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Zebec x Asure x Natpay: The Digital Evolution of Modern Payroll
Recorded: Dec. 2, 2025 Duration: 0:46:49Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, industry leaders from Zebek, Assure, and NatPay explored the transformative potential of blockchain technology in payroll and payment systems. They highlighted key partnerships and trends driving growth, including the integration of stablecoins and real-time payment solutions, which are set to revolutionize the financial landscape.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. so so so Thank you. where'd it go?
Hey guys, what's going on? Ben, can you hear us alright?
I hear you perfectly. Am I coming through loud and clear?
Loud and clear. How are you, sir?
Very well. Very well this afternoon.
I know it's early for you folks in the states but
it is 3 p.m here in the uk and uh it's gloomy and miserable so i thought what better thing to do
on a tuesday afternoon than hang out with my friends at zebek there you go i love to hear that
how are you jj you well all good man uh man. We just came out of Thanksgiving break, right?
So shout out everybody that celebrated in the spaces and hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving.
Simon, what's up, sir?
Hey, everyone.
Great to be here today.
Can you all hear me?
Hey, very well.
How are you?
Doing well.
Great to be back from thegiving break and right into it with
one of probably the most awaited spaces of this year with our friends at assure and nappe
yeah really really excited about this one if you're good i'm gonna jump straight into it we're
at the top of the hour now so uh i guess a good opportunity to um to welcome everybody back and
as the other guys have done extend extend a happy Thanksgiving or at least
I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving
and you've been
working out this week, working off
the turkey
and yes, it's
an interesting time, right?
It's an interesting market, it's an interesting space
right now but
I think
what keeps so many people really, really hoping in the space is the fact that there is just so much like really great institutional backing now of blockchain technology.
You know, no doubt people would have seen that.
We're starting to really dig into the weeds when
it comes to these zebex spaces now when it comes to the opportunities and the infrastructure
regarding stable coins as a you know a real staple of all of that uh no pun intended um
and so yeah joined by simon today from zebex hello simon i'll quickly say hello again um and uh and then our guests today
are jay whitehead from assure and uh jim hagan from natpay um new payment partner of zebek which
is really exciting i'm looking forward to to quizzing the three of you uh about real-time
payments payroll modernization evolution of of money, movement infrastructure.
There's really so much to cover
when it comes to operational infrastructure,
regulatory framework,
the real plumbing of financial systems
that needs to be adjusted
to take blockchain into consideration.
We can start with something a little less taxing
and say, you know, before we get into the meat and potatoes of today's discussion,
I'm going to ask Jay and Jim, have we got everyone with us, by the way? Is everyone
up on stage right now? Let's see, we've got, can I do a mic check on the NatPay account
and see, is that jim behind
there hey jim how you doing good how are you very well thank you very well indeed thanks for joining
us and have we got have we got jay with us yet are we still waiting yeah i think we're still
waiting on jay um well i can jump into it with jim and um and Simon, and hopefully we can get Jay up as we go. So maybe just introduce yourself, Jim, and perhaps give us a very quick overview of what you're working on right now
and what you think, or at least why you think the financial landscape is such an exciting place to be innovating right now.
Sure. Jim Hagan, National Payment VP. I've been here for about 20 years and watched the whole evolution from the perspective of that past 20 years going today and then into the future.
Sure. Jim Hagen, National Payment VP.
side of it to the point where we're very competitively looking at the capability of
providing real-time payments through the FedNow program. It's sort of like the hope and wish of
every payroll company operating in the United States is that they could send a file today and everybody gets paid today wow there are still some evolutions to that
program it's in place now we've gone live with it and then our clients are getting very very
excited about the fact that this is something now that is finally being realized so it's not
something we're hoping for and as the Fed matures the platform,
we expect everyone to be processing on a real-time basis. Also, bringing in pay cards and other
solutions to help that is really, really exciting. And our clients are telling us the same thing.
I love that. That's great to hear. Simon, while we wait for Jay to come up, I've just had
confirmation that he is on his way. How about you? You're obviously at the coalface of all this right now. What do you get excited about when it comes to the kind of innovation that you're seeing come through and the institutional partners, either with Zebek or just more broadly in the space? How are you feeling about things at the moment? 2025 has been an incredible year for the payments industry,
really with the advent and growth of stablecoin payments,
plus the popularization of the FedNow program and major upgrades to the SWIFT network.
There's never been a more exciting time to be in this industry.
And at Zebek, we're really at the confluence of both what's happening
in traditional finance on traditional banking rails as well as on blockchain rails. be in this industry. And at Zabek, we're really at the confluence of both what's happening in
traditional finance on traditional banking rails, as well as on blockchain rails. And that's what
we're going to dig into today into our conversation. Yeah, and I think, I mean, let's keep things
moving. We can come back to Jay in a moment, because I do really want to get his perspective
too from a sure side of things. But Jim, I've got a few questions for you if you don't mind me just
kind of uh laying it on you here particularly you know let's start by saying you know nat pay is the
only payroll processor on FedNow right it's a strategic or I assume this is a strategic advantage and a key differentiator. So how does being a FedNow participant change NatPay's ability to serve clients in the U.S.?
And I've got a couple of follow-ups as well.
Well, it was about a year and a half journey.
And from our perspective, it was a necessity
because it's going to embrace so many other different
pieces of this, as you know, was saying. From our client standpoint, it's been more educating
them to the fact that it's actually here. To validate the fact that we're the single source,
third-party processor, we just encourage our clients just to go to the fed
page now page and kind of look at who's listed and you'll see it's only nap pay so when our clients
are looking at their competitive position which are all independent payroll processors. They're looking at what does ADP do? What is paychecks
doing? What are their real competition as they view it because they've got so many other assets?
So our value statement had to be that we've got the same toolbox. The value statement from us is that our pricing kind of moves us to the forefront of offering
a better value than other solutions that they have. And so it sort of embraces that,
what's the advantage of a third-party processor over a bank? And it kind of lays it in,
we're all things to our clients. Okay, I love it. A follow-up then to that is, you know, given these things, how fast
do you expect employer expectations to start shifting now that you're seeing these changes
and you're obviously like in this from a payroll processing perspective? Well, I think with the help of the earned wage solution requirement,
the participation in the evolving is coming a little bit quicker than we had anticipated.
So we're already seeing that as being where a lot of the initial activities occurred.
But we're also seeing from our staffing internationally as well as domestic clients that as a matter
of competition to secure the best talent that's available in the marketplace, they have to
be sitting there and looking at the value of what FedNow Instant Payments means.
And I think the shout out from the employees themselves across the board, particularly in the services industry where there's tips involved and all that, it's become a necessity.
So we're seeing the volume pick up a lot quicker than we had anticipated.
ultimate volume would be until we got into the end of the first quarter of January of next year.
But we're already there based on the projections that we made. So we're going a lot faster. We saw
the similar situation when we brought on the capability of doing cannabis business and that
type of thing. So we're very excited and very pleased with the results so far yeah and are
you able to i mean sorry just to put you on the spot but are you able to give any uh because i
saw like 140 billion a year in volume like some really interesting statistics coming out are there
any any stats that you can add to that off the top of your head sure we're 170 billion. Businesses picked up pretty rapidly. We serve over 300,000 clients, which both of those numbers are way up from last year.
partnerships that we're forming with some of the most intelligent people in the industry, which is
obviously Simon's company. It's growing at a speed, but we're very happy with the fact that
we have the capability and infrastructure to support. For us, it's just a technology base
that can handle any volume. Just one does more than the other but we're really
excited because we're definitely by far two and a half times or uh as larger than our existing
competitor and anybody else in this space so we're kind of looking at you know trying to get to an
80 market share and we think we're going to be very close to that in the next year or so
incredible and so with that what kind of compliance considerations are arising we're talking about
like instant money movement now like what are you having to adjust when it comes to that side of
things well there's um yeah we're we're we're part of a an aging process.
There were 35-year-old technology company that happened to be the first people to offer direct deposit in the United States.
And to that, we've added other solutions, which most of everything focuses on having data, live data and movable data, which kind of ties into everything that we do.
So everything is all about auditing and capabilities of instantly providing data
access points for regulatory, whether it be NAGCHA, whether it be a state,
whatever it might be, that gives us really the edge in the market.
We can tell you on a spot time and a real-time basis where everything is moving, where it's gone,
and provide that to the compliance.
our liability and responsibility for doing NACHA audits.
Using a third-party processor in the United States allows you to fall under our liability and responsibility for doing Notcha audits, so it removes our clients from that.
So it removes our clients from that.
That means that we're in constant evolving relationships
with NACHA and we enjoy a very strong position
where we have the opportunity to spend time with them,
discussing future anticipated changes.
And that helps a lot in our ability to move
as quick as we possibly can to complete whatever is required, which is a lot, as you all know.
Yeah, absolutely. A lot.
Simon, I noticed we've got Jay up now, so I want to introduce him in a moment.
But I just I think before we kind of close that section off, like that whole real time payroll piece, is there anything you want to kind of follow up with?
that whole real-time payroll piece?
Is there anything you want to kind of follow up with?
Well, I'd say our integration with NatPay
was probably one of our most important partnerships
this year at Zabek.
They're a critical, critical partner for us
in all of our off-chain payments.
And NatPay being the only payroll processor
in the FedNow program ensures that Zabek
can maintain our instant payroll flow
across all the spectrum
of payroll payments from stablecoin to digital wallet and eventually to an employee's bank
account in near real time thanks to the power of the FedNow system.
Our integration with NatPay bridges the best of both worlds.
You get real-time borderless stablecoins streaming on-chain, connected directly into the Federal
Reserve's
probably most significant innovation
in the past 50 years when you think about it,
the FedNow system,
which lets consumers access payments
on a 24-7, 365 basis.
And it's integrations like this,
which puts Zbex Rails at the cutting edge of PayFi
and opens us up to even larger
institutional flows with time.
Of course, also thanks to our partners at Assure, who we've been working with for years now, edge of payfi and opens us up to even larger institutional flows with time of course also
thanks to our partners at assure who we've been working with for years now and we'd love to welcome
jay to the show hi jay how you doing good to see you up here fresh fresh x account how's it going
you might need to just bring yourself off mute. I appreciate this might be your first time on Spaces.
Ah, there you go.
There you go.
How are you, Jay?
Happy Tuesday from beautiful Austin, Texas, where the traffic is bad, the weather is cold, and everybody is texting.
Okay.
Are you well?
Life is good. Life is good. Survived Thanksgiving.
Actually losing weight, So not bad.
Oh, well, you can't grumble there then. It's great to have you up.
We'll definitely, I'm sure there'll be other opportunities to speak with you. But given we're partway through, I'm going to kind of jump into things with you when it comes to Assure.
kind of jump into things with you when it comes to um assure and particularly you know given
assure's remit or or you know proposition which is to focus on helping companies scale without
ballooning their back office which i think is really really exciting so i wondered if i could
just ask you a couple of questions on that now and see what you think.
I wanted to touch on agentic AI and compliance automation, and really kind of understand where those two things matter most for approving efficiency in modern payroll.
Well, it's interesting.
When you talk about agentic AI, you're really talking about what does the user want? The user wants health. The assure customer, 100,000 assure customers, average size 17 and a half employees. These are small businesses representing about 2.2 million employees, 50 states. These are companies that don't have giant HR compliance
departments, they want somebody to do it for them
and that's why they hire to Shure.
And so we, and if you really look at the,
if you think of the world as an X and Y axis
where the X axis or the horizontal axis is on the left side,
do it yourself, and on the right side, do it for me.
And on the Y axis or the vertical axis is at the bottom is no flexibility, one size fits
all, versus the top of the chart, which is 100% flexibility.
Assure lives in the upper right quadrant, which is a lot of flexibility, and we do it for you
because that's what our market demands. And agentic AI fits into the idea of, okay, this is
just another way for us to do it for you, Whether you're a hair salon or a fast food restaurant
or a food processing plant
or a home healthcare provider in Kansas City,
we do all this stuff for you from HR payroll benefits,
recruitment, payroll tax, pay card,
the entire thing. And so people want answers. They want
and they expect compliance. Compliance is not optional. You know, this is table stakes for
all these employers. They cannot afford a tax notice from the state of Vermont saying that
they owe $250,000. That puts them out of business. So we, by the way, the state of Vermont saying that they owe $250,000.
That puts them out of business.
So we, by the way, the state of Vermont is, damn, they love to do those things.
Capricious little state.
So we provide all that support for those folks.
And Agentic HI just fits into that that picture simon yeah i love that um
i just very quickly as well how do a question i prepared earlier i was i was thinking about this
and like human capital outcomes like how do they start to improve when payroll systems are
modernized through agentic ai? Thank you so much for taking
the time to explain that. When you start to see those agentic AI real-time payment systems
being modernized, being implemented, what happens to human capital? What are the outcomes? How is
that improving things? Well, hopefully it just keeps things the same or a little better.
Remember the pressures that employers are under these days. Think about our customer base, which is 90% hourly workers.
1.6, between January and July, 1.6 million immigrants were forced out of the workforce by the current administration's
policies. That will increase to 3.6 million by this time next year. That puts tremendous pressure
on a lot of these hourly workers to find and retain people. So they're counting on their
payroll provider, their benefits provider, their HR
provider to help them retain their people. And retaining their people is complicated.
They can't afford to lose people because there's nobody to replace them in the hourly workforce.
Look, I'll use an example of a couple of big employers in Alabama and Georgia that I'm familiar with. Hyundai,
for example, in Georgia, they've got this big, big plant down there that they're trying to fill
workers. They had 500 of their Korean workers ejected from the country, and they haven't been
able to find anybody to replace them. There's nobody down there. The county they reside in, which is
called Bryan County, they need 19,000 workers. Only 9,000 people live in the county. So the
pressure on employers, especially hourly employers, is tremendous. And they're looking to their payroll
benefits, recruiting HR provider for assistance to help them just keep their lines
moving. And that's our job is just to help them stay in business, stay compliant, and not
lose everybody because they missed the payroll because the payroll provider sucked.
because they missed the payroll because the payroll provider sucked.
So that's our job.
And Agentic AI helps a bit,
although I must say a lot of our hourly employers are not all that,
are not among the early adopters, I'll say, of Agentic AI.
They'd rather get Shirley on the phone.
Sometimes you've got to name your agent Shirley.
Maybe. Surely not. Sorry,
sorry. Simon, are you seeing similar patterns with other like fintech enterprise clients from a Zbeck perspective? Absolutely. I mean, at Zbeck, we really like to think five to 10 years
ahead, how the world will look at that point in time and how we build our own
technology to suit the future needs of enterprises. And in our view, HR is about to experience a
seismic shift in how it operates. If you look at Fortune 500 companies, just to make it easy,
on average, they spend $3,000 per employee per year just on HR spent. So this is hundreds of millions of dollars in annual spend for the average large enterprise.
And a lot of the HR operations can actually be automated through agentic AI tools, as
Jay's discussed, anywhere from the employee onboarding process to payroll setup to bulk
processing and payments.
In our view, this will be run in the future using AI agents.
Now, if an AI agent is running the operations in an HR department sometime in the next five years, more and more of the payments will need to be done on-chain to ensure maximum speed, efficiency, and traceability.
is something that we're super excited about to be at the forefront of innovation for here at
Zabek alongside the team at Assure who of course have been building HCM for the past 30-40 years
and some of our AI partners as well including Sentient AI who we've been collaborating with
for the past few months as we bring our own AI tools to market.
I touched on compliance earlier I just want to come back to that now. And Jim, I hope you're still there, Jim. I have another compliance question coming your way. ISO 2022, is that right? 20022. I never know how to pronounce that because it's not 20,022, is it? ISO 2022. You got it.
Oh, thank you.
It's kind of becoming unavoidable, right,
across modern payments.
So, like, yeah, give us, I guess,
give us a little bit of context there
in terms of what that's starting to,
what that's starting to make you guys have to consider
and the expertise you're having to bring in,
the kind of the adjustments that you're having to make.
Well, in most of that, specifically, it falls to our bank and bank partners.
But what it does is it's creating the capability of exchanging data on a real-time basis
that can fulfill a blockchain payments inside and out.
blockchain payments inside and out.
The lift on that again falls mostly to our bank,
but it has to be integrated with our compliancy
that we are looking at the fact that we are certified via through our bank.
And then we have to adjust our technology to our bank to integrate all this
stuff through the systems that we both have.
We've been working with our principal bank, which is spanning over 22 years. And because of our
broad base, the other product lines providing data security and lockdown and all that stuff
and exchanging data on a real-time basis. We're way ahead of everybody else.
But these compliance issues and these certifications,
it all tries to bring us back because of non-payroll payments and everything.
Islam is telling you, it has to be all together now,
and it has to be accounted for and audited and all that stuff. So it's a little
expensive, even if we're not doing the actual certification, we still have to keep each other
meaning First Premier Bank, which is our principal bank, which is about the 19th largest bank in the
United States together going forward, because a lot of these things we're going to talk about today are coming.
They're not necessarily here full blown out, but we're ready for when they are, and that's
going to happen.
Yeah, absolutely.
Simon, which parts of gaining this accreditation are, I guess, most complex?
Because we've been talking about it with you and Zbeck for a little while now, like preparing the ISO 2022 as a deadline that you guys have set internally this month.
What's that whole process been like?
Well, it's been quite a year for our compliance team at Zbeck,
which we've really built out.
But what I like to compare ISO to is really the way FedNow was to the Federal
Reserve System. ISO 2022 is a step change improvement in SWIFT's global payment architecture.
Richer data, new ISO standards, they let you do cross-border payments in an instant way
with much deeper customer data. So for many global institutions and some of our biggest clients at Zabek,
it's almost become a non-negotiable to have ISO 2022 certification.
And it does require a major upgrade of the legacy systems,
which has taken months and sometimes for some organizations years to implement.
We're talking about a complete overhaul in data standards, mapping exercises,
new operational processes in place for the company, which has been mainly why our compliance
team has been so busy this year. But being able to bring on NatPay and work alongside them has
been one of the key pieces to Zbex Rails, communicating through a fully ISO compliant
network that connects us across
Swift's global payment system. So as we've said many times, we are working towards a year-end
deadline for ISO certification. I have no doubt that it will be achieved.
Love that. And from Zebex view, how does that then align with programmable payments,
automation? That's all ties together nicely?
Absolutely. I mean, the reality is you can't be competitive in global payments without ISO
certification. This is going to be a hard truth that many companies are going to slowly realize
in the next couple of months. If an employer is running real-time programmable payroll using
Zbeck Rails, How would they feel about
waiting two to three days for a cross-border wire to clear when they fund
payroll or they pay out to an employee's international bank account? They're just
not going to accept that. And in our view any lag or disruption in the flow
significantly reduces our ability to deliver on the commitment to real-time
payments and it will only slow the rate of adoption for Zebek's services with time.
So ISO is truly a step change for Zebek and our partners.
And with full implementation by the end of the year,
we're expecting to see a lot more momentum and growth into 2026.
Love it. Love it. We'll be very pleased to see that come to fruition it felt like a long time coming
we've been talking we've been talking about it since the beginning of the year but of course
big changes do not happen overnight right it's huge exactly Jim knows very well at NAPPay right
it's really a long-term exercise in building next level compliance yeah okay. Okay. So then big changes, big, you know, big operational
infrastructure differences. I can bring us right now segueing into another one of those,
which is stable coins, right? Stable coin rails all being built out in parallel. I want to touch
on, I want to ask Jim and Jay this question, because this is something that's been really
interesting. I guess we're seeing stablecoins now.
I mean, they're not replacing automated clearing or Fed now.
They're sitting alongside them.
And I'm wondering from your guys, so from NatPay and Ashur's perspective,
where are you actually seeing the most interest from like a programmable or instant payroll perspective? Like what kind of
sectors are really kind of leaning into that? I know, you know, you mentioned a moment ago talking
about like people that were paying on an hourly rate, etc. But kind of, can you give us an idea
of what sectors you're starting to see this interest come from? Yeah, Benjamin, I'll take
that up to Jim, we can follow on this. but at Assure, we are targeting stable coin application
to two cohorts in our 2.2 million employee group. One would be people who are 21 to 35, who own
decentralized finance, Ether, Bitcoin, Tether, Solana, Binance, et cetera, who want that in their wallet, in their digital wallet.
That represents about 70% of the folks who own decentralized finance.
And then the second is those who send fiat wages or U.S. dollar wages abroad to be converted into DeFi or fiat on the other end.
DeFi or fiat on the other end.
You know, look, US workers in 2024 sent $380 billion just to five countries, China, India,
Mexico, Brazil, Vietnam.
And a lot of our workers are sending money to the home country.
We have a partnership with MoneyGram through our short pay card that actually facilitates
that now at fairly low cost lower
cost in western union but stablecoin will reduce the cost of that by uh by an order by several
orders of magnitude so those are the two two use cases one is for the young folks and the second
is for those who are sending money back to the old country the The complications come with the one big beautiful bill or the one bill
too big to be beautiful. However you refer to it, it's some of the impact on the immigrant
populations here in the United States. That may tamp down a little bit more of this international remittance activity, but we're going to get ready for it anyway.
But the limiter is your FDIC-insured bank has to be a signator to the Genius Act.
And I believe Jim's bank, first premier bank, I believe they are among those or among those who soon will be.
bank, I believe they are among those or among those who soon will be. Assure for its pay card
uses a bank called CFSB in New York. And that's not a signatory at this time to the Genius Act.
They may be, but we were limited by that at this time in our ability to offer that to our
employees. We expect that that timeline will accelerate that.
How about you, Jim?
Do you want to follow on that?
I don't know if you, in terms of like the,
where you're seeing the most interest.
Sure.
I think we're running over 10 million payment rate
employees a month.
And focusing in, and we've kind of secured out,
25% of the people who live from paycheck to paycheck
don't even think or consider point-based offerings
because they're spending it before they actually have it.
And they need to have the fluidity
of being able to walk
over the door and go to Walmart and blow their paycheck.
So when we look at where the external interest is coming from,
it's from technology interested companies, from our payroll
clients, because we're talking about payroll based offering.
And we firmly believe that it will be part of the system in the process.
And the ability to offer is somewhat on our side,
restricted by our banks when you look at what they want to run through and how do you handle a payroll
when the company actually didn't have the funding
and they NSF and they go out of business
and how do you recover?
So there's a lot of that kind of stuff.
But from the standpoint of understanding
it's going to be a product,
it's going to be part of the whole toolbox.
It's coming and it's coming mostly
from the technology side as far as where the volume,
the payroll companies don't seem to be showing any inertia on their side about wanting it.
From the standpoint, we have 3,800 payroll processors and I probably have had two who
have called and said, where are you on coin-based offerings?
But by necessity and by reality and by totally supporting our group, it'll be something we'll be probably looking at hopefully as early as 2026.
Yeah. Great to have that option now, obviously. Yeah. now obviously yeah yeah and then you had the problem in in for various different interactions
the sense of the employee understanding on a real large base of what coins are and what it really is
other than what they hear in the news media about uh you know people losing millions of dollars or
getting millions of dollars, there isn't really
a real understanding. So it's going to be a narrow window initially. But then I think that, of course,
grow as Jay was pointing out. Yeah, absolutely. It's about being prepared for when that inertia
comes. Totally agree. Simon, I wanted to touch on that with you then a little bit.
Stablecoins, just cover again how they solve genuine operational pain.
Well, building off of what Jim said, I think we are a few steps ahead of the rest of the market. I mean, Zbeck has been a pioneer in stablecoin payments since 2021.
has been a pioneer in stablecoin payments since 2021.
We are the first company within the Assure and the NatPay networks
to offer stablecoin payroll in real time.
And we're truly excited to see other companies join us
and build on top of our rails and in our network.
It's very clear to all of us that the use case for stablecoins
is becoming more and more apparent,
especially as you increase the frequency of pay.
The reason most people don't get paid every day comes down to the friction of payments.
So you remove that friction through the use of stablecoins on chain,
and you can pay someone by the hour, by the minute, or even by the second
without any meaningful marginal cost.
And it's best for employees to have real-time access to their
payments. And it takes a lot of the burden off of the HR team by automating payments in a
programmable way. This is why we see and truly believe stablecoin payments are the future of
payroll. Yeah. And it's important to, I guess, you know, talk about the fact that they will, like, they will coexist in parallel with regulated
payroll and that environment. How, what will that coexisting look like?
Well, we've always viewed stablecoin payroll as an option that coexists alongside traditional
payroll. And with time, as awareness grows and the benefits to employees become more and more
apparent, the market share of stablecoin payments will only continue to grow.
We've seen an enormous level of growth in 2025 post the Genius Act.
And with more banks and companies enrolling in it with time, we're only going to see that curve continue to steepen.
Now, of course, stablecoin payments don't hold a ton of value unless they have a
direct connection into the banking system, whether that's through cards or off-wrapping to a bank.
And through our partnerships with both MasterCard and NatPay, we can ensure those payments are also
instant or near instant. So we have the infrastructure set up to really drive this growth into 2026. I love that. May I add a little bit to
that? Please, Jay. Yeah. You know, there's a big trend in the payroll HR benefits business right
now to offer earned wage access, EWA. This is where you get paid every day. You have the option
to get advanced your wages that you
earn today even if your your payroll period is every two weeks you can get paid every day
and there are a number of technologies including our issue pay card and others um you know uh daily
pay um you know there are a lot of others who do this, and that's a trend. But there's a possibility that stablecoin, let me go back for a second.
When Assure, for example, advances payroll to an employee who gets paid five days from now,
we advance the 50% of the wages that they've earned as of today, we actually take that money
from our line of credit. And we advance that money to the employee, and then we recover it
on payday. And we earn money in several ways. But the stablecoin could be and may be an alternative enablement technology for us to replace that line of credit with the bank by allowing us to debit a payroll, a payer or an employer's account in advance of payday to cover those earned
wage access advances. So it could be an enablement technology to help earned wage access along
while the rest of the market catches up. It is possible in five, seven, 12, 15 years, everybody will get paid daily. But right now, and for the
next half generation of employees, that will pay payers employers will continue to honor a payroll
cadence weekly, bi weekly, semi weekly, semi monthly-monthly, etc. And will not alter that. But in the meantime,
processors like us, like NatPay, like others, will run into the breach and answer demand for
payroll on demand or daily pay or earned wage advance with these other technologies.
And stablecoin could be an enablement technology that makes it easier, faster and cheaper.
Love that. Thank you.
I mean, that's a great point that you raise, Jay.
I think one of the common concerns that employers have when looking at adopting more real-time payroll systems is how do they fund it?
How do they have the working capital or the cash flow needed to make payroll, you know, on a Monday or a Tuesday rather than, you know, every two weeks.
Now that's where our partnership with a company called Payroll comes into perspective. And Payroll
is actually a real-time funding company. So think of them as a bank that specifically loans for
payroll and they let employers make up for any shortfall in their cash to ensure that
payroll can be done in real time without having any NSFs or cancelled ACH pulls. So that's been
really key for us to scale real-time payroll. And of course with stablecoins we're able to
bring off some of the volume from traditional payday lending or earned wage access cards, which of course come
with high interest and high fees for the consumer. So stablecoin is definitely the way to go
to reduce fees and make payroll a lot more accessible.
Yeah, totally agree. Awesome. I want to thank Jim and Jay. I'm just conscious of everyone's
time and we've already gone over a little bit. And I wanted to ask Simon if he could just
close up. So Jim, Jay, thank thank you so much really appreciate you coming out today
would love to have you back so much so much we can add to this so much color we can add to it so
really appreciate you guys taking the time today thank you for coming up um thank you guys simon
thank you so much simon just as a close like what does a a hybrid payroll ecosystem look like five years from now, for example, when
FedNow, ACH, ISO standardized messaging, tokenized money, when all of that stuff that we've been
talking about and we've been aspiring to, when it all operates together, what does the world look
like? I think we've hinted at it a lot over the course of the spaces. And as I've said multiple
times, the next five years for HR and payroll will see a complete paradigm shift in the industry.
Payments will move on-chain in a fully automated and programmable way,
with oversight and management from these agentic AI tools that can process and manage payroll faster and more effectively than a human payroll manager ever could. So by connecting on-chain payments to the FedNow system
and ISO standardized messaging,
we can now have payments make it into the bank accounts
of employees across the US and the world in mere seconds.
So the days of waiting for a wire or for your paycheck
will be a distant memory,
and only a story that I think older generations
will tell to their children
about how lucky they have it today.
So we say with confidence that Zabek Rails
will be at the core of this developing payroll ecosystem
alongside many of the giants in the industry
from our friends at Assure
to our new partners at MatPay
and to many, many more soon to join us in our mission.
Love it. Brilliant. Can't wait to meet them.
Really looking forward to it.
Thanks so much for your time today, Simon.
Thank you for hosting, Ben. Thanks to our guests.
Everyone stay tuned for many more to come.
December is going to be a very big month for us
as we finish the year strong here at Zabek.
Yes, for sure. Thanks sure thanks everyone for coming out today
jj i'll let you finish up but uh appreciate everyone's time no thank you everybody thanks
ben uh thanks obviously nat pay assure simon um and we'll catch you guys uh on the next one a lot
of exciting stuff coming up this month so stay tuned see you guys in the next one thank you thank you
