Veem
Like Venmo for your Business
One of the great joys of my work is meeting startups early in their journey and then watching them succeed and grow. It is a bit like watching your favorite sports teams win, you were cheering from the sidelines but likely had nothing to do with their success. Hence my clickbait picture above of MY Ohio State Buckeyes I always enjoy them winning but never went to the Ohio State and came to them via my father being from Columbus, Ohio, he too never attended the University.
My point is you can feel a lot of connection to an organization or team for really no valid reason other than you are a fan.
That is how I feel about Veem, I am fan.
I have known Veem since they were Align Commerce, they changed the name in 2017. I have always thought of them as Blockchain for Cross Border Payments. This last week I caught up with Marwan Forzley the founder/CEO of Veem. Let’s rattle off some data points Marwan shared with me and then we will dig into the context of those data points:
- 250,000 accounts all of which are SMB business accounts
- Most of their SMB customers are under $10M in annual revenue with 2–10 employees
- They cover 100 countries and 50 currencies
- $31M in recent funding, $100M in total funding
Marwan opened with a great tagline, “Like Venmo but for your Global Business” I am a big fan of good tag lines and this is a very good one for Veem. Like my own “The Rosetta Stone for Legacy Banks and Fintech Startups” — clear, concise and using an analog to something most people know.
Why be Venmo for business? Everyone knows that Venmo represents easy, quick payments. Every business person wants to spend less time on payments. Voila, great Tag Line !
Two things I really like in the overview of Veem.
- Multi-Rail — B2B payments needs flexibility and that is how you provide it. You can even connect to VISA or MasterCard for the payments.
- The Routing Module makes an automated selection based on: Best Experience | Payment Timing | Payment Size | Payment Currency
If you have read my B2B Buzz blog you know I write a lot about Treasury and CFOs but in the case of Veem, this is being decided by and used by the business owner or accountant.
Veem likes to avoid the complicated integration with banks and their core complexity. Honestly I would like to avoid that too, but find I often can not. Veem operates as a standalone payments platform for SMBs. However the latest financing round includes strategic investment from MUFG Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Truist Bank’s venture arm. So a strategic shift or more likely addition will be bank engagement. Actually Veem is looking for someone that knows how to sell to banks, so if you know anyone, reach out to Marwan.
Veem is ready to help banks with their SMB cross border payments and I can assure you banks need the help. Amazon, Shopify and just this week Stripe are looking to move into SMB payments territory. And the danger for banks is more than simply lost revenue on fees, it is losing the primary connection to their SMB customers.
Veem has a simple pricing model (unusual in the world of payments). Also a key on your cross border payments, the Foreign Exchange rates are more competitive than your banks.
From the Veem Website an FX Cost comparison
- Veem Exchange $1,000 USD to EUR *€825.39
- A Bank’s FX $1,000 USD toEUR €803.66 EUR
That is a savings of over €21 on a single transaction. You don’t need a CFO to be excited about that much savings. Rates change and your mileage may vary etc. but it is obviously a better rate on most transactions.
One final point and that is SMBs hate accounting. Seriously no one opens their business and thinks I can’t wait to deal with banking and payments and finance. They just wanna run the best Donut Shop or Machine Shop or Art Studio. This is where Banks can offer so much more by making business easier. Also, this is where Stripe’s Treasury announcement was smart this week as they and Square look to become the Operating System (OS) of SMBs.
Veem addresses this key point in two ways, first they integrate to Quickbooks and other SMB accounting programs. As I noted a couple weeks ago, this is a must have in SMB bank and Fintech, Data Transfer…..don’t make them pay their accountants hundreds of dollars per month to do this manually.
The other part of the Veem experience I like is easy on-boarding. You do connect your bank and this is likely where the required KYC is. Then sending invoices and getting paid is according to Veem as easy as sending an email.
Marwan made the point:
Veem is a way to replace expensive cross border Wire Transfers. Personally, I don’t know an SMB that wouldn’t appreciate that cost savings.
Of course now banks need to figure out how to replace Wire Transfer Fees.
