Today I speak with Barry Levett, Co-founder and CEO at Mypinpad. Mypinpad strives to be the solution of choice for money on the move — making mobile transactions safe, easy and enjoyable and Barry confidently says they are known for being some of the best of the world!

We discuss building soft POS, the impact Mypinpad is having in society when it comes to financial inclusion, lessons from merging two companies with different but supplementary strengths and products and successfully creating an innovative solution, not flawless execution, their recent 30 million investment round, community, market expansion and much more!

If you enjoy this Purpose Driven FinTech episode it would mean the world if you subscribe and give it a follow so that we can have more impact. Remember to connect in YouTube or LinkedIn to keep the conversation going.

Let’s dive into it!

👉 You can find Barry here

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrylevett/
• LinkedIn Mypinpad: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mypinpad-ltd/
• Website: http://www.mypinpad.com/

👉 And you can find Monica here:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicamillares/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@moni_millares
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moni_millares
• Website: https://moni-millares.mystrikingly.com/

In this Purpose Driven FinTech episode we cover:

(0:00:30) Focusing on performance and creating a fast and compliant product

(0:01:12) Making transactions safe, easy, and enjoyable

(0:03:02) Failure is part of the entrepreneurial journey, but spotting failure early is important

(0:05:02) Limited resources can lead to creative problem-solving and learning opportunities

(0:08:03) Mypinpad's North Star and Financial Inclusion

(0:12:55) Performance and experience for creating a successful product

(0:14:27) The process of merging companies and creating something new

(0:15:27) Knowing when to stop doing what made you successful and start something new

(0:17:18) Getting buy-in from the team and maintaining communication during the transition

(0:19:16) Challenges faced during the process of change and transition

(0:22:47) The importance of effective communication and finding translation agents

(0:25:52) The recent success of closing a $13 million investment round

(0:26:11) Getting investments and the pressure that comes with it

(0:27:01) The importance of community and the journey in business

(0:28:30) The benefits of having experienced investors in the payment industry

(0:30:14) Successfully expanding globally without physical presence

(0:31:58) Understanding your role in the ecosystem and building around it

(0:33:34) Identifying what you can do better than anyone else

(0:35:16) Asking the right questions to develop a unique value proposition

(0:39:53) Sorting out processes and fixing issues in teams

(0:40:30) Enjoying the journey and finding fulfillment

(0:42:39) Need for international standards in fintech

(0:43:35) Simplifying regulatory frameworks for global expansion

SEARCH QUESTIONS:

• What is SoftPOS technology?
• How to merge two FinTech companies successfully?
• What are the benefits of SoftPOS for merchants?
• How to achieve financial inclusion through payments?
• What is the journey mindset in entrepreneurship?
• How to build community-driven FinTech products?
• What are the challenges of SoftPOS certification?
• How to create agency banking solutions?
• What is the role of community in FinTech success?
• How to expand FinTech to multiple geographies?
• What makes SoftPOS secure and compliant?
• How to avoid culture clash in company mergers?
• What is the importance of failing fast?
• How to build confidence in leadership teams?
• What is contactless payment on mobile phones?
• How to raise investment rounds in challenging markets?
• What are PCI compliance requirements for SoftPOS?
• How to bring ATM services to rural populations?
• What is the future of mobile payment acceptance?
• How to create international regulatory standards for FinTech?

—

Production and marketing by Monica Millares. For inquiries about coaching, collabs, sponsoring the podcast or creating or editing your podcast email fintechwithmoni@gmail.com

Disclaimer: This episode does not constitute professional nor financial advice and does not represent the opinion nor views of my current, past or future employers. The guest has agreed to record and release our conversation for the use of this podcast and promotion in social media.

Barry Levett: Very good. Thank you for having me, Monica. Very, very happy to be here.

Monica Millares: Thank you. I am really looking forward to this conversation because you've done an amazing merge of companies. And we were talking about what happens when you put together an elephant and a giraffe and then the team comes together and they create a weird animal.

So instead of doing that, you've gone through a process of taking an elephant and a giraffe and creating something new that makes sense. So really looking forward to this chat. Uh, but before we go into the chat, we all know that life and building a company is not always, it's exciting, but it's not always an easy ride.

Barry Levett: Uh, yeah, I mean, that's a, that's, that's definitely a massive one. Uh, I think, uh, with, with failure comes, uh, a level of practice. Um, uh, I think, I think failure is part of it and, you know, going through it, at least for me, is if you assume that you're going to fail in some things, then the expectation is not there that you're going to hit it out of the park and become Elon Musk overnight, that That doesn't fly.

Um, I think the point and where I'd get disappointed is if you don't spot the failure early enough so that you can do something. Right? So the real big failure is, uh, is more of a blind spot rather than something doesn't come off. Um, I'm, I'm a, I'm a big fan of the idea of, of option options and optionality.

You know, not unsuccessful test. Unsuccessful test I don't really see as a failure. Because you're not really that surprised. Right? You don't expect everything to come off.

Monica Millares: Yeah, I like the distinction because like many times it's the emotional side of difficult times. That is the difficult, right? But it would change the minds exactly what you just said.

It's just, it's not a failure, yeah, it may be a difficult time, but it's more of, uh, An opportunity to do things different.

Um, you know, humans have had a long tradition of doing things because they're difficult, you know, not always because they're easy, you know, hence, you know, going out into space and going to the moon and, you know, inventing things and, uh, and that, and that's in modern days, but, you know, this is something that's innate in humans.

I mean, we've crossed the oceans. Uh, you know, think, think about what, um, Mariners of old were doing, you know, crossing oceans, they didn't even know what longitude they're at, you know, forget GPS and all the rest. So there's a pioneering element of, of, of sort of belief and then over overcoming things. You know, the fact that it's hard is makes it also a little bit fun.

I think that's also part of the failure story.

Yeah. So just to build on that, like you've had an entrepreneurial journey as such. What has been. I guess, like, the biggest lesson or the biggest challenge in your journey?

Barry Levett: Uh, I think the most, the most surprising thing is what you can do with very limited resource. Um, and, you know, I'm thinking, you know, very much the Spark has a...

Do something and show it and then get response and, and, um, and do the next thing and see what happens. And if you, if you fail, you're not failing that big because you haven't raised a huge amount of capital. Uh, I think, I think the, the more difficult way is to raise huge amounts of capital and you haven't done the early parts because you'll burn through it too quickly and you haven't learned, learned to learn to great deal.

Monica Millares: It kind of, it brought me back to my tandem days, the very early stages where it was like very small, small team, but we were like a big challenge and you had to figure things out. That's it. Yeah. You didn't have the big corporates behind you and the big team. It's like, yeah, you just get your hands dirty.

Barry Levett: And the other part is if you do that, uh, you can fail four times. You can get different groups and you can fail four times because you don't have a name yet. And not having a name is, is quite beneficial because it doesn't matter if you raise huge amounts of capital and everybody's backing you and so on, and then you failed, you very, you have, you know, you're a public presence, but use, use that opportunity to explore, find out what you're good at.

There's, there's not a lot of downside. That's the thing. Uh, just fail fast, um, and go to the next thing. Uh, failure is, is, is, is only a function of, you know, how far you fall. If, if, if you're not up in the sky, you don't hurt yourself so much. If, if you fall, right. You know, a couple of feet off the ground, you don't hurt yourself that much.

Monica Millares: Yeah. And even if you are up in the sky and you fall, well, it may be painful, but I'm sure you will learn something. Yeah,

Barry Levett: that is true.

Monica Millares: That is true. Awesome. So moving a little bit more like on topic as such. What has been the role of purpose, uh, in your journey

So, you know, Africa is in, in the heart. Um, I'm in Southeast Asia. So, you know, also Southeast Asian emerging markets spent a lot of time around there. And, uh, and a lot of it is financial inclusion. But, you know, we were, we were looking at different ways that we can play. That was the sort of the North Star.

We were looking at ways that we could do things in remittance and cross border payments in, um, uh, in, in, um, you know, currency trading, um, You know, a number of different things. And what we actually landed on is the ability to provide, you know, agency banking and payment services, you know, because you're, you're really trying to bring, you know, the ATM to the people.

But it costs them, it costs them three dollars to go and get the hundred dollars. Well, that's not great. We can do better than that, right? So, uh, that's where a lot of this started. It's very much around, you know, financial inclusion, but we didn't have a You know, big fixation other than, you know, financial inclusion as to exactly how to do it because nobody can solve financial inclusion by themselves.

You have to find some piece, you know, that you can play that's sort of part of, of, of kind of the community project of financial inclusion.

Monica Millares: I love that. It's a community project of financial inclusion. Yeah.

Barry Levett: 100%.

Barry Levett: Yeah. So, so the, the, the kind of the story forward, well, I, I came, I came from a smart PESA. So last year my pin pad and smart PESA did a merger. It was a case of, you know, if you can't beat them, join them. And, you know, with that comes some kind of scale. So, uh, so, where we've been overlapping is providing, um, very much payment services.

A lot of what we call soft POS, which is, um, Allows merchants to, to accept card payments on a phone. So, you know, when they had, you know, you go to a checkout and they put the card into a machine and they press the buttons and out comes the paper. Well, rather than having one of those machines, those terminals, those payment terminals, then we actually could just use the.

Um, so a range of different things, you know, beyond, but we're known for this as being the soft post guys.

Kind of like within the best in the world and what you do.

Barry Levett: So soft POS is very, very, very difficult to do. so it's, it's not so difficult to, to get it to work. The problem is getting it to work securely. at a level that, that security labs are happy for you to operate, right? So there's not many, many companies that can get to that, that kind of standard.

And when you get to the, when you get to that standard and, and other companies have done it, we're not the only ones, right? So the number of other companies or they're called certified, which means they've gone through lab and they get certified either by, PCI or by each of the schemes, fast card, visa and such like.

It's about trying to take that learnings about what we were doing and make something that's not just compliant, but really, really fast. so it's about, performance and the experience and, information and, the things that really turn it from being, yeah, it can work and it's compliant and it's certified to being something that's a real product.

And it's, yeah. And that's that kind of go to market. That's, that's the difficult part. And particularly for our customers, you know, often the acquirers is to end up with something that's very, very compelling.

Monica Millares: Cool. And then you just touched again on the elephant and the giraffe. But, um, can you expand on, okay, so it was two companies with its own ecosystems of everything.

So, or even teams will be merged. Like there's a lot of change going on. So I think it's important to understand from someone who's done this successfully to be like, Hey, in order to avoid a weird animal, this is the process that we followed or the lessons or the challenges to create something new.

Barry Levett: I, well, one, one thing is absolutely prerequisite.

And what's that sort of balance? Now, the, you know, this bit about stopping what made you successful and starting something else is a hellishly difficult thing to, to, to, to get on top of, you know, when is that the right thing to do? And this is not a question about startups. This is companies of all sizes.

The next time around they missed Android and, and, and iOS as well. And so the, so there comes times, time to time where, where it's important to stop doing the things that made you successful and switch to something new. But it's, it's a, it's a difficult thing to do. So one of the, one of the bits I think is, is, was, was important around this is I got.

Everybody comfortable that I understood the technology, right? That I understood the strategy element and I understood like the workings element. Because, you know, you can have the one and if you don't show credibility in the other area, then they go like, why, why would you do that? That's, that doesn't make sense, right?

And that's, that's the part where you say, yeah, we can try and tweak, but you'll never quite, you'll never get to where you can get, um, if, if you not a hundred percent start again, but you're pretty much starting again. And I think, uh, I think the sort of the, the, the, the, the convincing or, or the explanation to, to, to many is, um, Uh, you've, you've learned a great deal.

So, uh, there's also an element of, of, you know, total communication, sort of total buy and saying, listen, everybody's going to go into the new one. That's, that's fine. But you know, we have to continue paying the bills and building revenues and so on. So, um, uh, I think I was very lucky, um, because it wasn't that difficult to, to, to, to get alignment internally and with the, with the, with the, um, you know, [00:19:00] with the board and with, with shareholders and so on.

And. And there was one other factor, which was there was a new standard coming, which is called MPOC. Which was something that we could rally around as being, you know, kind of the catalyst towards this new thing. But in reality, we had to do it anyway, but it, you know, it became, it became, you know, that flagpole that people can, can, can circle around.

Monica Millares: It sounds definitely complex as such. In your case, you were like, it's not difficult, but I'm like, it is complex. Sometimes, sometimes at work, I say like, Oh, this is easy. And people look at me like. You know, it's not easy. Well, it's complex. So it tends to be complex. Um, what were the, and with complexity comes like challenges.

What were the biggest challenges that you had, even though it was quote unquote, not that difficult?

So certainly not flawless in any shape or form. Um, you know, I, I think, I think, you know, some of the things that, that, that we did maybe well is we did a lot of, a lot of communication through, particularly from, from the merger, but we carried on kind of the internal communication quite a lot, trying to explain this.

Because the organization has to go through a big learning change, uh, yeah. And, and as to what this, what the new product is like, why and, and, and how that, how that can work because it only really works. People only change if they want to change. Yeah, it doesn't change because the boss is you know, you know, it's it's got to be You know that they that they want to and sort of that that that vision you think you're communicating it well, and sometimes you actually find out not communicating it so well, so Uh, certainly not flawless Uh, i'm sure others but I relied on a huge amount of the management team You know, they carried a lot of the sort of the front front front part of, um, you know, what they're doing and, and, and sort of passing on the communications elements.

Monica Millares: Yes. I love that you're talking about all these because I don't know, there's a thing we don't talk that often about. It's not false.

It is not. So, for example, I don't know if, if I'm interviewing someone for the team and they ask me, Oh, do you guys do this? The other? And I always say, we're not perfect. We're not perfect. We're doing this and the other. Uh, we're not perfect, but I think openly like social media, these, the other, like the conversation is more like, what did we achieve?

But you use the right word that it's like people need to want to change. And it's all about communicating, communicating vision. How, how do you do that? It seems like you've done that successfully or that you've got experience in communicating that better and better and better. Like, what's your thinking process and your approach when communicating such big change?

What I've also found that's maybe even more important is to find out what's communication in the other direction, because then you actually find out about. some of the emotional sides, the fears and so on, are we really trying to, so you can address them, but also, feedback saying, I don't think we should design the thing this way.

That work, um, uh, I think from a kind of a cultural change, and this has really happened very much recently, is empowerment of, of the teams to drive their own agenda, right? But, you know, we had to set up a number of things in order to, to, to, to get that to happen, saying, okay, now the roadmap, the roadmap is now in the teams.

I've tried to keep my door open all the time, um, and, and then to, to the, to management as well. Um, and we do a lot of kind of other. You know, team, team building things, which are not just about work, you know, some, some just fun things, you know, kind of coffee, coffee times, um, uh, you know, trying to recreate a little bit, uh, the water, water cooler type, um, type asses purely virtual, um, you know, and like a quiz games and, um, other things as well.

So it's, you know, some social aspects as well,

And like, I was like, this is super cool, especially if you, well, if we are partially or fully online, so that's still super important. Yeah.

Barry Levett: Yeah. Okay. A hundred percent.

Monica Millares: So, yes. Um, so building going back to the success that I was like, yeah, we only talk about success in the industry. So, yeah, you had a big success recently.

Uh, and you closed a 13 million investment round, uh, congrats. And what does that mean for the future of my team? What's next?

Yeah. It's more pressure. Yeah. There's more pressure. Exactly. So you're not, you're not, you're not starting to become more visible and more, more so on. Right. So the money is, the money is. Pay salaries, which is great, right? And it pays for a lot of different things. Uh, the other part that is, which for me personally is, you know, backing a backing of individuals that, you know, what you're doing is somebody is willing to actually put at whatever price some money because Uh, you know, that's backing the management team and it's backing, um, the individuals that are doing that says, you know, we, we like what you're doing.

We want you to carry on or get better at what you're doing and, and, and such like, um, for me, and you asked a little bit about motivations. Um, I mean, apartheid didn't cover so much is I'm very much about the journey, not the destination. Um, you know, I like doing, I like doing the fun things. I like doing hard things because they're hard.

Monica Millares: like, oh, we raced. Oh, I need to

Barry Levett: like, I don't really want to go through the fun racing part.

But this... You know, there's the, there's the bit of, okay, you know, it's It's an, it's an, it's a milestone in a journey. It's not the thing, right? So, um, you know, we obviously celebrated getting, getting investment and particularly this market is not that, not that easy. Um, um, but you know, it's sort of back to, to doing what we, what we're doing.

So very happy to get CrossFund, uh, to kind of come on board because they're. Um, you know, certainly in Africa and South Africa, the guys, um, in the, in the payments industry, but well known around the world and, um, they've been, uh, terrific, uh, as, as shareholders and continue to be, I mean, they send me messages every other day, um, you know, and, um, and so we've become part of their, what they call a modder.

Monica Millares: Yeah. Yeah, I love that ethos that it's, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's more than building something together because I think we see a lot of leadership within the companies like we're together team, team, team, but now you're saying, no, it's like the community, it's not just one company, it's the ecosystem acting as a community and that makes.

Barry Levett: Yeah. And it's, uh, I think, I think for a lot of, I mean, maybe this is the advisory pieces. You can end up with a much better product if you think community, because, um, what it also means is, you know, how does your product fit with other people's products? Because maybe the combination is better. You know, and it's designed and, you know, you've got two companies, you know, you kind of, you're not really thinking about it, but maybe you can sort of combine the products and do something.

Monica Millares: Yeah, that applies across verticals, across, uh, industries, across everything, which

Barry Levett: is

Monica Millares: And then I wanted to expand because like when you were talking about community, it's like we were talking about success in South Africa.

You also have like multi geography, uh,

Barry Levett: presence,

Monica Millares: market expansion is hard. Having people in different territories is hard. Uh, how have you come, how have you gone about it? Like what has been your secret to successfully expanding?

Barry Levett: Yeah, we're trying to be the world's smallest global company. I mean, truly global. Uh, so we've got. As I mentioned, you know, we are, we're 100 percent um, uh, virtual, right?

So you tend to be kind of quite neat. Kind of, you know, kind of deep in these sort of concentrated and that's absolutely a winning strategy. There are many companies operate just in a single market and they do very, very well. Um, what, what we've done is we've said, okay, we're providing. Not the, [00:34:00] not the value chain to the individual.

We're taking the value chain through the complicated, the difficult part, that middle part, the securing from mobile phone to the backend. So we're providing, you know, that, that capability and that payment capability to banks. And then the banks are responsible for that last mile, the interaction with the merchants, right?

So that means we can provide, and we can sell what we do and service and all the rest. Globally without having, you know, individuals in any particular country, right? So most of our markets where we, where we sell, uh, we don't have any, but some markets, we've got people, we've got individuals, but it's purely, many cases purely coincidental as to where they are.

We're not doing it right to the, to, to, to the last individual.

Monica Millares: You were talking, I was thinking that is smart. That's it. It's just smart because the product, every, the company, everything is designed such that you can scale without limit. Well, not without limit, but yeah, there's not all these limitations, let's say, because of where you sit in the ecosystem.

You don't have to have, let's say, for example, banking license. It's like, it's like, you'll just work with the bank. The bank needs to figure out all the banking license. If anything, there might be some localized requirements, but it's not

Barry Levett: what it's in a way. It's an extension of the community aspect to it is, is.

You could be as the largest companies in the world could, can't do that. Um, you know, even, even those companies that one thinks that. Does do that. Things like, um, you know, McDonald's or fast food. No, they run franchises, right? They don't themselves do it, right? There's always an element of you have to give and take and play in the ecosystem.

So it is an extension of that ecosystem. And you, but you must be conscious, you know, I'm just going to go, this is what we're doing. This is our piece of the value chain. Here's what we do. Here's why we're good at this piece. You understand where it is. You understand the interface on the one side.

They don't actually know where they're playing, so they sort of follow, and then they try and do this, and then, and then they end up in the wrong geography with the sort of wrong product, and they're burning the wrong, wrong piece, but there's not that kind of conscious, conscious efforts going, okay, you know, what is it, what is it that, that, that we bring that's hard, um, hard for others to kind of, uh, you know, do, and, Are we providing it in a way that, that the ecosystem needs it?

All right. If, if you get there, if you can do those, then you have a chance. You have a chance.

Which framework or

Barry Levett: process? Ah, frameworks. Well, not

Monica Millares: necessarily framework, but it's like what thinking process?

Barry Levett: Uh, I would ask, ask as a question is what can you do better than anybody else can do? And the clue on this is the answer is one item. You need to be able to say one item. Like if somebody quite often they want to, you know, they go into, you know, lots of reels of all the different things that they're adding and kind of to do.

So you're building services around what your differentiation, because what then ends up happening is the market will. Push you, right, and you'll end up trying to follow the sort of the fad, because something comes along and you end up sort of following the fad. And, um, you know, because the mock is too ulcerous, right?

It'll push you around and you'll have people demanding things of you and so on. So, I don't know of any frameworks. I just asked a simple question is, you know, what can you do better than anybody else? And or and if you don't have an answer to that is what do what do customers really need that that they struggle to to to get?

You get some traction, but then you also get the fast followers that come and they can, they, they, they can copy you. Yes. They execute. Yeah. So how do you, you know, how do you, how do you do that? So there's. Generic strategies that different companies have. The one is, okay, we have a very low cost. Basis, right?

100%. But there's got to be something that you can sort of wrap your product and then your markets that, that just sticky, that you have some traction because you need some, you need some runway in order to be able to, to, to, to kind of operate and experiment and fail. Um, um, that's probably the kind of the two, two questions I'd ask at the beginning.

Monica Millares: I love it. It's super simple, but direct to the point. And if you really get that right. And that's it. You've got your core center proposition to then go and build awesome. And then as we're getting towards the end, I'm loving this conversation, by the way, I could keep talking and talking, well, asking you questions rather than listening.

Barry Levett: You need, you need to ask them, not me. Uh, I, uh, uh, I, I, you know, it's in total, in total, I think, um, I think it's there and I think people are sort of motivated and it gets down to individual. I'm sure there's going to be some individuals who. Who are very not, not happy and others who are elated. So there's going to be the spectrum.

So there's myself and there's management teams and such like that, that even if they don't know the detail, that there's confidence that they. That this group knows what they're doing. I think that de stresses a lot of the pieces. Uh, the next part is. Is, you know, there's, um, I think Jordan Peterson was, was one and kind of, you know, you clean up your room, there's an element of, you've got to sort out processes and you've got to sort out sort of previous, um, you know, kind of, um, issues that are, are there, right?

And, and, uh, you know, that, that's the thing I think the last part is there's a, there's a, there's a fun element to like, you know, hard work comes and there needs to be, there needs to be fun. I talked about the journey. I think it's a real mistake that People go into, you know, into small companies, particularly as entrepreneurs, and they want the names and they dream about the name in the newspaper.

Uh, so I think, I think sort of the last part is genuinely enjoy, enjoy the journey, talk about the journey and try and get others kind of to enjoy the journey, um, as well, uh, I don't know if I can comment much beyond that. Um, things, things are, things are good. Uh, you know, I think. They could always be a bit better, um, as they can be with any company and we'll kind of strive to sort of fill in the, the needs and gaps and so on.

Um, yeah, and that's probably kind of where, where it's right

Monica Millares: now. Awesome. Barry, it's been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for your time and wisdom. Where can we find you and my pin pad?

Um, on LinkedIn and we're kind of quite active there. Um, uh, connect to us. We've got a newsletter that goes out. So if you want to, you can kind of sign up and subscribe to that. Um, you can kind of click through. That's another way to get. Get get through to us. Uh, our primary channel is Radio LinkedIn. Um, since we operate in the B2B space.

So that's sort of the main place to find us.

Monica Millares: One last question before we go. If there was, if you were to change one thing in FinTech to make the industry better for customers, staff and shareholders, what would you change?

Barry Levett: Yikes. Um, uh, sure. One thing. Um, I think, I, I think that we end up with really good international standards.

Monica Millares: I thought that, yes, because you know what, when I speak with, let's say FinTechs on the other side, there are potential customers and when I asked this question, many people say.

Oh, to make regulatory, uh, frameworks easier across regions. So, so that it's easier to expand. I'm like, yeah, it kind of applies across the ecosystem. It's like, how do we make everything simpler, easier so that it's global. Yeah.

Barry Levett: A hundred percent. Cool. A hundred percent.

Monica Millares: Barry, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you everyone. Thanks

Barry Levett: so much, Monica. Thank you. Really appreciate it.