Founder Interview
How ChargeAfter Built a BNPL Marketplace Network Connecting Thousands of Merchants to 40+ Lenders (Interview with CEO Meidad Sharon)
- Interview Date
- May 4, 2022
- Interviewee
- Meidad SharonCEO and Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Series B Raised (2022)
$44M
Total Funding
$54M
Team Size (2022)
120 employees
Lenders on Platform (2022)
Close to 40
Year Founded
2017
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Meidad Sharon during his interview with Nathan Latka recorded in May 2022 and represent a historical snapshot, not current figures. See ChargeAfter’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways
- 01ChargeAfter closed a $44M Series B in 2022, led by investors including Citibank, Bradesco, and Visa
- 02Total funding raised across all rounds is $54M, starting with a $1.5M seed in 2017
- 03The company had close to 40 lenders on the platform at interview time, with a goal to reach 80 by end of 2022
- 04ChargeAfter operates as a BNPL network marketplace, connecting merchants to multiple lenders rather than lending itself
- 05Lenovo is a named merchant customer, using ChargeAfter to power white-labeled financing on its website
- 06The team stood at 120 employees in 2022, with engineering based primarily in Israel
- 07ChargeAfter was founded in 2017 starting with one merchant and one lender in the US
- 08Strategic investors include Visa, Synchrony Bank, Citibank, BBVA, and Bradesco, who also participate in the marketplace as lenders
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Seed Round (2017) | $1.5M | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Series A Round (2019) | $8.5M | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Series B Round (2022) | $44M | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Total Funding Raised | $54M | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Team Size (2022) | 120 employees | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Lenders on Platform (2022) | Close to 40 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Year Founded | 2017 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
Growth Breakdown
Funding
ChargeAfter raised a $1.5M seed round in 2017 from Pico Partners, followed by an $8.5M Series A in 2019 led by Propel with participation from BBVA, Synchrony Bank, and Plug and Play. In 2022 the company closed a $44M Series B, adding Citibank, Bradesco, and Bradesco to its investor base alongside existing backers Visa and Synchrony, bringing total funding to $54M.
Marketplace Scale
ChargeAfter launched in 2017 with one merchant and one lender and grew to thousands of merchants and close to 40 lenders by May 2022. The company does not publicly disclose exact merchant counts, but named Lenovo as a key customer using the white-labeled financing product.
Team
The company employed 120 people at the time of the interview, with offices in both Israel and the US. Engineering is based primarily in Israel.
Lender Network Growth
At interview time ChargeAfter had close to 40 lenders on the platform and Sharon stated the goal was to reach approximately 80 lenders by the end of 2022. Each lender joins through a direct relationship with ChargeAfter.
Growth Strategy
Network Marketplace Model
Rather than competing with lenders like Affirm, ChargeAfter positioned itself as the network layer connecting multiple lenders to merchants, similar to how Visa connects issuing banks to merchants. This allows merchants to offer broader consumer coverage and higher approval rates than any single lender could provide.
Strategic Bank Investors as Ecosystem Partners
ChargeAfter deliberately recruited major financial institutions such as Visa, Synchrony Bank, Citibank, and BBVA as investors, because those investors also participate in the marketplace as lenders. Sharon described this as building an ecosystem where investors are also platform participants, analogous to how airlines invest in Expedia.
White-Label Merchant Financing
ChargeAfter enables merchants to offer branded financing experiences, such as Lenovo Financing, powered behind the scenes by ChargeAfter. This approach reduces merchant dependence on third-party BNPL brands and increases platform stickiness.
Multi-Lender Coverage for Approval Rates
By connecting merchants to lenders across prime, near-prime, and subprime credit segments, ChargeAfter addresses the problem that any single lender declines roughly 70% of consumers. Offering multiple lenders in sequence improves approval rates and conversion for merchants.
Geographic and Payment Player Expansion
ChargeAfter extended its reach by integrating with payment players and distributors who want to add BNPL to their offerings, enabling those partners to use ChargeAfter rails to serve their own merchants and consumers across multiple geographies.
Best Quotes
“So we are working behind the scenes. Our platform and network is enabling the merchants to have their solution. Usually we are allowing the merchants to white label it, we are working with Lenovo as an example. If you go to Lenovo website, you will see Lenovo financing. It is powered by ChargeAfter and we are allowing them to offer this to their consumers.”
“The consumer experience of being declined in 70% of the cases is not positive. So first they are looking to be approved and second, they don't want necessarily to have only one option, they want the option that has the best fit for them that they can choose from.”
“So we launched ChargeAfter in 2017. We started with one merchant and one lender and we grew it from there.”
“I think that what I saw in the market, I'm coming from the payment space. In the payment space, if you think about it, there are tens of thousands of issuing banks which are very similar to the lenders in the BNPL space.”
“We have close to 40 lenders already on the platform, which will go probably to 80 by the end of the year. So we have dozens of lenders on the platform.”
“So we have 120 employees currently, and we are growing very fast.”
“We are adding more and more lenders all the time, we are adding more merchants, we are being connected to all the leading payment players and basically enabling them to use our rails that we have created and by that offering BNPL to their merchants and consumers, we see ourselves as the rails and the connectivity layer of the industry.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured ChargeAfter at the moment of closing its $44M Series B in May 2022, with 120 employees and close to 40 lenders on the platform. The figures above reflect what Meidad Sharon reported at that point in time and are not current. Visit the ChargeAfter company profile on GetLatka for the latest available data on funding, team size, and platform scale.
View ChargeAfter’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Guest Background
- 0:46What Is Buy Now Pay Later
- 1:49How ChargeAfter Works with Merchants Like Lenovo
- 3:01Multi-Lender Marketplace and the Problem of Approval Rates
- 6:53Marketplace Scale: Merchants and Lenders
- 7:54Lender Count and Growth Target
- 8:32GMV Run Rate Discussion
- 9:46Company Founding and Origin Story
- 10:24Why ChargeAfter Chose the Network Model Over Lending
- 11:32Business Model and Revenue Mechanics
- 16:07Funding History: Seed Through Series B
- 16:54Strategic Bank Investors and Ecosystem Vision
- 22:35Team Size and Engineering
- 23:17Product Vision and the Third Wave of Credit
- 24:23Famous Five Rapid Fire
Introduction and Guest Background
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Meidad Sharon. He's the CEO and founder of the award winning retail finance SaaS network platform, ChargeAfter, the first global network to provide a complete solution to point of sale financing from multiple lenders. Over fifteen years of experience he has over fifteen years of experience scaling global payments and SaaS businesses with a people and customer first approach. Meidad, you ready to take us to the top?
Meidad Sharon
00:20>> Sure. Sure.
Nathan Latka
00:21All right. Fifteen years, man. You're an OG. What was the first SaaS company you were working on?
Meidad Sharon
00:27>> I actually started in mobile space in the time that mobile was developing all the value added services and starting to have the internet on, moved from there to the payment space and from the payment space, this was a natural development in the BNPL and point of sale financing space.
What Is Buy Now Pay Later
Nathan Latka
00:46So just describe for people that are not familiar with buy now pay later, maybe they've never heard of like Affirm or these sorts of businesses, what is buy now pay later?
Meidad Sharon
00:54>> Yeah, so buy now pay later is basically the ability to split a payment to purchase to several payments, typically between four to six, but there are many other types of buy now pay later that allows the consumer to split the payments of the purchase to up to three years in many cases. This is a very developed, very growing trend where consumers can instead of paying now, they can pay later and split their purchase. It's a new
01:27>> form of credit, would say.
Nathan Latka
01:29So most folks listening guys, if you have bought maybe a Tesla or a Purple mattress. You may have saw pay with Affirm under the checkout page or something like that. This is the space you're playing in. So, Meidad, will consumers buying that mattress with a Tesla ever know about you or are you working behind the scenes with Tesla directly or with the mattress provider directly?
How ChargeAfter Works with Merchants Like Lenovo
Meidad Sharon
01:49>> So we are working behind the scenes. Our platform and network is enabling the merchants to have their solution. Usually we are allowing the merchants to white label it, we are working with Lenovo as an example. If you go to Lenovo website, you will see Lenovo financing. It is powered by ChargeAfter and we are allowing them to offer this to their consumers.
Nathan Latka
02:10You saw you said Lenovo, the computer company, Computer gaming PCs?
Meidad Sharon
02:14>> Exactly.
Nathan Latka
02:15Yeah. So I so I see this actually right now. Lenovo financing, if you guys just Google it, there's basically a big prequalification button. You're basically enabling Lenovo to take this in house, not have to rely on Affirm or one of these other tools that do it.
Meidad Sharon
02:28>> We enable Lenovo to have this in house in the sense that they are utilizing our platform to connect to multiple players like Affirm. Okay? That would enable their consumers to have much better coverage than having only one player. The pain point that ChargeAfter is solving is that there are many BNPL lenders out there, each one of those lenders is focusing on a specific financial product, it can be pay in four, it can be long term installments,
Multi-Lender Marketplace and the Problem of Approval Rates
Meidad Sharon
03:01>> it can be revolving line of credit or even a leasing product, but each one is different and each consumer would prefer a different product. Each lender is also focusing on specific credit segment, it might be prime, near prime or subprime, which means that they will approve only 30% of the consumers or in other words decline 70% of the consumers and each lender is focusing on specific geography. But the merchants from their side, they are looking to
03:28>> have a solution that would cover all their consumers and they want to have this flexibility and the consumer from their side, they are looking first to be approved, right?
03:40>> The consumer experience of being declined in 70% of the cases is not positive. So first they are looking to be approved and second, they don't want necessarily to have only one option, they want the option that has the best fit for them that they can choose from. And by having multiple lenders on ChargeAfter platform and network, we are enabling the merchants to have full coverage, best conversion rates, best approval rates and the consumer, we are almost
04:06>> bidding on their behalf between the different lenders. Because Affirm as an example, they're a great lender or really they're a great company, but they have a very specific product to a very specific
04:18>> credit box in The US, right? They don't cover other countries, they don't cover near prime or subprime, they don't cover revolving line of credit.
Nathan Latka
04:28Understood. Oh, what's going on there YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this, you love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you
04:53connect your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're
05:17gonna get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this
05:39is not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe
06:05you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at, and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second.
06:27But if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link, this link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back
Marketplace Scale: Merchants and Lenders
Nathan Latka
06:53into the interview. And so flush the marketplace out for me. How many merchants like Lenovo have installed ChargeAfter on their website?
Meidad Sharon
07:01>> So we have many, many merchants, thousands of merchants that installed ChargeAfter millions of consumers use ChargeAfter so far. We have an amazing investors, Visa invested in ChargeAfter, Synchrony Bank invested in ChargeAfter, Citibank, BBVA.
Nathan Latka
07:16Sorry, just before getting to your funding history, because I wanna touch on that. Just I wanna understand the merchant side too. So when you say thousands, you're talking between like a 3,000 Lenovos have you installed?
Meidad Sharon
07:25>> Yeah, Lenovo is a client for example.
Nathan Latka
07:28Okay, but my point is it's somewhere between like 1,000 and 3,000, when you say thousands, that's what you mean.
Meidad Sharon
07:32>> We are a private company, so we're not sharing the exact number of merchants that we have, but we have wide distribution of ChargeAfter across many merchants in many territories.
Nathan Latka
07:45Understood. And then on the flip side of the marketplace, how many lenders like Affirm are on the platform and does Affirm have to opt in or do you automatically add them? Don't need relationship with them?
Lender Count and Growth Target
Meidad Sharon
07:54>> No. So each lender that is on the platform has a relationship with ChargeAfter. We have close to 40 lenders already on the platform, which will go probably to 80 by the end of the year. So we have dozens of lenders on the platform.
Nathan Latka
08:09Yep. And then I guess when we talk about your growth, which is gonna tie into your funding story here, I imagine one of the things you measure is just GMV, right? How many loans done monthly, is that accurate? That's a key metric for you?
Meidad Sharon
08:22>> Yeah, certainly.
Nathan Latka
08:23And so are you talking like last month, are we talking tens of millions or hundreds of millions or just maybe a million per month? Can you give me a range of what your GMV is monthly?
GMV Run Rate Discussion
Meidad Sharon
08:32>> Yeah, so again we are a private company, we aren't revealing those types of data to the public, but we are certainly processing very big volumes in hundreds of millions.
Nathan Latka
08:45Hundreds of millions per month?
Meidad Sharon
08:48>> Again, we cannot share this type of stuff.
Nathan Latka
08:51Well, Meidad, you just shared the number. So I now need to qualify it so my audience doesn't get confused. You said hundreds of millions. Is that lifetime?
Meidad Sharon
08:58>> No. It's not the lifetime, but but let let's focus on other stuff because we don't feel comfortable to mention specific numbers on a on a podcast. We are
Nathan Latka
09:07Meidad, sorry. Just to be clear, you mentioned the number. You said hundreds of millions. So I wanna now make sure I understand it clearly. When you say hundreds of millions, over is that all time to date or that's not monthly? Or you don't wanna say?
Meidad Sharon
09:20>> It's not it's not all times. It's not all times. It's it's the current volume that the current run rate that we have.
Nathan Latka
09:27Okay. There you go. Perfect. So you're taking last month's GMV times 12.
Meidad Sharon
09:31>> Let's keep it That's the run rate.
Nathan Latka
09:33Yeah. Yeah. We'll move on. We'll move on. But that helps me qualify. Right? And by the way, this is how everyone calculates GMV run rate. Last month times 12. So this is very standard stuff. Talk to me about growth though, right? So when did you launch the company? What year?
Company Founding and Origin Story
Meidad Sharon
09:46>> So we launched ChargeAfter in 2017. We started with one merchant and one lender and we grew it from there.
Nathan Latka
09:56Are you able to share who that first both those first ones were?
Meidad Sharon
10:02>> Both of them were in The US, we started from The US, US is where we have the most activity even now and the merchant was in the electronic space and the lender was a typical point of sale financing lender.
Nathan Latka
10:18Is great.
Meidad Sharon
10:19>> It wasn't available back then, was point of sale financing, which is quite the same, but still.
Why ChargeAfter Chose the Network Model Over Lending
Nathan Latka
10:24Well, I mean, you made a strategic decision at some point not to compete directly with Affirm. You said, you know what, I don't want to take that risk on the balance sheet, maybe I'll just be the marketplace in the middle. I mean, that's a very important decision you made. Why did you make that decision?
Meidad Sharon
10:36>> Yeah, it's a great point. I think that what I saw in the market, I'm coming from the payment space. In the payment space, if you think about it, there are tens of thousands of issuing banks which are very similar to the lenders in the BNPL space.
10:50>> But then there is the networks Visa and MasterCard that are connecting all those separated issuers into one comprehensive network, which is allowing each merchant not to choose whether they want to work with this issuer or the other, but to work with all of them. And this is the vision of ChargeAfter we are building the visa of BNPL, the leading network and platform for the BNPL space. So I saw that there are so many lenders in
11:16>> the market, there will be more, each one of them focusing on a very specific area. We wanted to give the full solution to the merchants, to banks that are using our solution to get into the market. And we wanted to be this network that is connecting all the ecosystem.
Business Model and Revenue Mechanics
Nathan Latka
11:32And how we haven't talked about how you make money here, right? So what model have you built for yourself?
Meidad Sharon
11:39>> Yeah, so we a
11:42>> network solution very similar to how Visa and Mastercard are making money, we are making as well. So we are getting a fee from the lenders that are working with us and from the merchants that are working with us.
Nathan Latka
11:56Okay, got it. And are both of those on a percent basis? For example, would a company like Lenovo just pay you a flat SaaS fee or are both of them paying you like a percent of deals done?
Meidad Sharon
12:07>> Yeah, it's a great question again on we are not getting into the specific business model, let's keep it as a fee. This is an ongoing fee that they pay as part of the transactions.
Nathan Latka
12:20Well, mean, sorry. I'm gonna dig here though because this is a critical question. There's a lot of folks in this space that are trying to figure out, do we charge a flat fee here, SaaS fee, tied to a percent of GMV or deals closed? Then there are some that are on the total opposite side, which is no flat fee at all, free to use. You only pay ChargeAfter if we bring you deals, right? And we
12:38help you close deals and it's a percent of GMV. Are you picking one side or the other? Or are you more of a blended model?
Meidad Sharon
12:44>> A blended model.
Nathan Latka
12:45Okay. Fair enough. We'll leave it at that. Let's fast forward a bit. So first customers in 2017, we've talked about how many folks you're working with now today on both sides of the marketplace. Tell me more about the funding history. Why did you it sounds like you've raised. Why did you decide to raise capital?
Meidad Sharon
12:59>> Yeah, it's a great question. I think that we see a very big market demand to what we do. From all sides, have more and more lenders that want to join the platform, we have more merchants that are using the platform, we have more distributors and payment players that are understanding that BNPL is here to stay, they want to add these banks that adding this to their offering and they are coming to us basically, so we can
13:28>> provide them with the technology and connectivity. And so with so much demand, we needed more capital to accelerate our growth. This was the main reason for the last raise. We started thinking that we will do a smaller raise and we had so much investors that wanted to invest that we decided to increase the raise to the size of the raise that we had eventually.
Nathan Latka
13:52So let's start from the first capital you brought in. What year was that and what was the round size?
Meidad Sharon
13:58>> Yeah. So we we started in 2017 with the seed funding from Pico Partners, VC based in Israel and The US. The second round was led
Nathan Latka
14:08by And how much was the seed?
Meidad Sharon
14:10>> 1.5.
Nathan Latka
14:111.5. Okay. And and by the way, I just don't know. Back in 2017 in Israel, were you seeing the standard terms you've seen seed rounds in The States? You know, you're you're raising at a five or 10 cap, something like that on a convertible note?
Meidad Sharon
14:23>> Excuse me?
Nathan Latka
14:24Were you seeing back in 2017 sort of standard seed terms in Israel like we see here in The US? So a standard seed deal in The US would be a million to 2,000,000 on a 5,000,000 to $10,000,000 cap. Were you sort of seeing that same deal back then?
Meidad Sharon
14:40>> It was similar to The US without getting to the specific terms.
Nathan Latka
14:44Okay, cool. Okay, what happened after the seed?
Meidad Sharon
14:47>> And then we had our A round led by Propel backed up by BBVA, Synchrony joined, Plug and Play joined.
Nathan Latka
14:57What year?
Meidad Sharon
14:58>> In 2019. Okay.
Nathan Latka
14:59Then we had the last
15:02And what was the size there?
Meidad Sharon
15:07>> I think that it was 8,500,000.
Nathan Latka
15:108.5. You have to think about it, dilution is a real thing when you do these raises. I thought you know these numbers off the top of your head,
Meidad Sharon
15:18>> we had few investors coming and yeah, it was a very intense last year in terms of capital raise. So the former rounds are a bit vague at this point.
Nathan Latka
15:29I see. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. What happened after the Series A?
Meidad Sharon
15:33>> We had Visa join, you know, kind of in between the rounds then we had this round.
Nathan Latka
15:40And so again, audience doesn't know what this one is. So what tell us what you just raised.
Meidad Sharon
15:44>> Sure. Sure. So in the recent round, we raised 44,000,000 and we added to our existing investor group which is really great, the investor group that we had before was composed of Visa, no need to present Visa any further. Synchrony Bank that is one of the leading banks in buy now pay later in The US,
Funding History: Seed Through Series B
Meidad Sharon
16:07>> BBVA that is one of the largest banking group worldwide, and in the recent round we added Citibank, again no need to present Citibank, one of the largest banks in the world, we had Bradesco.
Nathan Latka
16:23Meidad, why was it important for you to get all these banks on board? Does it enable you to increase your margin profile at all?
Meidad Sharon
16:28>> Well, we think that what we are building here is a technological solution, but also an ecosystem. And we view ourselves as an industry platform and as such, as many players in the industry that are investing in ChargeAfter, we view it as a better thing. If you think about who are the investors of Visa, they are the banks, right? If you think about who are the investor of Expedia on the travel space, they are airlines. So we
Strategic Bank Investors and Ecosystem Vision
Meidad Sharon
16:54>> have a similar strategy where we think that as many as more banks investing in ChargeAfter, we are building the ecosystem, we are getting partners and we have a better base to implement our vision.
Nathan Latka
17:09I know. I guess what I'm trying to go deeper on is like, let's say that you help a consumer spend a dollar at Lenovo using Affirm. Of that dollar, right, Lenovo and Affirm are gonna pay you some whatever percent, cents, whatever. Then obviously Visa also takes whatever 300 bps, right? Citi takes 300 bps, whoever the card is takes 300 bps. Do you have the ability to expand your margin larger than 3% of that dollar by bringing
17:36some of these banks on board?
Meidad Sharon
17:38>> No, it's not connected to that. And by the way, you're working with us in Lenovo or elsewhere, but it's more about the ability to add more players that are believing in ChargeAfter vision and in ChargeAfter marketplace and usually they don't only invest, they also participate in the marketplace. So it's not about increasing the margin. When we are working with when a lender is involved in a specific transaction, it's only this lender, right? It's not
18:07>> also Visa and also Citibank.
Nathan Latka
18:11Oh, so Visa could be another version of Affirm. That Visa could be the lender in the platform like Affirm.
Meidad Sharon
18:16>> Actually, they are. We are enabling Visa installments. A product of Visa that is enabling the consumer to split his payments over multiple installments from three months to eighteen months using existing cards.
Nathan Latka
18:31I see, that's smart. And then Meidad, look, I don't know a ton about all of your competitors, you're going know more here. So my question to you is, if your competitors that own a marketplace like this are processing a dollar of like GMV like this, how much are they probably making on that dollar from both sides of the marketplace? Is it 5¢, 2¢, a cent?
Meidad Sharon
18:49>> It is very similar to the margins that Visa and Mastercard are having in the world.
Nathan Latka
18:543¢, 2¢, 3¢.
Meidad Sharon
18:57>> It's more complicated to that, you're referring to the total cost that involves in the Visa world, right? It will include the cost of the issuer, the cost of Visa and the cost of the acquiring bank or the gateway, But in general, our model is similar. We are doing the same thing that Visa did in the payment space in the BNPL point of sale financing space.
Nathan Latka
19:18Well, I'm not talking about you, I'm curious about just the overall market. So you're saying your competitors when they do this, look, there's complications here, I don't want go deep on all these complications, but it's somewhere between 3 and 5 cents per dollar of GMV, something like that.
Meidad Sharon
19:30>> Again, I don't think that this is the right place to relate to margins. I think that we have similar margins to our competitors have similar margins to us and it's similar business model and it's not different than what is happening in the payment space.
Nathan Latka
19:48Yeah, Meidad, sorry, the whole show is about educating founders, right? So we are not familiar with your space, that's why it's called the top entrepreneurs, right? So we're trying to learn the business model. So in this space, what is the margin you're seeing there? Again, think it's three to 5%. I mean, tell me if that's wrong.
Meidad Sharon
20:01>> No, it's certainly not three to 5%, right? If
Nathan Latka
20:04it's less or more?
Meidad Sharon
20:05>> It's much less, right?
Nathan Latka
20:07Oh, wow, okay.
Meidad Sharon
20:08>> If you look on the payment space, right, when a merchant is typically paying in The US somewhere between 1.6% to 3% on a credit card transaction, This cost would include the issuing cost, the cost of the card from the issuer, it would include the network costs, Visa or Mastercard and then it would include the margin of the distributor, the acquiring bank, the gateway, right? All those three players in the ecosystem would benefit out of this total
20:40>> cost. In our case, in our industry it is very similar, right? Instead of the issuers we have the lenders, instead of the acquirers, the distributors might be the same companies and then we are the network in the middle.
Nathan Latka
20:55Got it, got it. That's very helpful. Okay, so that's lower than I would have thought, my audience probably would thought, so under 3%, not a lot of margin to work with here, you need a lot of volume.
Meidad Sharon
21:02>> Exactly.
Nathan Latka
21:03Yeah. And you gave us a run rate earlier, right? Don't like that you gave it, but you gave us a run rate early, right? So, 8,300,000 per month. And if you're taking less than 3% there, people can sort of back into obviously what that looks like from a run rate perspective, 250,000 a monthly recurring revenue back to you guys as you scale.
Meidad Sharon
21:20>> I didn't say $8,300,000 I said hundreds of millions and again, I'm not relating not to revenues and not to volumes in this call. Want to be very clear, are a private company and we are not
Nathan Latka
21:33much Meidad, you keep saying that, but then you give the number, you say hundreds of millions. So you are giving a number and I'm trying to make sure my audience understands that number.
Meidad Sharon
21:41>> So I'm giving I'm sorry, right? I don't want to be rude or something, but on a podcast, I usually speak about the market trends, the value proposition of ChargeAfter, certainly not on the specifics of how much we make, how many merchants we have. In the places that I do want to mention like the lenders I'm mentioning, in the other places like merchants and volumes and margins, I don't want to be specific. So I just want
22:09>> to be very clear, happy to discuss this with investors which we are doing and with clients but not on a podcast.
Nathan Latka
22:17Yeah, mean look, a lot of folks are not, if someone doesn't hit and dive deep on the business model, you end up with WeWork's of the world that raised way too much money, that brag about valuations and how much they raise, and they end up bankrupt three years later. So I'm asking these questions to try and understand, is there real business here or is it basically flooded with VC dollars? You're losing money and whoever loses money
Team Size and Engineering
Nathan Latka
22:35the longest maybe wins a network in the long run. It sounds like that's not the case with you, but that's why I asked these questions. We'll move on from that though for for now. I think we have a good sense. You guys are growing growing nicely. Tell me more about your team today. Right? So how many folks are full timer on the team?
Meidad Sharon
22:49>> Yeah. So we have 120 employees currently, and we are growing very fast.
Nathan Latka
22:53And did you I know you have Israeli roots. Did you keep your engineering team over there, or how many engineers total?
Meidad Sharon
22:59>> Yeah. We have we have offices in Israel and in The US, and our engineering is in Israel mostly.
Nathan Latka
23:06And and what I imagine heavy engineering, right? About how many engineers on the team?
Meidad Sharon
23:10>> Heavy engineering. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
23:11Yeah. What's next product wise, and where can you see the space going? Right now you're in marketplace. What's step two?
Product Vision and the Third Wave of Credit
Meidad Sharon
23:17>> No. I think that we are very clear about our North Star and our vision. We have you know and I'm speaking out about the bigger picture. If you look on the credit market, the credit market was dominated by credit cards for many years. We believe that the ability of consumers to get the credit that they need at the point of sale point of need, is BNPL, is going to be the future of credit. Within this market
23:44>> we are the one connecting the markets, right? We are creating the connectivity, are not the lenders but we are the ones connecting the industry, creating what we call the third wave of credit. So we are very clear on our vision and we just continue to do that. We are adding more and more lenders all the time, we are adding more merchants, we are being connected to all the leading payment players and basically enabling them to use
24:11>> our rails that we have created and by that offering BNPL to their merchants and consumers, we see ourselves as the rails and the connectivity layer of the industry.
Famous Five Rapid Fire
Nathan Latka
24:23Alright. On that note, Meidad, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite book?
Meidad Sharon
24:29>> Favorite book?
Nathan Latka
24:31Book.
Meidad Sharon
24:34>> Grow to Defend. Grow to Defend.
Nathan Latka
24:37Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Meidad Sharon
24:42>> I'm following many CEOs.
Nathan Latka
24:45Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building ChargeAfter?
Meidad Sharon
24:50>> So I'm a great admirer of Salesforce. I think it's a very good tool.
Nathan Latka
24:54Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Meidad Sharon
24:58>> Four or five. I'm not a big That's not a lot.
Nathan Latka
25:01That can't be healthy.
Meidad Sharon
25:05>> I'm sleeping No.
Nathan Latka
25:06Seriously, that's not healthy. Five you can survive on five hours a night?
Meidad Sharon
25:10>> Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
25:11Wow. I mean, that's that's
25:14it's imp I I when a CEO comes on the show and says that amount of sleep, either usually they're bragging because they want to sound good to VCs that they never sleep, which is not healthy, or they're just superhuman and they actually just don't need sleep. It sounds like you just don't need sleep.
Meidad Sharon
25:28>> I do need sleep, but five hours is enough for me.
Nathan Latka
25:31Awesome. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
Meidad Sharon
25:34>> No. I'm I'm I'm married happily with three great daughters.
Nathan Latka
25:38Oh, that's amazing. And how old are you?
Meidad Sharon
25:40>> I'm I'm 50.
Nathan Latka
25:42Take us home. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.
Meidad Sharon
25:48>> I wish I knew that fintech will be such a big thing when I was 20.
Nathan Latka
25:53Guys launched in 2017, he's sitting at the center of the buy now pay later world, specifically building a marketplace connecting thousands of merchants like Lenovo to over 40 lenders like Affirm or the banks directly like Visa. Building nicely, he says, quote, processing hundreds of millions dollars of run rate GMV, which is exciting, nice growth. Just closed a $44,000,000 series b earlier this year. We'll see what happens next. Meidad, thanks for taking us
26:21to the top.
Meidad Sharon
26:22>> Thank you.
Nathan Latka
26:25One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday, 1PM
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