From Niche to Necessity: Tax & Accounting for Web3 and Digital Assets

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Niche to Necessity. Today we're excited to welcome Hugo Finkelstein. He's co founder and CEO of Rise. And Rise is building hybrid payroll solutions for users across the globe. Welcome Hugo. Thanks for joining us.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:00:13]:
Thanks for having me. Pleasure being here.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:00:16]:
So, for our listeners, could you just give a brief overview of Rise and your role within the company and kind of how its origin story, if you will.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:00:24]:
Yeah, so I'm the co founder and CEO of Rise. Rise is a global payments and payroll company that's helping global teams essentially handle all of their payment needs, whether that's B2B payments, contractor payments, or full time employee payments. Yeah, the backstory is basically, it's actually quite interesting. So I've been in the space since 2017, kind of like at the peak of, you know, the ico, the ICO craze. I was handling, you know, all marketing efforts for multiple projects, created a marketing agency around it. That marketing agency led me to get into the freelancer gig economy industry, spending a lot of time on, you know, the likes of fibers and upworks, realizing how important that flexible independent workforce was going to be. My co founder Andrew, was running a consulting shop in the space, so helping all kinds of blockchain projects, you know, with, you know, wallets, exchanges, explorers, et cetera. We met on Angelist Online actually in early 2019 and for a few months we brainstorm what practical use cases we could solve leveraging new technologies, these new, you know, decentralized technologies.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:01:59]:
We didn't want to get into something speculative, just wanted to have a real world use case with the new technologies. Very quickly we landed on the idea that we could build a better marketplace, a gig economy marketplace that would empower users, both payers and payees, independent contractors, by leveraging these new technologies, making them more independent, faster payouts, lower fees, et cetera and so forth. We launched so Rise V1, which was actually a marketplace, so not at all what we have today. But the idea was connecting businesses with independent contractors and then facilitating payments on chain releasing funds via smart contracts based on milestones that were achieved. That was kind of the idea. We launched that in 2021, had dozens of customers, did about a couple, like about 50k in GMV and quickly realized we had a much better, much better plan and play if we were to package the infrastructure we had built in terms of payments, add a layer of compliance to it, employment compliance, and essentially help any company, whether it's a dao, it's a startup, it's a protocol, or it's a company that has nothing to do with crypto. Help these organizations on hire and onboard international workers and pay them however they want. So that's when we met the pivot in 2021 and launched what we have today in 2022.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:03:33]:
So over two years ago.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:03:35]:
That's super cool. I love companies like yours that have an origin story that's born out of a pain point that you experience yourself in the industry. I was involved with a project that did a lot of audited smart contracts and things like that so that they could have token locks and things like that. Because the founder had gotten rugged a few times. So he wanted to be able to lock up his liquidity. He wanted to be able to ensure that projects he was investing in were locking their liquidity tokens or their team tokens and things like that. So I also got in the space right around when you did. So I was after the peak and in the trough, but I was like, okay, now's the time to enter, right? Those bear markets are good to build.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:04:14]:
Very cool. So I noticed on a lot of your marketing materials, you guys talk about this hybrid payroll solution. What does hybrid payroll mean to you?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:04:24]:
Yeah, it's really a term that we want to cone. Essentially when we say hybrid, we mean that we can blend fiat currencies. So you know, you know, currencies that are backed by governments, stable coins and cryptocurrencies. So basically we, we talk a lot about our hybrid payroll engine or hybrid payment engine. And that's essentially an engine that has a full on fiat capacity and a full on, on chain capacity capacity with stablecoins and crypto. And that means, you know, pay ins in whatever currency, payouts in whatever currency, all of that obviously compliant to the max. And on top of that engine, adding stacking up different products and services.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:05:11]:
That's interesting. So you know, someone doesn't need to use crypto to use your, your solution. They can be just, you know, operating in multiple, you know, different currencies that just, you know, it facilitates an ease of transitioning between those as well. And so you're almost future proofing your business as well if you're working with rise. Because if, even if you don't use stablecoin payments today, you might decide to in the future. So you're kind of like keeping door open.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:05:37]:
And we see many, I mean, we have many, you know, different use cases on our system that are actually, you know, I mean, very interesting. Like we have Web2 customers that come in, they have nothing to do with crypto but one of their contractors is asking for a USDC payout and they don't know how to do it. Or we have Web3 customers that only have USDC or you know, whatever stable coin on their treasury. They have some of their workers asking to get paid in fiat but they have no idea how to do it. So we're seeing all of these use cases that are making the case for a hybrid payment engine.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:06:14]:
Yeah, it's interesting because you know, different parts of the world, you know, sometimes people are pigeonholed to thinking about just you know, their use cases in the US but there's a lot of companies especially in Web3 that operate globally and they want to hire talent from wherever it's, you know, either, you know, wherever it's the right fit a lot of times. But you know, it's great to be able to have that flexibility to either be, hey, I'm a web3only organization and I need to pay people in their local currency or vice versa. I love that blend and that option there for folks, right?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:06:48]:
Absolutely, absolutely.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:06:51]:
So you mentioned being compliant. You know, how do you guys make sure that you're navigating the complex regulatory landscape associated with international payments and you know, beyond that, you know, crypto digital assets as well.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:07:03]:
Yeah, I mean, you know Rise is a, is US based and we want to be, you know since the beginning we, I mean both me and my co founder and half of the team is based in the US we, you know like the entire, I mean now everything's changing with the, you know, the new administration coming in and there's, you know, people, you know, know that it's going to like the regular regulatory framework is about to change for our industry in a positive way. But we had the approach in the beginning that we wanted to be in the US in the most compliant ways. So you know, I mean I can get into the details but we're registered with the different authorities like FinCEN, we're acquiring all of our licenses at the state level or MTLs. And in order to be able to do that you need to have a full on compliance program. So I think to this date we have 10 different compliance policies, four different compliance programs which are related to onboarding with KYC, KYB Anti Money Laundering check. Then we have transaction monitoring, then we have reporting. So we have a full on thanks to our magnificent chief compliance officer, a full on program around it. We actually invest a lot into tools that enable us to do all the onboarding, transaction monitoring and reporting.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:08:23]:
It's actually a joke that we have internally is that we have an enterprise grade compliance program and tooling when we're just a startup. But I believe that in the long run obviously that's gonna make us stand apart.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:08:34]:
Right, I completely agree on with that. I mean I haven't seen too many businesses that are forward thinking in that way. And it's so necessary the compliance aspect of this, especially being a money service business, you know, transact, you know, with all those, all those complex aspects. Not a lot of startups have that foresight and the ability to hire a compliance officer. So it's, it's, it's good to, good to hear that as well.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:08:58]:
Right, right. So that's, that's what we do in the U.S. domestically. We, you know, the majority of our payouts are in, are like in fiat and stablecoin, not necessarily cryptocurrencies. So when it comes to fiat we leverage partners that have local rails. For now, when it comes to stablecoins, I mean, you know, it's USD denominated, so there's not so much about, hey, you know, someone getting paid in, you know, a very weird cryptocurrency and all of the implications that come with that. So it's pretty straightforward. And for now we're just paying independent contractors.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:09:33]:
So independent contractor payouts in which, you know, they have to on their own essentially pay their taxes. Taxes, if that makes sense. So now with the new, you know, the projects that we have and endeavors that we have will, will have a more local presence when it comes to full time employees and that will come with a full on, you know, companionship I would say, around that part of getting paid in crypto.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:10:00]:
Yeah, I know. Before the call we were talking a little bit about, you know, where I live in Costa Rica, there's a lot of bitcoin adoption and I realized, you know, you asked me about stablecoins and I realized I actually bought my car with stablecoins and I forgot to mention that I, you know, so the adoption trends are happening and I think that it's a global, you know, you can leverage these tools globally. Obviously slightly different use case but same denomination in those stablecoins. So yeah, it's, I think we are in for an exciting few years coming up here.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:10:32]:
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, and we see it firsthand like all of our customers are asking for new features, new, you know, like having the transaction between the employer and the contractor is one thing, but there's so many different services and products we can add on each end of the transaction. That essentially makes a More compelling ecosystem. You know, like people get paid in stablecoin or crypto. Like, what do they do with that once they get paid? So coming up with products and ways for them to spend them, to invest them, to acquire them. There's so many things we can do and it's super exciting.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:11:11]:
Yeah, no, I think I've talked. The on chain payroll thing has always intrigued me a lot just because there's so many things you can do with it with smart contracts. One of the things I thought about in the US there's such an issue with payday loans as an example, predatory loans for that, for people that, you know, they've already earned that money. It's just they need to wait that week or two weeks before it hits their bank account. And so, you know, one thing that I've always thought about is like, you know, why can't. And I don't think I know that this isn't happening actively right now, but in the future it's going to be really cool to be able to see, hey, I've earned three days worth of wages so far. Let me just draw that out of the smart contract that it's in now because I've earned it already, it's mine. You know, things like that where you can actively leverage smart contracts to get paid what you're owed immediately and there's no, no downtime.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:12:00]:
I think stuff like that is going to help disrupt a lot of predatory businesses and the business practices in the states that just take advantage of people that are having a cash flow problem. Right, that's, that's.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:12:11]:
I mean, I'm glad you bring that up because that's exactly what we're building.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:12:15]:
Oh, nice.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:12:16]:
Yeah, yeah. Actually, we, we. So essentially, you know, so I was saying, like we have this hybrid payment engine on which we're stacking up products and services. The first one that we have is a global contractor payout system. The second one we're adding is an on chain payroll engine. So think about, you know, taxes deducted on chain, put into specific buckets. State, local, federal agencies that are then getting paid automatically. But financial products for the employees, such as, you know, a, you know, ewa, like earned wage access or, you know, daily pay.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:12:53]:
Like, these are things that because of our infrastructure we can make so efficient and so easy for these people. So we're definitely, I mean, you know, you'll see news in a few weeks, but when we launch this product, we'll have all sorts of innovative financial products.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:13:12]:
I love that. And you know, the thing that I'VE noticed and I'm not sure why it is, but it seems like anytime I transfer from like Coinbase or Kraken to my bank account, it seems to hit it so much faster than like, if I transfer from my business bank account to my personal account, it usually takes, you know, one to three days if I take, if I pull money out of Coinbase or, or. And I. Obviously it's the same system, so I'm not really sure what's happening. It usually hits within the same day. So, you know, I'm not really sure. I don't know if you have any insight on that, but it seems like it depends.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:13:44]:
It depends on the rail they're using, especially in the U.S. you know, I mean, you have ACH, you have wires now, you have RTP, fed now. Depends what rail they're using. What I can tell you is that on rise, like if it's a USD, like payout, not a USDC or USD payout, it's same, it's like within minutes, basically you get that to your bank account.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:14:06]:
Yeah, I mean that's a big challenge that I have being an expat living in Costa Rica and getting, you know, my business is located in the States, so I'm working remotely. Right. And a lot of times, you know, I'll get paid for my business and then I gotta wait for that, those funds to get transferred to my personal account so that I can pull them out from the atm. And it's like there's so much friction there. And the banking system here in Costa Rica is so antiquated and bureaucratic that it's a big reason why I'm pushing. A lot of what I do is seeing issues on the ground in places like this. So I know we've talked a little bit about the operational efficiencies that firms can get out of implementing a solution like rise. Can you talk a little bit more about some of those efficiencies that, that are gleaned from using your service?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:14:55]:
Yeah, I mean, I mean there's so many, there's so many different things, you know, but from a like, monetary standpoint, you know, first, the first one that comes to mind is the cost, obviously. So, you know, saving on global payments, saving on FX transactions, saving on hidden fees basically that, you know, traditional tradfi providers hide in in most, in most instances. Like I was actually looking at this diagram the other day where you see like a bank to bank transfer across the world versus like the stablecoin sandwich kind of diagram. And there's a Lot of hidden fees that are, you know, avoided by leveraging this kind of infrastructure. That's the first one. The second one is, is speed from an operational standpoint. You know, being able to, you know, onchain works 24 7, there's no downtime and transfers are essentially done in seconds now nowadays. So that would be the second one.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:15:56]:
And I mean so many different things too. That surprises for the product that we're gonna launch, I would say.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:16:04]:
Yeah, I feel like it's so nice to be able to be like, hey, I just sent you payment, here's the transaction id. As simple as that. It's like this has happened, it's on chain, it's in your wallet instant. It's like there's a kind of, I don't know, like a dopamine hit too. Just like immediately seeing those funds that really. Yeah.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:16:29]:
Adding to that is like the scalability that we provide. Like, you know, we speak to a lot. I mean all day long we speak to like managers, founders, operators, whether it's in web two or web three and realize how antiquated the systems they use are or how manual their processes are. So when we tell them like, hey, you can have a hundred, like a team of a hundred across the world onboarded in seconds or in minutes, whether they're doing business as a contractor or as a full time employee. And you can essentially scale all of your payouts and not have to worry about if, you know, Taylor wants to be paid in USD or Hugo wants USDC or this guy wants euro or whatsoever. You can just scale all of that and automate all of that and we do it all for you. They get that kind of, you know, like, wow moment basically.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:17:24]:
I love that. Yeah. So in that same kind of vein, talking about integrating into these systems, how does Rise integrate with existing accounting and HR systems within a firm?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:17:37]:
Yeah, so we're actively working on that. We're actually coming up again. That will be one of our few, one of our many sorry announcements in the coming weeks, but we're coming up on integration with, you know, the large, you know, accounting accounting software that you can think of and also large HR platforms that you can think of. So that's going to be, that's all coming within the next few weeks.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:17:58]:
So for users that are interested in your product or implementing your product, I know that we talked a little bit about being flexible. So is it fair to say that new user can come in with no crypto experience at all and implement Rise's solutions?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:18:15]:
Yeah, absolutely. Even though we're built on chain or like a majority of our infrastructure is built on chain. We built the system so that you know, any non crypto friendly or people that don't know at all about crypto can use our system. It's actually quite, quite fascinating. Like we have all sorts of, we have something called the Right ID on our system, which is a smart contract that you mint when you on board. Like we help users plug in either the crypto wallets to own that smart contract or we create, you know, what we call right security keys for them which are essentially, you know, non custodial wallets, but just wallets that help them, you know, own this particular smart contract and take particular actions. But we built the entire system from A to Z for people to, to use even even though they don't want, like don't want or know crypto.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:19:06]:
That's interesting. And I know that it sounds like if I'm an independent contractor and I enter the Rise ecosystem and then I go to another firm and they happen to use Rise as well, it sounds like I'll be. If I have what you're describing in your Rise id, would that be applicable to the other firm as well or would I need to do a separate onboarding process?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:19:27]:
No, I mean once you've done your KYC and KYB with Rise and you have your Rise id, you can get invited by, I mean obviously you don't want to have multiple employers at the same time, but you can have multiple clients or customers at the same time. But once you're in Rise and it's like, you know, the idea is to build your, your financial ecosystem, you know, so having multiple customers for you to receive paychecks, to send bills, to pay bills to on and off ramp, like all these, you know, real financial ecosystem for you.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:19:57]:
Very cool. So as far as companies onboarding and implementing Rise's tools, what kind of support does Rise offer for that process for both the employees and contractors? Employees or contractors. And then how do you ensure a user friendly experience with those folks?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:20:20]:
Yeah, I mean I think you know, the user friendly experience, it comes from like a constant feedback loop being very close to our customers. Whether that's you know, our customer support or our, you know, customer success managers and reps or even our account executive that are onboarding people or even myself and, and the leadership team, constant feedback loop to improve the product, to make the, the experience more user friendly. We're actually coming up with the second version of our product in a couple of weeks. In terms of onboarding, we have I mean all sorts of content documentation. So you know, employees that get, contractors that get onboarded, they get access to a guide, they get access to videos. We have 24, seven customer support available and then on the employer side of things, it's a little bit more like hands on at first handholding and we have, you know, teams of AES and customer support, customer success that will, that will onboard them basically.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:21:24]:
Very cool. So we talked a little bit about, you know, getting paid on stable coins. Do users have options to get paid on other crypto or is it mostly. Is, is it mostly limited to, to stable coins and then they can do with those stable coins what they want once they have. Once they have them?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:21:39]:
Yeah. So basically, I mean we're right now available when it comes to stable coins and on chain activities. We're available on five different chains. So EVM compatible chains. Basically we're working on adding more and again all of that is based on demand. What we're seeing like actual demand coming from users. But basically, yeah, it's the majority of our volume is done in stablecoins. We do have a Uniswap integration.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:22:08]:
After users get paid, they can decide to swap for other cryptocurrencies and by that time they're basically responsible for declaring paying gains on that or whatsoever. But yeah, we have an integration now. Our goal with our, the future releases that we're going to make is having a defi, kind of like marketplace where essentially users can plug their funds into different pools or protocols or marketplaces obviously on their own but showing them. And that's when I think it's very important to think about how do we onboard non crypto friendly users to this new financial ecosystem is by having those sorts of features and marketplaces and enabling access for these guys.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:23:00]:
Yeah, kind of like directing them to, hey, you can get, you know, 5% yield on your USDC over here or you know, if you want to get this, you know, debit card to be able to spend your, your usdc, they offer these bonuses or things like that.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:23:15]:
Yeah.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:23:16]:
Okay, very interesting. And so just anecdotally what, what EVM chains are most popular so far with users that are withdrawing funds to. Is it Polygon optimism? Which ones are most popular or most.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:23:31]:
I mean right now the one that we have that's working the most is Arbitrum.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:23:36]:
Okay, interesting.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:23:37]:
Yeah. In terms of withdrawal, it's Arbitrum. We're enabling more. In terms of funding, it's Arbitrum Polygon Optimism.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:23:49]:
Cool.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:23:49]:
I mean Mainnet also has like a decent amount of funding. But yeah, we're working, you know, base is on the roadmap and then we'll see about others. But yeah, it's our goal is to have the most amount of integrations possible.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:24:05]:
Well, I would love to hear you share some examples or you know, case studies of folks that have implemented RISE to streamline their payroll processes. Do you have any examples of folks that have had like good success with your product?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:24:18]:
Yeah, I mean, you know, in the, in the Web2 category, the first one, I won't name it, but you know, a traditional marketing agency that had workers based in Argentina and these workers wanted to get paid in USD and when they came to us they were like, you know, how do we do that? And we told them, you know, the easiest, fastest, cheapest way to get your people paid in USD is to send it actually via stable Coins and usdc. So they had Fiat Treasury. We paid their workers in stablecoins. That's for like they were able to essentially retain talent just with that particular feature on their payroll. Another one was actually a protocol like a DAO that came to us and that said, hey, we want to be the most compliant possible. But the hiccup is that our contributors want to stay anonymous. So we actually have a feature on our system where contributors, anonymous contributors on board, on rise, they pass kyc. Like we know their identity, we verify all their docs, process anti money laundering checks, et cetera.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:25:25]:
But the dao, essentially our customer doesn't know their identity, they just see an avatar. So that's one of the key. And I don't know to, to this day I don't know any other payroll platform that can facilitate that.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:25:37]:
That's super interesting. Yeah, that's hugely important to a lot of people in the space. And so yeah, that's great feature.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:25:47]:
Yeah, yeah.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:25:50]:
So what industries have seen the most significant benefits from adopting Rise? Obviously Web3, but beyond that, what other industries do you do you see really leveraging your product the most or getting the most benefit out of it?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:26:05]:
Yeah, I mean, you know, we just have independent contractor payouts now. So we've been targeting our marketing and sales efforts towards organizations and verticals and businesses that have like an independent workforce, first kind of, kind of workforce. So you know, marketplaces that have gig workers on it, agencies, startups, you know, all these, all these sorts of companies are using us and benefiting from it. Now with the few products that we plan on launching, I think we'll be able to move upstream and target, you know, larger SMBs and move towards Enterprise.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:26:45]:
So it sounds like my last question related to this was about, you know, how the transition to a hybrid payroll system is impacted, you know, the operations of companies but also contractor satisfaction. Satisfaction. What, what has been your, what have you seen from that standpoint? It sounded like with the Argentinian example that that was like a deal maker for them and that kept those people on board. Do you have any other examples related to that?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:27:13]:
I mean it's, it's mostly related to that. You know, it's like us, it's like rise coming in at a time where a traditional company has international workers that are asking for specific, specific methods of payouts and they don't know how to do that. They're simply, they're like should we go via, through, like off, you know, off ramp via an exchange? I mean, sorry, on ramps via an exchange. But that comes with fees, that comes with time. What about compliance? What about taxes? So having this overall, you know, complete offering from compliance to payments is, is actually quite, quite good for us. So that's on the contractor side of things, on the payroll side of things that we're about to launch. It's we see surprisingly like a lot of the large web three companies that we can think of are still leverage leveraging very antiquated and obsolete payroll systems. So when we speak to them and tell them, hey, you know, you'll be able to have all of your contractors over all of your full time employees with you know, healthcare, taxes, benefits, full payroll system built on chain but a lot of them what we've seen so far is that it's a no brainer like condensing all of that, you know.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:28:32]:
So, so we're super excited to get to market with these, with these new products.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:28:36]:
Yeah, I mean I can speak from experience. I was operating the CFO more, more actively back in you know, defi summer and that time and I was in Excel, you know, figuring out each contractor and the payment and which, which tokens they wanted to receive and then doing multi sends and it's like it was a mess. And you know, some people wanted usdt, some people wanted usdc, others wanted to get paid in our native token. And so then you know, it was just so complex and so convoluted that having a solution where the onus is on the contractor to onboard themselves but also it's one centralized place where I just need to type in what, what they get paid and then click a button. It's like that to me was a huge pain point and a big part of my job was Just going through monthly payroll and so. And then you can fat finger and make a mistake and it's on chain so it's, you know, permanent.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:29:31]:
Right.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:29:32]:
But yeah, very interesting.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:29:34]:
Yeah, we should definitely speak again in like a month from now when we have these new products and I want to show you what it looks like.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:29:40]:
Yeah, I love that. So we've talked a little bit about some of those upcoming features. I don't know how much you want to share here or how much is kind of saved for more formal presses at least. But what can users expect out of rise in 2025?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:29:54]:
A lot. New products and geo, like international expansion. So as I was saying, we have this engine on which we're putting products on top of right now we have global contractor payouts. We're adding the. I mean we're currently pushing to actually as we speak pushing to production the first on chain payroll engine with taxes deducted on chain healthcare benefits in the us. On that we'll have an employer of record service where Rise becomes the employer for a US based employee. And here the employer would be international. So think about an entity, a company based in Costa Rica that wants to absolutely employ like one US based employee but doesn't want to set up an entity and all of the legal and compliance costs that come with that, we do that.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:30:41]:
So we do that for you basically. So er, and then direct payroll. So this is more like a US based employee employer wanting to employ a US based employee. We essentially facilitate our tech. We then plan a GEO expansion on these two payroll products with Canada, UK, Europe, Latin America, all throughout 2025. And then the last service that I can share but not the least and actually not the last but a bill pay product where essentially say you're a accounts payable, accounts receivable product leveraging still this hybrid payment infrastructure. So being able to. And also like some AI components into it where you receive an invoice.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:31:31]:
Yeah. An email, you forward that to Rise and then automatically we read the recipient details whether it's on chain or in fiat and then you can just log into Rise and approve the payment or essentially send out bills to your customers.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:31:48]:
Very cool. Yeah, that was kind of like a logical next step that I was thinking about for you guys. Being this facilitator of payments and already having all the licenses related to that and then implementing something like that seems to make a lot of sense for your users to be able to expand and you know, I know I can see that. The cannabis industry, I'm very involved in the cannabis industry. I do a lot of, I have a lot of clients that operate, you know, retail dispensaries in Massachusetts. And a big challenge for them is being able to make payments they can't do. Ach, they're shut out of baking operations. They can do checks or they can do like a lot of them use antiquated services that will send a check on their behalf.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:32:25]:
But to be able to implement something like this instant settlement, hybrid, Fiat and crypto, they don't even have to leverage the crypto aspect if they don't want to. So stuff like that, I think there's a lot of potential for outside of crypto to be able to leverage your tool.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:32:43]:
Yeah, absolutely. And even apart from just a traditional Web2 company that wants to stay like in, in the, how do you say, like in the know or like wants to keep attracting and retaining younger generations of workers that are asking for more and more, you know, flexible ways of getting paid and you know, more and more ways to invest their funds. You know, like it's evident to us that say, you know, big like Fortune 500 basically that want to stay like innovative, will adapt a system like ours one way or another. It's obvious we're already having discussions with those guys and yeah, I think the future is quite exciting and interesting.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:33:29]:
So wrapping up here a little bit, what advice would you give to companies that are interested in exploring rise services but are unsure of where to start?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:33:38]:
I mean definitely start on our website. We have a lot of resources. We actually put, you know, with the help of our head of content, a lot of content out around contractor payouts. Whether it's like, you know, we have, I mean, different categories on our, on our resources centers. But like whether it's compliance, tax related, crypto related, stablecoin related or just, you know, traditional payments, we put a lot of content out there to educate our users around our product and the industry. So definitely start on the site and then you know, obviously the team is, is, has our doors are open basically. So any questions? We have a full on business development team that will be happy to educate and help potential customers and even people in general.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:34:24]:
Awesome. And then any final thoughts you'd like to share about the importance of modernizing payroll systems?

Hugo Finkelstein [00:34:30]:
I mean I think the two tailwinds that we see are basically the adoption of global work. You know, obviously Covid accelerated that, but now, you know, more and more people are working remotely and are setting up, you know, their businesses, their entities remotely. So this is the first like global work is, is definitely like exploding the Second one is stablecoin adoption or, you know, leveraging blockchain rails to process payments, basically. So the addition of the two is essentially what we're building, like this full on hybrid system for global teams and global workers. So I think it's evident that the traditional payroll systems that are not looking at stablecoin rails and blockchain rails and even global payroll capabilities will be very quickly outdated. So I would say, yeah, the, what we're building, I think is definitely in the right direction and we're seeing it across like, you know, everything.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:35:38]:
So, yeah, it seems like the solution is going to help people dip their toes in without, you know, needing to commit to making that change, but also have the ability to flip that switch whenever they want to.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:35:47]:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And just to finish, like, we're, we're, you know, we're going to market with these new products. We're hungry for partners. You know, whether that's accounting firms or consulting firms or HR firms that are seeing these topics becoming more and more, you know, topical essentially are coming up more and more often. Would love to have an open discussion with them and seeing how we can work together.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:36:13]:
That's awesome. Well, this has been such a pleasure, Hugo, learning more about your services that I didn't even know. You know, I feel like I'm pretty up to date on what rise does, and I didn't know that, you know, you guys were facilitating payments between businesses as well. So that's really cool to hear as well. And I'm excited to hear more of the announcements that you guys have coming for us in 2020. And yeah, once again, thank you so much for coming on.

Hugo Finkelstein [00:36:34]:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me and looking forward to doing the next one already.

Taylor Zork, CPA [00:36:39]:
Sounds good.