Nick Chandi: Yeah, it's an interesting journey, you know. Just to give you a brief background, Andy, I've been working in the accounting industry for over 20 years. (02:23) Before founding Forwardly, I was the founder of one of the largest IT consulting companies in Canada. We were providing services to accountants, bookkeepers, and other firms. During that period, I gained exposure to accounting systems and a deep understanding of how they work. We sold that company, and then during the early days of the pandemic, I had the opportunity to work on the PPP program. We launched a company that was fetching accounting data from platforms like QuickBooks and Xero, (03:00) and we were providing that data to banks, lenders, and other stakeholders who needed real-time access to accounting data coming from these systems.

During that experience, I learned that payments are one of the experiences that most businesses face day-to-day because it's a very high-frequency action or activity that happens inside a business – maybe not as much as email or team calls, but we always want more of those transactions happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, every payment (03:38) is an opportunity to talk to your customer and your suppliers. We saw a strong demand from our customers for AR/AP kind of solutions. Slowly, we pivoted from accounting data APIs to using that data and providing or building that solution based on accounting data solutions. (04:01) Today, you can use Forwardly with or without an accounting system. Let's say you need to create an invoice on our system; you are able to use it and request quick payments from your clients as well.

Andy: Very powerful. (04:18) So, I guess what are some of the biggest shifts you're seeing in payment and accounting technology today in 2025, and where do you see things going over the next few years?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, the payment domain is really changing. You know, when we started, in the early days, there were checks. Checks are so outdated, but the reality is a lot of businesses still make payments with checks. That's the reality we have in the U.S., even though countries like Brazil, India, the UK, Sweden, and many other countries in Europe don't use checks anymore. Every payment is an electronic payment, and instant payments, they have, you know, anytime you (04:52) push the money from your bank account, it shows up on the other side. We have similar technology now that's been made available in the last few years. We call it RTP or FedNow. RTP is a real-time payment solution that's available from major banks like Chase and Bank of America. (05:17) FedNow is a federal solution that's available through community banks. So these solutions can send payments instantly from one bank account to another.

We're seeing good adoption of that kind of technology, and I believe it's still going to take some time until we reach the scale of Pix in Brazil or instant payments in the UK, which are very common. But we don't see those things happening anytime soon in the USA. (05:52) Yes, time will change, and slowly we should see some double-digit adoption in the U.S. market, but it's still early days. Even though more than 1,000 banks support these instant payments, they don't promote it actively. The truth is, many businesses aren't even aware that they can receive payments from their customers instantly. It's common for us to wait for three to five business days. Okay. Common through ACH. (06:25) ACH is a very old technology, developed in the 70s, and we're still using it. I know we built some new systems like 2-day or same-day ACH, but those are kind of band-aid or duct tape solutions, and they're not as fast as instant payments. So that's one thing I'm very optimistic is going to get some traction this year and in coming years as well.

(06:53) The other thing we're seeing in the industry is stablecoins. Stablecoins are getting very popular for cross-border payments. So, anytime you need to send money out of the U.S., they're becoming very popular. The primary reason is that the money moves instantly. (07:19) Cost-wise, I won't say they are as effective as SWIFT because they're as expensive as SWIFT, or maybe in some cases, I've seen them more expensive than SWIFT for cross-border or international payments. But, you know, in some corridors of the world, people like to hold U.S. dollars, and it's one way to hold U.S. dollars in your wallet in countries like Venezuela, Cuba, or even Turkey, where the currency is depreciating at a very high speed compared to U.S. dollars. So, people don't want local currency; they want (08:00) exposure to U.S. dollars. These are the businesses that are going to move to stablecoins. That's the other thing I'm expecting to go big time in 2025 and in coming years. In fact, I'm guessing in the next three, five, or seven years, that's going to be the mainstream way we send money out of our country or for any international payment; that's going to become the standard. Yeah.

(08:35) And there's a company called Circle that had their IPO. They had a great IPO, right? I think they started with $31, and I believe they eventually hit $300, and now I believe they're close to $200. But you can see the excitement. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of interest. We'll see how the domain evolves. (09:00) You know, there are a lot of changes happening with the GENIE Act and other changes in the regulatory landscape, and all these things are providing some opportunities for these kinds of platforms.

Andy: Yeah, I'd like you to reiterate on the GENIE Act. I know what it is, but a lot of other people watching today might not understand what the GENIE Act is and what it does. (09:20) Would you be able to perhaps elaborate on that?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, I can provide you a higher-level understanding, you know, because things are still in a—nobody really reads all those documents in detail. But on a higher level, for so far, you know, banks haven't wanted to touch crypto or stablecoins, but this law is going to allow these banks and other legal entities to offer these stablecoins. (09:50) So, a stablecoin is a cryptocurrency that's pegged to the U.S. dollar one-to-one. For example, one USDC is equivalent to one U.S. dollar. So, whether you hold USDC in the U.S. market or in the UK or Brazil, the holder of that USDC is actually holding U.S. dollars in their bank account, in their wallet, or in the crypto exchange, whatever option they have. You know, banks have been very hesitant to get into crypto so far. (10:23) But yeah, but this provides them the opportunity, and in fact, many banks are already dabbling in this and trying to issue their own stablecoins. Currently, the leader is Circle, but we will see how these things evolve. Like Bank of America, they're also looking at it, and Truist Bank, they already have something internal going on, and they might support this too. So, I believe over time, every bank or consortium of banks will have their own stablecoins too (10:58) because think about this: there's a huge demand for U.S. dollars offshore, okay? A lot of businesses buy and sell services in U.S. dollars. They want exposure in U.S. dollars. No one wants to convert U.S. dollars into euros and then convert it back into U.S. dollars. You lose on the currency exchange. (11:21) So, they do want some exposure, and this will provide a great opportunity to them.

Andy: Very exciting. So, in terms of like RTP payments, why do you think it's taken so long for that to be adopted? Obviously, consumers and businesses aren't aware of it. (11:38) I mean, who wouldn't want their payments immediately? Are the banks kind of finding that, you know, they want to make sure that the verification process is smooth for being able to process those payments faster? And are there any fees associated with it that have kind of led to maybe some friction for getting more people on board with it?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, there are multiple things, you know, that are factors here. (12:01) For RTP, when RTP was launched, I guess six or seven years ago, it was from a consortium of big banks. So these banks, you know, they launched it, but the smaller banks were very hesitant to join a consortium or support a service that was offered by big banks. They treat them as competitors, and obviously, they were supposed to pay some fee to access that kind of service, but that did play a factor in the adoption. Now we have FedNow for over a year and a half now, or maybe two years now, (12:42) and now community banks are also offering these kinds of services as well. More than 1,000 banks are on the FedNow network.

But there are multiple factors. When we compare with countries like India or Brazil or even the UK, in the UK, they have a local regulator called FCA, and that regulator enforced all the rules that we need to accept payments or send payments this way. Similar thing with Pix in Brazil and UPI in India; the local regulator, they're (13:20) very strict; they enforced those kinds of rules and requirements. But the U.S. market is very different. We are a market-driven economy, and we leave it to the banks to offer the adoption, and consumers need to ask for it. We see on the consumer side, if you look at the experience of Venmo or those, it feels like the money is in your wallet right away, right? We don't have that kind of experience on the business side, even though we offer it, (13:54) but still, very few businesses are aware of it, and the banks don't promote it actively either, because it competes directly with their other solutions like credit cards, where they make 3% on those credit card transactions, right? And RTP is very, very cheap compared to credit cards, so it competes against the other business models as well. If you look at the history, history tells us that in the U.S. market, we don't replace payments; we always keep on adding more and more. We have checks, and we have cash, and we have ACH today, (14:32) same day, now we have RTP and FedNow; they are also in play, and tomorrow there will be stablecoins as well, who knows.

Andy: Yeah. In terms of checks, I mean, I always love getting a check, you know, something physical to touch, but it's just not convenient anymore. Do you foresee checks going away completely, or do you think some legacy players might still use them?

Nick Chandi: You know, checks are being replaced though, right? But checks are not going out anytime soon. (15:03) Okay, we will see how it goes. The truth is, the federal government mandated that they're not going to send checks anymore. Okay. So we'll see how that impacts the landscape, but checks are so connected to our ecosystem. (15:28) A lot of businesses want to see this as a kind of thing, and even though it's inconvenient, I know a local printing shop here, what they would do is they would literally travel to their customer, pick up the check, and go and stand in line at the bank. You know how much time they waste.

Andy: Oh, so much time.

Nick Chandi: So much time. Studies after studies show, you know, checks are so expensive. (15:52) If you look at the hidden cost of accepting checks, it's anywhere between $10 to $25, different studies show. Look at the, you know, you need to get the check printed and stock it, and someone needs to take it out, mail it, and, you know, hopefully it's going to arrive on the other side. (16:11) And someone's going to open it, and they have to enter it in their accounting system and go to the bank, or hopefully they have a mobile app where they can deposit online. But you never know, you know, but that's the other problem I have. I have huge concerns about checks on the fraud side too, right? Because checks have your routing number and account number printed on them, and anytime you mail the checks, there's an opportunity for someone to steal it. And, you know, there were more than 700,000 check frauds, I guess, if you look at the data for 2021 or 2022. (16:48) So, more than 700,000 fraudulent checks. Now we have the technology for these scammers, you know, they can change the payee name on the checks, they can change the amount, and, you know, all those kinds of bad things happen to businesses. Once you have a fraud, once you are a victim of a fraud, it's very, very hard to recover. (17:14) There was a PR company in New York, they were accepting check payments from their clients for the last 10 years.

Andy: Wow.

Nick Chandi: And what happened? They found that they were not receiving checks anymore. And what they found was that the address was changed, and, you know, last I heard, even after two or three months, they were able to receive only around 60% or 70% of the payments they were expecting from their clients.

Andy: Jeez.

Nick Chandi: Very, very hard to recover, you know, and you can foresee, Andy, what kind of—it's going to cause huge cash flow problems, you know, because they need to pay those bills and rent and payroll, and it's a very, very difficult situation to be in. We don't offer, yeah, we don't offer any payment through checks for our platform, only electronic payment methods, because there's clear visibility of where the payment is. (18:15) Both parties, sender and receiver, can see where the transaction is, and, you know, those kinds of things can save huge time and bring efficiencies to businesses.

Andy: Awesome. Yeah, that's, yeah, the fraudsters are going to—it's going to be good to see them go out of business though, at least in this particular way of doing fraud, I guess. And then, um, you know, some of the businesses that owe you money can't get away with the whole "yeah, the check's in the mail" and then it never shows up.

Nick Chandi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. "Checks in the mail," you know, always. Yeah. No, I'm using Forwardly. There's supposed to be a real-time payment here, you know. Yeah, I don't see it in my account, you know.

Andy: That's correct. Yeah, there we go. Um, I guess how else have consumer and business expectations evolved over the last few years in terms of like convenience and security of payments? Obviously, more people are starting to expect real-time payments now, and I hope more do figure out that this is an option for them. But also in terms of security too, right? I mean, you mentioned earlier some of the issues with check fraud. Are there any potential security loopholes that businesses should be aware of today when it comes to payments, and how is that kind of evolving with their needs?

Nick Chandi: (19:20) So let's look at the expectations, right? The consumer, Andy, I'm pretty sure you and I, we both use Amazon and we use Netflix and Uber Eats and those kinds of experiences, right? These are the experiences we have today, and the young generation of team members or the people, you know, they are born with a mobile in their hand, okay? So they won't go anywhere without a cell phone in their hand; that's the new generation. These are the people who are going to start businesses. (19:50) They are the people who are going to join as employees in businesses, and that's the kind of experience they expect on the business side too. Yeah. And honestly, we don't have that kind of business experience like Venmo's in the business domain yet, right? We talked about checks, and we talked about ACH.

Andy: They're going to want it though.

Nick Chandi: (20:14) We want it. Yeah. Well, you want the check payment to arrive today. You don't order a Netflix movie on Friday night to watch it on Tuesday morning.

Andy: Exactly. Yeah. I tell my CEO that too with our marketplace. Like, you know, there's stuff from the consumer, stuff you can learn and apply to a business. (20:31) You know, people don't want to have a bad experience buying software too, right? So, there's always like ways we can improve upon the UX and make it easier for people, right?

Nick Chandi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's the reality, right? So that's happened in payment—other payment methods too. Yeah, we have RTP and FedNow too. (20:50) So there's an opportunity for businesses to receive payment instantly from their clients. That's what we offer too, and I so talk to your bank, you know, they might be offering those kinds of services as well.

On the control side, you asked, you know, in business payments, we believe business payments are more about the workflows. Yeah. (21:11) Because, you know, if you need to make a payment to your supplier, someone needs to make sure those bills are valid; they are real, right? Someone needs to enter the data into the accounting system. So, for example, like Forwardly, a good payment system will do is they're going to read all those kinds of invoices coming to you for the payment. (21:35) Yeah. And at Forwardly, we provide a dedicated email address to every business that signs up so that you can receive all your supplier bills from that dedicated email address. We read them, we read the data, we do the OCR, or we use AI to read the data, and we try to code it accurately, close to 99% accuracy, so that, you know, whether it's an entertainment expense or a marketing expense, those kinds of data, you know, we call it—we call it chart of accounts in accounting, or you can call it categories or type of expenses. So all those things need (22:14) to be coded accurately in the accounting system. Then, obviously, we're talking about control here. So obviously, if it's a small business, and then, you know, small businesses, the owner wants to know, you know, they need to approve all the payments. In some businesses, if they have 25, 50, 100 employees, then they might need two people who are stakeholders in the payment approval process. (22:45) Like some businesses we've seen, among thousands of businesses that we serve, they have two or three approvers. You know, if the payment is, let's say, for less than $2,000, maybe $200, then, you know, there may be one person who can approve it. But if the payment is over $10K, then we need approval from the CEO, or it could be approval needed from three people, right? So, you know, those kinds of controls are needed in any payment system, business payment system. (23:13) Then obviously, we need to collect W9 information because if you're making a certain amount of payment to these suppliers, you need to collect W9 and issue 1099s to them. So, business payments are all about workflows because we need to reconcile with the accounting system too. Yeah. Right. (23:33) Because you don't want to wait for three days or five days to close your accounting books. It needs to be—anytime you receive a payment, you need to mark it as paid in the accounting system. So all those kinds of things provide control to businesses, business owners, or accountants that we serve, as well as bringing efficiencies to their workflow too, because no one needs to call, "Where is my payment?" Okay. Yeah, it should show up in the system.

Andy: And I like your guys' blend of automation and human-in-the-loop to really ensure (24:06) that things are able to process a lot more efficiently using the latest artificial intelligence technology that you have today and OCR that you guys are using. But then you have that human-in-the-loop opportunity too. So you could have key account holders, people that the CEO maybe gives access to, that can actually go through and verify all the payments and make sure everything's, you know, although it is automated, there's still somebody there to, you know, provide checks and balances to the system.

Nick Chandi: Yeah. Yeah. You know, sometimes, you know, there are like Jane was here on the call (24:35) before, and you know, like she might be working with an outside PR company, and you know, she may know more than me whether that PR bill needs to be paid or not, okay? Did they deliver on those commitments or not? So she needs to be a stakeholder in the payment approval process too, right? I, as a business owner, may want to know which bills are being paid, and I can plan when they need to be paid, but, you know, the person like Jane, they need to be aware of these kinds of things too. So, modern technology, you know, they provide those kinds of controls to businesses.

Andy: (25:08) Very interesting. What other kinds of controls do you guys have? So there's like a key account holder person that's tagged with the bill, and potentially somebody else might want to get notified of any incoming and outgoing bills or transactions. What else do you guys have in place there to maintain that level of control?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, there are multiple levels of controls in place. (25:29) You know, like one I just shared with you based on the amounts. So you can have controls based on the amounts, and another one, you know, sometimes in bigger companies, you can have control based on the supplier names as well, the vendor names. So if you have invoices coming from, let's say, Costco, they need to go to a certain person or a certain group of people. You can plan based on that, a chart of account type of expense, you know, or when the payment was made, payment needs to be made—all those kinds of controls can be placed in any kind of approval process.

Andy: (26:05) Very neat. And I guess, how does Forwardly help businesses get paid on time? Do you guys have any services around helping people collect payments, maybe if the client might not have the willingness or ability to pay? Because, like we mentioned earlier, cash flow is king for any company, and you know, having real-time payments is great if you're getting them, but a lot of companies still sometimes have to chase vendors down and sometimes run into cash flow issues just because they're waiting on a (26:29) few clients. You know, accounts receivable's waiting while accounts payable—you know, your clients, of course, want to get paid on time. Yeah. But nobody wants to pay us on time, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Chandi: So, we have something called the auto-collection feature in Forwardly. Let me step back here, you know, and you know, this situation is very normal, and you may have seen it hundreds of times, right?

Andy: Oh, yeah.

Nick Chandi: (27:00) You have done a great job, but there is almost always someone who doesn't want to pay their bills. Simple. They might have 20 bills to pay, and paying for your product or services may not be the top of their line item that they need to pay, okay? It may be somewhere at the bottom of the list, and now, all of a sudden, you have a late payment, you have bad debt, or who knows, and it will cause cash flow problems on your side. Yeah. (27:25) So the best way to solve that problem is having no AR, basically. Okay. And that you can have if you get pre-authorization from your clients. Anytime you provide a product or service, you need to get the bank information, their credit card information before you deliver those kinds of products or services.

Yeah, we provide an auto-collection feature in Forwardly. (27:49) So you make a request to your customer before you get your first payment or before you provide services or products, and they provide the banking information, and that's the auto-collection operation for you.

Andy: Wow.

Nick Chandi: So next time you provide any product or services, you raise an invoice at Forwardly or in QuickBooks or Xero or any accounting system you use, we are going to collect that payment from that customer automatically without pushing any finger, without pressing any button on your side. That's an automated process. Week after week, month after (28:24) month, we will be able to collect that payment from that client. So I believe that's the best way to eliminate any kind of AR or bad debt, you know, because or cash flow problems. You know, cash flow problems caused—I don't know the exact number right now, but more than 80-82% of businesses fail because of cash flow problems, right? Yeah. And if we can help them, we can help the business survive and grow, you know, then we are playing an important role in society.

Andy: The most important. Yeah, as I always say, yeah, a company lives and dies by its cash flow. So, you can ensure (29:03) your payments are actually showing up on time with this really cool feature that you guys have. Um, I guess what other specific technologies or integrations would you recommend for your merchants to prioritize over the next 12 to 24 months?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, in any payment system, you know, the integration, the most important integration any businesses need to be looking for, you know, it needs to be able to integrate with your accounting system and your practice management system, the business management system, whatever you use it. (29:34) So, I believe those are the kinds of integrations they must have. Businesses should be looking for those. The other one is, you know, connection to your bank account. In old days, we used to, let's say, it's common for businesses to have two or three bank accounts, and in the old days, what we would do is log into every bank account and see the cash balance, and then we would decide from which bank account we are going to pay these bills. Those days are gone now. We have the technology like at Forwardly, we show you (30:08) the bank balance in all two or three or multiple bank accounts that you might have, so you can make a decision on the fly. So having those kinds of integrations saves time and allows businesses to make good decisions.

Andy: Very nice. (30:27) And I guess, uh, what else do your customers have to look forward to over the next few years? What other kinds of features are you guys excited about?

Nick Chandi: We are building more and more integrations with other players, with software that's being used by businesses, like I shared by Mediaocean and ConnectWise, AutoTask, or those kinds of integrations that we are looking for, that we believe we want to build the solution, we want to build the integrations to the platform that these businesses use. That's the direction we are going for. The other (31:01) thing that we are working on, Andy, is we are building a network of vendors. We call it the Forwardly Business Network, where anytime you become a verified business at Forwardly, anyone can send you a payment, any other business can send you a payment, or you can request payment from any other business on the Forwardly network very seamlessly without any extra work on their side. (31:27) So I believe those kinds of integrations bring a lot of efficiencies and improve the workflow because no one wants to share their bank account information or credit card information time and again. So once you have information, once you are on our network and you need your bank information changed, it's going to change with all of your customers, for all of your suppliers. Okay. But those kinds of things are more meaningful for us.

Andy: Very interesting. (31:56) I guess where can people learn more about your company and pick up your services today?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, just go to our website, Forwardly.com, and sign up for an account. One last thing I want to touch base on, Andy, you know, things come to mind, you know, when you talked about human-in-the-loop, right? On the future of payment, I believe it's going to change a lot with the rise of AI. (32:26) We believe that, you know, have you ever used Waymo from Google, the self-driving car?

Andy: Yep.

Nick Chandi: Very interesting. Very interesting, right? I believe the future of payments is very similar to Waymo. Okay. Like in a self-driving car, you set up and configure it one time, and it follows your direction. I believe business payments are going to evolve in that direction too, with authentic workflows that we are going to implement, and other players are going to do as well. (32:59) Where you set up and configure payments, and you know, it follows your guidelines. It can see the agreement you have on file with your supplier, with your vendor, and terms are still good. You have been making those payments for the last six months, and those payments will need to be automatically approved and paid, and you just get a notification or intimation, (33:18) "Okay, Nick, this payment is being made," and if you want to stop it, you want to reject it, you can still take control back. Yeah. So I believe we are heading in that direction as well, and companies like Forwardly, we are moving in that direction.

Nick Chandi: You know, checks are being replaced though, right? But checks are not going out anytime soon. (15:03) Okay, we will see how it goes. The truth is, the federal government mandated that they're not going to send checks anymore. Okay. So we'll see how that impacts the landscape, but checks are so connected to our ecosystem. (15:28) A lot of businesses want to see this as a kind of thing, and even though it's inconvenient, I know a local printing shop here, what they would do is they would literally travel to their customer, pick up the check, and go and stand in line at the bank. You know how much time they waste.

Andy: Oh, so much time.

Nick Chandi: So much time. Studies after studies show, you know, checks are so expensive. (15:52) If you look at the hidden cost of accepting checks, it's anywhere between $10 to $25, different studies show. Look at the, you know, you need to get the check printed and stock it, and someone needs to take it out, mail it, and, you know, hopefully it's going to arrive on the other side. (16:11) And someone's going to open it, and they have to enter it in their accounting system and go to the bank, or hopefully they have a mobile app where they can deposit online. But you never know, you know, but that's the other problem I have. I have huge concerns about checks on the fraud side too, right? Because checks have your routing number and account number printed on them, and anytime you mail the checks, there's an opportunity for someone to steal it. And, you know, there were more than 700,000 check frauds, I guess, if you look at the data for 2021 or 2022. (16:48) So, more than 700,000 fraudulent checks. Now we have the technology for these scammers, you know, they can change the payee name on the checks, they can change the amount, and, you know, all those kinds of bad things happen to businesses. Once you have a fraud, once you are a victim of a fraud, it's very, very hard to recover. (17:14) There was a PR company in New York, they were accepting check payments from their clients for the last 10 years.

Andy: Wow.

Nick Chandi: And what happened? They found that they were not receiving checks anymore. And what they found was that the address was changed, and, you know, last I heard, even after two or three months, they were able to receive only around 60% or 70% of the payments they were expecting from their clients.

Andy: Jeez.

Nick Chandi: Very, very hard to recover, you know, and you can foresee, Andy, what kind of—it's going to cause huge cash flow problems, you know, because they need to pay those bills and rent and payroll, and it's a very, very difficult situation to be in. We don't offer, yeah, we don't offer any payment through checks for our platform, only electronic payment methods, because there's clear visibility of where the payment is. (18:15) Both parties, sender and receiver, can see where the transaction is, and, you know, those kinds of things can save huge time and bring efficiencies to businesses.

Andy: Awesome. Yeah, that's, yeah, the fraudsters are going to—it's going to be good to see them go out of business though, at least in this particular way of doing fraud, I guess. And then, um, you know, some of the businesses that owe you money can't get away with the whole "yeah, the check's in the mail" and then it never shows up.

Nick Chandi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. "Checks in the mail," you know, always. Yeah. No, I'm using Forwardly. There's supposed to be a real-time payment here, you know. Yeah, I don't see it in my account, you know.

Andy: That's correct. Yeah, there we go. Um, I guess how else have consumer and business expectations evolved over the last few years in terms of like convenience and security of payments? Obviously, more people are starting to expect real-time payments now, and I hope more do figure out that this is an option for them. But also in terms of security too, right? I mean, you mentioned earlier some of the issues with check fraud. Are there any potential security loopholes that businesses should be aware of today when it comes to payments, and how is that kind of evolving with their needs?

Nick Chandi: (19:20) So let's look at the expectations, right? The consumer, Andy, I'm pretty sure you and I, we both use Amazon and we use Netflix and Uber Eats and those kinds of experiences, right? These are the experiences we have today, and the young generation of team members or the people, you know, they are born with a mobile in their hand, okay? So they won't go anywhere without a cell phone in their hand; that's the new generation. These are the people who are going to start businesses. (19:50) They are the people who are going to join as employees in businesses, and that's the kind of experience they expect on the business side too. Yeah. And honestly, we don't have that kind of business experience like Venmo's in the business domain yet, right? We talked about checks, and we talked about ACH.

Andy: They're going to want it though.

Nick Chandi: (20:14) We want it. Yeah. Well, you want the check payment to arrive today. You don't order a Netflix movie on Friday night to watch it on Tuesday morning.

Andy: Exactly. Yeah. I tell my CEO that too with our marketplace. Like, you know, there's stuff from the consumer, stuff you can learn and apply to a business. (20:31) You know, people don't want to have a bad experience buying software too, right? So, there's always like ways we can improve upon the UX and make it easier for people, right?

Nick Chandi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's the reality, right? So that's happened in payment—other payment methods too. Yeah, we have RTP and FedNow too. (20:50) So there's an opportunity for businesses to receive payment instantly from their clients. That's what we offer too, and I so talk to your bank, you know, they might be offering those kinds of services as well.

On the control side, you asked, you know, in business payments, we believe business payments are more about the workflows. Yeah. (21:11) Because, you know, if you need to make a payment to your supplier, someone needs to make sure those bills are valid; they are real, right? Someone needs to enter the data into the accounting system. So, for example, like Forwardly, a good payment system will do is they're going to read all those kinds of invoices coming to you for the payment. (21:35) Yeah. And at Forwardly, we provide a dedicated email address to every business that signs up so that you can receive all your supplier bills from that dedicated email address. We read them, we read the data, we do the OCR, or we use AI to read the data, and we try to code it accurately, close to 99% accuracy, so that, you know, whether it's an entertainment expense or a marketing expense, those kinds of data, you know, we call it—we call it chart of accounts in accounting, or you can call it categories or type of expenses. So all those things need (22:14) to be coded accurately in the accounting system. Then, obviously, we're talking about control here. So obviously, if it's a small business, and then, you know, small businesses, the owner wants to know, you know, they need to approve all the payments. In some businesses, if they have 25, 50, 100 employees, then they might need two people who are stakeholders in the payment approval process. (22:45) Like some businesses we've seen, among thousands of businesses that we serve, they have two or three approvers. You know, if the payment is, let's say, for less than $2,000, maybe $200, then, you know, there may be one person who can approve it. But if the payment is over $10K, then we need approval from the CEO, or it could be approval needed from three people, right? So, you know, those kinds of controls are needed in any payment system, business payment system. (23:13) Then obviously, we need to collect W9 information because if you're making a certain amount of payment to these suppliers, you need to collect W9 and issue 1099s to them. So, business payments are all about workflows because we need to reconcile with the accounting system too. Yeah. Right. (23:33) Because you don't want to wait for three days or five days to close your accounting books. It needs to be—anytime you receive a payment, you need to mark it as paid in the accounting system. So all those kinds of things provide control to businesses, business owners, or accountants that we serve, as well as bringing efficiencies to their workflow too, because no one needs to call, "Where is my payment?" Okay. Yeah, it should show up in the system.

Andy: And I like your guys' blend of automation and human-in-the-loop to really ensure (24:06) that things are able to process a lot more efficiently using the latest artificial intelligence technology that you have today and OCR that you guys are using. But then you have that human-in-the-loop opportunity too. So you could have key account holders, people that the CEO maybe gives access to, that can actually go through and verify all the payments and make sure everything's, you know, although it is automated, there's still somebody there to, you know, provide checks and balances to the system.

Nick Chandi: Yeah. Yeah. You know, sometimes, you know, there are like Jane was here on the call (24:35) before, and you know, like she might be working with an outside PR company, and you know, she may know more than me whether that PR bill needs to be paid or not, okay? Did they deliver on those commitments or not? So she needs to be a stakeholder in the payment approval process too, right? I, as a business owner, may want to know which bills are being paid, and I can plan when they need to be paid, but, you know, the person like Jane, they need to be aware of these kinds of things too. So, modern technology, you know, they provide those kinds of controls to businesses.

Andy: (25:08) Very interesting. What other kinds of controls do you guys have? So there's like a key account holder person that's tagged with the bill, and potentially somebody else might want to get notified of any incoming and outgoing bills or transactions. What else do you guys have in place there to maintain that level of control?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, there are multiple levels of controls in place. (25:29) You know, like one I just shared with you based on the amounts. So you can have controls based on the amounts, and another one, you know, sometimes in bigger companies, you can have control based on the supplier names as well, the vendor names. So if you have invoices coming from, let's say, Costco, they need to go to a certain person or a certain group of people. You can plan based on that, a chart of account type of expense, you know, or when the payment was made, payment needs to be made—all those kinds of controls can be placed in any kind of approval process.

Andy: (26:05) Very neat. And I guess, how does Forwardly help businesses get paid on time? Do you guys have any services around helping people collect payments, maybe if the client might not have the willingness or ability to pay? Because, like we mentioned earlier, cash flow is king for any company, and you know, having real-time payments is great if you're getting them, but a lot of companies still sometimes have to chase vendors down and sometimes run into cash flow issues just because they're waiting on a (26:29) few clients. You know, accounts receivable's waiting while accounts payable—you know, your clients, of course, want to get paid on time. Yeah. But nobody wants to pay us on time, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Chandi: So, we have something called the auto-collection feature in Forwardly. Let me step back here, you know, and you know, this situation is very normal, and you may have seen it hundreds of times, right?

Andy: Oh, yeah.

Nick Chandi: (27:00) You have done a great job, but there is almost always someone who doesn't want to pay their bills. Simple. They might have 20 bills to pay, and paying for your product or services may not be the top of their line item that they need to pay, okay? It may be somewhere at the bottom of the list, and now, all of a sudden, you have a late payment, you have bad debt, or who knows, and it will cause cash flow problems on your side. Yeah. (27:25) So the best way to solve that problem is having no AR, basically. Okay. And that you can have if you get pre-authorization from your clients. Anytime you provide a product or service, you need to get the bank information, their credit card information before you deliver those kinds of products or services.

Yeah, we provide an auto-collection feature in Forwardly. (27:49) So you make a request to your customer before you get your first payment or before you provide services or products, and they provide the banking information, and that's the auto-collection operation for you.

Andy: Wow.

Nick Chandi: So next time you provide any product or services, you raise an invoice at Forwardly or in QuickBooks or Xero or any accounting system you use, we are going to collect that payment from that customer automatically without pushing any finger, without pressing any button on your side. That's an automated process. Week after week, month after (28:24) month, we will be able to collect that payment from that client. So I believe that's the best way to eliminate any kind of AR or bad debt, you know, because or cash flow problems. You know, cash flow problems caused—I don't know the exact number right now, but more than 80-82% of businesses fail because of cash flow problems, right? Yeah. And if we can help them, we can help the business survive and grow, you know, then we are playing an important role in society.

Andy: The most important. Yeah, as I always say, yeah, a company lives and dies by its cash flow. So, you can ensure (29:03) your payments are actually showing up on time with this really cool feature that you guys have. Um, I guess what other specific technologies or integrations would you recommend for your merchants to prioritize over the next 12 to 24 months?

NickChandi: Yeah, in any payment system, you know, the integration, the most important integration any businesses need to be looking for, you know, it needs to be able to integrate with your accounting system and your practice management system, the business management system, whatever you use it. (29:34) So, I believe those are the kinds of integrations they must have. Businesses should be looking for those. The other one is, you know, connection to your bank account. In old days, we used to, let's say, it's common for businesses to have two or three bank accounts, and in the old days, what we would do is log into every bank account and see the cash balance, and then we would decide from which bank account we are going to pay these bills. Those days are gone now. We have the technology like at Forwardly, we show you (30:08) the bank balance in all two or three or multiple bank accounts that you might have, so you can make a decision on the fly. So having those kinds of integrations saves time and allows businesses to make good decisions.

Andy: Very nice. (30:27) And I guess, uh, what else do your customers have to look forward to over the next few years? What other kinds of features are you guys excited about?

Nick Chandi: We are building more and more integrations with other players, with software that's being used by businesses, like I shared by Mediaocean and ConnectWise, AutoTask, or those kinds of integrations that we are looking for, that we believe we want to build the solution, we want to build the integrations to the platform that these businesses use. That's the direction we are going for. The other (31:01) thing that we are working on, Andy, is we are building a network of vendors. We call it the Forwardly Business Network, where anytime you become a verified business at Forwardly, anyone can send you a payment, any other business can send you a payment, or you can request payment from any other business on the Forwardly network very seamlessly without any extra work on their side. (31:27) So I believe those kinds of integrations bring a lot of efficiencies and improve the workflow because no one wants to share their bank account information or credit card information time and again. So once you have information, once you are on our network and you need your bank information changed, it's going to change with all of your customers, for all of your suppliers. Okay. But those kinds of things are more meaningful for us.

Andy: Very interesting. (31:56) I guess where can people learn more about your company and pick up your services today?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, just go to our website, Forwardly.com, and sign up for an account. One last thing I want to touch base on, Andy, you know, things come to mind, you know, when you talked about human-in-the-loop, right? On the future of payment, I believe it's going to change a lot with the rise of AI. (32:26) We believe that, you know, have you ever used Waymo from Google, the self-driving car?

Andy: Yep.

Nick Chandi: Very interesting. Very interesting, right? I believe the future of payments is very similar to Waymo. Okay. Like in a self-driving car, you set up and configure it one time, and it follows your direction. I believe business payments are going to evolve in that direction too, with authentic workflows that we are going to implement, and other players are going to do as well. (32:59) Where you set up and configure payments, and you know, it follows your guidelines. It can see the agreement you have on file with your supplier, with your vendor, and terms are still good. You have been making those payments for the last six months, and those payments will need to be automatically approved and paid, and you just get a notification or intimation, (33:18) "Okay, Nick, this payment is being made," and if you want to stop it, you want to reject it, you can still take control back. Yeah. So I believe we are heading in that direction as well, and companies like Forwardly, we are moving in that direction.

Nick Chandi: You know, checks are being replaced though, right? But checks are not going out anytime soon. (15:03) Okay, we will see how it goes. The truth is, the federal government mandated that they're not going to send checks anymore. Okay. So we'll see how that impacts the landscape, but checks are so connected to our ecosystem. (15:28) A lot of businesses want to see this as a kind of thing, and even though it's inconvenient, I know a local printing shop here, what they would do is they would literally travel to their customer, pick up the check, and go and stand in line at the bank. You know how much time they waste.

Andy: Oh, so much time.

Nick Chandi: So much time. Studies after studies show, you know, checks are so expensive. (15:52) If you look at the hidden cost of accepting checks, it's anywhere between $10 to $25, different studies show. Look at the, you know, you need to get the check printed and stock it, and someone needs to take it out, mail it, and, you know, hopefully it's going to arrive on the other side. (16:11) And someone's going to open it, and they have to enter it in their accounting system and go to the bank, or hopefully they have a mobile app where they can deposit online. But you never know, you know, but that's the other problem I have. I have huge concerns about checks on the fraud side too, right? Because checks have your routing number and account number printed on them, and anytime you mail the checks, there's an opportunity for someone to steal it. And, you know, there were more than 700,000 check frauds, I guess, if you look at the data for 2021 or 2022. (16:48) So, more than 700,000 fraudulent checks. Now we have the technology for these scammers, you know, they can change the payee name on the checks, they can change the amount, and, you know, all those kinds of bad things happen to businesses. Once you have a fraud, once you are a victim of a fraud, it's very, very hard to recover. (17:14) There was a PR company in New York, they were accepting check payments from their clients for the last 10 years.

Andy: Wow.

Nick Chandi: And what happened? They found that they were not receiving checks anymore. And what they found was that the address was changed, and, you know, last I heard, even after two or three months, they were able to receive only around 60% or 70% of the payments they were expecting from their clients.

Andy: Jeez.

Nick Chandi: Very, very hard to recover, you know, and you can foresee, Andy, what kind of—it's going to cause huge cash flow problems, you know, because they need to pay those bills and rent and payroll, and it's a very, very difficult situation to be in. We don't offer, yeah, we don't offer any payment through checks for our platform, only electronic payment methods, because there's clear visibility of where the payment is. (18:15) Both parties, sender and receiver, can see where the transaction is, and, you know, those kinds of things can save huge time and bring efficiencies to businesses.

Andy: Awesome. Yeah, that's, yeah, the fraudsters are going to—it's going to be good to see them go out of business though, at least in this particular way of doing fraud, I guess. And then, um, you know, some of the businesses that owe you money can't get away with the whole "yeah, the check's in the mail" and then it never shows up.

Nick Chandi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. "Checks in the mail," you know, always. Yeah. No, I'm using Forwardly. There's supposed to be a real-time payment here, you know. Yeah, I don't see it in my account, you know.

Andy: That's correct. Yeah, there we go. Um, I guess how else have consumer and business expectations evolved over the last few years in terms of like convenience and security of payments? Obviously, more people are starting to expect real-time payments now, and I hope more do figure out that this is an option for them. But also in terms of security too, right? I mean, you mentioned earlier some of the issues with check fraud. Are there any potential security loopholes that businesses should be aware of today when it comes to payments, and how is that kind of evolving with their needs?

Nick Chandi: (19:20) So let's look at the expectations, right? The consumer, Andy, I'm pretty sure you and I, we both use Amazon and we use Netflix and Uber Eats and those kinds of experiences, right? These are the experiences we have today, and the young generation of team members or the people, you know, they are born with a mobile in their hand, okay? So they won't go anywhere without a cell phone in their hand; that's the new generation. These are the people who are going to start businesses. (19:50) They are the people who are going to join as employees in businesses, and that's the kind of experience they expect on the business side too. Yeah. And honestly, we don't have that kind of business experience like Venmo's in the business domain yet, right? We talked about checks, and we talked about ACH.

Andy: They're going to want it though.

Nick Chandi: (20:14) We want it. Yeah. Well, you want the check payment to arrive today. You don't order a Netflix movie on Friday night to watch it on Tuesday morning.

Andy: Exactly. Yeah. I tell my CEO that too with our marketplace. Like, you know, there's stuff from the consumer, stuff you can learn and apply to a business. (20:31) You know, people don't want to have a bad experience buying software too, right? So, there's always like ways we can improve upon the UX and make it easier for people, right?

Nick Chandi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's the reality, right? So that's happened in payment—other payment methods too. Yeah, we have RTP and FedNow too. (20:50) So there's an opportunity for businesses to receive payment instantly from their clients. That's what we offer too, and I so talk to your bank, you know, they might be offering those kinds of services as well.

On the control side, you asked, you know, in business payments, we believe business payments are more about the workflows. Yeah. (21:11) Because, you know, if you need to make a payment to your supplier, someone needs to make sure those bills are valid; they are real, right? Someone needs to enter the data into the accounting system. So, for example, like Forwardly, a good payment system will do is they're going to read all those kinds of invoices coming to you for the payment. (21:35) Yeah. And at Forwardly, we provide a dedicated email address to every business that signs up so that you can receive all your supplier bills from that dedicated email address. We read them, we read the data, we do the OCR, or we use AI to read the data, and we try to code it accurately, close to 99% accuracy, so that, you know, whether it's an entertainment expense or a marketing expense, those kinds of data, you know, we call it—we call it chart of accounts in accounting, or you can call it categories or type of expenses. So all those things need (22:14) to be coded accurately in the accounting system. Then, obviously, we're talking about control here. So obviously, if it's a small business, and then, you know, small businesses, the owner wants to know, you know, they need to approve all the payments. In some businesses, if they have 25, 50, 100 employees, then they might need two people who are stakeholders in the payment approval process. (22:45) Like some businesses we've seen, among thousands of businesses that we serve, they have two or three approvers. You know, if the payment is, let's say, for less than $2,000, maybe $200, then, you know, there may be one person who can approve it. But if the payment is over $10K, then we need approval from the CEO, or it could be approval needed from three people, right? So, you know, those kinds of controls are needed in any payment system, business payment system. (23:13) Then obviously, we need to collect W9 information because if you're making a certain amount of payment to these suppliers, you need to collect W9 and issue 1099s to them. So, business payments are all about workflows because we need to reconcile with the accounting system too. Yeah. Right. (23:33) Because you don't want to wait for three days or five days to close your accounting books. It needs to be—anytime you receive a payment, you need to mark it as paid in the accounting system. So all those kinds of things provide control to businesses, business owners, or accountants that we serve, as well as bringing efficiencies to their workflow too, because no one needs to call, "Where is my payment?" Okay. Yeah, it should show up in the system.

Andy: And I like your guys' blend of automation and human-in-the-loop to really ensure (24:06) that things are able to process a lot more efficiently using the latest artificial intelligence technology that you have today and OCR that you guys are using. But then you have that human-in-the-loop opportunity too. So you could have key account holders, people that the CEO maybe gives access to, that can actually go through and verify all the payments and make sure everything's, you know, although it is automated, there's still somebody there to, you know, provide checks and balances to the system.

Nick Chandi: Yeah. Yeah. You know, sometimes, you know, there are like Jane was here on the call (24:35) before, and you know, like she might be working with an outside PR company, and you know, she may know more than me whether that PR bill needs to be paid or not, okay? Did they deliver on those commitments or not? So she needs to be a stakeholder in the payment approval process too, right? I, as a business owner, may want to know which bills are being paid, and I can plan when they need to be paid, but, you know, the person like Jane, they need to be aware of these kinds of things too. So, modern technology, you know, they provide those kinds of controls to businesses.

Andy: (25:08) Very interesting. What other kinds of controls do you guys have? So there's like a key account holder person that's tagged with the bill, and potentially somebody else might want to get notified of any incoming and outgoing bills or transactions. What else do you guys have in place there to maintain that level of control?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, there are multiple levels of controls in place. (25:29) You know, like one I just shared with you based on the amounts. So you can have controls based on the amounts, and another one, you know, sometimes in bigger companies, you can have control based on the supplier names as well, the vendor names. So if you have invoices coming from, let's say, Costco, they need to go to a certain person or a certain group of people. You can plan based on that, a chart of account type of expense, you know, or when the payment was made, payment needs to be made—all those kinds of controls can be placed in any kind of approval process.

Andy: (26:05) Very neat. And I guess, how does Forwardly help businesses get paid on time? Do you guys have any services around helping people collect payments, maybe if the client might not have the willingness or ability to pay? Because, like we mentioned earlier, cash flow is king for any company, and you know, having real-time payments is great if you're getting them, but a lot of companies still sometimes have to chase vendors down and sometimes run into cash flow issues just because they're waiting on a (26:29) few clients. You know, accounts receivable's waiting while accounts payable—you know, your clients, of course, want to get paid on time. Yeah. But nobody wants to pay us on time, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Chandi: So, we have something called the auto-collection feature in Forwardly. Let me step back here, you know, and you know, this situation is very normal, and you may have seen it hundreds of times, right?

Andy: Oh, yeah.

Nick Chandi: (27:00) You have done a great job, but there is almost always someone who doesn't want to pay their bills. Simple. They might have 20 bills to pay, and paying for your product or services may not be the top of their line item that they need to pay, okay? It may be somewhere at the bottom of the list, and now, all of a sudden, you have a late payment, you have bad debt, or who knows, and it will cause cash flow problems on your side. Yeah. (27:25) So the best way to solve that problem is having no AR, basically. Okay. And that you can have if you get pre-authorization from your clients. Anytime you provide a product or service, you need to get the bank information, their credit card information before you deliver those kinds of products or services.

Yeah, we provide an auto-collection feature in Forwardly. (27:49) So you make a request to your customer before you get your first payment or before you provide services or products, and they provide the banking information, and that's the auto-collection operation for you.

Andy: Wow.

Nick Chandi: So next time you provide any product or services, you raise an invoice at Forwardly or in QuickBooks or Xero or any accounting system you use, we are going to collect that payment from that customer automatically without pushing any finger, without pressing any button on your side. That's an automated process. Week after week, month after (28:24) month, we will be able to collect that payment from that client. So I believe that's the best way to eliminate any kind of AR or bad debt, you know, because or cash flow problems. You know, cash flow problems caused—I don't know the exact number right now, but more than 80-82% of businesses fail because of cash flow problems, right? Yeah. And if we can help them, we can help the business survive and grow, you know, then we are playing an important role in society.

Andy: The most important. Yeah, as I always say, yeah, a company lives and dies by its cash flow. So, you can ensure (29:03) your payments are actually showing up on time with this really cool feature that you guys have. Um, I guess what other specific technologies or integrations would you recommend for your merchants to prioritize over the next 12 to 24 months?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, in any payment system, you know, the integration, the most important integration any businesses need to be looking for, you know, it needs to be able to integrate with your accounting system and your practice management system, the business management system, whatever you use it. (29:34) So, I believe those are the kinds of integrations they must have. Businesses should be looking for those. The other one is, you know, connection to your bank account. In old days, we used to, let's say, it's common for businesses to have two or three bank accounts, and in the old days, what we would do is log into every bank account and see the cash balance, and then we would decide from which bank account we are going to pay these bills. Those days are gone now. We have the technology like at Forwardly, we show you (30:08) the bank balance in all two or three or multiple bank accounts that you might have, so you can make a decision on the fly. So having those kinds of integrations saves time and allows businesses to make good decisions.

Andy: Very nice. (30:27) And I guess, uh, what else do your customers have to look forward to over the next few years? What other kinds of features are you guys excited about?

Nick Chandi: We are building more and more integrations with other players, with software that's being used by businesses, like I shared by Mediaocean and ConnectWise, AutoTask, or those kinds of integrations that we are looking for, that we believe we want to build the solution, we want to build the integrations to the platform that these businesses use. That's the direction we are going for. The other (31:01) thing that we are working on, Andy, is we are building a network of vendors. We call it the Forwardly Business Network, where anytime you become a verified business at Forwardly, anyone can send you a payment, any other business can send you a payment, or you can request payment from any other business on the Forwardly network very seamlessly without any extra work on their side. (31:27) So I believe those kinds of integrations bring a lot of efficiencies and improve the workflow because no one wants to share their bank account information or credit card information time and again. So once you have information, once you are on our network and you need your bank information changed, it's going to change with all of your customers, for all of your suppliers. Okay. But those kinds of things are more meaningful for us.

Andy: Very interesting. (31:56) I guess where can people learn more about your company and pick up your services today?

Nick Chandi: Yeah, just go to our website, Forwardly.com, and sign up for an account. One last thing I want to touch base on, Andy, you know, things come to mind, you know, when you talked about human-in-the-loop, right? On the future of payment, I believe it's going to change a lot with the rise of AI. (32:26) We believe that, you know, have you ever used Waymo from Google, the self-driving car?

Andy: Yep.

Nick Chandi: Very interesting. Very interesting, right? I believe the future of payments is very similar to Waymo. Okay. Like in a self-driving car, you set up and configure it one time, and it follows your direction. I believe business payments are going to evolve in that direction too, with authentic workflows that we are going to implement, and other players are going to do as well. (32:59) Where you set up and configure payments, and you know, it follows your guidelines. It can see the agreement you have on file with your supplier, with your vendor, and terms are still good. You have been making those payments for the last six months, and those payments will need to be automatically approved and paid, and you just get a notification or intimation, (33:18) "Okay, Nick, this payment is being made," and if you want to stop it, you want to reject it, you can still take control back. Yeah. So I believe we are heading in that direction as well, and companies like Forwardly, we are moving in that direction.