Joshua Tate on ForumPay’s crypto payment system for merchants

0:01i'm ashton addison from eventchain for investmentpitch media and fintech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have joshua tate the ceo of forum pay and blocks live joshua welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to be here thank you ashton i appreciate you having me out you're very welcome i'd love to kick off the interview by getting a little bit of

0:21background on what you and your team are working on at forum pay form pay is a very interesting project for us um basically the the sort of genesis of forum pay was to look at the way that massive some of the catalysts to mass adoption and cryptocurrencies one of the ways that i identified or that my team and i identified in order to do that is to solve for the acceptability

0:49component of cryptocurrency um as a lot of people know there are generally six characteristics of money right divisibility portability acceptability limited supply so on and so forth the one place where crypto really struggles is in general acceptability meaning you really just can't use it in your daily life generally speak you know you can't just run down and buy

1:12a cup of coffee or go on amazon or so on and so forth um with with your cryptocurrency that sort of handicaps crypto in a number of different ways um one that it doesn't actually despite what you call it make crypto a currency um because it doesn't fulfill that final characteristic um and it also happens to sort of handicap the the the volatility component i'll

1:36explain that in more detail but generally speaking we set out to provide something for provide a a technology a fintech technology that would allow for payments really to happen in everyday life by cryptocurrencies and on behalf of merchants that may or may not be willing to be interested or accept cryptocurrencies so it's a blending of the two worlds of

2:04cryptocurrency and traditional fiat kind of environments mm-hmm yeah it's very cool because crypto payments is something that really has not reached anywhere near its peak and it's still the kinks are still being worked out and there are so many great use cases and benefits potentially when it does come into full effect that it's definitely a great space to be

2:26in and i want to dive into that but i also want to touch on the fact that you also run blocks live and that's what got you into cryptocurrency in the first place which helped grow foreign pay so if you could give a little bit of that story on how did you first hear about crypto get involved and start block's life that'd be great yeah absolutely foreign pay sort of came

2:47out of my experience in crypto and my journey and experience in crypto was through media um i'm involved with the company and have been involved with the company for a number of years it's a tech company specifically we represent well the company was designed to solve for a number of problems with the internet when it comes to distributing video content at scale especially in live and

3:08linear form content when we were very young in business that company is called system 73. when we were very young in business sort of the company's infancy we were solving for all these scalability issues and we were trying to find different ways to um you know showcase the the technology that we built the chairman he's a very successful guy in his own right

3:29of the company and the primary investor in system 73 is getting built or incredibly talented guy he and i would sit in the office on saturdays and kind of brainstorm about how we took that particular technology to mark he and i were not i should say neither of us were necessarily crypto guys but we were both and not necessarily crypto skeptics we were both very intellectually interested

3:53in cryptocurrency and its application to a number of different things i shouldn't say crypto i should say blockchain um from a finance perspective and both from in a technology perspective they're both very interesting i'm an old real estate and energy guy so the application of of blockchain to energy really kind of is what originally piqued my interest and

4:14sit around on our saturday afternoons and brainstorm in the office about various things we thought you know there's no place that i can find right now this is three or four years ago there's no place i can find right now that will satisfy sort of that intellectual crave for learning about crypto and blockchain for a new for somebody who's new right interested

4:35in a lot of different applications um and so you'd go to youtube or you'd go to even cheddar at the time was doing a bit of cnbc had 15 minutes a week bloomberg may touch on it when there was something big going on but generally speaking it was just very difficult to find what you would consider to be reliable information so we said why don't we create the

4:58cnbc or bloomberg of crypto and blockchain and that's very much what we set out to do with blocks live tv um we very quickly put together a team of incredibly talented sort of blockchain enthusiasts who are also in journalism and put them together and and brought them all to this you know crazy island in the middle of the mediterranean called malta and um started this this

5:21really really cool channel which has grown into a whole different monster you know on its own where that really kind of benefited me in the entire space was i was in the studio every day with all the guys and girls who were really producing great content and doing all the things that we wanted to do by becoming that sort of go-to resource for great information

5:44listening the great influencers so on and so forth like yourself and and and get folks really enthused and excited with reliable information about crypto that just means i got to meet i had the fortune of meeting really really influential people and really really smart people in the crypto community including my producers and and my writers and everything else that we're

6:05working on the channel they got me more and more excited the people who i met got me more and more excited and and i remember the light bulb went off one day when i said let's do a piece on the six characteristics of currency as i kind of mentioned previously is the genesis of foreign um i said i'd like to do a nice three-part series i don't want you to

6:27specifically focus on talking to just crypto or just blockchain people let's talk to everybody across the board all right phds and micro and mac econ economics i want folks that are sort of in the middle and kind of playing both sides and i want the hardcore crypto guys i want them to debate and talk and and discuss the challenges and generally speaking that's where they came

6:49up with you know where that cryptocurrency is is generally superior in five of those six characteristics it failed on on the sixth and so with blocks live getting me energized and into the community i was able to take some of my old career principles and finance and public finance to um to apply to something that i thought was a very unique opportunity in

7:14payments with cryptocurrency the the end result is is actually interesting i mean payments is a big business no matter how you look at it whether it's in credit cards or or any other sort of medium of payments in exchange interesting thing with crypto though specifically within our community is that if you do solve and you do it well for blockchain payments utilizing crypto at

7:43merchants and you solve for the acceptability component just by applying that transactional component to cryptocurrency and making it a cryptocurrency automatically has the effect of reducing the volatility of the currencies that actually are modicum of transaction and not just value what that also does the stability within you know stabilizing the volatility rather increases the value

8:08so when you solve in crypto blockchain it's so interesting when you solve little bits and pieces of the ecosystem and the puzzle with really you know true blockchain based solutions it's amazing what they have in terms of collateral benefit across the board for the entire industry um and so that's that's where i that's that's how i got into this particular industry through blocks

8:30live and very fortunately so uh some of the people that that ushered me through the process along the way uh and how i ended up starting um another sort of vertical within the particular yeah it's a very cool backstory joshua and both industries media and payments will be super important i believe to the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology and going back to

8:55the payment side you know i'm curious on what you think about the more recent news from you know the payment goliaths mastercard and visa uh you know came out visa came out the road road to crypto adoption and mastercard coming out with their partner program um on the payment side do you think that this is going to bring more legitimacy for all of the crypto

9:16payment processors and having uh that alternative where crypto as a payment system is going to be you know more ingrained into the system now that the the big dogs are starting to talk about it excuse me it's interesting i don't mind when big institutional players get into our space because i do think that that adds a certain level of credibility to you know say a merchant that might

9:43otherwise not know about crypto or even a consumer that might otherwise not know about it when visa mastercard paypal stripe or whatever it is get into the business though you're you're talking about actually diluting the principles of blockchain in in in that particular application so a credit card you know we kind of we've all been through the credit card journey but

10:07in a credit card transaction or a general credit card or debit card transaction there are literally no less than six people involved in the transaction and with a true blockchain based solution like forum pay and there are a handful of others i think foreign face better but you know people can disagree but with form pay a true blockchain based solution

10:29only has three people right the consumer you have the gateway and then you have the merchant it's that and it's that direct it also takes place on the actual blockchain which means risk of identity theft is eliminated risk of chargebacks is eliminated all of these things that that make the blockchain transactions really shine are totally diminished by putting on crypto

10:56or excuse me by uh putting the transaction back on visa and mastercard rights then all of a sudden you've still got you're acquiring banks you're interchanged you're settling bank all the six players that are involved in or seven and sometimes eight and nine that are involved in the typical credit card transaction i i think it's as i said interesting when

11:15they get into the game but they're not doing i i think it will be a catalyst ultimately to what what we're trying to do in a true blockchain based solution more people will be interested more people will understand and at the end of the day if i've got merchants who are actually interested in and understand cryptocurrency then forum comes an obvious solution away from the vsan

11:40mastercard debit and credit you know quote unquote pay with crypto sort of solutions that are out there there are some big companies even exchanges in this space that we all know have made some recent announcements announcements related to that and and again it's it's just not true to a blockchain solution or industry yeah so the value of a true blockchain

12:06based solution will show its value people who do know will know that people are getting involved will certainly become knowledgeable and educated on it and i think that will ultimately prove itself to be um you know kind of forward-facing yeah i completely agree joshua and i think it sort of goes the same for you know these chartered banks now just started saying that they'll take custody

12:29of your bitcoin if you want right and it's like well it brings it legitimacy to the people that think that banks are legitimate but for the people that think bitcoin is the you know the real legitimacy that it sort of goes against the grain of giving your bitcoin to the bank right so it it uh it sort of goes away from the principles and of course they're going to take

12:49fees and there's all this extra stuff involved and if you just use like a true blockchain solution that has the minimal amount of parties and the most amount of savings then you're probably going to get the most value out of it you i couldn't have said it better aston you absolutely nailed it this energy there the similarity between what's going on with the custodial banks and

13:08and sort of the institutional players in uh in payments is yeah uncanny so you were talking about the different principles of money and the fact that right now not a lot of people are accepting cryptocurrencies you know so it doesn't really make it a currency if it's not being transferred around a lot and i was looking into foreign pay and you know one of the

13:30solutions at least on the merchant side is that they don't really have to deal with cryptocurrencies necessarily if they don't want to you know they can use fiat can you talk about uh that fiat crypto interchangeability sure i i design forum base specifically with three to four criteria i said it's really i think only interesting to be in this business

13:52if you can and be in this industry through payments if you can solve for a number of very critical first of all we all know that we're all very sort of tribal when it comes to our wallets or our cryptocurrencies or whatever it may be as a crypto enthusiast consumer whatever like we are being in the industry if if you're going to provide a payment mechanism

14:15my criteria were it has to be entirely wallet acknowledged agnostic so if you've got whatever world it is that you like you trust and you feel is safe and secure and you know how to operate and it's the the best ui for you you have to be able to use that and be able to pay with it the same with sort of currencies with with the various tokens now you can't

14:34except you can't pay with every of the 2 000 plus tokens in the world right but certainly 96 of the market is represented by the top eight coins so you need to be able to at least have a mechanism that also will accept those different cryptocurrencies and as you well know um different blockchains provide different sort of challenges when it comes to that that

14:57transaction or the exchange so we had to solve for those two things on the product the second part we had to solve for was that the merchants you have to be able to educate and convince a merchant that they they really don't need to be concerned with what is being paid to them it's what they receive so for my merchants it was important for me to be able to say

15:19look the transaction takes place instantly at the point of sale just like a credit card or debit card or even we have features which allow for invoicing and so on so there's lots of different ways but let's just use credit cards and debit cards as an example at the point of sale when the transaction is consummated the conversion of that crypto to that fiat or traditional whatever

15:39whether it's a euro dollar yen or whatever that needs to happen at that at that exact time and there can't be any sort of delay or weird talk about when the blockchain settles the payment or more settles the actual conversion so it has to be an instant conversion and it has to be an instant conversion to whatever currency the merchant actually is used to getting

16:01paid and then the third criteria within that was i also can't tell a merchant that oh by the way you also have to sign up for some crazy bank account somewhere this literally all you need to know is that the person in front of you wants to pay with something that has a 100 euro or a hundred dollar or 100 cad equivalent in front of and needs to be spot priced best

16:26execution at the time and point of sale with no loading by the way on on the other side once that takes place and you can solve for that and the merchant can see that they're their whatever fiat it is that they choose gets settled into their bank account just as efficiently if not more efficiently and frankly likely less expensive than credit card does

16:48then you have some you have really something that you can you can give a merchant an excuse to to to accept or certainly no excuse not to right i think the report i read the other day is that there's 20 of the global population that owns cryptocurrency now and that's like 100 increase or 80 89 maybe percent increase from the private prior year to from 18 to 19. um there's no reason to

17:16think that cryptocurrency isn't being adopted in even more exponential levels but that you know a very real hockey financial hockey stick isn't isn't showing its base so that's a large amount of consumers that if you want to have a competitive advantage against your other merchants that may be reluctant in this space you can totally access and there's

17:39you're simply being an early adopter to something that i think will ultimately be something that that people just very much get used to with forum pay it look i'll admit if i'm any good or any of us and payments are any good at what we're doing in true blockchain-based solutions eventually we won't be necessary right because people will want to keep their

17:59crypto it will become that familiar that they won't need that instant fiat conversion it will be sort of just an option in and amongst any other now i designed forum pay so that they could in fact keep on exchange that we operate on which we also own and and operate those different cryptocurrencies and trade them as they become enthusiasts and adopters

18:20just like um you know the rest of us in the industry but right now it's a it's accessing a market a very passionate consumers that i think and i i i think most of us would agree would very much use cryptocurrency as a currency if in fact that we're not definitely uh well that's very exciting joshua and it sounds like you're doing really well with form pay

18:46right now so all the best and continued growth on that we're running out of time here but if there are viewers or merchants that are interested in learning more about cryptocurrency payments or about form pay what's the best way for them to learn more information sure our website's very informative as our most it's www.forumpay.com are you mpay.com um there's lots of

19:13information on there and if you go to the site you can always just uh look me up and hit me up on any of the various social media or linkedin or whatever i'm always happy to talk to people about you know these products and others and kind of just generally having that sort of weird media background as well i just like to talk about our industry and see what

19:34options and opportunities there are to grow and network within it so ashton i uh i think the this has been great i really appreciate your time um and good luck with event chain and everything and the next time you're in malta we will definitely have to get started great well thank you so much josh i will leave those links in the description box below for the viewers as

19:54well and all the best with all of your projects and let's follow up in the near future thank you so much you