know, I’m in my early 40s now, you kind of have all the good things in life around you and you get very comfortable, and you lose that ability to really lean in and get uncomfortable and get out of your comfort zone and embrace that change, switch your mindset around that. So that’s been a massive thing, and I think I shared with you, when you’re on the treadmill and you feel like giving up, or you’re doing some physical exercise and you think you’ve reached your limit, there’s probably another 40 or 50% to go that you can give. And it’s not to say do this every day, but it’s like, what is that trigger in your mind to say, no, you know what, I’m going to go high, and I’m going to raise the bar even more.

So, yeah, beast mode’s been something that I talk to myself about, beast mode. And it’s, as I say, like, beast mode starts in the gym in the morning and then transpires into when I walk in, see the team and talk to customers and meet with our investors and think about creatively about solving complex problems and identifying opportunities, getting out and talk to people. Again, your energy and your vibe is everything. People want to gravitate to that warm, you know, exciting, buzzy energy, and opportunities just come off the back of that. It’s crazy.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah, and look, it’s something I’ve actually had conversations with myself about as well, right, is that you got to get out your comfort zone, right, kind of when where you’re being challenged, right, you know, kind of step muscle.

Paul Weingarth
It’s a muscle, right. It’s literally, I reckon I neglected that muscle, being too comfortable, for a good decade, and caught myself on it, and I was like, that’s kind of where it started, which was get comfortable being uncomfortable. Embrace those little, even those little one percenters that you don’t want to do, go and do them, because that actually drives a sense of satisfaction, purpose, energy, and you’re building this new muscle, and then you get those micro wins going and then the macro wins start.

Dexter Cousins
I think it’s one of the kind of seductions of starting your own business, you know, being a founder, you think that you’re always doing that just because you’ve taken that risk. Whereas if you transport yourself back to the times when you dreaming about being a founder or a business owner, having your own show, like you were breaking it, right, that’s why you weren’t doing it. And then you pulled up the courage to go, right, I’m finally doing it. Yeah, that only lasts for so long, right, you can’t kind of live forever off that.

Paul Weingarth
Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I mean, for me the fuel light was on, like it was empty, and it couldn’t have come empty at a worse of time. And as I say, there wasn’t enough time to feel sorry for yourself or to play victim, it was how do I navigate. And for me it literally started by walking down to Bondi Icebergs, doing a workout, running on the treadmill. I’ve dropped just over 25 kgs.

Dexter Cousins
Incredible.

Paul Weingarth
In 12 months. And that first run hurt a lot, even though I used to be a track runner back in my glory days at university and high school. I hadn’t really pushed myself that hard, and just started by walking and into running and then into pretty high performance training, so.

Dexter Cousins
Awesome.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah, my advice to anyone who’s got their challenges is, like, lean into that uncomfortable, just chip away at it, start small and get those little mini wins, because they’ll turn into massive wins pretty quickly. Three months, three months is all it takes to completely transform yourself.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah, awesome. Now, there’s another challenge that’s facing a lot of founders, people in the fintech industry, and that is navigating partnerships with big four banks. You’re the expert. You only want to do it with all four. What would be your kind of advice, guidance to people who either are developing a product where they’re going to need to, it’s to serve a big four bank, or they’re right in the midst of it and they got a partnership and they’re kind of hitting roadblocks, it’s not getting the traction that everybody hoped it would. Because, yeah, the big four banks are going into this with good intent as well, they want to make it work, but there’s just unforeseen challenges. What kind of tips could you people?

Paul Weingarth
Oh wow, that’s a big question.

Dexter Cousins
Remember we edit this, right, so you say yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Weingarth
That’s a massive question, and there are a heap of learnings that, you know, love to share. Think how do I unpack that. Firstly, my advice would be to any fintech out there that has a sole distribution strategy or concentrated distribution strategy to enable that through their bank partners, big four banks or even second tier banks, is to rethink that strategy. Because the speed that you want to work at as a fintech or a startup, scale up, is going to be worlds apart to the reality of how the banks, the machines of the banks work. And when banks take a long time to do things, to innovate, that there’s also risk and exposure of changing of their strategy, changing of stakeholders, key stakeholders with those organisations, that shift their strategy and don’t want to inherit the old strategy, want to go on their own path and what have you. So definitely have it as a secondary distribution strategy, don’t have it as a primary distribution strategy.

I think the other probably key thing, again, we can sit here for another half an hour and talk about this, but everyone’s got great intentions, and as you mentioned, the banks want to innovate, but the machine of the bank isn’t conducive to doing that at a pace that aligns to a scale up or a startup. But I suppose one of the other key points would be, make sure that if you are solving a problem for that bank or that partner, it is a big problem and is totally, tightly aligned to their core business, and is right on strategy, core strategy, not innovation strategy or innovation candy. And also be very, very careful of doing proof of concepts or pilots, because going from a proof of concept apart into production is daylights away from each other.

So things like, we’ve seen for example all the scams that are happening off the back of COVID and the hacking and the, feels like I got about 20 calls a day from some form of spammer, and the phishing emails and all these types of things. That’s a huge problem in financial services and that’s not going away. So that would be one where I would say, you know what, we have a really good solie, let’s go really hard at it and focus on that, but also manage your part one.

So you start with something small, prove it in market, and then you got your land strategy and then your expand strategy, but you work on both of them in unison. So focusing, one, don’t have it as a sole distribution strategy, it’s going to end in tears. Two, focus on real problems that are core of the business. And three, have like a multi-prong sort of pipeline approach to that as well. But yeah, it’s been a big learning for us, and as you mentioned, the banks want to innovate, they want to invest in the ecosystem, which is fantastic. The speed at which they can move and innovate is a major challenge.

Dexter Cousins
Looking to the future now, like, what can we expect from Slyp in the next 12 months?

Paul Weingarth
Well, God, we are incredibly excited about how we’ve sort of evolved the business.

Dexter Cousins
And man, I’m excited for Lan Che.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah, so it’s funny, you mentioned how different we are today, but actually our vision and our strategy, our go-to-market strategy has evolved definitely, but if you go back to our very first pitch deck when we were doing our angel round, this is the moment right now that we’re actually realising our vision. So a very good friend of mine and cl, and he was actually on the podcast saying this, one of the very first that I did, but he came up with a line that I’ve just lived religiously by, shared with everybody, said I got a 10-year vision and a 90 days planer.

Dexter Cousins
So you’re what, eight years, nine years now, and vision is.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah, that’s it. You got to win today to unlock tomorrow, yeah. And you’ve got to have the grand plan, but how you get there is going to be very different. How we’re getting there, we’re not there yet, right, we’re getting there, and I’m really excited. Next year is a big year for us. But to answer your question more specifically, we mentioned earlier the Go Rewards platform, which is our loyalty platform that will, we’ve just launched our first retailer. The results speak for themselves. We had some incredible, incredible metrics that have really, and that really satisfies us for the business, for Supabarn as our first retailer, one of our existing digital receipts providers. We’ve got hundreds more retailers on our platform that we want to take Go Rewards to. We’ve already signed three more since we’ve launched, so plenty more news to come on that shortly.

We see, again, connecting SKU and who, loyalty rewards is going to be a fundamental focus for us, particularly in this moment in time where customers are doing tough, retailers are doing tough, retailers want to bring their suppliers into that ecosystem. So by connecting SKU and who, we can enable a whole new dimension to that commerce ecosystem. Banks are also a really interesting spot as well, so our bank partners. There’s a lot of noise at the moment around the commoditisation and regulation around payments, retail or merchant payments, and obviously there’s a lot of innovation that’s happening around PayTo and what have you in that space.

I think this next 12 months is going to be incredibly interesting to watch what happens with regulation in payments. They’re talking about removing surcharging from some cards in the retail landscape. What does that do? How does that shift traditional rewards models, where you’ve got issuers or card issuers providing points to their customers? The margins to fund those points, there’s going to continue to be downward pressure on that.

So I think there’s going to have to be a shift in how rewards and loyalty within the payments ecosystem operates. That’s the opportunity we see with Go Rewards and being able to bring suppliers into that ecosystem, because merchants, they are literally doing it tough. Banks are looking for ways to reward their customers for being loyal with them and shopping at their merchants as well. But there’s one stakeholder that’s not in this picture yet, and that’s the suppliers, the CPG brands, your nesl, your Sony’s, Samsungs, all these different suppliers that don’t have an end customer but are super thirsty to engage with that customer through non-traditional channels. The only way they do that today is by advertising on social media or on TV or in store, being a to retail media, is a massive hot spot. And by connecting SKU who, we feel like we’ve got a really interesting right to play and to unlock that opportunity with the ecosystem, to bring it all together.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah, this is now becoming really clear that we’re kind of moving, I don’t even want to call it fintech 2.0, but I think we’re talking about fintech 3.0, right. Which is, if you look at that first iteration, it was regulatory arbitrage, it was making a clip on the ticket on the way through, doing something slightly more efficient, maybe it’s doing it slightly cheaper, but everything was just arbitrage. It was like the early days of online advertising, where you just do an advertising arbitrage, those, you click on a website was just literally a list of ads, right. It’s kind of like, that’s how I look at that early version of fintech. Then we’ve gone the super app, which I think is kind of, yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s had its time, I think they’re doing a great job, but now it’s kind of that ownership model of where Grab, Uber Eats owns the everything.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah, yeah, it’s being disintermediated again, absolutely.

Dexter Cousins
And I think this is now where the value chain is getting totally chopped up.

Paul Weingarth
You look at it, yeah, you look at it with, I think Afterpay have announced a partnership in retail media, so they’re getting involved in retail media. Some of the biggest US banks getting involved in retail media. The holy grail of retail media is not just connecting retailers with their own customer through a financial services product, but it’s their suppliers, and that’s what I’ve been sort of alluding to. And you can only do that when you have the basket, the SKU level data, connected to the payment, and that’s been our vision from day one. And it’s really exciting to know that we’ve survived at this point, the market’s finally moving to where we were hoping it was going to move to.

You’ve got, coming from the side of that, being able to get hyper personalised using AI and machine learning, so letting the machines do the work to curate content that is hyper relevant to end consumers. You’ve got the changing in the funding model as well, as I mentioned, with suppliers. So it’s a perfect storm brewing right now. And then you’ve got the disruption and the downward pressure on payments in general and the margins in payments, but the data that sits around the payments, are where juicy pieces, where the meat around the payments bone sits. And so it’s already starting, locally and offshore, but I think this is the next sort of really big thing in payments, and bringing together loyalty rewards and retail media all bundled in around the payment is fundamental.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah, and I mean, it extends way out between retail products, right. You got services, you know. Yeah, I think you and I both mentioned built in the US, which is, yes, people buy a house, right.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah, yeah, it’s really, really interesting. Yeah, I think crypto’s in an interesting spot as well. I’ve seen some interesting use cases outside of rewards on loyalty, but around lending. I think there’s some interesting use cases where traditional crypto’s trying to find, it’s been a great asset class and some people have made some very good money off it, but how does that translate into the everyday life of consumers? So there’s some really interesting Australian innovators that are building interesting capability, enabling people to leverage their Bitcoin asset as a way to secure a loan, and lending through smart contracts that way. So I think there’s going to be more use cases coming from crypto and how you can get more utility out of that asset if you own Bitcoin and other different cryptos. So that’s really interesting, I’m seeing that emerge as well.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah, I agree. I think that’s kind of really where, and certainly may kind of, the people that have respect in that space, I think they’ve been talking about tokenisation of real world assets for the last 18 months, and maybe, look, is this the use case? And I think that is definitely one to watch.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah, it’s interesting. I think I was listening to the founder of Lightning rails, which basically trying to create retail payments, merchant payments, using your crypto. The challenge they had, over in the US, these guys, and the challenge they had was that it’s very hard to displace the incumbents, because you can use your credit, you get 2 or 3%, merchant pays 2 or 3%. So they’re not as heavily regulated over here with their interchange rates.

Merchant pays 2 or 3%, most of that goes to the card network, well, some of it goes to the card network, most of it goes to the card issuer, and then chunk of that goes to the customer in free wies, flights, lounge access, all that sort of stuff. So while merchants wanted to accept crypto because it’s low to no cost and they don’t wear any risk around fraud or what have you, bad actors on the network, would solve a big problem, would be a merchant in the world that doesn’t want to take zero cost payments, near zero cost payments. The challenge is customers are on a drug they can’t get off, and the banks and the ecosystem.

Dexter Cousins
I think the other issue for it as well, Paul, is like, we kind of live in this bubble ecosystem, but 98% of people on the street, like, you mention crypto, first word they’ll say is scam.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah, absolutely.

Dexter Cousins
Element that I think that’s kind of really, that adoption is the biggest challenge that it faces. I think it’s kind of, yeah, that’s the hurdle it has to overcome. Mate, we’re coming to a wrap, but before we do, obviously really inspiring story, both personally and business wise. Other than Fintech Chatter, of course, like, what podcasts do you listen to? Like, where do you go to get inspiration and, you know, kind of education and ideas?

Paul Weingarth
Yeah, the one for me, outside Fintech Chatter, which I love, that’s my favourite. I mean, it just gives me, you’ve had so many great guests on this program, and you always take little snippets from each of them and learnings on how they think. I get exactly the same thing from everyone, yeah. It really is powerful stuff what you do for the community and founders like myself, so thank you for that.

I think for me, like, if I want to balance, because I can’t be always on, thinking about fintech and retail tech and payments and all of that, so I want to sort of zen out a little bit. I love The Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett. I think, again, given the sort of soul searching and health, physical, mental journey I’ve been on over the last 12 months, and trying to really give myself the right toolkit to continue to get uncomfortable, get out of my comfort zone and to perform better at every angle in my life. I think Steven Bartlett on D CEO has a really, really good cross-section of guests, some of the guests have different opinions on different things, so it’s good to critically analyse that. But yeah, it’s a mix of health, wellness, mental, physical, business, so for me, that’s something.

Dexter Cousins
One of his early episodes with the ex CEO co-founder of mono.

Paul Weingarth
Yes, yeah, had the CL founder on that as well. He’s had quite a few, I’ve listened to most of them, so yeah.

Dexter Cousins
And I think he also has a really soothing voice. Just like, I just don’t, I just don’t spook Athletic Greens, what’s the thing.

Paul Weingarth
He’s got his finger in a few pies, but he’s only young and he’s quite inspirational, and he’s very vulnerable, very honest, which I love. I think everyone can appreciate vulnerability is not easy, and hopefully I’ve been a little bit vulnerable today. And I think it’s always endearing, and that’s how you actually connect with people, as being who you really are and being authentic.

Dexter Cousins
I think it’s how you inspire people as well, right. You came up with your line, you know, for Slyp, and I think the line for my podcast is, look, it’s ordinary people doing some extraordinary things, right. And that’s the reality, right, like, you get people who you’d be talking in the schoolyard as a parent and just not thinking anything of it, and then you kind of see them in the AFR, right. And I think that’s the reality, right. And there’s a quote from Oscar Wilde, the great English writer, which is, we’re all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.

Paul Weingarth
Yeah.

Dexter Cousins
I kind of love that, right. It’s like, look, we are, right, we all suffer from the same emotions, feelings, right, regardless of what your position is, regardless of what privileges you’ve had in life, we all have to deal with the same emotions, fears, right, challenges. We all have to deal with death, we all have to deal with sickness, right, we all have to deal with those things. And I think that’s a kind of great leveller, everybody.

Paul Weingarth
100%. That’s, yeah, I mean, we’re getting deep now, but it’s good. Like, I think through this last sort of 12 plus months in my journey, connecting with nature has been really, really important, realising how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. It’s nothing like looking the ocean for me, and getting down there for the sunrise or the sunset, like practising that gratitude every single day has been incredibly important for perspective, and to effectively I’m not the energy to continue to chip away and navigate through challenging times.

Dexter Cousins
Awesome. Now, where can people find out more about Slyp platform?

Paul Weingarth
Slyp platform, so slyp.com. Refreshed slyp.com website is now live, after couple of weeks ago we think we launched that. You’ll also have our new loyalty platform called Go Rewards, so Go Rewards or one word .com, and of course on LinkedIn, so myself me up or our s business page.

Dexter Cousins
Awesome. Well, great to have you on again, like, fantastic story, and can’t wait to see what happens this next 12 months.

Paul Weingarth
Thank you for having me, D, it’s been a pleasure.

Dexter Cousins
Well, thanks for tuning in folks. If you enjoyed that episode, make sure to check out our back catalogue of over 300 interviews with great fintech leaders just like Paul. If you are new to the show, make sure you follow us on your favourite podcast player. If you’re coming back, thanks so much for your support. If you did enjoy the show, make sure to share it on your socials, it really helps promote great businesses like Slyp and great Aussie founders like Paul. Until the next episode, keep well.

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