00:00The world's biggest companies are flexing record capex spending in today's volatile economy,
00:06but small and mid-sized businesses aren't necessarily reaping the same benefits.
00:11Payoneer sits in a unique position offering payment solutions for some of these firms,
00:15and CEO John Kaplan joins us now.
00:17It's the K-shaped economy that's been talked about ad nauseum.
00:20What are you seeing from the more small and mid-sized businesses?
00:23It's a fascinating moment for small businesses globally.
00:25What I would say is the agility and resilience of small business cannot be underestimated.
00:31Our customers are in 190 countries and territories.
00:35U.S. businesses are approaching globalization, sourcing globally, hiring globally, exporting globally,
00:44and international firms are discovering new trade routes.
00:48So actually I think when you look at the research, small business confidence may be down a little bit,
00:53but resilience and agility is way up.
00:56And so I feel pretty optimistic about where the small business is.
00:59Tell me again about your customer base, because I saw that B2B volume growth more than doubled to 44%,
01:06which is massive growth.
01:09And I imagine that the supply chain shakeup that we've been watching now for six years has a lot to
01:15do with that.
01:16Payoneer, as I said, does business in 190 countries.
01:20We have 2 million active small business customers around the globe.
01:24In the last 12 months, nearly $100 billion of volume was transferred on our platform, our payment platform.
01:31And the disruption from tariffs, the sort of global macro events that have happened, have really been sort of an
01:39interesting,
01:40you know, the uncertainty created innovation.
01:43And so what we saw 44% growth in our B2B volumes in Q1, up from 24% growth in
01:50Q4 of 2025,
01:51for the reason you'd state, businesses are looking for creative new ways to distribute
01:56and need a modern financial services platform like Payoneers to make it easy to do business anywhere on the globe.
02:03Well, and if you're looking for a cheaper supplier, or if you're trying to avoid a tariff here or a
02:06tariff there,
02:08it's an excellent opportunity to switch the platform with which you make payments, right?
02:12Exactly. So one business unit we have is our workforce management unit, which helps companies around the globe hire employees
02:21and contractors far from home. And you have to do that in a compliant way with tax rules and regulations.
02:27And so we see U.S. businesses increasingly turning to Payoneer to globalize their organizations.
02:32And we see global firms looking to new trade routes, saying, export from China,
02:37let me drive my exports to Latin America or Africa or Europe, as trade between China and the U.S.
02:43has decelerated pretty precipitously as a result of the tariff.
02:47Are you surprised that more of these companies are able or have wanted to keep their global footprint,
02:52that they haven't tried to turn more domestic just with this disruption that continues to happen?
02:57I'm actually not. You know, if you think about the U.S. has 340 million people, best economy in the
03:03world,
03:03best system in the world, but there's 7.5 billion people on the planet.
03:07And so if you make a good or service today, your opportunity really is global.
03:12And we're seeing exports from Vietnam grow. We're seeing exports from Turkey grow.
03:18We're seeing U.S. businesses drive opportunity outside of the U.S. borders, which is great for the U.S.
03:24economy, right?
03:25We want healthy, growing, strong firms. And companies like Payoneer is sort of the backbone that enables that to be
03:32possible for entrepreneurship.
03:33What's changed, though? You know, you had you beat earnings expectations. You did very well in Q1.
03:41And as a result, you have analysts on the street raising their price target, raising their assessment of your company.
03:49But in Q4, it didn't look so great. So what's changed between Q1, Q4 and Q1?
03:53I think the last 12 months have been a really interesting, really a transformation of Payoneer.
03:58We've unlocked meaningful new profitability in the business with clear visibility.
04:03We've guided to doubling our core EBITDA from $40 million in 2024 to $90 million at the midpoint for 2025,
04:11excuse me, to 2026.
04:13So we're unlocking profitability. We had 11 percent core revenue growth. Ours is a healthy, growing.
04:20But how? But why? Because I think it's really powered by entrepreneurship.
04:23Like the energy in the entrepreneurial global economy has never been stronger.
04:28I was listening to your earlier guest talk about the 50 major opportunities.
04:33You know, Jamie Dimon's comment about the 50 major opportunities for AI transformation.
04:37That is he's right. We're seeing it inside of Payoneer.
04:40And our two million customers are totally energized by the ability to punch above their weight by using AI tools
04:48to act bigger, be bigger, be more efficient than they are.
04:52So I really think the AI revolution and globalization, frankly, are real net positives to S&Bs and ultimately firm
04:59like ours.
04:59There's also just this real anxiety, though, that maybe it's never been easier to start a company.
05:05But it's also been like there's also so many companies that are being disrupted.
05:09And especially if you're a smaller business. I mean, some of the stuff is expensive.
05:13Tokens are getting more expensive. It helps to have scale in a lot of cases.
05:17What what separates the haves and the have nots that the optimism you're talking about, but also on the downside,
05:23companies that can't keep up with this fast, fast changing technology and environment.
05:28You make a really important point. Right. Token maxing. Right. This idea of how do we monetize.
05:33How do we rate limit the amount of tokens people use, get positive ROI on those took that token usage.
05:39Every company in the world is trying to figure that out. Small businesses are no different.
05:43I would say one thing about the S&Bs. What you saw Anthropic do with some of the tools they
05:47provided for S&Bs is a real positive.
05:50Because if Anthropic and other sort of superstar AI companies recognize that making it easier for all firms to participate
05:59in the upside, that's better for them, certainly better for the S&Bs and ultimately all of us and the
06:04transformation to the global economy.
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