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Zebec Ecosystem Spaces: Roadmap and Super App Updates
Recorded: July 9, 2025 Duration: 0:45:58Space Recording
Short Summary
Zebek is making significant strides in the crypto space with strategic partnerships, a focus on growth, and the upcoming launch of their innovative super app. With plans to bridge DeFi and traditional finance, Zebek aims to capture a substantial share of the $11 trillion payroll market, showcasing their commitment to building a robust financial ecosystem.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Mic check, mic check.
Yo, yo, Ben, I can hear you loud and clear.
Lovely. I'm very well, JJ. How you doing, man?
Pretty good. Can't complain. it's uh Wednesday it's sunny here
the weather is sensational here in the UK I must say so uh good vibes all around we've got some
good news we've got a great show up today and it's good to be back good to be back I'm looking
forward to catching with the team hey Simon how are Hey Ben, I'm doing very well and you are absolutely right. What a stunning day it is here in the UK
today.
Beautiful. I also hear it was very, very nice in Cannes. I'm looking forward to hearing all
about that. How was your week?
Absolutely. We had an incredible week down there. A lot of the team was out there. We hosted
a beautiful event with some of our top partners at the ECC conference. So
there will be some photos and recap of that event coming out later this week.
Fantastic. I know we're waiting for a couple of others to come up, but to begin with,
I'm going to kind of chat with you. So I wonder if we maybe give it another minute and then get
going. Let's give it another minute. We have a few joiners from the Zabek side that will be speaking today alongside myself.
So I want to make sure that everyone is on and their mic is working.
Yeah.
I'm also really excited because Sam's going to be joining us today as well.
Yeah.
Really, really good.
It's great to have him up.
I know a lot of the community will appreciate that.
And having chatted with him yesterday, I know he's really looking forward to addressing the community will appreciate that and uh having chatted with him yesterday i know he's really looking forward to uh to addressing uh the community as well so great stuff
right um i'm gonna kick things off just myself for a moment so i just want to welcome everybody
to another zebek ecosystem spaces we're going to talk a bit more about the roadmap and the super app updates, which is really exciting. I guess like personally, I also just want to say like how
grateful I am that you guys keep inviting me back to host you guys. It's very rare that you
get a project the size of Zebek that's building out like a true ecosystem the way you are that is um so committed to being really really
transparent and really really consistently communicating with uh with its community so um
thank you for having me back again my name's ben white for those that don't know me um i'm a spaces
host and marketing consultant do all kinds of other things but recently I've been
really really fortunate enough to be working with Simon and the team at Zebek on all kinds of comms
and things like that and it's been great fun and I'm a huge fan of what they're building so
looking forward to updating you all today very quick framing for you all like we're the point
of today's spaces is about transparency roadmap updates community
dialogue and then we can get back into our like weekly cadence of interesting spaces about
different topics and things that are going on in the broader web 3 and defy space so um i think
we're all in now so simon um i'm gonna jump straight into it actually i'm gonna jump straight
onto you and ask you a question just to get us kicked off, right?
And I guess I want to touch a little bit on what I was just talking about.
Like, Zepic is building out something huge, right?
It's a big, big ecosystem that you guys are building, and you're putting all of the parts together.
I wondered if you could just take some time, before we get into all of our broader questions just to
talk to me about what it takes from a team from a from a leadership group like what it takes to
build out a financial ecosystem like this it's a good point ben and look we've been doing this for
years at zibak and we're building financial products that are supposed to form the basis
of a new financial ecosystem this This takes a lot of time
and a lot of skill and resources to deliver properly. You need to remember that ZBEC is not
a quick DeFi play from 2021. We are in the early stages of trying to reinvent an $11 trillion
industry. So do keep in mind, we've been doing this for only a few years versus players like
Ripple that have had a decade head start.
I like to think we've achieved a lot in a very short period of time.
And remember, a lot of the work that we're doing right now involves putting together the strategic puzzle pieces needed to lay the groundwork for the future financial ecosystem that Zabek is building.
So when I refer to these puzzle pieces, what am I talking about? Well, for one, our partnerships, which
we're going to dive deep into later in the spaces. But our partnerships are with leading
infrastructure providers across crypto, as well as TradFi, companies like JP Morgan, MasterCard,
Solana, Stellar, and of course, Circle. We'll speak more on these later. The second puzzle piece
is what I would call our acquisition strategy. So we've made four acquisitions in our short history as a company.
Of course, Paybridge and School Payroll Services, which we did a deep dive on last month on our payroll spaces.
And most recently, the acquisitions of Gatenox and Science Card, two leading technology firms here in Europe.
And then the third pillar is our strategic hires and advisors.
And then the third pillar is our strategic hires and advisors.
So we brought a number of new members onto the core team, mostly focused on engineering and product, as that is our number one priority as a company right now.
We have Stelios Juroginakis joining us from the London Stock Exchange, and he'll be contributing later on today in the spaces.
And then, of course, our top tier advisors from TradFi, payroll and government.
And then, of course, our top tier advisors from TradFi, payroll and government.
We, of course, have multiple members of the ADP former C-suite on our board of directors.
They are core to our long term thesis in the payroll space.
We have Wojtek, of course, who led GateKnox for many years and is our head of compliance and will be leading our SOC 2 and ISO initiatives.
And most recently, we have Mr. Mark Turkington, who is the leader of
transaction monitoring at HSBC, of course, one of the world's largest investment banks and wealth
managers, who is also joining our advisory team. So going back to my point earlier, we are in a
multi-year process here of building the future of finance. And of course, you can't do it without great people.
I love that. And I think, you know, laying that context out more broadly, and really like referring it to it as that big puzzle, I think it, I think it's really, really important, because it
it reemphasizes here the amount of work that actually goes into building an ecosystem like
this. And I guess one of the
other things I'm super curious about now, having got to hung out with you a few times, and I see
you juggling and spinning these plates. It's very impressive. I guess, can you just tell me a little
bit about, alongside building infrastructure like this, putting the technical pieces together,
what other inroads you're making when it comes
to bridging DeFi with the institution that is traditional finance?
Alongside all the great building we're doing, we're also working on essentially rewriting the
rules of modern finance. It's absolutely critical to have major institutions and governments on your side. Tomorrow, myself and Neil Padier,
who leads our M&A group at ZBEC, will be speaking in the UK's House of Parliament. We're invited by
the Baroness Susan Kramer in support of UK Whistleblowers Week, and we'll be speaking
alongside policymakers, legal experts, other members of government in tomorrow's session
on tech, AI and ethics, which starts at 1230 PM UK
time. Unfortunately, it's not a televised session, but we will have a recap and hopefully
many good photos and videos from the session to share with our community.
So to make inroads in any market, you need to develop relationships with leaders and
policymakers. We focused a lot on the US market over the years, which of course is still
our core market at ZBEC. But with our global expansion now to the UK and Europe, we will be
making further announcements this month as notable political figures join our advisory board. So do
stay tuned for that. And as I mentioned in the first part, we've been very focused on these so
called puzzle pieces needed to execute on our ambitions.
And we do have major plans this fall for a move in the London capital market.
So a lot of exciting things happening on this side of the pond.
Awesome. Absolutely love it.
And congrats, dude.
going into House of Parliament to speak and give, you know,
essentially kind of like to advise the government on how to approach these things
is no mean feat.
Like that is an incredible opportunity for you and for the ZEBEC team.
I'm absolutely stoked for you.
Especially to our company really of our short history, right?
To be in this level of government.
Are you all prepared?
Are you ready to go?
We are more than prepared.
We're extremely excited and we're actually very honored to have this opportunity to even begin with.
100 percent.
Well, congrats, man.
I cannot wait to see that content.
It sounds fantastic.
I'm really, really looking forward to that.
OK, I want to jump into the next part.
So that's like a nice
introduction thank you so much for giving me an update on and the audience an update on where
we're at i think it would be great now if we could just deep dive a little bit into the product
roadmap obviously you laid out this this real like roadmap in terms of where we're going um with
zebek and uh and now here we are in j, like you blink and seven months of the year have
passed. So it'd be great, I think, if we can, to dig into a little bit about like what has actually
been delivered versus what was, you know, hoped to be delivered, what's coming next, and how the
roadmap is progressing. So I wondered if you want to touch
on roadmap super app vision and then perhaps introduce some of our additional speakers now
i know we're also hoping kian's going to come up and i can see he's having trouble being able to
stay up so kian if you can hear me one of the things that might be worth doing is just closing
your app all together and then coming back in and having another go.
But Simon, do you want to just give us a second to reconnect?
As I do think it's important for Kian and Stelios to speak to their phenomenal achievements on our roadmap this year. But what's most exciting to me is, of course, the Super App, which is in production right now.
now. And we spoke about the super app on a few of our earlier spaces. And the vision for this app
And we spoke about the Super App on a few of our earlier spaces.
is really to build a Web3 native consumer financial management application that brings together
payroll streams, card products, token wallets, and an integrated on and off ramp all in a single
mobile app. Think of it as a Web3 based revolute but on steroids nothing like this has ever been
built before and there's no company that i believe is better positioned than zebec to deliver on a
product like this so i'd love to turn it over to kian and stellios um our engineering lead and
head of the zebec super app initiative yeah i think initially we're gonna have to do that with
stellios so i can see you up here stellios Can we get a mic check on you, sir?
Yeah, testing, testing.
One, two, one, two.
Testing, testing.
I can hear you perfectly.
Stelius, why don't you introduce yourself?
Because you come with an incredible background.
I would love to know a little bit more about you and your background
and what you're bringing to Zebek before I get into some of these questions.
And hopefully we can bring up Kian in the background.
Yeah, happy, excited, actually, to be joining Zebek and be part of the journey.
As a brief introduction, before joining Zebek,
I was a principal engineer in London Stock Exchange Group in data and analytics division.
And before that, worked for a year with ignite uh most people
know it as tender mint as senior engineering manager in the atom cosmos ecosystem and before
that uh two and a half years uh helped um go cardless uh payment scale-up process over a billion a month in direct debit payments.
If someone's in the UK, you've probably interacted with them.
And also helped RBS, working there for four and a half years, launch their open banking APIs.
But I'm not here to speak about myself, but rather about
the super app.
Yeah, absolutely.
And love that, by the way. Thank you so
much. I mean, it sounds like you've got an incredible
TradFi background,
which is amazing, and really
excited to see now how you want
to come...
I was speaking earlier to another member of the team,
and we were talking about this notion that there are a lot of projects and protocols and people out there who are creating stuff who are really kind of like just full of hot air about what it is they're trying to do and not necessarily talking about how they're trying to marry up really what users want or need at the moment from a decentralized finance platform like
Zebek. And I think it's really exciting that you come with so much knowledge and experience in
terms of what does and doesn't work from a TradFi perspective, but that you're all in on DeFi. And
I think that's amazing. I think it's a really, really bold step. And I'd love to get into that
a little bit more with you.
I think we're not going to have Kian up, it looks like.
So that's a shame we can bring him up a bit later on.
So Simon, I'm just going to brief you to kind of like be ready to step in a little bit.
But Stelios, I'm going to ask a little bit then about, you know, perhaps a few questions about the Super App and some of the rest of the roadmap, particularly like in terms of our pacing,
like we're past halfway through 2025 now.
And I know you come in at this point,
like how are we pacing versus the roadmap that we projected before we then get
into what the super app is all about and what it will provide.
And Simon, feel free to jump in at any point during that.
Yeah, so far we have been delivering ahead of of what has been promised for example uh staking
and now i will go back to what simon said which is the puzzle pieces which is a great great metaphor
because the pieces of the super have been of the super app have been there, credit cards, staking, payroll.
And what we are doing now with the super app
is bringing everything under one roof
while building a solid foundation.
So we're starting with a web interface,
accessible from a browser.
And a little bit later, because it's a bit more involved
we're going to also roll out the mobile application and we will not just stop there
we've launched one and we're done this is a journey because there are multiple payment rails
multiple integrations multiple chains and we will continue to be rolling out, multiple integrations, multiple chains, and we will continue to be
rolling out features and integrations. Amazing. I mean, the super app sounds
really, really exciting. All apps under one umbrella, a real focus on user experience. I
know when we were speaking with Vojtek a few weeks ago, we were talking about compliance.
when we were speaking with Wojtek a few weeks ago,
and we were talking about compliance,
his number one focus when it comes to getting compliance right
is to focus on the user experience,
because that's what makes or breaks someone wanting
to actually go through the compliance process.
So what's it been like building or speccing out
what that super app's going to look like?
And what else can we expect in Q3 or Q4 this year?
So building it up is because the pieces have already been there and there's already been
real use and volume moving through the system.
I don't know. I think it was you that mentioned,
this is not hot air.
There's already been use on the sites
and we've already seen, like for example,
what are the pain points?
And on the other side, conversely,
what are the opportunities with regards to growth?
So we're bringing this in,
whether in terms of requirements
to basically spec out features,
iron out problems and bring this out as a seamless experience.
It's not going to be of course,
like perfect on the first go, nothing is,
but the goal is here to have a nice great usable app that will allow us to onboard
masses and masses of people and grow the community and also do it in a safe compliant way.
Love that, love that and I'm really excited to see what that looks like. I'm sure as you say it
will be something that iterates and there are many versions of but i think bringing everything on together under under one umbrella is a really
really exciting prospect when you think about all of the different puzzle pieces to use simon's
analogy i think that's awesome um okay little nerdy question then from me as someone who really
enjoys like the technically challenging things like like what from a tech perspective, Stelios, what has been really challenging to
kind of like to nail down when it comes to building the super app or what's been
the most impressive to kind of manage, what's been the most exciting part of
this process so far?
Well, I don't know. The exciting parts are also the boring parts, if you like. Because we are handling people's money and the exciting part is also the boring part. nines of uptime. Not just have flashy features, but make sure that every person that onboards
to the application, they get their money on the other side. So this is basically the most
challenging bit and also the most exciting bit. We are handling people's money, which is important.
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think people should take a lot of comfort in
knowing that what excites us the most is doing this, doing the boring things, because they're
the most important things. You're absolutely right. Simon, I wondered if you wanted to kind of,
I guess, come in and then touch on a little bit more about what you think the super app
provides the community at large, but also like potential new users as well to Zebek.
Like what is it that you're trying to deliver here by building this hub out?
Well, the Super App is going to be the ultimate way for Zebek to attract retail users at a mass
scale when you think about it, right? It brings all of these great tools that we've built into a
seamless consumer-friendly mobile application that people will use to manage their payroll, manage their cards, and really get more familiar with crypto in general.
So we're very excited to be rolling it out later this year, and we're going to be tracking really closely metrics on usage.
As building great product is one thing, but having that product used in the real world is a whole different story. And it's a back. We're extremely proud of the metrics that we've achieved this
year. Hundreds of clients are using us for our payroll tools. We've done over a hundred card
white label opportunities this year. And we're seeing the volumes grow month over month. So
with the super app, we can expect these numbers to grow even further.
Love it. Love it. Very excited.
Can't wait to get involved with it as a user of Zebek myself.
I think it will be really exciting.
So Stelios, thank you so much for coming up and joining us there.
We look forward to bringing you back to talk more technically about some of these things as you get closer to rolling them out. It's great to meet you and great to have someone of your
experience come and join us. So thanks so much.
You're welcome. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Simon, we are, goodness, 20 minutes into what we
think would be about a 45-minute session. So we've got 25 minutes left. I think that's probably
good time now to jump into
some of the community Q&A stuff. I know we put some messages out there to try and kind of
curate a list of questions. I see JJ has presented me with those questions, which is great.
So JJ has gone out and spoken with a few members of the community, has organized some of the
priority questions that they'd like the team to address. And that is
exactly what we're going to do now in the end of the spaces. Awesome. Okay. So let's go through
them in order. I've got a few here. I haven't read these yet, so I'm going to familiarize myself
now. Okay. Right. What can you tell us, this is to Simon, or give us to confirm partnerships with
Cotapay, JPM, Bank of America.
These are all really exciting names as well, Simon.
So how are those things going at the moment?
So these companies have all been partners of Zbeck and PGP for multiple years now,
and they are core to the processing of payroll for our enterprise clients,
of course, alongside Circle for on and off-ramp functionality.
So this is not new news these
are companies that we've been working with for years now and we plan to continue to work with
and expand our relationship going forward love it thank you very much sir um okay another one for
you simon does zebek intend on opening the door to other stable coins such as um fi usd rl usd jpmd etc um where
are we at with that because no doubt about it right the stable coin narrative is one that has
really kind of like pushed on now like it's it seems to really be kind of setting a light like
what's the what's uh zebek's kind of like stance on it well you seems to really be kind of setting a light like what's the what's
zebec's kind of like stance on it well you need to remember that zebec is the original provider
of stablecoin payroll so all of this great regulatory progress on stablecoins in the u.s
is extremely bullish for us and what we're building circle is an early investor in zebec
and a long-time partner as I mentioned in our last spaces.
USDC is core to all of our products.
It's core to our ecosystem.
It's core to our payroll.
And we're not going to be giving up on USDC.
It is always going to be there.
That being said, there are other stable coins that are coming into the market now, which we are evaluating, potentially working with. In fact, the RLUSD, so the Ripple stablecoin, we've actually
integrated it on our silver card. And of course, we've been in talks with Ripple for the past few
months on a product launch, which we're working on with them as well. And more will be revealed
on that when we are ready. Okay, awesome. So we're, you know, we're down the line with a lot
of that. And obviously, as you say, we're kind of the original payroll provider when it comes to stables.
So, yeah, really, really exciting.
Great, great answer.
Thank you so much for that.
Sam, welcome.
Mic check.
Hey, hey, hey.
Thank you, Ben and Simon's answering amazing questions.
I'm just wondering how many questions are left, you know, because...
We've got a couple left.
I've got one that I've seen here that I really would like you to answer, actually.
I think the reason I'd like you to answer it is because, obviously, all of this is the brainchild of you and the team here.
And spinning it into reality is i spoke
to simon at the top of the call and said you know i'm really interested to know what it means to you
to put something together like this and i think you know you must sit back now a few years in and
be really really proud of the progress that you and the team have been making i guess how often
do you remind yourself and could you go
into a bit of detail about like what you think is now really, really special about Zebex TechStack?
So I think like right now, Solana is such a hot technology, right? And everyone thinks that
everything was obvious, right? Like how easy it is to write smart contract, like how easy it is to write smart contract, like how easy it is to audit, right? How easy
the wallets were. When we were building, right? On Solana, there was Solit wallet, right? That
was built by FTX. And sometimes the token that you have in your wallet would not be visible
because the RPC was not working properly. So right now, everyone builds on like Anchor Framework,
which makes doing formal testing and building smart contracts so easy.
When we were building, Anchor Framework was just coming along.
There were like less than 50 teams.
I would say like 30-ish team that was actually writing smart contract.
The Solana's builder group set group had less than 100 people in.
And like, Anatoly and Raj used to actively post in there.
And there were less than three companies that could properly audit smart contract.
In fact, it was so hard to write smart contract on Solana that we actually hired auditors
to actually write contracts because that was the only safe way to do it.
So our early devs were actually all auditors. So that's how we got started. And
what it means that is like, it has the fun part about being the first one to do things is you
have a chance of actually battle testing your smart contract over the years. You audit multiple
times. In fact, we have spent
almost millions of dollars auditing it, which is more than what a lot of people actually raise
capital. We have spent more money in auditing our smart contract than what most people have
raised money on. So what also means is now it gives us ability to focus on things that really matters. Because what happens in crypto and Web3 in general is people will build things.
They will kind of throw it out there to the small group of Web3 user,
which is like 100-ish thousand of people.
And you have this giant musical chair of capital flowing from protocol A to protocol B to protocol C.
But you don't grow the pie.
And we have taken a much more different approach
is let's battle test the smart contracts.
Let's build something that is stable, right?
And then go where it actually means
and where the users are actually there.
So it means like going out there,
have a proper compliance framework built in, right? So
that's kind of like, you know, secret sauce at Zubek is like, you have been out there for such
a long time, you have spent such a long time plus effort plus capital on battle testing the product.
Now you get to spend a substantial amount of resource to get it compliant, get licenses.
a substantial amount of resource to get it compliant, get licenses.
And most importantly, being able to make the user experience so easy
that at some point in the future, we expect that like Zbeck will power applications
that makes users not even, you know, like the crypto aspect of Zbeck
and Web3 should be completely hidden from users.
And I think that's the path that we're headed to.
And I think that's kind of the secret sauce of Zabek.
Yeah, I love that.
And what's great is that to hear you say that and to know that then every single person
I ever speak to that now works with, for, advises, et cetera, with Zabek says the same
thing.
The focus is always about the user
experience. It's about building something that users will intuitively want and know how to use.
And I think that's what's really, really exciting here. And as you say, like the amount of energy
and finance that you've put into building, rebuilding, auditing, all of those smart contracts to make this work.
It's really, really exciting.
So thank you for that.
I've got another one for you in a minute, Sam.
But first, I've got another one for you, Simon.
We obviously had Voitek up,
who was the founder of GateKnox,
which is obviously the business
that's been recently acquired by Zabek.
And he's coming to to advise
and consult and to to lead the charge when it comes to compliance any updates or any kind of
like timeline for things what are we talking about here there was sock two i remember he spoke about
that one there's iso 2022 there's uh possible uh i don't know how to pronounce is it mica
compliance there's all kinds
of things that i think are really important where are we at with all of that we are extremely
fortunate to have voitek now leading our compliance vertical he's been with us uh for the past month
since we closed our acquisition of gate knocks um the compliance suite in early june um and voitek
and our team have been incredibly busy with SOC 2 compliance,
which is really the first step in moving towards full ISO certification, which is still our goal
towards the end of the year. And SOC 2, for those who do not know, is the gold standard in corporate
compliance and privacy, which is very important for a company like Zbeck that manages customer
data and customer funds. So our goal is to have SOC 2 compliance
complete by the end of July, and we are on track to do that. And then on the MICA topic, given that
we do operate now in the UK and Europe, we are in the process of finalizing MICA compliance with
regulators. We have completed our MICA white paper. it is under review with multiple regulatory bodies and we are hoping to receive the green light on that um at some point this year
love that i can see yes yeah how you doing hey guys hey ben how are you hey sam very
very thanks for having me back here it's always my pleasure to have you back here, Wojtek.
Nice hearing this.
Yeah, I wanted, because this question is actually quite interesting, so I wanted to address it maybe in a slightly different,
I mean, the question about SOC 2 and why SOC 2.
Sure.
And the answer is fairly simple,
if you think about this in two aspects.
So the ISO brings us to transferring valuable content, which consists of highly detailed digital information.
It's not just money. It's also invoice details, tax information, and so on and so forth.
also invoice details, tax information, and so on and so forth.
So if you think about this as a content,
you can think about SOC as a secure container.
So SOC addresses security in Webex systems,
in processes and procedures.
So thinking about this from a perspective
of having the content delivered
that has huge value, you want customary data to be secure. And to prove the security,
we decided to go with SOC2 certification, which is a standard for the US market. it's becoming more and more recognizable in Europe as well. That is essentially proving
that the ZBEC infrastructure processes and procedures can maintain the customer information
in a secure manner. Love it.
All very, very important.
And you're happy with progress, Wojtek?
You're trucking along?
We're feeling good about getting this over the line in 2025?
Oh, definitely.
We're getting good progress.
Obviously, there are always some surprises,
and we probably are going to have a few more
when the audit starts.
That's the key thing also that has been mentioned last time
that we spoke by Nick, as far as I remember,
that stock has this unique value of actually not
being only the framework,
but to get certified, you need to go through the quite rigorous audit.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, look, thank you so much for coming up again.
We're going to drag you up here regularly to give us updates on this
because I know how important it is to what Zebeck's mission is,
but really appreciate you taking the time today.
Thanks for coming up, and great to see you.
I'm always happy to join. Thanks, guys.
Love it. I have another one for Sam.
Oh, this is an interesting one.
So obviously there was the Nautilus chain sale,
and I think a few people within the community have just said,
why did that happen?
What went down there when it came to the Nautilus chain?
So I think there's like an interesting thing you want to look into, right?
Payroll itself is like such a big market.
I mean, if you want to cut and dice it like in many, many times, you will still have multi-billion dollar market.
it. And what does that mean is you need absolute focus because in last, I would say year or so,
And what does that mean is you need absolute focus.
we have kind of seen the regulatory pathway open up for stable coin and stable coin related
payments 10 times more, right? So what this means is Zabek was one of the projects, like one of the
several projects incubated by Zabek, right? We had absolutely like, we have multiple other projects that we tried to, because our ultimate goal is how can we push stable coin
payments and how can we get, you know, stable coin payroll out, right? So what really it meant for us
was we have to go back to focus on payroll, right? And another thing we also came to realization was we support almost 10 chains.
And they're all tier one chains.
In fact, 95% of all Web3 users are in those 10 chains.
I think focusing to get those and lock in this payroll opportunity completely for Zbeck is much more important than expanding in any other front.
Think of this as like a battlefield, right?
And the idea is who takes whose flank, right?
And right now we are in that crux of this stablecoin payroll battle.
Whoever takes the flank, after that, the opportunity just cascades down for them.
Whoever captures it on either side is able to get it completely.
And we believe stablecoin payroll is the most important thing.
Whoever wins this, right, wins the entire internet capital market game for whatever the opportunity that lies with crypto.
Because we believe this whole thing about trading and all the other stuff is rather like a short-term phenomenon, right?
and all the other stuff is rather of like a short-term phenomenon, right?
Over the long run, the one who decides how you get paid
and the one who is enabling that is able to go down the hierarchy
and vertically capture the entire market, right?
So for us, focusing on that is much more noble and much more important goal.
So hence, we had to exit from that.
Yeah, I think that's, I mean, you can't get more transparent than that, right?
It's about focus.
It's about making sure that we keep our eye on the biggest prize of all
and set the business up in a manner that really goes after that.
And I think that's incredible.
Like, what kind of size market is that, Sam?
Like, what are you guys, you're looking at here?
Let's just talk in payroll terms.
And I know you've mentioned,
I think I've heard various numbers before,
but in your mind, like,
what kind of size market is that at the moment
in terms of value?
So the way we look into this is, right,
everyone, in fact, like, I would say 90%
of all the capital that exists in the world is some sort of payroll, right? It's like almost $11 trillion in payroll
volume a year, right? It means at any time, right? Payroll float is in like, not in billions,
not in a hundred or billions. It's actually almost in a trillion dollar range. So whoever
captures this, captures everything else.
Like nothing really matters if you are able to capture the payroll industry itself.
Because it opens up opportunity on being able to be the one who enables card, the way you spend the money, the money that you're spending is, i.e like what stablecoin that is being spent on right everything that connects to the user you are the one who is able to vertically integrate that
so so it's a very very very big number in fact like you know it kind of like amazes us to even
think about that like it's like hey you know it's like much higher it was a much higher number than
entire crypto market combined right it was a bit why I was kind of a bit nervous to say it because I was like, is that real?
But $11 trillion, like as an overall kind of payroll piece.
And then you're absolutely right, right?
Whoever is able to capture that then has the dialogue and the ability to create vertical products and services that complement it.
And you're in the best position to be able to do so.
I think it's such an amazing opportunity. Thank you so much for sharing that, Sam. Really appreciate
it. Simon, I got two left, both of them for you. So first one is what companies currently utilize
Zebek Payroll? We've read about the $500 million in volume. How is that derived?
It's a great question. And I encourage everyone who was not on our spaces in early May to listen
to our payroll spaces where we brought on Tony Chavals, who runs Paybridge, which is one of the
businesses that Zebek and PGP acquired two years ago now.
And we spoke on that space is about the fact that we serve over 200 enterprise clients
in just the payroll side. And of those 200, you can break them down into a number of different
verticals. For example, we serve over 18 charter schools in the US. We serve four manufacturing
businesses. We serve six logistic companies. The list goes on.
And these companies are using us for payroll as well as our pay card for employee incentives and payroll advances.
We have a very active sales team that is actively adding new clients each month.
And I would say that new payroll acquisitions are definitely not off the table either. So a few more of those may be coming as well, which will further boost our client base.
Awesome.
Love to see it.
Love to hear that there are more clients
coming to the books.
It's very, very exciting.
Okay, last one here,
and this is just a bit of a silly one.
So, but we wanted to include it.
Robbie Michnick from BlackRock.
Understand that you guys know one another.
What's the deal there?
How does that work?
Well, this is definitely an interesting
and unexpected question.
Sorry, I just wanted to throw a left field one in there.
No, I love it.
I mean, Robbie's actually a classmate of mine
or was a classmate of mine
and a personal friend as well.
We've known each other for over 10 years.
As a fellow, what I would call big picture thinker,
we both entered crypto years ago
while many of our friends and classmates in university
took jobs on Wall Street and other areas of TradFi.
I mean, both of us actually did start in TradFi
before we made the jump to crypto.
And it's really good to see him now
leading the Web3 efforts
at the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock.
Awesome. Love that. him now leading the web3 efforts at the world's largest asset manager blackrock awesome love that sorry to throw a bit of a rogue one in there jj and i were laughing about always fun to get some curveballs so um okay well look i think we are yeah we're pretty much there like
um i don't know maybe just time for a very quick summary sim Simon, and then we can finish up.
Great. Well, I think we had fantastic turnout today.
I know we missed a week of spaces, of course.
We were very busy at the conference and con.
But as you mentioned earlier, Ben, it's great to get back to the weekly cadence.
We have some really good spaces planned for this month,
which we'll be announcing soon with some very big partners joining as well so everyone keep an eye on our twitter um and yes we'll have some updates from
the uk parliament tomorrow after neil and i have completed our speaking session over there and
we'll be sharing that with the community too love that what time is that tomorrow like what
time are you going in um our session starts at 12 30 time. Love it. So we will be there for most of the day.
Very exciting.
I'm really, really stoked for you, man.
I can't wait to hear all about it.
Make sure that you capture as much content as possible.
Look forward to seeing it out there.
Okay, well, look, that is a pretty comprehensive roundup.
Let's get everyone back on the same level playing field here
in terms of where we're going and what we're doing.
As Simon says, looking forward to hosting some more spaces this month
and going into August also really focusing on different exciting aspects
and elements within the Web3 and DeFi space.
I want to thank Sam for coming up.
Really good to see you, Sam.
Really appreciate you doing it.
Come back, chat with us more often.
Of course, of course totally totally appreciate how busy you
are though but great thank you for taking time out of your day also
Stelios welcome really really exciting to to see someone with such an
incredible TradFi background come in and join the charge really really excited to
see what you are doing there and really really excited to see how that super app starts to um starts to come together and we should absolutely when there's a bit more
to talk about we should uh come up and talk about it again so thank you and welcome um and then to
you simon thank you appreciate you taking the time like you do to uh answer all of these questions
i'm looking forward to uh focusing now on and on some other bits within the Web3 and DeFi space.
And then that just leaves me to say thank you to everyone for coming out and joining us today.
Really appreciate such a huge turnout.
And yeah, great stuff.
JJ, when you are ready, sir, let's finish up and say goodbye.
Yep.
So again, thank you guys for showing up on a Wednesday in the middle of the day.
And then obviously, thank you to all of our speakers. Ben for hosting, as always. Really
appreciate your work. And yeah, until next time, again, stay tuned for tomorrow. We're going to
be at the party limit at the House of Lords. So we'll bring you guys a couple more updates
between tomorrow and Friday as well. So stay tuned for that.
Alright guys, that's it.
Thank you guys. Take care everyone.
Bye bye.
