During this 33th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Johnathan Holland, the Founder and CEO of Curexe, that provides tools for enabling online foreign exchange transactions at reasonable rates—including a new product that will allow users to take payment with Interac.
Time Stamped Show Notes:
● 00:55 – Curexe assists businesses to send and receive money.
● 01:34 – Johnathan Holland started Curexe four years ago.
● 02:59 – He looked at how Canadian banking hadn’t properly connected to
technology yet.
● 04:33 – He started listening to motivational speeches on YouTube for inspiration.
● 05:48 – He began working with his CTO and got into a Canadian entrepreneurial
leadership program called The Next 36.
● 09:16 – Johnathan came to Toronto from St. Catharines.
● 10:22 – Curexe only charges a flat rate of 1% to send money out, 2% to accept
money.
● 11:18 – Curexe is targeting small business owners looking to scale globally.
● 12:45 – Curexe has a blog with content to capture customers and provide value.
● 14:02 – Their new product is a debit card called SmartPay.
● 19:17 – Curexe handles about 20 currencies.
● 21:43 – The hurdles have been things like it taking 2 and a half years to convince
a bank to give them a merchant account for a money service business.
● 26:05 – You have to be resourceful and hustle.
● 28:20 – Have a differentiating product that is valuable to get customers and scale
up.
● 30:38 – The long term vision for Curexe is showing Canadians that businesses can
scale globally to be the next PayPal.
● 33:29 – Johnathan Holland is excited about forcing banking to change to creating
more value and a smoother experience.
3 Key Points:
1. You aren’t going to know looking forward how it is all going to work out…but you can
connect the dots when you look back.
2. Research shows the U.S. and Canadian income per capita are constantly diverging
because Canada isn’t building the big YouTubes and Googles of the world in terms of
businesses.
3. Your network is the biggest thing.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “We (Curexe) help businesses that need to send and receive money.” – Johnathan
Holland.
- “If you are a business owner and you need to send money to a supplier in another
country, we (Curexe) can help you do that right from our online platform, for a
cheaper price tag than what a bank would typically charge.” – Johnathan Holland.
- “Accepting money would be via invoice or in an online checkout, which is
accentually a direct debit way of paying without ever leaving your online store.” –
Johnathan Holland.
Resources Mentioned:
● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial
● Johnathan Holland – LinkedIn for Johnathan Holland
● Curexe – Website for Curexe
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