Fintech South 2024, hosted by the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), took place on Aug. 27-28 at the Woodruff Arts Center and Atlanta Symphony Hall. This year’s theme was “Fintech Lives Here!”
Les Adkins is the CEO and Founder of Yonga Tech and he was the Co-Founder and President of A Pocket. As President of APocket, Les drove the company’s strategy around currency and media. He has spent his career working with fortune 100 & 200 companies to develop digital strategies to make and keep their businesses relevant.
Les has an MBA in global communication and has spent the last decade working with some of the most progressive companies in the USA to bridge the gap between old and new.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, broadcasting live from Fintech South 2024 at the Woodruff Arts Center. So excited to be talking to our next guest, Les Adkins with Yonga Tech. Welcome.
Les Adkins: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your company. How are you serving folks?
Les Adkins: So the easiest way to tell you is one line we are doing crypto to fiat at point of sale. So crypto currency at point of sale so people can use their crypto. Finally. By having a debit card or credit card like they like, they use a debit card or credit card.
Lee Kantor: So now educate the audience. When it comes to crypto as crypto a currency, is it, is it? Kind of a commodity like what is?
Les Adkins: So right now crypto is a commodity. But it was meant to. Be a currency.
Lee Kantor: Right. So it makes it a little tricky. It does. Like I can’t bring my gold bar to. Buy a pizza.
Les Adkins: Exactly. So there’s $222 billion worth of crypto in the United States, and there’s 45 million. Account holders of that crypto. Right. And all they’re trying to do is spend it and save it and grow it and all that stuff, but they’re looking for ways to spend it. Well, what we’ve done, there have been ways out there that that have tried to do this. They’ve gotten in trouble. The banking regulations have stopped them. And so what allows us to do it is we are not a crypto company. We don’t touch crypto. It’s a self-custody wallet. You load your crypto and then you spend it as currency. We call it fiat, but it’s currency. So USD currency, yen, Euro, any currency you can spend your crypto in.
Lee Kantor: So any place that accepts crypto, I can use your.
Les Adkins: No, that’s the beauty of it. That’s any place that accepts cash.
Lee Kantor: Cash? I can go to 7-Eleven. You can do.
Les Adkins: 7-eleven. You can buy your gas. You can do a vending machine. You can do it online.
Lee Kantor: So how much is it going to take out if I go and buy a, you know, a snicker bar with my card from you?
Les Adkins: So how much is. So let’s say a snicker bar is let’s make it easy. Let’s say a snicker bar is a dollar, right? Okay. It’s probably more closer to $5, but let’s say it’s a dollar.
Lee Kantor: That’s why this is not going to be dated. So in the future you’ll be right.
Les Adkins: It’d be $100. So. Okay. So let’s say it’s a dollar. Yeah. So we allow you right now to load 5,000 USD crypto at the time you load it on. That’s the deal with regulations and all this wonderful, great stuff.
Lee Kantor: So a 12th of a Bitcoin about as of today probably.
Les Adkins: Yes, exactly. So then you take it to the merchant right. They take out a dollar’s worth of crypto. At that time. The merchant gets a dollar right. We freeze the transaction. So there’s lower volatility. And that’s all proprietary and patent pending and all the stuff that we do behind it. So but so it’s a dollar worth of crypto. You spend the dollar the merchant gets the dollar. They don’t care that you use crypto. They don’t even necessarily know that you use crypto.
Lee Kantor: That’s not relevant to them.
Les Adkins: No because we’re putting we’re point of sale agnostic. Right.
Lee Kantor: Because they are just getting their money. And it’s like it’s.
Les Adkins: Like pulling out a dollar in your. Think of it this way. This is the best way to describe it in your wallet. You’re saying let’s use the same. You said snicker bar right? Right. So same snicker bar. You go to the store, you have a dollar in your wallet. You pull it out of your wallet, you hand the merchant cash. Right. Right. Same concept, except we’re just doing it with crypto.
Lee Kantor: Right. And you’re doing it on a card. And then I can just dump my crypto there and use it as if it’s cash. As if it’s used up my $5,000. Exactly.
Les Adkins: And then you can load it again, or you can use it to save your crypto, but that’s a whole other conversation.
Lee Kantor: So how is how has the adoption been with this.
Les Adkins: So we are in alpha. We’re in alpha.
Lee Kantor: Alpha.
Les Adkins: We’re so we’re in alpha. We’re we’re at the early stages. But we have uh, we are partnering with Musk miners that they are a crypto mining company and they’ve got around 100,000 clients. We’re also working with some influencers in crypto. If you’ve ever seen the documentary God Bless Bitcoin, I work with some of those individuals and we actually have people that are using crypto now that call us on a regular basis and say, hey, is your card out yet? I want to use my crypto. So great example of that. Remember recently when crypto kind of went down for a day? Yeah, we had about 20 to 40 people call us and say, hey, is that card ready yet? Because we want to use it because we want to take the loss. So we have a lot of buzz around us. A lot of momentum. We have a very high level executive advisory board, and we’re in a funding round that we should be able to be closing in the next six weeks or so.
Lee Kantor: Is the card right now is there a card?
Les Adkins: We do have a card. It’s an alpha. It’s by invite only right now. But we actually have a card. It works with an app and a card. We actually have a card that’s an alpha and we’re pushing to beta. My developer and I keep having this conversation, so I want it to go in October. But he promised me by January.
Lee Kantor: So we’re negotiating. We’re negotiating. You’re negotiating.
Les Adkins: So he’s the guy. He’s the guy that makes everything work, so I can’t really push him too hard. So.
Lee Kantor: So, um, what’s the funny story on the name?
Les Adkins: So we were looking for a name, so we started out with a. We were eventually going to do a digital gift card app called Gift Guru. And we have a whole gift card thing that we do as well.
Lee Kantor: But crypto gift cards or it’ll eventually be crypto.
Les Adkins: Yeah, it’ll be.
Lee Kantor: Everything’s gonna be crypto.
Les Adkins: Well, it’ll be crypto cash. So we’re all crypto cash. So everything. Everything relates to USD currency, euros, yens. But. So we were looking for. We work with kangaroos. If you see our logos, there’s kangaroos on them. So my wife is into astrology. Not astrology but stars and constellations. So we were looking for constellations and we found a constellation in Australia that the kangaroo that they call Yanga. And that’s the name of the company, Yanga Tek.
Lee Kantor: So Australia has different constellations.
Les Adkins: Same constellations, different.
Lee Kantor: Names, different names.
Les Adkins: All I know is they said it’s found in Australia. So if you look up in the sky, you can see I.
Lee Kantor: Thought they were Greek constellations.
Les Adkins: You can Google.
Lee Kantor: It. Okay, I’ll take your word for it. So what do you need more for at this time? Is it investors or what are you looking for?
Les Adkins: Actually we’re looking.
Lee Kantor: We’re.
Les Adkins: Looking for investors. We’re looking for people that can help us go to market. We are looking for individuals that are interested in spending their crypto. So we’ll actually be like I said, we have an investor. We’re a current $5 million round of funding that, like I said, should close within the next six weeks.
Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to connect, learn more. Website, all that good stuff.
Les Adkins: They just need to go to yoga tech.com or go to my LinkedIn, which is Leslie Adkins.
Lee Kantor: Adkins and yonga is y o n g a t e c h.com.
Les Adkins: Correct. There is a yonga tech. Yoga tech. So don’t do that one.
Lee Kantor: It’s that one.
Les Adkins: Yonga tech H.
Lee Kantor: Tech. Well les thank you so much for sharing your story, doing important work and we appreciate you.
Les Adkins: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate you guys having me here.
Lee Kantor: All right. This Lee Kantor back in a few. At Fintech South 2024.
