We went On Call with Eric Barbier, the CEO and founder of TripleA, B2B crypto payments solutions company headquartered out of Singapore, that helps businesses globally increase their revenue by enabling crypto payments and payouts.

In this jampacked call, we do not only talk about crypto and TripleA’s work in pioneering business payments use cases, but also Eric’s entrepreneurial journey, being a serial fintech founder scaling companies amidst challenging market conditions like the turn of the millennium dotcom boom and crash, then the global financial crisis, as well as driving payments adoption and use cases from web2 to now web3 with TripleA.

Eric and TripleA are also the first investees of Insignia Ventures Partners‘ Moonshot Fellowship (see full press release), bringing together a network and community of web3 founders and talent building important infrastructures and laying the foundations for the still-nascent web3 ecosystem.

Highlights and Timestamps

(00:23) Paulo introduces TripleA and Eric; 

(02:26) The Entrepreneurial Pioneer Journey from Mobile Messaging to Mobile Payments to Crypto Payments for Business; “When I discovered crypto, I [thought], “That’s really a perfect solution to help merchants having fraud issues,” because the beauty of crypto is that there’s no risk of fraud. There’s no possibility to do a chargeback. Linking the two together, I felt that was a very interesting solution to help merchants especially cross-border selling digital goods…”

(06:16) Building for Crypto’s Mainstream Adoption through B2B Payments Software; “What’s pretty unique about TripleA is the fact that we are on the use case of crypto as a form of payment today. A lot of what we’ve seen and what is kind of collapsing at the moment is everything which is more related to trading, the purely speculative use cases, whereas what we do is we really use crypto in the way it was invented…I’m a big believer that for crypto to be used mainstream, it has to be regulated…So we have a very strong compliance program, and that for me [is a] big differentiator.”

(11:12) Advantages of Building Crypto Solutions in Singapore; “I think the main reasons are the fact that we are having a B2B business model and doing compliance on B2B, doing KYC on a business is way easier than doing KYC on a consumer or on an individual…And I think the second reason as well is that I think MAS and couple of other regulators knew me because I have licenses in different jurisdictions.”

(14:51) Assorted Topics: Un-Learnings from Web2, Starting Companies in Fundraising Winters, Local Stablecoins, Bridging Web2 Fintechs to Web3; “What’s interesting is as I get older, I’m spending less and less money. I’m raising less and less and I’m trying to be more and more capital efficient. What I’m trying to do, and that’s what I did with TripleA is always to be very close to be profitable. So at any point in time, I’m able to go back to profitability. So I will not need to raise money in a bad situation.”

(21:25) Future of Global Crypto Payments; “My vision is that we want to be the crypto treasury partner of CFOs and of businesses…It’s a US$300 trillion market, so it’s a huge market. This crypto payment can represent like 5-10% of the cross border B2B payments, especially with the people with tight working capital…for people where being paid couple of days earlier makes a difference, those are the people who are gonna adopt crypto first.”

(23:41) Rapid Fire Round;

About our guest

TripleA is founded by Eric Barbier, a repeat FinTech entrepreneur with a proven track record of building successful payments companies. He co-founded Mobile 365 back in 1999, a mobile messaging hub that reached a subscriber base of over 400 million. It was acquired by Sybase (now SAP) for $425M. He then founded TransferTo (now Thunes) in 2006 on the idea that transferring money should be as easy as sending a text message. Today, Thunes has raised over $60M and is now the largest payment network connected to mobile wallets. With partners like Paypal and M-Pesa in its network, Thunes supports 60+ currencies, enables payments to 110+ countries, and helps businesses accept 285+ payment methods. He is also an investor and board member in global fintech companies, including the first digital bank in Saudi Arabia.

Transcript

The Entrepreneurial Pioneer Journey from Mobile Messaging to Mobile Payments to Crypto Payments for Business

Paulo: Hey Eric, thank you for joining us on call today. How are you doing?

Eric: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be on your show.

Paulo: Thank you so much for coming on. I mean, there are a lot of Web3 startups and Web3 companies that are building different aspects of this whole economy, but then it’s not very often that you really find entrepreneurs who are really matched to the right use cases and so speaking of founder-market fit and founder-product fit, would love for you to bring us back to 1999 and how you started this journey in FinTech.

Maybe you can share with us how you became co-founder and CEO of this mobile messaging hub in Europe, and then how did that experience eventually lead you into TransferTo, into doing B2B mobile payments out of Singapore?

Eric: Happy to share more about the history, but I started Mobile365 in Europe together with three other co-founders and the idea back then, I don’t know if you recall, but when you were in Hong Kong, you couldn’t send a text message to the Philippines.

And so what we [were] doing was to start interoperability internationally of SMS, if you recall what an SMS is, the thing before WhatsApp. And so that was a very interesting journey, it was [during] the dotcom era and we raised a lot of money, over 70 million back then from mostly Californian VCs.

We [made] a lot of mistakes, as often when you are raising too much money, and we had to raise money at very bad time. I remember [it was] 2002, 2003. That was really bad, but we ended up, selling the company to Sybase, for 400 million, and then Sybase got acquired by SAP.

It was a very interesting journey and that’s [how] I moved to Singapore. So I was initially based in Paris, I was the CTO, and that’s how I moved to Singapore in 2001 to expand the business in Asia.

Paulo: And then you went to do TransferTo right? So how did you eventually decide to go into payments? Because going from mobile connectivity, there are lots of options that you can venture into.

Eric: Even though we did a great exit, actually most of the money [was] made by the investors. so I was not rich enough to stop working. And that’s where I started TransferTo. So I was already based in Singapore, and I actually got the idea while I was traveling to the Philippines.

And I realized that people were exchanging prepaid mobile credit between each other. And I’d say, “Oh, if people are doing it within the Philippines, [then it’s a] pretty [good] business to do it cross border, so say from Singapore of the Philippine or Hong Kong to the Philippines and all the other corridors, and that’s how I started TransferTo. Our very first transaction was in 2008.

That was between Malaysia and Indonesia, and then it grew to what has now become Thunes.

“…what we [were] doing was to start interoperability internationally of SMS…I realized that people were exchanging prepaid mobile credit between each other…[then it’s a] pretty [good] business to do it cross border, so say from Singapore of the Philippine or Hong Kong to the Philippines and all the other corridors…”

Paulo: And I still remember those days definitely, before all these ewallets, where you could buy load, where you still had to do it [on your own]. I still remember doing it on my Nokia phone back then. It’s great to see that you’ve been a proponent of a lot of this change, through these companies. And you’ve definitely learned a lot not just being an operator but also building companies from the ground up. And so 20 years from 1999, when you started Mobile365, you started TripleA, which is still payments, but now building B2B solutions for the crypto space.

So maybe you could share a little bit about what are the things that you were seeing in the market, I think this around 2018, and maybe even personal factors that led you to decide to actually start working on TripleA.

Eric: I got introduced to crypto through my engineers at Thunes. It was funny because it was a Friday night and usually on Friday night, the developers, the tech guys, they were usually playing games. 

But that day they were not playing games. So I tried to understand what they were doing and they told me about mining and trading and things you can do with crypto. And I actually bought my first crypto from one of my developers, so that’s how I got to get interested in crypto and then I realized that I had a lot of my clients having a lot of fraud issues with trade gap payments. 

So when I discovered crypto, I [thought], “That’s really a perfect solution to help merchants having fraud issues,” because the beauty of crypto is that there’s no risk of fraud. There’s no possibility to do a chargeback. 

Linking the two together, I felt that was a very interesting solution to help merchants especially cross-border selling digital goods to be able to have a payment solution without any risk of fraud.

“When I discovered crypto, I [thought], “That’s really a perfect solution to help merchants having fraud issues,” because the beauty of crypto is that there’s no risk of fraud. There’s no possibility to do a chargeback. Linking the two together, I felt that was a very interesting solution to help merchants especially cross-border selling digital goods…”

Building for Crypto’s Mainstream Adoption through B2B Payments Software

Paulo: Speaking of pain points and the merchants that you guys are helping out with TripleA, maybe you can explain for our listeners who might not be so familiar, how does TripleA impact the user experience of a merchant looking at it from their perspective? Maybe you can give a specific example of a digital transaction that commonly occurs. 

Eric: For instance, we’re working with Charles & Keith, which is a Singapore brand but very popular across the world. And so what we’re helping them is that in addition to the traditional payment option, like paying by Grab or by Alipay, and so on, now [they] have a new payment option, which is pay with your crypto and that’s what we power.

So say you’re buying a pair of shoes for a hundred dollars. What will happen is, [if] you decide to pay with crypto, you will be asked with which crypto you want to buy, Bitcoin for instance, Ethereum, USDC and so on. So you choose the crypto you want to buy with, and then what we do is we are locking the exchange rate for 25 minutes.

So this means that no matter what is the volatility of the crypto, even during the checkout process, the merchant is guaranteed to receive a hundred dollars on their bank account the next day. So we’re completely shielding the merchants from all the issues of crypto, like volatility, security as well as compliance.

So for the merchant, we really act like any of their payment gateway, exactly the same way they would work with a Stripe or somebody like this…and then they get a hundred dollars in their bank account the next day.

“You choose the crypto you want to buy with, and then what we do is we are locking the exchange rate for 25 minutes…So we’re completely shielding the merchants from all the issues of crypto, like volatility, security as well as compliance.”

Paulo: That’s really the key, the lock in period that you guys set, because again, even if crypto offers really that transparency, which you mentioned earlier, there is that volatility that comes with it and so what is the offset in terms of that lock in? Is there any offset that you guys need to do in order to make sure that that lock in is sustainable and can be applied to any sort of coins or any tokens?

Eric: So we are working with a dozen exchanges on the back end. So we have a very deep liquidity, we can tap on and so we’re connected with all those liquidity providers [through] APIs. So we’re able to immediately convert the crypto back to dollars or pesos or the currency of a merchant so as such in our business model, we’re not taking any crypto risk. We’re not keeping crypto on our balance sheet in the long run.

“We are working with a dozen exchanges on the back end. So we have a very deep liquidity, we can tap on and so we’re connected with all those liquidity providers for APIs.”

Paulo: I’m interested to know especially in light of the recent round, which should have been announced by the time listeners are hearing to this that was led by Razer, and you talked about in that press release about the importance of the gaming community as a market segment, aside from gamers, who are the typical types of customers who would actually pay using crypto for buying something from say, Charles & Keith?

Eric: So we have so many different types of users. You can have some of the people who’ve been investing long time ago and who are now quite rich, and then they would spend more on luxury items and things of this nature. We are also doing sub $1 transaction, for instance, in El Salvador with Digicel.

In El Salvador, Bitcoin is legal tender. So meaning the merchants there, they have to accept Bitcoin, and for that, we’ve implemented the lightning protocol, which is the cheap and fast version of Bitcoin. So that can be a $1 top up of a prepaid phone.

And as you know, you mentioned all the gamers, young generation, and so on. There’s [a] huge match between the gamers and the cryptocurrency use [cases]. But there’s 300 million people who are owning and using cryptocurrencies across the world, so you have so many different use cases, as more and more people are paying and get paid with crypto.

“You can have some of the people who’ve been investing long time ago and who are now quite rich, and then they would spend more on luxury items and things of this nature. We are also doing sub $1 transaction, for instance, in El Salvador…”

Paulo: I really like that you illustrated from the crypto rich, and those who are using it for sub $1 transactions, it really shows sort of the breadth of the capabilities that you guys can do in terms of facilitating these transactions and given the fact that you help a lot of these transactions really globally, how would you say TripleA stands out in terms of the broader Web3 ecosystem, like in terms of other payment solutions providers?

Eric: I think what’s pretty unique about TripleA is the fact that we are on the use case of crypto as a form of payment today. A lot of what we’ve seen and what is kind of collapsing at the moment is everything which is more related to trading, the purely speculative use cases, whereas what we do is we really use crypto in the way it was invented. The first invention of Bitcoin was really way to transfer value or money to somebody else. So, that’s what we’ve been focusing on. 

I would say the second thing as well, is that we are not coming from the angle of being the crypto cowboy, where it is the far west, you can do whatever you want. It’s not regulated. My approach was really the opposite. I’m a big believer that for crypto to be used mainstream, it has to be regulated. And so that’s why we took the focus of doing everything by the book, making sure that all the transactions are being screened against potential money laundering. We’re doing sanction list training and things of this nature. So we have a very strong compliance program, and that for me [is a] big differentiator.

“What’s pretty unique about TripleA is the fact that we are on the use case of crypto as a form of payment today. A lot of what we’ve seen and what is kind of collapsing at the moment is everything which is more related to trading, the purely speculative use cases, whereas what we do is we really use crypto in the way it was invented…I’m a big believer that for crypto to be used mainstream, it has to be regulated…So we have a very strong compliance program, and that for me [is a] big differentiator.”

Advantages of Building Crypto Solutions in Singapore

Paulo: That leads exactly into my next question actually, which is speaking of compliance, TripleA is actually the first crypto payments company to secure a license from the MAS under Singapore’s new payment services act, which actually came slightly later than when you founded TripleA

So I guess you’ve also been keeping a close watch in terms of how the regulations were developing and really took the chance once it came up. So maybe you could share with us, what was that journey like to actually secure that license, and then what has it meant for TripleA?

Eric: So the journey was pretty long. It took us something like 18 months to get the license. I think we’ve been quite lucky to get the license, [and be] among the first ones for crypto payment, and there’s still very few licenses which have been issued.

I think the main reasons are the fact that we are having a B2B business model and doing compliance on B2B, doing KYC on a business is way easier than doing KYC on a consumer or on an individual. Because if someone brings a million dollars to you in Bitcoin or something, how do you know how [they] got [that money] and so on? That’s very difficult, whereas for a business you have supporting documents, OTA accounts, and so on. 

And I think the second reason as well is that I think MAS and couple of other regulators knew me because I have licenses in different jurisdictions. I’m sitting on the board of companies in regulated in Singapore, [Europe]…

Paulo: Middle east, I think as well, right?

Eric: It’s actually the first digital bank in Saudi Arabia.

“I think the main reasons are the fact that we are having a B2B business model and doing compliance on B2B, doing KYC on a business is way easier than doing KYC on a consumer or on an individual…And I think the second reason as well is that I think MAS and couple of other regulators knew me because I have licenses in different jurisdictions.”

Paulo: It’s really significant milestone, not just for TripleA, but also for the ecosystem at large, and it’s good that you brought out the importance of being able to do proper KYC [with B2B]. Given that there are only a few licenses right now in Singapore and Singapore is already leading the pack in the region, so how do you see this evolving license regimes in the broader DeFi ecosystem here in Southeast Asia?

Eric: I believe that MAS will continue to have a cautious approach to issuing licenses, because they already want to make sure that the people [granted] a license are able to handle it. Right now, they’re also looking at what’s gonna be the impact of the fact that the crypto markets are crashing. That will take them even longer time to process all those licenses.

If we look at it more broadly, across Southeast Asia, things are still pretty slow. There’s some interesting things happening in the Philippines. Malaysia has already couple of licensed entities, but as far as I know and I’ve seen, a complete regulation as we have it with the payment services act — so it’s usually either on more on the trading or on the payment, but it’s not holistic yet in the region.

[As for] the ones in the developed country, the ones we’re looking for is really what’s gonna happen in Europe, because that’s already a significant market for us.

“If we look at it more broadly, across Southeast Asia, things are still pretty slow…a complete regulation as we have it with the payment services act — so it’s usually either on more on the trading or on the payment, but it’s not holistic yet in the region.”

Paulo: As always, worth remembering for our audience that even if TripleA is based in Singapore, you guys have pretty much been tapping into a global market. And it’s really important for you guys to be able to keep your eyes on how these license regimes are developing also in developed markets. 

But going back to Singapore, like apart from the regulation, are there any other advantages that you see in terms of starting or having headquarters here for TripleA, and maybe, in addition to that, what can other Web3 ventures globally learn from Singapore or operating in Singapore?

Eric: My previous company Thunes, I started it in Singapore. So I believe Singapore is really a very efficient place to run a business from. And for crypto, we’re very lucky to have these proper regulation regimes, which says things you can do, or you cannot do, and how to do them.

So that’s pretty unique, in the world, and very often I’m getting this question is like, “Oh, so you’re based in Singapore, so your market is Asia.” 

No, really you can run a global business from Singapore. That’s my message to founders or anyone…Singapore is not only about Asia.

“Really you can run a global business from Singapore. That’s my message to founders or anyone…Singapore is not only about Asia.”

Assorted Topics: Un-Learnings from Web2, Starting Companies in Fundraising Winters, Local Stablecoins, Bridging Web2 Fintechs to Web3

Paulo: Having seen even Web2, mobile, SoLoMo, that whole movement evolve, and then now Web3, seeing it evolve, going through it’s ups and downs as well, what is the biggest thing that you’ve had to unlearn from having grown a Web2 payments business, and now with TripleA, what is an assumption or something that you got used to in the past building Thunes or Mobile365 that now you can’t really apply to Web3?

Eric: You know what comes to my mind and what’s very different from my previous ventures is the fact that my clients can be pretty much any kind of business while when I was doing the mobile thing I was mostly dealing with mobile operators, so there’s like 500 telcos around the world. So you have a list and you can go [through them] one by one, same thing for Thunes, [we were] mostly targeting remittance on payment companies. 

Paulo: You can still print out a list. 

Eric: Exactly, while here, it’s like a lot of potential businesses can be my clients so it’s very tough to know ahead of time who’s gonna be big and who’s not gonna be so big. So I need to kind of change my sales process, to adapt it to something which is so diverse and to make sure we’re pretty efficient. 

You know, one of the problems [with] crypto being so popular, it’s kind of easy to get a meeting because people love to get educated about crypto, but are you gonna [build] a business [with it], that’s the thing you need to be careful with.

Paulo: It’s something not only that we see with Web3, but even for example, like with FinTech, a lot of people are excited about the tech, but they forget about the “fin” part and the risk management and all the discipline that has to come into building these kinds of businesses.

And so speaking of that, you’ve also seen sort of the different cycles. You’ve been through the first dotom crash, and then with Thunes, also the Global Financial Crisis, and then now, you’re seeing with the tech market as well, it’s slowing down and even crypto is taking a huge hit as well. How is your mindset when it comes to these types of environments and maybe if you have any advice for other founders out there from your past experience, and even now how you’re handling things at TripleA?

Eric: You know, I’ve always started companies in the worst [times]. I remember when I was looking for money that was 2008, 2009 for Thunes or TransferTo. That was a very tough environment. 

What’s interesting is as I get older, I’m spending less and less money. I’m raising less and less and I’m trying to be more and more capital efficient. What I’m trying to do, and that’s what I did with TripleA is always to be very close to be profitable. So at any point in time, I’m able to go back to profitability. So I will not need to raise money in a bad situation.

Also, obviously because it’s B2B and so on, there’s only so much money you can raise and spend, and my experience is that when you have too much money, you [end up] spending a bit stupidly sometimes.

Paulo: I’d also like to think you’re again — correct me if I’m wrong, but the way for TripleA to really scale might not actually require, and usually the reason why startups raise a lot of funding in order to scale, and in TripleA’s case the path to scaling may not be as costly because, as you mentioned, you’re already able to, even at this point, reach a lot of different customers around the globe already, and it’s very API based and software based. So sales I guess isn’t as costly. 

Eric: The only thing is because we’re a regulated business, the only thing where you have to add more people is on the compliance side. So as we are growing the number of clients and the number of transactions, you don’t need to have more tech guys, [regardless] if you have to handle [a] 1 million or 10 million [transaction], but on the compliance side you do. So that’s the thing. And as the volume is growing, you need to do that, and especially the number of clients, you need to have more people on that.

“What’s interesting is as I get older, I’m spending less and less money. I’m raising less and less and I’m trying to be more and more capital efficient. What I’m trying to do, and that’s what I did with TripleA is always to be very close to be profitable. So at any point in time, I’m able to go back to profitability. So I will not need to raise money in a bad situation.”

Paulo: I also wanted to touch on a quick topic here on stablecoins in particular. And that’s because in a previous call with Xfers CEO Tianwei, he really talked about the importance of having local stable coins, and obviously they’re the guys behind XSGD, so I also wanted to get your thoughts on this and where this fits also into TripleA’s value proposition long term.

Eric: In general, stablecoins, I see this as a big game changer across the world, because they have the capability to solve one of the big problems, which is how to do real time settlement, compared to the couple of days a SWIFT transfer is gonna take. 

So there’s a lot of businesses who can’t afford to wait like two or three days, for having a SWIFT payment clear. So stablecoin are very important, and today we only have actually quite few good stablecoins and they’re all in US dollars, so I fully agree with him, is that we need to get more stablecoins in many more countries, and we’re actually talking to Xfers to see how we can add XSGD support. 

We would [also] love to see more stable coins in the Eurozone, and India and Indonesia would be very good…as well. 

“Stablecoins, I see this as a big game changer across the world, because they have the capability to solve one of the big problems, which is how to do real time settlement…today we only have actually quite few good stablecoins and they’re all in US dollars…we need to get more stablecoins in many more countries…”

Paulo: I’d also like to shift gears on really building a team in Web3. We touched on it a little bit in terms of like tech versus sales, but maybe what’s the biggest difference that you’ve seen in terms of like bringing team together for a Web3 versus your previous companies.

Eric: The good thing about that is, usually tech guys, they love crypto. So all the tech CEOs I know are struggling to hire talent. I’m not saying it’s easy, but usually people when they have to choose between crypto and, I don’t know, a delivery app, they prefer to work with crypto. So that’s one of the good thing about that, and in a way we’re lucky for that.

“…usually people when they have to choose between crypto and, I don’t know, a delivery app, they prefer to work with crypto.”

Paulo: Another thing that I also wanted to talk about is that we are also seeing a lot of FinTech companies getting into crypto as well. I think even in our portfolio, Ajaib launched their crypto service. You have Xfers as well. And you also have guys like Brankas in open finance, trying to create APIs as well for crypto payments.

Being an investor and board member in a number of global FinTech companies as well, what are your thoughts on a lot of these like Web2 fintechs getting into…expanding their ecosystem to include crypto. What should these companies look out for?

Eric: What I’m seeing and still with my TripleA hat is that a lot of people they want to go into Web3 and they’re looking at partnering with people like us, because that might be something [that], in terms of go to market, we are having both a direct and indirect go to market.

So we are going direct to merchants like Charles & Keith or Razer. but we are also working with payment service providers, because our technology is white labeled and so on. I don’t need the TripleA name to be there so I can help payments companies who are already doing card processing, maybe Alipay processing and so on, and then they can add pay with crypto. 

“…in terms of go to market, we are having both a direct and indirect go to market. So we are going direct to merchants like Charles & Keith or Razer. but we are also working with payment service providers, because our technology is white labeled and so on.”

Future of Global Crypto Payments

Paulo: You guys are also helping fintechs also make that transition as well into Web3, right? So definitely also part of that big market base that you talked about earlier. 

And before we get into the Rapid Fire Round, wanted to close off the main corner of our call here with, maybe you can share, moving forward, obviously we’re seeing that crypto is still very much nascent here and even globally as well, and there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. And so what do you think are the biggest gaps that need to be solved in terms of Web3 infrastructure maybe specifically here in this part of the world or even globally?

Eric: I think we touched upon it a bit. I think what needs to be improved is on the regulation side, having clearer licensing regimes and regulations. A lot of countries are, of course, looking at what Singapore has been doing and try to do their own flavor of the payments services act, which I think is a well balanced regulation.

That would be the biggest gap. For the rest, I think the market is really ready. It feels like all the players are kind ahead of regulation as often [is the case]. So for me, that would be the biggest gap.

“I think what needs to be improved is on the regulation side, having clearer licensing regimes and regulation. A lot of countries are, of course, looking at what Singapore has been doing and try to do their own flavor of the payments services act, which I think is a well-balanced regulation.”

Paulo: In the next five years, where do you see TripleA as a company? How would TripleA look like, especially in the context of where we are now in the crypto markets and Web3.

Eric: In three years from now, I believe that businesses, many of them, will have a need [to] have the whole crypto processing capabilities. So, I would say becoming a crypto payment bank for businesses [is where I see TripleA going]. 

Ultimately when you are doing business in Indonesia, for instance, you will have multiple accounts, you will have your IDR, your SGD, but you will have also your crypto. So my vision is that we want to be the crypto treasury partner of CFOs and of businesses.

“My vision is that we want to be the crypto treasury partner of CFOs and of businesses.”

Paulo: And just a quick side question there. How much of the pie do you see crypto taking in terms of business payments, say three to five years down the road versus you know, the usual fiat [currencies]?

Eric: It’s a US$300 trillion market, so it’s a huge market. This crypto payment can represent like 5-10% of the cross-border B2B payments, especially with the people with tight working capital, or the smaller players, because people who are getting paid at 90 days don’t really care. But for people where being paid a couple of days earlier makes a difference, those are the people who are gonna adopt crypto first.

“It’s a US$300 trillion market, so it’s a huge market. This crypto payment can represent like 5-10% of the cross border B2B payments, especially with the people with tight working capital…for people where being paid couple of days earlier makes a difference, those are the people who are gonna adopt crypto first.”

Rapid Fire Round

Top 3 traits of a great web3 founder? 

Eric: [They] need to be creative. [They] need to listen to clients, to understand the actual needs of the market, and [they] need to be able to drive a team to go in the same direction. I’m not sure [that these are] specific to Web3. 

Favorite book / podcast / resource to learn about crypto payments and DeFi?
Eric: On tech, of course your podcast is the most important one. the thing I like. it’s a newsletter on, they also have a podcast, which is FinTech Blueprint. They’re pretty, pretty good. Yeah. It’s FinTech, but very much crypto.

What digital technology/innovation excites you the most today, apart from crypto payments?
Eric: What’s fascinating [are] all the innovations which are happening in the gaming industry, and they’re, playing with crypto, but not only [that], what’s fascinating is to see how usually all the gaming [companies] are so innovative, whether it’s in terms of new business models, new technologies, and so on. So that’s an interesting point — having kids…looking at what they do, it’s amazing to see, and how fast those gaming companies are adopting those new technologies [and] inventing stuff, which are very interesting. So I think it’s a very good source of inspiration.

What’s your favorite go-to destination in Southeast Asia / Indonesia?
Eric: For leisure, I’m a big fan of Thailand. I love Bangkok. Phuket is nice as well. You know, I love the food. I love pretty much everything in Thailand. 

What do you do to de-stress or for your self-care? 

Eric: So I stopped playing golf because it’s actually more stressing than de-stressing. What I like to do [now is] gardening on my free time. Gardening helps to empty the head. I like planting bougainvilleas because they’re pretty easy to maintain and they’re really nice.