Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by onpay built in Atlanta. On Pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at Onpay. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have GavinCicchinelli with prime revenue. Welcome, Gavin.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:00:41] Thank you, Lee. Great to be here. Appreciate the time to chat.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us a little bit about prime revenue. How are you serving, folks?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:00:51] The prime revenue. We are a working capital and B2B payments organization for the global supply chain. We are fintech company that buyers and their suppliers utilize and plug in to to be able to transact on time and early payments. So we are a global payment rail that facilitates cash flow.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:13] So what’s the back story on prime revenue? Was this how you were always set up to be or is it something that’s kind of evolved to this point because fintechs always kind of evolving and pivoting

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:01:25] And a great question. Actually, yes, our underlying technology has always been built on a gateway payment rail, which is the fascinating part of our organization. So from a fintech perspective, we were kind of born out of natural fintech. From there, we’ve continued to add and generate investments into the product and the platform and expand across global reaches that over the last 18 years of prime revenue as an organization has built a pretty tremendous global payment rail, if you will, for again on time and early payments for anyone who has a supply chain and any large buyer client or small buyer client who has a need for working capital.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:07] And then now, tell us about this sure play SURE-P pipeline.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:02:12] Sure. So very exciting. We just sent out a great press release last week on our release of our new sure paid platform. And what that really means is that the paid platform is an easy to use marketplace, if you will, of our products. There are three core products that sit within that platform. One is called supply chain finance, which is a traditional long term working capital solution that’s been used for years and years and years and the trade finance markets. The second is dynamic discounting. That is an opportunity for our buyer customers in their supply chain to be able to offer discounts to their suppliers in exchange for an early payment. And then our most exciting and recent release is our on time payment. This is where we’ve really taken a massive investment this year in our product platform to start to solve account payable problems for buyers and suppliers and how they interact within the supply chain and getting on time payment. So if a customer, for instance, a supplier, has an agreement, they’ll get paid in 30 days for the products they sold to a larger entity. They’ll onboard to our platform and we’ll make sure and ensure that the accounts payable process pays them exactly on time in 30 days. So there’s no cash flow issues. So that’s our most recent release in the broader, sure paid platform.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:37] So when you’re kind of launching a marketplace like that, it’s a chicken and egg. Is it difficult for you to get both sides of the equation involved on the platform?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:03:47] Wonderful, wonderful question. The unique advantage that we have as prime revenue is again, after 18 years of really establishing a long term name in the traditional trade, finance and supply chain finance market, which is again a fancy word for just working capital early payment, if you will. We have been able to build such a tremendous network of incredibly valuable customers and clients where the evolution of this pay platform came from is direct feedback from 18 years worth of working with our customers. We realized that we could solve so many additional problems with our with our product that we, with some investment just hadn’t done in the past. So in our scenario. The good news is it hasn’t been the chicken and egg per say. We built a great foundation that now we can just continue to solve additional problems for not only our existing customers, but any customer that’s got to count payable issues across their supply chain.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:44] Now, when you say any customers that any customer of a certain size or is it truly any customer?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:04:50] You know, it’s truly any customer. You know, we typically we work anywhere from customers that are, you know, 50 million in annual revenue up to well over two billion in annual revenue. So our our platform is scalable, especially in the on time and account payable platform. Supply chain finance, you know, does have a third party component with our banking that has to be qualified. But for the Sherpa platform and our B2B payments process, it really is scalable for any customer that’s got a supply chain.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:22] So now talk about the Atlanta fintech scene. How have you seen it evolve?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:05:29] Oh, that is a question that I could talk about for hours and hours and hours. Atlanta has become a tremendous hotspot. I don’t know what the most recent percentage of payments that flow through Atlanta is on a global scale anymore. I know at one point it was somewhere around 70 75 percent of the world’s transactions. Through Atlanta. So, you know, we’re happy to be Homestead in Atlanta, continuing to grow, invest and provide career opportunities for the Atlanta market. We continue to offer and we have actually open positions now as well, so please check out our website for that. But the expansion of fintech and payments in Atlanta just continues to to grow. I worked for a couple, even former organizations there in the Atlanta home base, so it’s exciting to see not only the growth of payments, but the expansive growth of Atlanta kind of becoming that hotbed, if you will, for fintech and B2B payments.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:27] Now, why do you think that that ecosystem within fintech is so strong in Atlanta?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:06:34] It’s it’s talent. It is resources. And you know, what a what a great place to be in Atlanta with, you know, just able to travel to a lot of different global continents. You know, we have offices in Hong Kong, we have offices in in Europe and London. We’ve got an office in Australia. And so, you know, you think about being able to to kind of centrally locate and work across the globe. Atlanta is a great spot, not only time location, but to interact with other fintech companies that also operate in some of those markets. It just really creates a great unity across our buyers and our partners and our vendors.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:14] So now how how does the crypto kind of excitement impact what your work like? Is there anything in there for you or is that something you’re looking at or part of a roadmap?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:07:28] Sure, great question. We get that question a lot from any time you mentioned payments. The next question is always crypto and all of that. Here’s what I would answer is is the space that we’re playing in today. The short answer is no. The part of crypto that does make sense is more the ledger based, you know, infrastructure of seeing where a payments made and how that continues to evolve and more of a ledger based payment system and methodology. But today, the problems we’re solving with our Sherpa platform are not crypto related. They’re truly solving for manual processes that a lot of supply chains are working through today and making them automated so that you gain efficiency in how a buyer customer pays all of their suppliers that they buy products from. And so we’re really excited about not only that continued automation, but then if there’s ever a need lead for one of those buyer customers to have to unlock capital to make investments in their business, we’re able to do that as well and provide what I would say on a massive giant scale. You know, large cash advances, if you want to think of it that way to not only suppliers but to buyer entities, you know in how they can unlock capital and ultimately reinvest. So we’re solving a different part of the ecosystem beyond the crypto.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:46] So now what is kind of the problem that they’re having right now, where your solution is, the solution for them is like, are there symptoms where if they are having kind of certain issues that they should contact the prime revenue folks like, what are some clues that there might be a better answer to what they’re doing?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:09:05] Oh, great. Great question. Thank you for that. I’m going to answer that in two ways. If you’re a customer meaning a supplier and you’re selling your products to larger buyer entities. Our platform has an accounts payable process in it that your buyer and you as a supplier can join our platform and the buyer will pay you through our platform versus manual and checks versus wondering did they approve the invoice of all the products that they bought from me? Oftentimes, a supplier will submit an invoice for thirty thousand units. You know that somebody bought from them and the visibility of when that invoice got approved for payment. And when the payment is scheduled to be made is kind of a black hole for a lot of companies right now. So that’s where our platform gets to plug in those two connective tissues and say once an invoice is approved by the buyer entity, the supplier who sold those products gets to see that entire visibility cycle of when the payments come in, when it’s going to be in their bank account and when that invoice got approved. The other client and customer that would be a great opportunity with love and opportunity to talk to is if you’re a buyer entity that you buy products from other suppliers, we’ll put your entire supply chain on our platform.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:10:25] And will tech enable your entire supply chain? And what that will allow you to do is pay all of your suppliers through our platform in one fell swoop. Generally, we’ve seen in the research that an average invoice in a manual nature that a buyer has to make costs about 15 dollars per invoice give or take. Our platform can save substantial money and doing that through the automation of it because you’re not having to answer and field thousands of phone calls in a month from all of your customers, saying What am I going to get paid? Is the check in the mail. Did you approve my invoice? And then lastly, we you know, we are a great place for a customer and a buyer to come if they’ve got a need to run a supply chain finance program where essentially, you know, we can help a buyer unlock working capital to go reinvest back in their business. So we like to think we really run the gamut of what the B2B payments ecosystem needs, whether it’s early payment through supply chain finance, dynamic discounting or on time payment through really our platform solving account payable processes in the supply chain.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:28] Now what percentage of folks are doing this still manually? That kind of. Shocks me a little bit.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:11:35] It did us as well, which is, you know, kind of hence the launch of our platform. You know, I don’t know the numbers exactly, but as of as of late, I would say on a global scale, it’s still about forty five percent to 50 percent of buyers and suppliers are communicating in a manual nature. In fact, what we’ve heard is we did diligence with even our own customers, meaning our own buyer clients as a customer. Is that in most cases, the buyer customer is using a different supplier portal versus a different invoicing vendor versus a different vendor for supply chain finance versus a different vendor for dynamic discounting. So you can kind of see the picture that I’m painting, you know, really, our platform is a one stop shop now. And so that’s where helping to solve not only the fragmentation of multiple vendors, but the 40 to 50 percent of folks that are out there still handling manual payment processes and mailing checks. You know, a big challenge for buyers is that to get all of their suppliers, let’s say you have a thousand suppliers you buy products from across the world validating the bank account to make sure it’s the right bank account to pay in an automated fashion. Just imagine that process across a thousand suppliers in your ecosystem. We take that lift off and we handle all that for you. So if you don’t have validated bank accounts, you can never get out of the stage of cutting manual checks and having a manual process. So just those simple steps along the way is really how our short paid platform solves problems.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:05] So what’s next for you guys? How do you see twenty twenty two? What’s your forecast especially? I mean, I know you’re using the word supply chain maybe differently, but then what’s in the news with the supply chain? But it sounds like there’s a lot of turbulence in that world.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:13:23] There is. That’s a great, great point, and that’s actually where we can help to eliminate some of that friction. You know, when there are restrictions in supply chain, we can help to unlock capital. So if you’re a buyer entity out there that are having challenges in getting, you know, your suppliers have the right products, have enough products, demand of products give us a call because we can definitely help unlock capital to infuse that back into your supplier and supply chains to free these things up. But what’s next, really for us in Twenty Twenty Two is really continuing just to accelerate our pay platform. We’re very excited to go to create and deliver ongoing value to our supplier, customer and our buyer customer in solving working capital and on time AP payment solutions. So we’ve got, you know, since the press release, just an immense response, you know, from not only new customers, but our existing customers saying, Hey, tell me more about this. We’re excited. We’ve known prime revenue has done great things for the last 18 years. But but we want, you know, we’re hungry for more products from which you guys have on your platform. So we’re going to be busy in twenty twenty two. No doubt.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:32] So if somebody wants to learn more, have more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s a website?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:14:39] A website is prime revenue. All one word. Check us out, there’s a contact us form if you’re interested in learning more and buying the platform and what the platform can do for you to solve a problem. If you’re looking for a career opportunity, check our page out there as well for careers and see what positions we have. But we’re in a very exciting time and a cool, transformative time for us as an organization in the world that we live in. So please check us out.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:08] Well, congratulations on all the success. Thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:15:13] Thank you, Lee, for having me and have a great Halloween. All right,

Lee Kantor: [00:15:16] This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.