Michael Donovan: Now focusing a bit more on North America, slightly related to margins, I suppose. Regarding the shift from terminal based to app based processing, what is the anticipated impact there on customer retention? And what trends do you see for this type of shift? Do you think it’s going to decrease your acquisition cost in the short-term? Or how are you thinking about this shift right here?
Ben Errez: Min will take that.
Min Wei: Thank you, Ben. Mike, this is another great question. As we have probably seen this transition or transformation in different business verticals or sectors, I would say there are some intricate dynamics on this journey, right? Because when you move the payments experience from a terminal based experience to the mobile app experience, there are a few facets of it. First of all, you allow us as a service provider, as a technology enabler to have more customer touch points because the customer touch points is transitioning from previously to primarily interfacing with merchants and business customers to now we have customer interface interaction with both the merchants and the business customers as well as the general consumers, right?
So that’s important because I’m sorry for taking a little bit of time to get to the answer, because you did mention about customer retention and whatnot. You gave us more direct interaction and feedback from the consumers, which gave us the feedback loop as needed to motivate us to continue to innovate based on user feedback. That way we’re not just depending on second handed or direct feedback from the merchants, now we actually have the feedback directly from consumers. And the second point is, it gave us better visibility in terms of flow management and risk management and monitoring. In the past, we are doing a great job on behalf of our merchants and business customers. Now that we have direct interaction be directly involved in KYC, onboarding of the consumers onto the mobile app, a lot of this information is timely validated through our advanced risk monitoring management system.
So that will also allow us to reduce risk for our business customers. So all of this will lead to us in a long-term better business retention, customer retention, better engagement with customers, both at the merchant level as well as the consumer level, which we care a lot about. Now in the near-term, because we are talking about a transition, it is a significant change in terms of user experience. So we do expect there will be a little bit of a time it takes to rebuild momentum, but that’s not to say we have lost our customers. Many of our merchants still committed and are still in live contact with us. But we are taking the time to ensure we work closely with our merchants, our partners, our ISOs to educate them. We also prepare them to educate the consumers to better use the system we have now on the app basis, and that can benefit from the user experience.
So hopefully that answers your question, Michael.
Michael Donovan: Now you mentioned risk. I believe, not too long ago, we discussed North America and the high risk licenses. Are PayPal and Stripe still the only players with this high risk license? And is RYVYL pursuing a high risk license in North America?
Min Wei: I’ll try to answer the question because this really depends, Michael. First of all, we do understand that PayPal, Venmo and others are very reputable renowned players in terms of P2P, B2C, C2B payment experience in the overall general market. RYVYL and our product offerings are focused on very specific service verticals and niche markets. It is not part of our strategic vision go head to head with those big players in the general market. Our sweet spot and strength and focus is continue to be successful and excel in the space we serve. So whether that’s considered medium risk, low risk or high risk. So we do have working, we have been working with our banking channels, both in the U.S. and in EU, we have the requisite licensees to perform business in a compliant way and that’s something we are absolutely committed to.
So again, to answer your question about that is, we do not see PayPal and Venmo to compete in the near-term in the space we operate in. We do believe there is a barrier to entry. We also do believe we have our unique offering that serves not just our merchants, our business customers, but also our partners, our agents, ISOs as well as consumers.
Michael Donovan: Fantastic answer there and very diplomatic. My final question before returning the floor is in regard to American Samoa and market penetration. I think you mentioned around 60% for all payments there. What are some of the hurdles that you’re seeing for increasing market penetration? And also, what are some of the perhaps pleasant surprises that you’ve seen in Americas Samoa?
Min Wei: No problem. So Michael, you have the fair reservation there. As we indicated, we’ve been supporting and servicing over 60% of the target merchants market for the past few quarters already. And I believe your questions are twofold. So number one is, why is that penetration not going higher? But bear in mind, American Samoa is a very contained environment or market for us. There’s a lot of added benefit for that because it gave us that protected territory for us to pilot and prove that we can do a good job to transform the payment experience for the market, for the customers and residents there on the island. The reason for that kind of sustainment at 60% is in total we have a good determination of the total merchants market for the island.
