Stephen: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Around The Coin. I'm your host, Stephen Sargeant. We're in for a treat today. We have the CEO of Shift4 Taylor Lauber. He talks all about Shift4's evolution into the payment processing space, working with e-commerce companies.

He talks a lot about staying nimble in the evolving payment space while also working in crypto. We even talk about the philanthropic work they're doing with the Giving Block and the Care for Crypto campaign donating over $20 million.

He talks about some of the jurisdictional nuances as. When it comes to regulation and payment infrastructure, we talk about what the future of FinTech, the future of payments, the future of crypto is gonna look like, and what part Shift4 plays in this entire ecosystem.

This is such a great episode. Shift4 is on the bleeding edge of technology, including giving us some insights about their space payments exploration. This is one for all the payment tech crypto nerds like myself to watch.

Stephen: We have a fantastic episode today. This is the Around The Coin podcast. We're talking a lot about payments on earth in space, everywhere you can think of, we have Taylor Lauber, CEO of Shift4 Payments. Shift4 is really exciting.

But I wanna talk a little bit about you, Taylor. You've worked, you know, on like the Wall Streets of the world, but what were you really interested in, maybe going all the way back to your childhood?

Is there anything that you found, you know, whether you spent your days in the library making extra money, shoveling snow? I'm curious of anything that you did in your childhood that maybe gave you an interesting impact of what you're working on these days.

Taylor: It's, uh, it's a great question. Thanks for having me. Um, you know, I, I would say that a few early, um, remembrances of things I really liked to do. I really loved technology as a child. I was the taken apart the computer, put 'em back together. Um, I also, you know, uh, for better or worse had to work as a child.

And I think, um, you know, uh, at a young age learned that I was gonna have to take care of myself. And so, um, had lots of jobs as you could imagine, young kids do. Uh, you know, the snack bar, the, you know, auto repair shop, et cetera. But really, one of my first jobs was working in our founder's parents' basement when he started the company.

Um, and, and I think my, my, uh, decisions at the time probably give you an indication of where I thought I was best applied. Um, because I left, I went to college, I went to, uh, wall Street, as you said, and that was my career path. I really loved technology, but I also loved finance. And, uh, I was not looking back.

Despite the fact that Jared kept trying to hire me back into the company. Um, and so, uh, I, um, you know, had a about 12 year career on Wall Street. Really enjoyed my time there, but, um, kept struggling to say no to, you know, my, my, my friend from the high school years and also didn't, I was struggling to deny this, like, incredible success he was having and the industry.

Um, and, and the, and the tailwinds behind it. So rejoined about eight years ago, and it was really that, uh, it's the perfect marriage of kind of finance and technology. Like I, what I like to say is we are the technology that gets the money to the bank. Um, and so in many ways is, is as important, if not more important to our merchants than the bank itself.

Stephen: I think, you know, as an entrepreneur, that is the most important part is like, how can my clients get the money to me? How can I get my, you know, how can I get money to my vendors, you know, my, my contractors. People think it's easy, but it's not hard, especially in the world that we live in today, where people are living in multiple jurisdictions.

But you know, you're working with, you know, these large organizations, especially when it comes to digital assets.

Can you talk about your early relationship with the founder? Like you're talking about, you know, back in the day you're in the basement, maybe playing video games, working on things, but he was definitely building something huge back then.

Can you tell me a little bit about, you know, the founder of Ship four, what your relationship was, how it's evolved over the last, you know, maybe almost two plus decades?

Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, he was best friends with my cousin, so that's how I got to know him. Uh, all, all teenagers, all nerds really focused on, you know, technologies, computers, um, the emerging industries at the time, you know, uh, the PC was becoming popularized, so it was now in everyone's, everyone's homes.

The video game industry was finally like, hitting its stride. You had, uh, you know, the, the, the dawn of the multiplayer online stuff. That was really cool, uh, to see. Um, and it was my cousin who actually said, Hey, my buddy, uh, is building this business. I'm working for him. Like, can you come join us and help out?

And none of us like knew what payment processing was at the time, but, um, little did we know that was an emerging industry that was gonna have huge impact. Um, and so at the time the business was, was, was quite simplistic. It was, you need to enable a merchant to accept this thing called a credit card. And, um, uh, believe it or not, that was innovative.

Most people were still paying cash in the late nineties for things and businesses were kind of clamoring to accept this credit card that was becoming ubiquitous. It was no longer just a tool for the wealthy that travel around the world. As, as 16 year olds, we were getting sent credit cards to us in the mail by the comfort that just like the issuing banks were just doing whatever they can to make this new form of payment as as ubiquitous as possible.

And, uh, Jared's approach was. We just need to simplify this. This doesn't need to be this complicated. The process felt very much like working with a bank in those early days. It felt like a commercial mortgage, as we like to say. And uh, what, what Jared was kind of uniquely, uh, positioned to do is say, this shouldn't work this way.

This should work like buying a cell phone or some of the other more modern industries. And we should just get the device in the hands of the merchant as quickly as possible. We should do it in a way that's, uh, economically aligned so that when they make money, we make money. And, um, if we can just simplify it, it's gonna make life really, really easy.

And the early days was simply that it was make this process easy, make it as low friction as possible. There wasn't a lot of technological differentiation. Um, and, and, and, and, and that was incredibly successful. And I think one of the reasons that, uh, Jared and the company are where they are today is because the early success did not convince any of the team that it was enough.

And it actually success inside of Shift4 really makes us paranoid, uh, and, um, forced us to go do things to, to maintain that success, like start to embrace technology. And so now we are a very kind of, uh, technology forward company with lots of software we offer to merchants, lots of hardware, et cetera.

Um, and lo and behold, that's what merchants c value in. It's, uh, you know, the money needs to hit their bank account, but the value comes and how easy you make that process for them.

Stephen: Was there any like, you know, turning point for maybe you or Jared where it's like, hey, you're going to a bunch of card shows and like you couldn't find any way to pay unless you had cash. Was there any like sticking moment, like in the everyday lives that you had where you're like, Hey, I just wanna make this easier for myself, and then you're like, oh, maybe we're off to something.

If we're able to, you know, process these payments just for this small niche community. What if we expanded it out to, you know, the broader audiences, the to more people, to our friends, to our schools, to our universities, to our community?

Taylor: You know, it's, it's a, it's an interesting question. I would say there's more of that now. There's more insight and pattern recognition and, you know, this worked well over here, or this isn't working as well as it should. Um, far more of that in the business now. You know, I, I will, um, take some liberties because it was really Jared at the time, and I, I, I was in college after, you know, that, that few short months.

Um, but it was luck in the early days. He was actually working at a computer store, uh, on Route 22 in New Jersey when a credit card processing business came in and asked for help. Uh, with their computers. And so he kind of accidentally found the industry and, um, saw the opportunity in the industry and saw the inefficiencies of the industry.

Uh, but it wasn't something that we were seeking out. And I think, um, I, I think the ability to recognize luck versus skill is something Jared has really, really, really, um, uh, uh, an acute awareness of. It's, it's interesting because we've watched lots of other people who got lucky by finding this industry and this gold rush that was electronic payments.

Um, and most of them don't exist today because they mistook their luck for skill. Um, we knew, and Jared specifically knew that he was lucky and that he found an opportunity and if he wanted to sustain this success, that was this early lucky days that we need to work really hard and evolve constantly.

And, and that evolution forces you to do, I think, what you're alluding to, which is look for inefficiencies everywhere you can find them. Look for opportunity that you think hasn't been fulfilled. And we're trying to do that every single day. But the, but the early days, you know, there was a lot of luck.

Stephen: And there's a lot of parallel to like the crypto industry, right? Like, oh, I got into NFTs, I made a lot of money. You can just kind of sit back and be like, oh, just keep on creating NFTs. You don't realize like, Hey, you have to actually build, you have to build out on brand. You have to actually execute. And you know, that's what I think you're saying is like, Hey, we realized it was a gold rush, but we also know we needed longevity and sustainability.

We have to start to innovate. We have to start building a foundation. And I think maybe some of those companies that were around at that time was just focus on like going to the bank, cashing the checks and seeing like, Hey, all we have to do is be open and people are running to us for money. Uh, I don't know, you know, your age, but you're talking about nine 1990s.

Like, was there still a stigma that like the payment processing industry was a little bit sketchy or shady? I know, you know, a lot of crypto exchanges ran into problems with payment processors, uh, trying to, you know, especially with the banks kind of de-risking them. Did you, have you seen that, like, darker side of the industry or maybe that stigma to the industry?

Taylor: You know, so, um, that was far more of a theme in e-commerce. Where, um, that was an emerging industry, kind of around the same time. I'm 42 for what it's worth. So, um, born the same year as the, as the Nintendo, which is something I, I think I'm really proud of. Um, the, uh, payment processing wasn't necessarily viewed as a, as a sketchy industry.

It was a complicated industry. You know, businesses were struggling with, what does this mean? What do I actually, what does it cost me when someone comes in with this credit card versus the cash? How do I use the terminal? How do I do a refund? Like when someone needs a refund in cash, it's very easy. Uh, an electronic refund can be more complicated.

When will I see the money? When will the customer. See the money leaving their, their bank account. All of those were new questions. And so I would say in those early days, there was confusion, uh, for sure, and there was a lot of education that was required, um, but not, not, uh, necessarily viewed as sketchy. I think, uh, as e-commerce became prevalent, um, there were a lot of unanswered questions.

There was a lot of, how do I know what I'm buying is what I'm getting and how do I know what they're selling is, um, you know, is as advertised. And so I think there was a lot of skepticism that came into the industry as a result of e-commerce. But, uh, we, we've generally focused on physical commerce for most of our history.

Stephen: And you know, you, you mentioned that you had worked at Blackstone Group for eight years, you know, and they were alternative investment, like real estate, uh, private equity. Was there any kind of key takeaways now that you're running a juggernaut like Shift4? Was there any key takeaways or things that you learned from managing Probably a variety of portfolios, meeting with different founders and industry stakeholders that you're applying today.

Taylor: Uh, there was a ton that I learned from that company and it, you know, it, I, I found the entire company by accident. So I was working on a wealth management team at Merrill Lynch and Blackstone became a customer around the time of, of their IPO and, and it was just fortunate because of what we were helping 'em with, which was the stock that all their employees were getting in, in the transaction.

I got to meet all of the wealthiest and, and most influential people at Blackstone. Um, and I, I consider it an incredible. Uh, uh, uh, twist of luck that I, I was in that position, but in my early twenties, I was talking with all of the most senior people at Blackstone about their most significant, um, asset in their own, in their, in their own lives, which was the, their ownership of the company.

So I was insourced. Um, it, I was kind of told I was going there. Um, they were a big customer of Merrill Lynch, and one day my boss said, Hey, I'm, uh, uh, I'm not gonna ask you. Uh, I'm, uh, I'm not gonna ask you. Like, they want you over there and they're our biggest customer, so you should probably do it. Um, and when I got there, there were a few things that were really striking now, uh, to, to your point, it was the largest alternative asset manager in the world at the time.

Um, I, I, I wanna say they had 80, going to a hundred billion dollars on their management. So they were bigger than most of their competitors combined. It felt. Incredibly polished. And um, yet when I got there it was like there was a lot going on behind the scenes. There was a lot of operational mess that what we were working through to kind of keep up with the growth of the company.

So one of the early things that I learned was you can be an incredible company, uh, and you can be an awesome brand that the world loves. Uh, but if you're growing really fast. Your back office operations are sprinting and it's chaotic and you're constantly outrunning your supply lines. And that feeling and, and, and understanding that feeling, um, is really important because I think all you want as a business operator is smooth operations.

And what you sort of realize over time is that if your business is running smoothly, it's probably not growing. And if it's not growing, that's devastating and that's far worse than the, the anxiety of constantly needing to upgrade your systems, modernize your systems, add people, um, and, and play catch up.

So that was the first thing I learned was if you're growing really fast. It means, uh, you're gonna be playing catch up a lot. And that's a far better thing than, than not having to play catch up at all. Um, secondarily I learned that, uh, you know, the entrepreneurial spirit of Blackstone was something that I, you know, did not find anywhere.

Everyone was encouraged to build a business inside of that business. Um, uh, it was all within the theme of asset management. So it might be, to your point, investing in buildings or, or land. It might be buying companies, it might be debt, um, investing in other investment firms, uh, through their hedge fund group.

Um, so, uh, but on the theme of investing, there was this idea that you should be as entrepreneurial as possible in finding new ways to do this. And, um, that helps tremendously when you're trying to run a business 'cause you have to do that and it's not, um, a bad thing to look at. Countercyclical businesses to your own and say, how can I do this?

Um, and and it became incredibly important when, you know, the pandemic hit and we realized some of the concentration risks that came in our own business and we needed to kind of seek to diversify beyond that. And then lastly, I would say, um, scale and knowing what moves the needle is something that is, I, I only learned after I left.

And it was funny 'cause you think about the things that frustrate you about a job and you think about the things that management tells you. I remember very vividly, uh, John Gray, who runs Blackstone today as the president, um, you know, kind of shooting down different ideas that, that our team would have around new investment products.

And we're like, wait a minute. I thought we're entrepreneurial. We're trying to create this thing. And he is like, no, not big enough. Can't be scaled. It's too complicated to, to do a lot of it. Um, and I would get immensely frustrated and. Um, now kind of in, in, in, in a position where I'm trying to lead, you know, our own business, I realize how, how damn important it is to not get stuck.

Like, like ideas are not that much harder to make really big than to make small. And so if you just spend the time to focus on and make sure your idea can be really big, it has an impact. If you don't, it's really, really hard to come up with 20 great ideas and add them all together and suddenly have an impact on a, on a growing and larger company.

Stephen: and I think that focus is huge. You probably see it now running your own companies. Why He probably shot down some ideas versus others.

Taylor: Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen: Because, you know, the shiny ball, the woman in the red dress, everything looks appealing. But you know, you are still not maximizing maybe some of the areas that you are already in Now seeing, you know, I was fairly early in crypto, but you know, you always go back like, oh, I saw this happening and oh, you know, I, I could have invested at certain times.

Was there any kind of trend that you saw when you were at, uh, Blacko where you're like, Hey, you know what? I really believed in it. I didn't do much about it, but it's really like blown up since my initial thoughts now that I'm seeing it kind of play out maybe over the last decade.

Taylor: So I, I, I'm kind of boring on the investment side, ironically, um, for how kind of entrepreneurial I, we, we try to be and how much we've got going on in the business. I own two stocks. I own Shift4, and I own Blackstone because, um, I know how much conviction I have to have in a management team and a, and a business plan before I would ever risk a dollar on it.

Um, and so, uh, there was a lot of investments that I would participate in as an employee of Blackstone, but it generally wasn't my decision. It was like awesome investment professionals who found an opportunity, it was their job, and as an employee you had the opportunity to allocate capital into them. So, um, certainly learned, uh, a lot about investing.

I would say what stuck with me more. kind of the themes that the, the investment team would use. And, and again, John was a huge proponent of this. How do you take a theme that's been successful and replicate it as many times as possible? And so one of the things going on back then, um, you know, it was 2012 ish Blackstone was RA raising, um, uh, you know, uh, their seventh real estate fund, if I recall.

And, um, it was the wake of the global financial crisis. So the opportunity was just enormous. I mean, you know, real estate had been kind of. Decimated. Most of the competitors have been wiped out, and yet Blackstone had the largest fund in history and could deploy it into this opportunity. And, um, they started to kind of take a theme that worked really well in the United States and then replicate it around the world, um, in different markets that were, uh, you know, at different points of maturity.

And, um, that really stuck with me because if you know your industry or you know your business really well, you know your product really well. Um, everywhere in the world is at a different point of evolution, um, from, uh, from a technological standpoint, from a societal standpoint, from a banking standpoint.

And you can find exactly the right point to introduce your product into that, you know, mix.

Uh, and, and it became really interesting as we started to look at what was making us successful, um, at Shift4 with regard to combining software and payments. Uh, it became very obvious to us that. Hey, in Europe, they're still using a bunch of those old bank terminals.

And what if we do what we did 15 years ago in the United States and apply those lessons to Europe? And lo and behold, we're adding thousands of merchants a month in Europe in a product that they see a ton of value in. And it's not, it, it's not hard. It's just like, don't make the same mistakes you made, uh, 15 years ago.

And spot the opportunity that was so easy to, that was harder to see then, uh, so easily now. So this idea of pattern recognition and try to, um, uh, try to predict where, uh, each g geography is from an evolutionary standpoint and where you can help, has been really successful for us.

Stephen: I can't remember where it was this summer that I saw Shift4. It was like an irregular place. Either it was like a flea market in Canada, or it was like Turks and Caicos trying to buy, I assume. I'm like, oh, like I didn't know. Shift4, like went out this far. I think it was Turks and Kos. I was like, oh, Shift4 is like global.

Global.

Taylor: Yeah. You know, it's, um, uh, it's, I I think that both helps and hurts our brand, um, because we are everywhere. I mean the Bar and Grill in Boise, Idaho, the Yankee Stadium, and, um, it can kind of make this head scratch of like, wait, what do they actually do? Um, what we connect software and payments, and I'm guessing if you saw us in Turks and Caicos, it was probably a resort that had tons of software that needed to be connected, you know, to to, to the payments network.

And they need that, uh, uh, that, that guest to have a common payment experience. And, and as importantly, they need the, the auditor of that and the accountant of that resort to know what's going on in this kind of mess of complexity and payments. Um, so we are in a heck of a lot of places and it's this theme of how do you.

Take technology and software and make it work as seamlessly as possible with, you know, what can be at times a commoditized product of payment acceptance. Um, and how do you combine those two things and make life as easy on the merchant? And, and, and maybe just the one area of focus is we started with the bars and grills in Boise, Idaho.

We're really good at them. We do tons of them, thousands, you know, um, uh, join every single month. But where we've identified the ability to kind of find, uh, uh, a lot of success and limited competition is put that bar and grill inside of a place like a stadium or a resort where, um, it needs to cooperate with tons of other revenue centers.

And so, um, yeah, love to see us on Main Street, but also know that if we're in a stadium, there was like, uh, there was very, very little competition, uh, preventing us from getting there.

Stephen: That's interesting because you operate in both the hardware and software state.

Can you gimme the current state of payments from maybe your perspective? It feels like a lot of players have moved just online. They're just doing the online payment transactions. We're seeing a lot of fintechs and stablecoin companies get into that area as well.

But you know, very few are going the hardware side and I think now with AI, hardware is actually very attractive to VCs. Everyone's worrying about the manufacturing of chips and, you know, hardware sexy again after maybe two or three decades. What are your thoughts? Where are we in the current state of payments as it, you know, as it pertains to hardware and software?

Taylor: So great question. And there's really, those are two different questions, right? So, um, with regard to software, you know, again, Jared and, and the team recognized far before I, I rejoined the company that, um, software was what was gonna win the hearts and minds of merchants software that made their operations easier and made commerce easier and reconciliation easier was valuable to them, and payment processing was a necessity.

Um, and combining those two things was a huge, huge point of innovation. And he, and he was doing it. Uh, and the team was doing it, uh, in the mid two thousands. So that was incredibly valuable back then. And what they learned was we're no longer a payment processing company. We are a software and technology company as well, and there's a lot of complexity that comes into supporting those operations.

You know, imagine your phone calls were about, you know, your billing statement or how to do a refund, and then a year later your phone calls are about how to change the price of buffalo wings in, in my system, or how to apply a new tax, um, you know, in a geography because the town just instituted one. Um, so learned a ton from that evolution.

And where are we? Today, you know, that evolution has made several, uh, several, uh, leaps from there. So software and payments are pretty ubiquitous now. Most software companies being born today are thinking about the payment experience, uh, at the point of design and, and creation. Um, and, and yet selling around the world for merchants is still an incredible challenge.

Um, this idea that I want to sell my product into a foreign geography, um, presents not only the problem of accepting payments from that geography, but also how do I make sure that what I'm offering from a, a, a payment methodology standpoint is the way the consumer wants to pay. And I said a lot of jargon there, but let me just make it really simple.

If I wanna

Stephen: not to mention like regulatory sanctions, you know, there's a lot of other

Taylor: Tons of it. And, and, and, uh, you know, to boil it down, if I wanna sell to a growing population of Chinese travelers. I should probably be offering them things that don't feel natural to me, like Alipay plus wallets and WeChat pay and things like that, because that's how they're used to paying.

And so the current evolution we're in, and there's only a handful of companies I think doing this really well, is yes, give the merchant the experience of unlocking countries in a seamless a way as possible. Um, but also give the, uh, consumer an experience that feels like they're paying it home. That is a real point of difference because every company is finding it easier logistically to sell their goods, uh, or their services all over the world.

So that's the software side of things is just enablement on a grand scale in a way that feels local is a huge theme for merchants. Um, the idea that Netflix wants to, uh, add subscribers in a new country is, uh, probably the easiest way to think about that Now, on the hardware side of things. It, it's a great question because, um, hardware is a means to an end in our industry.

It's a physical necessity, uh, for our merchants. And yet, um, you know, for the first kind of 20 years of the industry's history, hardware was like viewed as this massive point of differentiation. And we never viewed the world that way. We said hardware is like the, the, the, um, enablement tool for our merchants to accept payments.

And so we're not gonna charge for it. We're gonna get them great hardware that find that, that, um, uh, that necess, uh, that provides the solution and we're gonna, uh, give it to them for free. And anytime there's an issue, overnight it, and we'll get you another one because we never want this physical device to stand between you and commerce.

Um, so we've taken a different.

Stephen: part of the industry at the time where, you know, companies were charging these huge amounts to install the hardware and it was like, you know, you know, I think we've gone through this with all equipment, like to do a home security system before they charge you so much amounts, but now it's like, hey, we'll install that.

We'll have it there for free. You just have to pay the subscription kind of thing.

Taylor: That's exactly right. And we've taken that approach all the way to, you know, the biggest stadiums in the world, the largest casino resorts. Like we, we are not in the business of trying to make an extra buck because there's an, uh, the power plug has been moved a few inches on the next version of the device.

This device helps both you and us conduct commerce, and so let's get it there as quickly as possible. And thankfully, over time, hardware has become a lot cheaper. So it, it benefits our business model to do it this way and a lot easier to like, update remotely with Android based operating systems, things like that.

Stephen: Is there anything revolutionary in hardware? I know we're going a lot more to like end, you know, touch, uh, whether it's our phone, our, our wrist with our watches. Is there anything that you're seeing in hardware that people are like, oh man, like in the next five years they wouldn't even believe that we're able to do this using some of the hardware out there.

Taylor: It is, you know, it wouldn't feel evolutionary if, um, you were looking at it from the standpoint of a consumer and an iPhone or an Android, uh, phone because, um, you know, we, we've had this for a while, but for a payments company and a technology company like us, we are using far more of those features. Than we ever have before in the commerce experience.

So to give you a sense, um, you know, we have an all-in-one payment terminal that is being released in Europe. And, um, if you are eligible for, uh, a refund on your taxes, 'cause you're a foreign traveler, it detects that based on the card that you paid or tapped with, and it tells the cashier on the screen, Hey, this person can get the tax back.

Make sure they know about that and educate them on how to do that. And they might spend more, by the way, and this is great for everyone, um, uh, but as part of that process, you might want to take a picture of their passport, um, because that's needed to validate everything. And so suddenly you're using like five different pieces that we use in our phones every day as part of the commerce experience.

Um, and that to us is really, really cool. Um, the idea that we can introduce devices that do all of this complicated commerce stuff in a really seamless way that the, you know, cashier needs very little training to take advantage of is, is, is very helpful.

Stephen: Do you see a transition?

And this is a, you know, a great question, I think for someone in your position where eventually it's less about the payments and more about the data that you're collecting from those payments. Like if you look at Uber, eventually Uber's gonna be able to be very unique in the way they advertise or way people pay on advertise.

They know exactly where you're going, how much you're spending, what groceries you're buying, and it's almost like the data is more important than the actual, you know, the travel element of it or the delivery element. Do you see that in payments where it's like your customers are probably coming to you like, Hey, give us an idea of like how much people are spending on chicken wings across Buffalo versus in New York and how can we adjust this because hey, like 25 cents per wing, you know, can change a whole industry.

Um, and you kind of have access to love that, that just by seeing this, this, the payment trends, like I would assume.

Taylor: Yeah, it, you know, it is, it is immensely valuable, I think, how to monetize. It's the right question. Um, do you give it away to your merchants and therefore they adopt your product more quickly, et cetera. We tend to err on that side, which is, um, yes, merchants see a ton of value in it, but it should be part of the Shift4 experience as opposed to modules, add-ons, et cetera.

Um, I'll tell you, with a business we recently acquired called Global Blue that does this, you know, um, tax free, uh, uh, or tax refund experience around the world, the value is immensely, uh, or the data is immensely valuable. And they know who the shopper is, what they're buying, the luxury store they went to, how expensive the product was, how many different stores they may have gone to through that experience, where they came from to travel to that country.

Um, so these are all incredible insights, but packaging them historically has been difficult. And what's kind of, uh. What's kind of really interesting is AI has made the packaging of these insights far easier. Um, we, we have this, uh, this thing we talk about called the Jack and Coke problem, which is, you know, imagine how many ways a restaurant could program a Jack and Coke into their, uh, point of sale system if they wanted to.

It could be one button for Jack and Coke, it could be Whiskey plus Coke, it could be Jack Daniels plus Cola. You know, there's a hundred ways to do it, and we found ai, um, is solving the Jack and Coke problem for us, which is, I just want to know how many Jack and Cokes were sold, uh, really, really easily.

And applying that to our products and our merchants to get those levels of insights in is, um, we're, we're at kind of a, a new age for being able to provide them as a result of, of these technologies, which is awesome.

Stephen: And you mentioned the acquisition of Global Blue, but you also had an Australian payment provider, smart Pay that you acquired, you know, from a CEO perspective working with lots of companies, uh, in your, you know, previous life. What are the challenges with acquiring an organization, potential redundant roles, different culture, especially around the world, and how do you approach that?

Maybe they even have a different approach to the industry or what they saw for their product or solutions.

Taylor: It's a great question, and it's probably the majority of my day, um, is how do we, um, integrate the cultures of recently acquired businesses. Um, I'll tell you the, the things that make it easy and the things that make it hard. The things that make it easy are that if we're acquiring a business, it is generally part of a, a broader commerce experience.

And so that business is used to the handshakes required to make the experience work. Um, just by way of example, um, the, the global blue business that, that, that we've been talking about, um, it's never processed payments for its tax-free merchants, but clearly the purchase of the good starts their whole workflow.

So they know what it means. And that part's easy. It's not like you're trying to get, um, you know, I, I don't know, a barbershop to become, you know, a, a restaurant. You, you are, um, definitely, you know, uh, they're, uh, keenly aware of the value chain that their product sits in. So there's no mysteries as to the overall experience that you're trying to deliver.

Um, however, if we're acquiring a business, they have not fulfilled all the parts of that value chain. And probably for. Legitimate reasons. Um, and so the, the hard part of the Coin comes in when you are, um, changing the go to market and the service delivery model, and suddenly these people are responsible for far more pieces of that commerce experience than they historically would.

They can't hide behind another vendor. When something's not working, they can't say, go call your your payments company. We are the payments company now.

Stephen: are the, just call it, call this other number within the organization,

Taylor: believe it or not, that in far more commerce than you could imagine. That's the experience and that's why we've been so successful. It is this big, complicated experience of paying inside of a large resort is a grand finger pointing exercise of six vendors when it doesn't work.

And we simply said we could own all these pieces and. Yeah, there'll be some finger pointing, but it'll be internal and we can solve all that much faster for merchants. So the, the um, easy part of our m and a strategy, uh, is, well, number one, we're immensely price disciplined and so we don't spend a lot of time or emotion and should we buy something or not?

It is in this economic model, it, we will do it a thousand times and if it doesn't meet that we will not do it and move on. Um, so that, that's very helpful. Um, but. understanding the end game is something acquired businesses and the employees of those businesses generally do. Um, and then it's the how do you make these pieces work together?

Why are you doing it? Why did you ignore the opportunity, and why should we not ignore that opportunity today? Um, and then inevitably cultures like, and that's the fun part, right? The fun part is, hey, commerce works differently here. Consumers pay for things differently.

We sell different goods and services.

Um, that's fun. It's just fun to travel around the world and learn about these cultural differences, but

Stephen: what I was gonna say. It is funny if you have to go to Australia and learn how they're processing certain foods and stuff, not a bad trip for you.

Taylor: I will be, uh, I'll be at Octoberfest in Munich, uh, in a couple weeks. Uh, just making sure the commerce experience is, is what they say it is.

Stephen: One beer at a time. Like, let's see exactly how long it takes for each one of these beers, uh, to be paid for and consumed.

I'm curious, you did touch a little bit on ai, but even when you talk about approaching what makes it for you different from like, Hey, let's just establish a partnership with this payment vendor in this jurisdiction, versus let's acquire the whole business and, you know, not do a partnership.

Or do you always do partnerships first, see how it's going, and then being like, Hey, we really like the way they're doing business. We wanna absorb this as part of our actual infrastructure, versus just having like a third party payment, you know, agreement.

Taylor: It is a great question and it is probably one of the things we are most, um, rigid in our views on, and it's not that you can't partner or you have to partner it is that you have to know which is right for the circumstance, and there are circumstances where you are forced to partner. And you should. And then in circumstances where you are not forced to partner, you should own as much of that stack as you possibly can because you're a hundred percent responsible for the delivery model, which means you, it's harder, but you can deliver better outcomes for the work.

Um, so in the early days, you know, uh, Jared and the team were forced to partner in far more capacities than, um, they ever would've liked to because they didn't own a lot of infrastructure. I think Jared used like 10,000 bucks from his grandfather to start the business. So, you know, you had to partner in a lot of different capacities in order to make the solution work.

And the cost of those partnerships over time became so nauseating, um, that it was early lessons learned, but obvious. You don't wanna bring a partner in if it's critical to your ex customer's experience

Stephen: Right,

Taylor: You can do it. So, so we, we try to avoid partnership where, um, it's a, it's a core model that we deserve or we should be delivering to the customer.

And then in other examples, we can't own all of the value chain. It's impossible. And I, I'll use the example of like, um, a large casino in resort in Las Vegas. Like they have Microsoft installed, they have Oracle installed, they've got, you know, uh, hundreds of revenue centers all with different software.

There is no chance we're ever gonna own all that. And the role of the valuable partner that stitches it together is unique and is incredibly valuable in that capacity. And so, um, we are very kind of, um, rigid in this build versus buy versus partner approach to how we do things. Um, rarely do we partner and then buy it later 'cause that's really, really expensive.

If it's a good idea, you should just do it. Uh, you shouldn't test it. And then, um, you know, give your partner half the economics, uh, for, for some, uh, pred period of time because you're unsure whether it'll work out.

Stephen: now you're touching money and value, obviously, as a payment service provider.

What are some of the regulations like is G-D-P-R-A huge concern when you're doing that? Is there other emerging regulations, especially the treatment of digital assets and jurisdictions? Like Canada, where I am, where you know, stable coins of security makes no sense, but it absolutely crushes the potential of stablecoin infrastructure in places like Canada.

Where do you sit when it comes to regulations? Are there ones you're more concerned about than others? Are there jurisdictions that are more friendly to your business model than others?

Taylor: Uh, also a an awesome question, you know, well, I'll start with kind of my, a little bit of my, my early career and, and how it informed my views. I, I, I joined Merrill Lynch in November of 2005. Um, so I, I. It was pretty euphoric in the capital markets at that time. Um, and, uh, by the time I left Merrill Lynch had kind of collapsed and, and been acquired and as had many other large, you know, service providers in the financial service industry and a lot of assets turned out to be worthless.

Um, so I really welcome the regulation that creeps into industry, especially with regard to money, because I've seen the consequence firsthand of people not knowing what they own. Um, and if they don't know what they own and there weren't the right protections to educate them on what they own, it can be devastating.

Um, and so, uh, the, the regulations are, you know, obviously. Not always implemented in the best way, not implemented in the same way across different countries. So it can be very confusing, very frustrating, but in general, regulations with regard to moving money, we are really, really supportive of, um, uh, and I'll tell you, they do change everywhere and they're not perfect everywhere, to your point.

And, um, you have to be nimble enough to navigate those things on behalf of your customer. Um, you know, your customers should not have to deal with it. It should be if, if, if we're in the business of making sure our merchants get their money, we should have to, uh, navigate a lot of that complexity for them.

So we have like banking relationships in the United States where we send money through the a CH networks. We are a SEPA participant in Europe, and that covers a whole different set of regulations in terms of how to move money through those, you know, systems into those banks. It's completely different in Latin America where you're using things like pix.

Um, we have to embrace it. I am very supportive of it because I want. Um, everyone to know what they're buying and what they're getting for it and how the money will move and that the money will move in a safe way and no one will be, will be, um, uh, will be disadvantaged through that. Um, but we gotta own it for our customers.

Stephen: What's your ethos, whether it's personally or professionally? With Shift4, do you want to be early to the market while regulations are still formulating, so you can be kind of like first to market, or do you wanna wait to see a couple of months after everything's already up and running, and then you'll leverage your infrastructure and your partnerships and relationships to then go into that market?

Taylor: I, I think we just have to serve the customer. Um, and, you know, our customers are gonna guide us to where they want to conduct commerce. And the best customers are gonna push you, um, because their product is ubiquitous and can be sold anywhere and wants to be used everywhere. And they're gonna push you to help navigate this for them.

Uh, because like they, they don't wanna figure all this out. They wanna sell their product in a country and receive the funds. So I, I welcome kind of a balance of both of those things, which is a great aggressive, uh, fast growing business with a great product that's trying to sell everywhere, and we're trying to help them on that.

And then separately, you have kind of, maybe it's a, maybe it's a, a restaurant in, um, uh, middle America that wants to accept stable coins or crypto because consumers are starting to talk to 'em about it. And so we, we kind of try to balance these things. It's not, we're not in the business of telling. Uh, consumers how to pay.

And we're certainly in the, in the business of enabling merchants to accept whatever is of value today. Um, and it will change. So we kind of accept all those truths and know we're gonna have to make tough decisions about do you enable, I don't know, stable coins or the next version of American Express or Pix in Brazil, or WeChat pay.

Um, all of these things are things you have to debate. Um, and so you try not to be too, um, uh, religious about which one you think is gonna win and just make sure you're serving the merchant. And then in the geographies, you should just be in the trenches with your, your, your merchants.

Stephen: And how's it been? You know, obviously us has a new administration, stable coins are leaping, but the tariffs are kind of hurting that e-commerce business. How is it it balancing these two kind of dichotomies from a payment perspective? Do you see a decline in things like e-commerce purchases or spending?

And have you seen an increase, you know, when it comes to your stable Coin side of the things or payments with crypto, have you seen an increased interest on that side as well?

Taylor: So there's a ton in that question. And I would say this is one where my, you know, early history in or early career history in banking, uh, gives me a, a, a pretty, uh, I don't know, jaded viewpoint on, on, on the environment, which is, um. You know, banks have been whipsaw by different administrations, um, and quite frankly, paid for the sins of prior administrations, um, in the future, uh, based on decisions they were told to make by government.

And so, if you think about the housing crisis, right, and all the banks that got sued for mortgages, that at some point the government was encouraging them to make, right? I see a lot of that going on in the, um, digital asset industry today, which is, you know, yes, the administration's encouraging it. I actually don't even think it's that controversial between, uh, the, the left and the right in our country today.

Everyone's kind of encouraging it, but banks are saying. I'm not sure who's gonna be here next, and I'm not gonna take my chances, um, because, um, I remember when you sued and fined me for, you know, what the last administration encouraged me to do. By the way we see that today with all the loans that were issued during COVID.

It was a huge push by the government to make sure these. These things get out and lo and behold, five, 10 years later, someone starts to say, Hey, was that done right? Did people follow the right rules? So I don't blame the financial institutions or the plumbing at all for the caution that they're exhibiting today.

And there's a ton of caution related to digital assets. Um, and I, I, I think our, our current kind of, uh, form of government and, and the, uh, amount of discourse on it creates the right solution pretty quickly relative to other parts in the world, because, believe it or not, other parts in the world, they can't make a decision at all, let alone change their minds.

Um, so, uh, I'm encouraged by the pace at which the dialogue's happening, and I'm encouraged by, um, the speed at which, you know, uh, uh, the private sector and the public sector are trying to come together to find the solution. Um, but there, there will always be, uh, a theme like this where the trusted financial plumbing is a little bit leery of, um, what, what the government said yesterday.

Stephen: And I think it's hard too, like these are huge institutions. By the time you consult with consultants, by the time you start putting in policies, procedures that could take, you know, 18, 12 to 18 months, by that time midterms are starting to go around and then we're already heading in a different direction.

So it must be so difficult, you know, they can't just, you know, switch on the stablecoin button. Uh, like some of these maybe fintechs or Neobanks. I'm curious.

You know, every payment company I talk to, I have to bring up the conversation around chargebacks. Especially, you know, there's been reports at Canada, north America is going through a recession and we start to see friendly fraud as they like to call it, where people are just like, I bought that thing, but I'm just gonna say I didn't buy that thing so I can get my money back.

What are your thoughts? What are you seeing in the world of chargebacks? Is it still like the number one problem for a lot of your vendors and merchants?

Taylor: you know, this is one where, um. Because we've been in physical commerce for as long as we have, and that's the predominance of the business we do today. It's not something we deal with a lot of like, it, you know, you, you generally, when you go into a restaurant, if you have a dispute with the experience, you're settling that with the business owner, with the waiter or waitress in the restaurant.

Um, it is rare that you would charge back a meal and quite frankly, you probably wouldn't win it, um, if, if you did that experience. Similarly with hotels, um, you know, the policies are pretty mature. Um, and, uh, you know, if you, uh, have a chargeback for one reason or another, it's, it's exceptionally rare. So we don't see a lot of chargebacks across our merchant base.

Um, in e-commerce is start to where it kind of creeps into the mix and you have to have pretty robust tools just to help the, the merchant manage them. Um, and, and I would say, um, you know, we, we've, uh, we, we've. We've gotten pretty high scores from that, from our customers in terms of helping them navigate this.

Um, partially because we've been in really low chargeback industries for most of our history, and also because we have a handful of e-commerce customers that are real trailblazers, um, that are selling all over the world very, very quickly. And we're helping enable that for them. And that iterative process of kind of constantly having to adapt, um, you know, helps us build a product that meets their needs.

Stephen: I'm curious, you know, when we talk about payments, we've talked about casinos, payments, restaurants, e-commerce, but you guys are actually in some very unique areas, including space, which is kind of interesting. Consider, you're talking about physical, physical payments. Tell me a little bit about what is shift for doing in space?

Is it more on what's happening here? Is it like building out an ecosystem of payments there? Give us a little bit of insight there.

Taylor: So, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll start with the, the, um. The ambitions of our founder are pretty well evidenced by a lot of his. Um. Uh, a lot of his activities in aerospace. Um, so, you know, before we were a public company, he built an air defense business that was, you know, selling, um, adversarial training to the US government.

Basically fighter jets that would be the bad guys, you know, uh, help train our people. Uh, uh, he doesn't stop when he gets, uh, fascinated with something. And that evolved into a desire to go to space, um, relationships with space companies. That was largely him personally pursuing these things and where commercial relationships made sense.

Um, we obviously as, as you know, the owner and founder of a business, it's very common for that to be the case. So, uh, you know, enabling Blue Origin for, um, stable coins is kind of a natural byproduct of a bunch of curiosity and, um, and ambition of our founder. Um, and I would say it's, uh, it's what it, it's the way.

Good businesses are supposed to grow, which is, you know, when you're, uh, out there in the world and you identify opportunities and problems that you can solve, um, and, uh, and you do that on a relationship basis, you start to win really, really interesting customers and you start to solve unique problems.

So I wouldn't say that space is like a big theme, uh, despite the rocket behind me in the picture of Jared's launch, um, over there. Um, it's, it's, uh, it's a curiosity. I think it represents the best of human ambition at the moment. Um, and that ambition is what we try to translate into, you know, the product experience.

Um, but what we are trying to do is take complicated problems like that and that, and solve them on behalf of businesses that don't want to deal with them so that they can sell their products.

Stephen: If you can handle payment transactions in regards to space exploration, I think you're pretty good to handle the Boise, Idaho barbecue restaurant. That's really just trying to organize their POS systems.

You're new to the CEO role for the most part. Uh, is there any KPIs or any metrics that you track obsessively that maybe other CEOs don't spend that much time, or maybe your investors aren't bugging you about?

Is there any like unique thing that you're like, oh, I really want this to be great, whether it's, you know, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, entrepreneurship, or people are bringing you cool ideas of where you can go, even if you don't execute on them, you're like, Hey, I love to keep this kind of momentum.

Taylor: You know, it's, it's, it's a good question. There's a set of like financial outcomes that we have to be very acutely aware of. Uh, but that's the byproduct of the work we're doing. That's not, you know, the, the, the goal necessarily. Um, but you have to be acutely aware of the financial impact. And by the way, as you move around the world.

That's a lot more complicated. Where, what are the taxes? You know, what's repatriation look like? How, what's the currency exchange rate as we're, you know, selling these products and spending these dollars. Um, so there, there's a lot of complexity in the financial side of the business that you have to be acutely aware of.

I think if you're gonna make the right decisions, you have to know where the next dollar should be spent. But, um, one thing that I, I, I kind of stole from, um, from, from Blackstone, and I, and, and I think it was, it was their founder that, um, you know, would talk about this from time to time is, uh, we're growing employee count tremendously.

And I think many CEOs and leaders kind of view that as this, um, a a as the proof of success. We have 6,000 people today and we had 3018 months ago. We must be successful. And what I try to look at is, what is the. Sales and profitability per employee that we have because adding. 3000 employees is not the goal.

The goal is that when you add those 3000 employees, they are generating more productivity for our shareholders than the, the, the first 3000 were. And so this is an exercise we spent a lot of time on. I'm a little stale on my statistics, but you know, prior to the acquisition of Global Blue, we probably had about, um, six times ish the employees that we had at the time of our IPO.

And yet we were, you know. Two and a half times more profitable per employee. Um, and that's really the North Star. It's not that you're adding people, it's not that you're growing customer accounts. It's like, is the gener, is the, um, person in the seat generating better outcomes for shareholders than, um, you know, than they were yesterday?

And so is that growing? Um, are you implementing tools in the right way that's driving productivity so that every incremental employee is creating better outcomes? That's what I try to pay attention to. You can't look at it daily, but you can certainly look at it quarterly and, and, and, and semi-annually and annually to know are you going in the right direction?

Is like the output of the employee on an economic basis rising or shrinking. And when it's shrinking, you're, you're making life harder, not just for yourself, but for your employees. So in many ways, like employee satisfaction grows when they can do more. And, and with, with, with, with less resources. Um, and, and that thing can not, not solve itself, but but certainly be trending, you know, in the right direction.

Stephen: And do you think this, you know, this, you know, revenue per employee is something I'm hearing a lot more than conversations maybe five years ago. Do you think AI is driving this conversation a lot more because AI is giving the ability and attribution to some of these employees to do more with less and make.

More with the same amount of time? Like were you talking those numbers when you were at Merrill Lynch or Black? Like were those conversations coming up at Blackstone or is this a new phenomenon with the advent of ai?

Taylor: No, I, it's not a, well, let me, let me give you some of my perspective on why I think that's happening, and I agree with you. Um, I think it's happening because the advent of venture capital meant that very few companies had a mandate to make a profit. For a long period of time, um, you know, it was grow at all costs and grow first, and profitability is something you can figure out later.

And, um, for, for, um, Jared, and I think, you know, to a, a a, a similar extent for Steve Schwarzman, when he founded Blackstone. F money wasn't free. You couldn't just go take someone else's money. And by the way, if the idea was really good, you don't wanna take someone else's money. You wanna own all the equity in these outcomes.

And so I think there's not, uh, you know, uh, the, what I, what I was trained on is somebody who owns the entirety of the business saying, how do I take my capital and get the best return for that capital, the best return on this dollar spent? Um, and no one, I think, thinks about that more pragmatically than someone who owns a business that can't find free money anywhere they're looking.

Uh, they stretch a dollar as far as it can go and obsess over the efficiency of that dollar. And, you know, for better or worse, that's how I, I grew up. That's how Jared operates. That's how, you know, the, uh, the founders of Blackstone operated. Um, and yet I would oftentimes look at competitors and I would just like, wait a minute, they just raised.

You know, hundreds of millions of dollars at billions of dollars worth of valuation. And they haven't proved that they can make a dollar a profit yet. Um, I know they say they can, but like, how the hell does anyone trust 'em with that? You know, there, there were times in our history where competitors had five times the number of employees we did and we owned like a much larger business and it was 'cause their investors were encouraging them to take those risks with that capital.

I don't think that that encouragement is there anymore. I think the ability to prove that you can turn an idea into a return on capital is at the front of the conversation days like this at times like this. And that's why I think businesses are being forced to adapt to a new way of thinking. Uh, for us that's kind of how we've always thought.

Stephen: Is 'cause you know, you're trying to, you know, talk about how much you doubled your, that doubled your team in the last 18 months. How do you convey the potential hires that you are mission-driven organization, but it's still, you know, on the cutting edge. You know, I'm sure you've seen maybe some transition from employees to AI and whatever's, you know, whatever's coming out next, quantum computing.

How do you obtain, maintain, retain the top talent within Shift4?

Taylor: It starts with winning. So like, if you're winning as an organization, people stay, um, and they're happy. And, um, so, so if, if that's key. Um, now we're somewhat unique in that. About 75% of our employees came from companies we acquired. And uh, what I think we're, we're pretty good at is showing those acquired employees a different way of doing business that leads to winning more and they stay.

And again, it's an ecosystem they're pretty familiar with because their product had to work with commerce. You know, when we bought the venue Next stadium, uh, product. It was to enable commerce across stadiums. So they knew they were used to working with people like us, and inside of our walls, they got more done than outside of walls.

So, uh, culturally acquired employees, as long as you can show them that you're winning, tend to do really well inside of Shift4. And then we end up with more of them than everything else. Now, how do you hire? It's hard. It's really hard. I, you know, you cannot align to the best and smartest people in the world, and both look each other in the eye and say, this is a good idea.

And inevitably, half the time it doesn't work out for one reason or another. Um, because we have incredibly high standards on ourselves and we work in really complicated industry that requires a lot of, uh, uh, uh, of, uh, of, um, domain knowledge to be successful. So where we tend to hire and where it does work is on things we are horrible at.

We go out and look at companies that do things incredibly well and say. Hey, we, you know, our customer experience could be better. Can we go get someone from a company that has an incredible customer experience and bring them in, um, purchasing, you know, purchasing's a really, really tough thing to do for a growing business.

Why do you buy your stuff? How do you make sure you're doing it well and efficiently? Let's go get a purchasing team from a really large industrial manufacturer that, but just buys and sells things all day long. So we have had a lot of success kind of identifying our shortcomings and being, um, I think, uh, really aware of who does it way better than us, irrespective of industry and bringing in that talent.

Um, uh, uh, but we try to hire as little as possible because our m and a strategy is, it has generally brought a lot of talent into the business. We have 2000 more colleagues on July 3rd when we bought Global Blue than we did a day before that. And we know they understand at least the, the, the guts of our business better than, than someone off the street.

Stephen: That's huge numbers when you think of it. I'm an entrepreneur that has a team of five and like when you talk about thousands and being the CEO of that, like I have little sweat beads going down behind my glasses here. Like it just sounds stressful.

One thing I do wanna end on, and we've had them on the podcast, the Giving Block.

Uh, you have this Care for Crypto campaign. You announced, I think almost $20 million worth of worth of philanthropy, um, campaign back in 20 22, 3 years later. What are some of the largest donations maybe you've made? What were some of the most interesting, you know, community partners? Uh, that's a lot of money, first of all.

And you know, what emptied you to, preempted you to go the crypto route, right? Like maybe, especially with Jared's, maybe thinking about space exploration. That might be something that he personally is interested. What was the, you know, what was the focus on the crypto campaign?

Taylor: It it awesome question. For us, it was very simple. It was, there's this new wave of digital currency. And, and what's our answer? You know, customers are gonna call and we can't not have an answer. Um, and, and I think we had a lot of skepticism around the evolution of the industry and what people were buying and what it was worth and all that stuff.

And you can't let that skepticism, uh, uh, uh, obfuscate the fact that this is a thing that will probably last and that merchants are gonna pay attention to it and, and demand solutions in it. So, uh, it started first with we need an answer to, um, crypto. And we struggled a lot to find kind of the right.

Business model that we thought made sense. Um, now, fortunately, and again, this is a bit of luck, it's a lot of luck. Um, it was a time at which, um, you know, Jared was giving, I think, the largest gift in their history to St. Jude and got really, really close to that organization. And as any curious entrepreneur would, he started to ask, how do you manage all this revenue that you collect?

There are donations to St. Jude, but to any business it's revenue. And there's, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of different software that a large business like that uses to collect revenue. And he said, we can solve this problem for you. We've done this for hotels, we've done it for stadiums. And the giving block kind of represented this really interesting combination of the two problems we were trying to solve at that moment in time, which is they enable cryptocurrency donations on behalf of charities.

And charities were scrambling to figure out how to accept this new form of value that, um, a lot of people had gains in and were looking quite frankly, to, uh, to use when they, when they

Stephen: To offset some of those gains with philanthropy, work, and donations. Yeah.

Taylor: so we acquired the business and we said, we want you to focus on two things. We want you to focus on how to create a more ubiquitous nonprofit experience.

And today nonprofits can donate, uh, you can donate crypto to them, you can use a credit card, you can actually donate stock all through that platform, and it's awesome. Um, and then on the other side of the Coin, make sure we're not like losing ground in crypto. And Alex and Pat have been tremendous in that regard.

They push us all the time into things we otherwise wouldn't feel comfortable doing. And, um, they do that because they're much more closer to the industry than we are, and they're kind of raising the flag to say, Hey, if you miss this, you're gonna miss a big opportunity. So it's been a, a, a, a really awesome partnership, um, in terms of product enablement for a new vertical.

That is not for profit for us, that, that we do really well. And then for them, keeping us really close to an industry that, you know, uh, naturally we might not be as close to if, if weren't for their curiosity and, and, and, and passion.

Stephen: And they, they're extremely entrepreneurial. You don't find that much in a non-profit space. You know, operators of large organizations, corporations, but like those guys are entrepreneurial. They're, they're really entrepreneurial in the way they approach it. Add to that a CEO, like yourself, a visionary like Jared, also very entrepreneurial.

It makes it like you completely revolutionize that type of industry. And we're seeing the benefits, uh, you know, we we're really close with the association of for women in crypto and the ability for them to receive donations, uh, in crypto is huge. So we're seeing the benefits of these things that are going right back into the fabric of the community.

Taylor: Yeah, it's, they're an awesome team. And quite frankly, the, the value proposition was something the crypto industry needed to be educated on, which is like, if you really believe in this asset. You should be donating the stuff you have and buying more, uh, that's tax advantaged. Um, and, uh, and the charities obviously just need all the help in the, that they can get in terms of accepting things of value that people wanna give them.

Stephen: And it gets more people involved. If you're accepting cryptocurrency as a former donation, your team's starting to understand a little bit more about what's cryptocurrency, what does it do, how does the value go up so much? You start educating a new, you know, in industry that normally probably wouldn't be looking at that.

And I know Nick and others like they put some the charts up on LinkedIn and it's like, wow. They like imagine missing out on that massive amount of donations and having like cool ways to like have companies invest in what you believe in, you know?

Taylor: Yeah. We've seen many, you know, high seven figure donations that charities might not have otherwise gotten, or another charity would've gotten if they hadn't been able to accept it. So it's, it's incredible.

Stephen: And I feel like the crypto community is very mission driven, you know, passionate about certain things, so it gives them an outlet to donate into someone and the organization that they firmly believe in the cause, and that's a little bit more innovative than maybe some of the other non-for-profits out there.

As we end the conversation, Taylor, I would love to know you move into the CEO role. Was there any book that you went to look for? Like, Hey, I need to brush up on some things. Is there a, you know, a podcast that you started listening to or an idea that helped you, you know, shape your thinking, uh, as CEO.

Taylor: There. There's a bunch. I would say, um, you know, a short history of nearly everything has got nothing to do with business, but it teaches you so much about kind of the evolution of humanity, that it, it becomes easy to kind of recognize trends as a result. The book of Mor uh, Morgan history of JP Morgan going back to the early foundings will teach everyone a ton about the evolution of the financial markets and the banking system and for.

Folks that are, um, excited about cryptocurrency, that should be a must read because that's how money began to move in the modern sense and the rules that were applied to make it work in the right way. And, and I would predict a lot of that will play out in the, in the crypto industry. Um, and then the acquired podcast just showcases so many great businesses that, you know, we, we've been around 26 years, we've done, I think, a decent job of growing, but, but they highlight businesses that have been around for 90, a hundred years in our household names.

And I, I think listening to that can be both humbling and inspiring, uh, as a, as a business operator to know just what it takes to kind of create something that's gonna endure, um, you know, long past yourself.

Stephen: And I like the Founders' podcast probably for the exact same reason, right? He is not interviewing the latest, greatest entrepreneurs. He is going way back talking about entrepreneurs. I've built huge things and why they're in existence still today. Uh, I'm curious though, you know, you mentioned like things outside of the industry, a lot of what you do is technology, but it's gotta have to do a lot with psych psychology of like consumers, consumer behavior.

Do you have like a special unit within your organization where you're bringing in maybe the top doctors and thought leaders in that area to help you with the customer onboarding, the customer experience? Or is that just based on industry knowledge at this stage?

Taylor: You know, it's, it's an awesome question. And historically payments was a complicated industry and I, I think that this is one of those places, where're looking outside of our industry to help us make the experience easier. Um, because by definition, a payments company is used to so much. Challenge that, um, in product delivery that you can oftentimes accept, uh, a lower standard than your customers deserve in terms of the, the onboarding journey and experience.

So we challenge ourselves to look at, uh, completely different companies where you can sign up for something with just an email address online and get this incredible experience. That's what we want our product to feel like. Not a traditional payments, um, product. And then the customers themselves, you have to just listen to them and we have enough and we're pushing ourselves enough into these new corners of the world that we get a, quite frankly, more feedback than we can react to and prioritize in a, in a sensible way.

So those two points of knowing kind of what a good experience looks like outside of, in, in the best of circumstances way outside of your industry, and applying that where you can and getting that expertise helps and then listening to the customer should, you know, solve the gap as long as you got enough.

Stephen: I love it. Taylor, I think our audience is really gonna enjoy this podcast. We covered a lot of ground in the, in the topics that everyone loves to hear. Payments, tech, crypto, uh, but we also talked a lot about giving and the psychol, like the psychology of dealing with acquiring companies and dealing with new members of your team.

Where can people find you if they wanna learn more? I'm assuming LinkedIn is gonna be your bread and butter. Do you frequent Twitter a little bit. Get into those Twitter conversations.

Taylor: You know, you're, you're, you're, uh, you're, you're channeling my chief of staff. I don't spend enough time on LinkedIn, but I'm there. Um, I spend a lot of time inside the company, but, um, you know, tlauber@shiftfour.com, um, I would encourage anyone to reach out. It's like we get the best insights from that. I think if you're not listening, um, you'll find me on Twitter.

I just don't tweet that much. Um, uh, and you'll find our founder and he tweets a lot. Uh, so that's probably why we're the nice

Stephen: Tweets. Enough for the both of you, and we we're a nice balance

Taylor: each

Stephen: get you on LinkedIn, brother. I hope you out. Don't worry.

Taylor: Awesome. Um, I, I'm there. I'm just not curated, so, um, I'm working on it.

Stephen: Awesome. Taylor, thank you so much for sharing so many insights in such a short period of time. This episode flew by and it's probably one of the best ones we've had this year.

Taylor: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me.

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