It's also hard to figure out what WePay has actually been doing. Great enterprise speak again.
So, that's what the banking world looks like? Even more enterprisy than the Enterprise despite being a start-up?
Between my quote "hi guys, we've been bought" and this statement, you can see the difference, right? One is very clear to the point, the other talks about lot of things but actually doesn't literally spell it out once.
Curious as it seems to me (uninformed) that basically all banks already have fintech offerings and are built around networking and payments technology at their core.
Unfortunately I'd say yes. Consider that Goldman Sachs has 38,000 employees and the average compensation is 350k-400k per year, per their recent quarterly filing.
It is an elite world based on signaling and deep relationships, because there is a lot of money at stake.
I’m writing all this because I left with the feeling that he was a genuinely great guy and that he deserved success. I’m glad it has finally come his way!
Best of luck!
PS: stay away from bitcoin.
> It's just not a real thing, eventually it will be closed,
> Dimon also said he'd "fire in a second" any JPMorgan trader who was trading bitcoin, noting two reasons: "It's against our rules and they are stupid."
A materialized gain that you can actually use is more valuable than a paper gain that may not be there when you need it, especially in an instrument as volatile and immature as Bitcoin.
It's pretty clear it wasn't the home run that so many set out for when founding a company. I do expect this is a good landing out of this for many, yet now there are new challenges to navigate.
Nine years is no short time to labor through, especially when you're taking a giant risk and giving up things that software engineers could easily get in terms of work/life balance at an AWS/Google/Microsoft. Yet, you set out to change something in a noticeable fashion.
I truly hope Chase gives you the chance to do that, yes it's a big company. But, in the spectrum of big co's in the financial space they seem more open to innovation than so many others so... best of luck with what's next at Chase.
This isn't to say it's a bad acquisition or should be dismissed as a failure. It just re-iterates that it's not all easy, glory, and success.
I do hope for the team involved it worked out just as they'd hoped, but from their post it feels like many hard years and more of a next chapter than the end. Best of luck to them all in the future.
So what does this mean for Chase? Do they gut all of the plumbing out with Vantiv and move it over to Paymentec for processing? Does Paymentec even have a PayFac capability built into it?
What the parent is describing is PayFac (payment facilitator) which is where the card network and acquirer are aware of the merchant/sub-merchant relationship. You can determine if a payment is through PayFac by the tell-tale asterisk after the first 2 characters on the statement descriptor. For example, Square transactions process as "SQ*[Merchant Name]"
Huge congrats to the team!
One feature that stood out for me was the ability to issue refunds without fees. It was not common a few years ago. This allowed me to build an event ticketing platform where promoters could sell tickets. If an event is cancelled and we had already paid out funds to the promoter, my business could have been 'on the line' for the refunds.
Even though we were never a huge customer, the business didn't succeed, they still always treated us like we were important. This was a stark contrast to PayPal, whom they were originally trying to take down.
I suspect this merger is also about their fraud detection system. I hope Chase can put it to good use, they need it.
WePay is about providing payments infrastructure to marketplaces and crowdfunding platforms (Lyft, GoFundMe, etc.). WePay are competitive with Stripe's Connect product (disclaimer: my employer). Braintree and Adyen also have similar products.
Congrats to the WePay folks. I hope this new chapter works out well for them!
I'm surprised that Zelle is moving so slowly - it's a great selling point for a bank/CU. Alas, the system doesn't allow for non-personal payments, so the banks want to preserve their commercial payments processing income.
Also, Zelle and WePay are in two completely different spaces. Zelle is consumer-to-consumer money transfer. WePay is a merchant payment processor.
Just nice, smart, unpretentious guys.
Congrats.
They were kind, warm, quick with a joke, and even quicker to offer support, insight, and help to the fledgling group of young entrepreneurs.
I've taken vicarious delight from watching their success!
Uh, oh. Does such a thing ever work?
In the automotive world, everyone has a bet on self driving cars, for instance. Ford has Argo AI, GM has Cruise Automation.
For a contrast, look at Kodak. They pioneered the tech for digital camera sensors... and then did nothing with it, because they made money on film. Digital camera sensors killed film.
If you want a longer discussion on this, The Innovator's Dilemma is highly recommended. Here's a short summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUAtIQDllo8
