5/21/2025

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Västra Handel and Corporate Finance. Today, we will talk about Carfish, who has just released its Q1 report for 2025. And I'm joined by CEO Joakim Solundsson to talk about it. And I encourage... Welcome, Joakim. Thank you. Nice to have you here.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Thank you. Nice to be here.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

And I have a bunch of questions, and I'm sure you have too. So please use the Q&A function in the meeting. during the interview. But let's kick off. The report, your net sales were 285,000 Swedish kroner, approximately. What's behind these numbers?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

It's not much. Compared to last year, I think we did some one-off sale than last year. So it's a huge drop. But obviously, I think this is not the... Still not... This quarter wasn't the quarter where we sort of turned things around. The 285,000, I think we were rewarded by RBI that we were part of this third hackathon. This year, they had a way that all finalists were awarded, I think it was 10 lakh. A lakh is 100,000. So that means 10 times 100,000, 1,000,000. So 1 million rupees was awarded to us from RBI that we were the finalists in this hackathon that I was in Bangalore and presented our solution in early January. So that was sort of, I guess, 100,000 of it. And the rest is mainly, it's actually revenue recognition from contracts on the gesture side. So slightly less than 200,000 is sort of from the gesture side that we have these sort of orders and they have a, you know, they work for. I think it is a contract where we revenue recognize monthly during its duration. So the other 200,000 is for that. That's what we have.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

And if you look at costs, the company reported lower costs than our estimates, mainly personnel costs and external costs. Will this continue or are you at the level you're comfortable with?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

It will go down a little bit more unless we do accelerate. We have announced that we have... close down our gesture business. And we announced that last year, that that will give a significant lowering of costs, which is good for us. It gives us a longer runway. And that's part of the story. In Q2, we still have, I think one guy is leaving us in June. So his salary is still up to June. There is one more person that is coming back from some illness and we haven't, We didn't sort of let him go in his difficult situation. So then that has a spillover effect. We also have the office. We haven't completely got out of the contract, but we will after 1st of July. So from Q3 onwards, I would say, then we are... Then we have taken out all the costs for the ester side. Then on the other external costs, which have also gone down quite a lot, this is a little bit related to the ester side, but mostly because of our engagement with Ernst & Young, as well as our lawyers from Settevals that helped us last year with the the round we did at the end of 2023, there were some, you know, legal fees we had for them, but mainly it's sort of the related to retainer fee to Unshin Yang, which we don't have anymore, but we did have in Q1 in 2024.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Oh, I see. So you mentioned the runway. You ended the quarter with 40 million SEC in cash holdings. Yes. How long is your financial runway?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Well, we're going to get some more money now. We had a unit emission, as you remember, in December, which had two... Attached to that was two warrants. One which was then converted into about... We got some 5 million in February. And it's going to be a little bit more this time. The strike price now is 0.63. And that one is, I think, the subscription or where you have to... use that is actually here in May. So that's going to give us another 6 million, I think, something like that. Which means sort of that right now, you can see that we were at, if you add that, we are at 20 minus a little bit what has happened in April and May. So maybe we are at, I don't know, 16, something like that. So how is that financial runway? Well, Worst case scenario, we believe we will sustain ourselves for the rest of the year. We do count on a little bit of revenue, but that is the worst case scenario. That's why we had a clean annual report, nothing from the auditor. Because you have to then say, can you sustain yourself for another year? And that's in the auditor's report. But the best way to finance ourselves is through revenues. And that's what we need to do. And hopefully we could turn that around. So we are not out of cash sort of early next year, but we actually can. No one will be happier than me if we don't have to do another financing round.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

That's in our projections as well. You have a, you have a finance, finance around in Q1 26.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah. Yeah.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

You have that. And I think if nothing else happens, no, exactly.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Exactly. So I, I don't blame you that you have that, but yeah, my job or my focus is to make you wrong on that as well.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

So that's the financials. A big theme in the report was the offline terminal infrastructure concept. Could you tell us a bit about this?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah, this is actually something we've had. We've always had it. We've always had an asymmetry in our solution in the sense that the payer has a wallet, an offline wallet, needs high security because otherwise people will sit at home and create their own money, digital money. And we can't have that. No one wants to have that. So that needs a secure element, an isolation of that wallet on the device. And we have that. But we've always had the asymmetry that the receiving side, you could pay from a wallet to, we call it before, a verifier. which was a bit technical. But now I think we've just seen the similarities of the card rail, that there are sort of card terminals. What can they do? Well, when you pay there, they send you a request for a payment, and then there is an interaction with your card or your mobile phone where you have emulated the card, and you send basically a signed message back. The card terminal verifies that message. And if it's offline, it can store it. And then it can send it up to the backend for settlement. That's exactly what our offline terminal does. So this concept, instead of calling it the verifier, which is one step that, yes, it can verify a payment. It can do that, certainly, but it can do a little bit more. It can sort of do exactly what a card terminal does. So think of a card terminal, but we have generalized it that this applies to any payment rate. So it is a concept where we look at offline as, all right, there is the wallet side, the paying side, which actually could receive payments as well if you can both receive and pay. But we have this asymmetry that there is a receiving side without the ability to pay, just like a card terminal. You don't pay with a card terminal. It only collects payments. Similarly, we can have here this launch of an offline terminal. And this is the key thing. This is something that should be part of the payment ecosystem, the payment network. Because if you make that part of the payment network, then all of a sudden you enable everybody to be able to pay. Again, let's do the analogy with the card payments. You have your card. What's your bank? Handelsbanken.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Let's say Handelsbanken.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Let's say Handelsbanken, but you have another bank. Let's say Handelsbanken, even though Martin has another bank. They issue you a card. But Handelsbanken, that you don't have, they have nothing to do with the car terminal. But you still are able to pay at the car terminal. Because the car terminal is put up by... in a way, what's called the payment rail, the card payment rail. And it has specification for something called EMVCO. It stands for EuroPay MasterCard and Visa Company. They own the specifications. And then in this card terminal, MasterCard have a kernel inside there that can accept MasterCard payments. And there's also another kernel from Visa that can accept Visa payments. And there are some other card schemes as well. But Handelsbanken have not done anything on that part. So there is a clear separation on the card rail between the issuing side, sort of the payer side, this is Handelsbanken gives you the ability to pay, and the ability to receive. Very clearly, exactly the same concept is what we see that we have the ability to do as well. And the importance of that is that the ability to receive payments, that should belong to the network, the payment network. But the ability to make payments That should belong to what's called a payment service providers. And it's a service provider that provides end users like you, Martin, with payment ability. Exactly that structure is what we want to replicate. And that creates for us a new go-to-market strategy, which is very important. I talk in this, it's sort of like a turnaround for us because I'm talking about Third times the charm in Swedish, tredje gången gilt. Because in 2023, we went to market where we did a pilot. We had the biggest bank in India, the biggest commercial bank, HDFC Bank. And we had IDFC First Bank, one of the most prominent sort of digital first banks. In the regulatory sandbox of RBI, Reserve Bank of India, But we hadn't engaged the payment network, which comes from MPCI. So we had a solution which didn't really scale. And what happened really was that HDFC, who is one of the main players in MPCI, because it's a banking corporation. Being a big bank, you have a big say. They went to MPCI. You need to put this great innovation that we have seen here on the ecosystem. And that became UPI LiteX in 2023, launched by MPCI. You started working on that side then? Then in 2024, that was the second attempt. We said, okay, we need to go to the payment networks. So we went to MPCI saying that, oh, look, look at our wallet. It's superior to UPI LiteX, miles apart. And we went to a lot of... CBDC projects, which is also networks. They set a payment rail for CBDC. We had an announcement from early 2024. We had an announcement from ECB. We're going to spend 220 million buying actually wallets for CBDC. Europeans and we're going to go for offline but they are a network with their digital euro. They would have their own app but they will also allow banks and other payment service providers to provide for paying with digital euros. Likewise RBI came in February 2024 and said for the digital rupee Offline payments is a priority. And that's a network. It's not the UPI payment rail. That's like Switch in India. But they have also now, just like we could have had e-kronan, they have e-rupees. That's what RBI is announcing. And that's a network. And we spent 2024 working really hard with the payment networks. And we made, I think, significant progress. But we haven't turned it into... revenue. And why? Well, two reasons. ECB, I think, they still haven't decided on where they're going with their... They are in a process. It hasn't been announced yet where they're going with their offline approach. In India, we are very close to RBI, not close to RBI, but I think they like what we do. But they've told us, you have to talk to MPCI, because MPCI is not only providing the payment network for UPI, but they're also building the payment network for the digital rupee. So you have to talk to MPCI. And we are sort of doing that. But if you have a payment network, and I've said that in previous interviews here, you need full control. Because think of it, you're going to have hundreds, if not thousands, of payment service providers that rely on your network. And you can't have a dependency of a little Swedish company with a crazy CEO that might all of a sudden change the rules for them. They will never allow that. ECB also, they have very strict rules. They have even said that everybody has to be European to actually even come with technology for the digital euro. They haven't said that in India, thank God. But in Europe, they've said that. So they don't want to put themselves in a hostage situation. And the other thing is that the market mainly then would consist of the solutions from the payment service provider. This is where it scales. It's multiple banks, it's multiple payment service providers. ECB spends, as we said, 220, it could go up to 660 million euros because they plan to buy offline wallets for the entire market. Indians, they don't think that way at all. But they still like our solution and we've been talking and we've been offering, but they're not willing to pay anywhere near what ECB wants to pay. So what to do? Because I am not willing to give NPCI the entire Indian market with our offline wallets so I can't sell anymore to all the banks I'm not willing to do that because that would be shooting myself in the foot. No scalability. But what we have done now, and this is the third time's the charm, let the network have the terminal infrastructure, the offline terminal infrastructure. That is not a high price for that because the good thing is that if that is put in place, then that enables the whole market where offline wallets like Crunchfish, and it could be others as well, could actually... sell offline wallets into, and that's the big market.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

So in this go-to-market strategy, are you addressing RBI or MPCI or...

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

I speak sort of, yeah, absolutely. And we're talking to ECB and we're talking to, yeah, we, now I think we, it has to, we spent 2024 talking to the payment networks and we haven't stopped talking to them because we understand if we only talk to the payment service providers as we did in 2023, we will hit the brick wall. But we can't just talk to the payment network providers either. The new strategy in 2025 is that let the networks have, they have the specs and they can offer the receiving side, the terminal side, and leave it to the banks and payment application providers to provide a wallet. That separation where we actually focus on both sides simultaneously, that's a trick.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

So what has the response been so far? Can you tell us anything about that? Yeah, it's been good. Yeah, OK. Sounds promising. Yes. So could you tell us anything about if you're reaching an agreement with NPCI, how would such a deal be structured?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

It's still being defined in our discussions. But I think the idea that we come with here resonates with them because I think they realize that we can't give them the full control over our offline wallet because we have a third-party component from Singapore, the Viki component. That's in our offline wallet. It's not in the terminal side, but it's in the offline wallet. And they understand that Vicky cannot give source code for that with full control to the payment network in India because they would jeopardize all their other hundreds of customers. And that means that they can't then take that solution and roll it out widely in the market. That won't do. But they can take the terminal side because that doesn't have any Vicky component in it if it only has the ability to receive. And they like it. And I think what's nice here is that we can talk to them in terms of, how it actually models on a successful payment ecosystem model being what the card networks do. They understand that inside out. They have their own card scheme called RuPay. They have UPI, and they support also digital rupee. They have UPI, digital rupee, and they have RuPay, which is the Indian card scheme. So they know all about it. This is all from MPCI. If I say we are, in a way, modeling it after the card scheme, I don't have to say much more. He understands what they understand. But we're trying to find sort of how it can be done. But the good part is that this will become our go-to-market strategy everywhere. There's no point of going back and trying to sell the whole solution with wallets and in a way the terminal side anywhere. This is the new way to go to market. And this helps everywhere.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

So the OTI structure is conditional on the other patients?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

No, but I think if we split it this way, we realize that the terminal side is an excellent entry point to sell into the networks. We can establish that. If you have that, then everybody can receive a payment. So you establish what's called the acquiring side, the receiving side. That's done. And then we can drop ship in and sell to all the banks. We can sell the first structure to the payment networks, but then we can sell also the offline wallets. The first OTI to central banks. Well, that would be good to set that standard. Because one of the problems we had in 2023, when we just had two banks, didn't have the network with us, is that unless you were an IDFC-first bank, customer or an HDFC customer, you couldn't receive a payment. So what's the chance if you have 200 banks in India, what's the chance that you find a person that you are on the right bank so I can make a payment? We had an idea of how this could scale incrementally. The structure was there that we can onboard more and more banks. But the benefit of getting the network on board from the start is that we can enable the entire country everybody can receive. Because if they put our terminal infrastructure or terminal sort of terminal software inside what's called their common library, then anyone can take it, a payment. Which is a completely different story than you have to go and look for someone that can receive a payment.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

So you've launched the strategy, you've started discussions with the ECB and RBI and PCI?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

ECB doesn't know about this yet, but we go India first, as you know, so the Indians know about it.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Could you tell us anything about timelines? What? Timelines for the discussions and when... Well, they're now, they're happening now.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're happening.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

And also, could you also repeat, in relation to your other offerings, how do they fit into the

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Well, as I said, this would be a new go-to-market strategy where we realize that we can set the acquiring side, the receiving side, set that with a network, and then drop ship in. The network sets the standard. So any bank or payment application provider, they could just take the wallet and it works. it works on the rail because we have already make sure that, and so incrementally we can, you know, one bank can come on board and they, there'd be a first move in the market and say, Hey, our customers can now pay offline. And that will start in a way like an, I think I want to have that as well. All right.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

You have an agreement with the IDFC First Bank?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah, we have that.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Is that included in this?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

They already have support for all this because they already bought our wallet. So they have it already. So this could scale for them as well, not only for the digital uh rupee that we currently have with them out live in the market but they can put it now uh if we get mpci on board on the receiving side with the terminals then idfc could put it for all their upi or all their customers having upi payments as well absolutely

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Because in India, the RBI prompted the transition into value-based tokens during the spring. How is that project going?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

I think they put enormous pressure because they were, as we discussed, I think last time, they were on a structure where they had fixed denominations. They really literally done digital rupees as they have... a banknote of 100 rupees, and they had a digital equivalent, and it was exactly 100. But it's hard if I meet you, Martin, and you say, I owe you 15. I have 100, and you maybe have a 10. We can't get to 15 by even doing an exchange. So this wasn't a good idea. So they've gone for a structure now which they call value-based tokens, and they pushed all the banks And I think the deadline was actually end of Q1 to make the transition, but it's a huge transition. And I know that there are delays, but I think they are still working hard. All the banks, they have about 15 piloting banks and they have some payment application providers as well. And they're all working hard to transition into this new structure. But digital rupee, it's great that it's very pronounced from the... RBI, the Reserve Bank of India, that offline should be part of it. Just like ECB says that offline should be part of the digital euro. But volume-wise, and MPCI with UPI, they do 17 billion transactions per month. That's more than Mastercard does globally. I actually was at an event with a German up in Stockholm yesterday. And I asked this guy who was one of their managers, how many transactions do you think UPI makes a month? And he said, 300 million. And I said, well, you're off with the factor, probably 50. They do 17 billion. And that's sort of like, if you think of it, do you know how many is that per second, Martin? If you have a steady flow. Yeah, that's a lot. How many do you think? Wow. I think it is somewhere around every second. But then there will be peak hours when they do more. They do something like between 5,000 and 10,000 transactions per second. That's the pulse that they have.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

We received some questions from the audience and one of them is wondering, do you need to make a new offering to MPCI now with this new solution?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

As I said, I don't know how many offerings we made to MPCI during 2024, because they were asking us, oh, can you tweak it this way, tweak it that way, tweak it that way? And I think Patrick calculated too that we've sent 15 proposals. This goes on, but I think with a change now, because this proposal that we're doing now, and we've done it in a very methodical way, this now is set up in a way which works for them. where they have full control over the source code. And they will just have to do the same thing that RBI has already decided on, that they're going to open up that it's not just the MPCI own offline wallet, which is allowed. They will open up that third parties like Crunchfish could actually also be allowed to have an offline wallet in the market that is compatible with the MPCI payment network. So they are warming up to that idea. They will do it sort of for the digital rupee. That sort of RBI is their product. They're pushing for that. But I believe that MPCI may do it as well for UPI because they want to keep architecturally quite similar.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Another viewer is wondering if the network providers need to change or implement the new systems, or is it something that they have and just can add?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

We have this whole thing. We've had it since 2021. We have the protocols, how you communicate offline. We have the protocols or the APIs, how you communicate online. And we have the source code, which we happily... want to provide them so that they we have this whole spec and it works in our grand scheme of things for about everything that this is generalizations we've done so we happy to give them the what we had before we call it the verifier part, but now we're calling it the offline terminal part and. Yeah, we have it.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

So it's not a big step for the network?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

It's not a big step for them. It's not a huge amount of code because it's just supposed to... It doesn't have high security. It needs to send a payment request. It needs to verify what comes back. It's a signed payment. Hold that if you're offline. And when you go online, you're just going to send it up to the backend. It's not rocket science. And we have the protocols and we have the APIs and we have the source code. And it's not much... code that they have to put in as well. So it's not a big project.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

I have a question regarding the CBDC implementation in India. You mentioned it briefly before, but could you just repeat, how does the OTI offering relate to the CBDC project?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah, it would be the same. I think NPCI, who provides the payment network for the digital rupee as well, they should just in what they're calling it, they don't call it the common library, they call it the CBDC SDK. So they have an SDK for CBDC, which all the banks needs to have that. all the third-party payment application providers needs to have that, so that there is some sort of software from MPCI that goes everywhere. Inside there, they should do the terminal infrastructure or the terminal software, supporting offline payments, supporting the ability to receive an offline payment and send it back to the backend. That is what should be done. And if they do that, then one by one, we don't have to take them all, just one by one to decide, okay, now HDFC banks decide our customers should you know, pay offline. So they could just source in an offline wallet, which could come from MPCI also, but so far they haven't succeeded of doing a successful offline wallet, but it could come from a player like us. And it could come from others as well. But I think we would have a head start if we set the standard for how the In a way, if you think of it, if one company in the world could come to India and say, we can set a new standard for a generalized car terminal that works on any rail, and that is Crunchfish, that's a pretty cool thing. And we are the ones that then can sell our offline wallets to not just one bank, but two. whole market but but we we we can't lock them in that they only can take our offline wall and that's we we will be we we need to democratize it that the the payment service providers they can choose whatever offline wallet they want but this happens to be really a good one that comes from a smaller company in sweden yeah

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

If you describe the infrastructure in, for instance, in the payment rail in India, is the card payment rail is parallel to the offline, or is it... Do you potentially generalize the card rail?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah, we actually had even a... decided to abandon that pattern application because our idea could have also gone for the card rail. But we got some resistance on that innovation. So we decided to take that down. But we have a lot of generalization of the card rail as well. The fact that our offline terminal It can be used for crypto. It can be used for real-time payments like UPI. It can be used for CBDC. It could be used for mobile operators. I think we are just completely general. It doesn't just have to be the card rail. But we even generalize the card rail because with our system, we can interchangeably be paying between MasterCard and Visa. So you can be a MasterCard. And it could be, you know, it could be with offline going to our offline terminal and that could be then processed. So we then, and then Visa can also pay. So we are generalizing even that.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

But India is not like Sweden.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

It's easy here in Sweden to think everything is like Sweden, and it's not. India has only a few merchants. It's sort of in the big cities that have car terminals. Everything else is done via just mobile payments, and it's almost like a peer-to-peer payment that I would pay you, Martin. But what we want to say is that we want to have peer-to-terminal payments, because then merchants all over India can receive payments.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

And the question is regarding patents. Is the OTI protected in India? Yeah. So the patents... It's patent pending.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Not OTI itself, but the way we have our approach, which people have been following us. I've always talked about that what we do is reserve. So you reserve some money that you can spend offline. And then you pay offline. And then we settle. And what is settle? Settlement. Settlement is when the money is moved from an account to another one in the back end. So we do reserve, pay, and settle. And how we have that approach to offline payments, that it is something happens offline with a spending limit that you created for yourself. And then we settle it later online. It's this two-step process. That is what we have patented. There are other ways, but it would be less secure. And that is to do what a lot of people think is the way to go for offline payments, is that you fund your wallet and then you pay. And then whoever at the end has something that has, I pay you and you can pay to Oscar here. And then Oscar will just defund. If you do it that way, there is a huge risk that if you are a fraudster, Martin, not saying you are, but if you are, how can they in the back end detect that the money that Oscar have, which looks like a legitimate claim, because Oscar wants his money from, it's a claim on the central bank. How can they detect that there was in that chain of events happening offline, there was a fraudster? for Martin? Well, it's very hard to do. What they need to do is to put in an extra reconciliation layer. And it's a bit extra. What in our elegant solution, We don't just transfer something to you, Martin, and you transfer to Oscar as a token which Oscar can just claim. We view it as a digital check instead of seeing it as a digital banknote. I have an IOU. That's what I sign out. I owe you, Martin. This is what you receive. And then that could credit your balance offline. And then you write out an IOU to Oscar. And every step of the way needs to be settled. That means that we can reuse the existing online payment rail. Because this is how it works online. I create an IOU if I have an online payment to you, Martin, and they move the money. I'm just reducing that. I don't have to build any overly complicated reconciliation structure online to keep track of if there is fraudsters. This will be detected using the standard online settlement system. So that's why I think our approach that Crunchy has patented is the winning approach for the offline world.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Should we return to IDFC First Bank? Sure. Just for a moment. And the agreement you signed a couple of years ago. 2023.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah, we're the one who signed up.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Exactly. And this agreement could potentially imply short-term revenue for Crownfish. Should they enroll Binds in their applications?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah, there's seven steps in some sort of ladder there.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

And this agreement is still valid?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

It actually should be renewed now, but we are talking about, I think now it's getting very interesting for us and for them because they're not doing, I think this implementation they've done is the telecom solution because they can do it on their own, doesn't need a network because they connect directly to the payment network via an SMS. But now the real thing with proximity payments pull offline, they can do that as well. But if we get the network on board, then, as I said, they can go for it for all their customers, and they will be an early adopter. And we are talking to them maybe at GFF. This is the Global FinTech Fest in Mumbai. We participated for two years. We stand next to MPCI and RBI. This is a good place to actually showcase great innovation, and they are – They've just said, we just have to fix this value-based token implementation. But then they are willing to talk to us. And it's a bridgehead for us where we have access to a paying and a real customer.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

So they are not really enrolling clients at the moment?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

No, right now they are trying to just get the online value-based tokens to work, really. So, yeah. But this could work. But I think this is just one bank out of, you know, probably a thousand different. But this is a good one. I agree. They're early. But I think the game has changed now. Because if I get the network, then I get that established. And then that's open for everybody.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

But it could still be a proof of concept for you.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

You know it's not just a proof of concept it's it's sort of their live in production and the product they have from us, it can pay connecting to the back end, but they can also definitely do also if they just would find any receivers they can certainly also pay. fully offline in proximity yeah.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Let's switch to Europe. Okay. And talk about the ECB project.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yes.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

You announced that you were selected as one of maybe 70... Oh, okay.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah, that one. Yeah, yeah.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Could you tell us more about this?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

What happens if you're allowed to?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah. No, here I'm allowed, actually. There are two... I think it's just for clarity. Last year, they did a huge tender. This is the one with 220 million that can go up to 660. This is for an offline solution, which they have said should use hardware secure element, which we think is... Yeah, will that ever work? Because there is no ecosystem to actually deploy them. So we question that. And the other thing that they have this fund, pay and defund, and they need to build a reconciliation layer. So they have that, all these, what I think is structurally a flawed approach. That's what they are.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

And you've told them.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Well, yeah. And I think the problem is as well is that they are biting a huge bullet by buying all the wallets. Instead, there is an alternative approach that I discussed. But what they now also have done is that not only have they decided to focus on offline payments, which I really think is great that they did that, but they've also announced that conditional payment, they call it. They announced that last year, that this is also an area of huge interest to us. And we want technical pioneers who can show us use cases for conditional payments. And conditional payments is like an online payment, but with the difference is that the settlement step, remember settlement is when you move money, that already from the start comes with some conditions. It's not like, all right, you have agreed to pay me and then move the money. There are some conditions applied. It could be a time constraint. It could be that if I deliver goods, You don't want to give me the money until I've given the transportation company the goods. Then the money will go. So they need a signature from the transportation company. That could be one example. But it's based on what? Well, it's based on reserve, pay, and settle. Because when you sign up for such a payment, the conditional payment, which is also known as a smart contract in the crypto world, it's also known as programmable payments. You program in rules for the payment. There, in order for it to settle automatically when all the conditions are met, your bank will take the money from you when you set up that payment. Because otherwise they cannot trust that it will actually be settled when the time is right. So they work on this reserve. and then pay and settle paradigm, which exactly is the paradigm we have for offline payments. And what we have told ACB, this is when we applied, that fantastic that you're going for conditional payments, because it just happens that our way of doing offline payments is exactly that. Because we reserve money, And I reserve it not for a merchant, I reserve it for myself, but it's still, there is a reservation and they support it on the digital euro rail. And then I make a payment offline. And what is the condition that the backend is waiting for? Well, they're waiting for that from either the payer or the payee, comes back to the backend, assigned offline transaction that they could trust. But when they see that, they move the money. So what we have telling them that it's great that you have now put conditional payments or smart contracts in place, the structure for that, because all of a sudden we can do offline payments for you. And you don't have to wait many, many years until the ecosystem with hardware secure elements, if it ever will happen, You can actually do offline payments now. And we can also tell them that, why don't you put an offline terminal infrastructure in place? Wouldn't cost them much. Just a tiny fraction of 220 million euros. Put that in place, everybody can receive. And then let the payment service providers, the banks, or yourself and others, to pay offline tomorrow. We can support that. And we have already programmed that.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

And we're going to show you. You will do.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

We've already done it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this project ends now in May. And it was announced in May. But that's just because they were late in allowing us to announce it. But we've been working on this one. We started in February. We were enrolled in February. But we couldn't say anything until May. And then we could. These 70 participants, we're one of them, and we have already done, and as we speak, we're finalizing our report, the final report, and then they will consider this as, is this an interesting addition to the digital Euro payment rate? I think it is. And then all of a sudden, they enable Europe, not in many years with hardware secure elements that probably, I think, probably won't happen. That's my prediction. They can have offline payments this year by us.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

So they will state their conclusions in a report?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Well, I don't know. I don't know how they... But I think they will bring in all the things and then they will look at what it is. But I think we have a really... I don't think they thought of it because they thought of smart contracts or conditional payments as an online thing. But we just... you know, show them that, look, the structure you put in place, and we have implemented our way of doing it already in their sandbox. So we're moving digital euro with our offline payments. And so, yeah, and it works.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

And this showcase is separate from the tender you participated in last year.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

This was for conditional payments. And we are... We are technical pioneer for that. It just happens that we are showcasing offline payments in that context. But they are going for this fund, pay, defund, reconciliate as a completely separate. It's like an adjunct structure. What we have is a seamlessly integrated thing that can use the online settlement rail that is already in place.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Yes. Could you tell us anything about the other tender? Which one? No, we're not allowed.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

We were one of the five selected. I've said that before, but I'm not allowed to say anything more. Okay.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Leave it there. And CBDC is not only happening in the EU or India. Could you tell us about your ambitions elsewhere?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah, no, I'm heading for Bangkok because this idea, as I said, with this separation that the CBDC project should They should definitely put in place the terminal infrastructure because everybody can receive a payment and then we can drop ship in offline wallets after that. That applies everywhere. This is the Digital Currency Conference in Bangkok. I have a speaking slot there where I'm talking about this groundbreaking ecosystem approach. There will be a lot of central bankers there because this is And we have already some projects where we started with working with already 2024, where this applies also. As I said, this is not just for India. It's for everybody. It's our new go-to-market strategy, which helps to go to market.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

You're talking to artists in Sweden as well?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah. Yeah, we certainly have talked to everybody probably saw that on the news that Sweden should invest more in offline payments because of the security situation. I think so far they've just said, have more cash, which is an offline thing, in your mattress. And we're going to force some businesses to accept cash, like grocery shops and petrol shops. We're going to do that by law. That's what we're thinking. And they've announced that they will have a new card scheme where they can set the rules themselves, that a terminal could accept maybe payments for a week. But that's it. But I'm saying, what about Swish? we could enable offline payments with Swish tomorrow. This is, you know, why not think of Swish? They do present Swish as a key rail in Sweden, but they have no plans for how to make that resilient. And I think that's just a mistake. But we are talking to Swish as well. But I would have hoped that Riksbank would put some pressure on the banks that you can do Swish But only if you actually do it resilient. And then it will just happen. But they are just thinking of cash and cards, which I think they can improve.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Yes. We're approaching the end of this webcast. And I encourage you all to send in questions if you have them. I noted or we noted that you've changed your website somewhat.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yes. Well, it is the under the menu digital cache. that whole flow that goes under that menu is completely rewritten. We announced that actually, you don't know that Martin, because you were here with me, but it came out press release at nine where we announced that. And it's important because I think the previous website or the previous explanation of little cash didn't do us justice. It needed an overhaul anyway, but certainly now with this new go-to-market and explaining it more clearly, And so it's new, completely rewritten in a way. We kept a little bit, I think we kept the demo flows and we have a little bit on our patents. I think that we kept those frames, but the rest is just new stuff which relates to what we're talking about today.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

That's good. So if you didn't catch everything that Joakim said today, you can always visit the website.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

And if I could make a little bit of a marketing announcement or whatever you can call it, I appreciate that. The report, which was released at 8.30 today, and we're having this interview just a few half an hour later, it's very hard to come with questions for that. So that's why, which is not our norm, but on Friday, we will have what's called a lunch talk. together with Emergers and Johan Widmark there. And the difference will be that it will be in Swedish and it will be in 48 hours from now. And we will turn off the chat function because we will have it that please, you can ask questions, but we will set it up as a meeting. So please do it verbally, but you're more than welcome to join there. And you have 24, 48 hours, a little bit more to come up with all your questions.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

It's good. And to wrap this up, final questions. There's evidently a lot of things going on in the country at the moment. And the next report will be in August.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Mid-August or third week of August, I think.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

What do you hope to have achieved until then?

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

I hope to have done, to set a deal with a network provider. That could be, there are several choices there, but I certainly hope that. And yeah, I think if we get a network provider with the terminal on the terminal side, because then that opens up the whole market for us in that way. in that region or that country, at least one of those. But, you know, if we can have that, then I think we are, I hope we can avoid a new financing round, which, as I said, that's my job to try to do. I don't like them either.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Okay. Thank you Joakim for coming and talking about this.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Thank you, Martin, for preparing it.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

And thank you all viewers and people who have sent in questions. If you missed anything, this video will soon be uploaded to Bester Hammond's YouTube channel, so subscribe and watch out.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah. And we, I think we will put it, we put the, this, when you send it to us, we'll put it on our web as well. And I guess, is it, who will do a press release on it? Will you do it or you just put it up?

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

We will put it up. We will do also a written comment on the report.

speaker
Joakim Solundsson
CEO

Yeah. And we, we, we do a press release on, yeah, that's how I normally do it. So we will press release this when, as soon as we get it from you, we'll press release it. And then we put it out on our web as well.

speaker
Martin
Host, Västra Handel and Corporate Finance

Thank you very much. Thank you. And see you later.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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