Grand Designs
Fintech intelligentsia light up when they hear about new payment processing platforms, sometimes referred to as "rails." It's an allusion to moving goods via railway with tracks, switches, sidings and all those other things grandpa used to reminisce about but that you've never actually seen in person — save for that one harrowing flight out of Midway Int'l in January 2015, when you swore you could count the rivets on boxcars at the Corwith railyard. Only difference is that payment rails can move money from, say, your credit card account to a prince's bank account in some far-off land, rather than, say, pork from Washington D.C. to a senior Congressman's home district. (Hmmm....)
Whether routing freight or funds, using the requisite rails can be complex, slow and expensive. That's fine if you happen to own a critical section of the track, so to speak, and can skim a tad for every boxcar or transaction passing by. It may not be so good for your customers, and everyone else downstream in the food chain (think pork bellies, if you wish, but financial transactions work, too). Hence, the collective shudder of excitement from the Fintech community when new rails give promise to potentially cheaper and faster payment processing.
(Yes, yes. The podcast. We know. We're almost there. Promise. Can you wait until the next rest stop, or should we pull over by the side of the road?)
Introducing new payment platforms is as bold as even the most daring of entrepreneurs care to go. Sure, you do hear about the occasional one that proposes a new form of currency, but ever since the central bankers and securities regulators cracked down on cryptocurrencies, anyone enterprising enough might fare better as a counterfeiter. (No, boys and girls, we don't recommend trying that at home.)
Creating a digital marketplace can prove nearly as satisfying as introducing a new currency, but it's fair to wonder whether that dog will still hunt. Though it only just recently crawled out from under a rock, even the team from Failure - the Podcast has heard of eBay, Alibaba, or ... what is it now? ... Amazon. You would think that starting another one of these in 2021 (yep, think about it, we are almost there, and January 20th is right around the corner -- nervous, anyone?) has about the same chance of success as Rudy G's hair dye at a presser.
Yet, some may differ. Take Pakira Inc., the Boston-based Fintech startup that hopes to revolutionize the market for physical commodities throughout the entire supply chain. By providing a digital marketplace for transactions, coupled with Bloomberg-like information on all of its players, Pakira is aiming to be the go-to platform for buying and selling everything from lumber to pork bellies.
Will Pakira succeed? If winning pitch competitions is any gauge, the answer is most certainly. On the other hand, if appearing on this podcast is the better measure, we will look forward to speaking with them again for a postmortem. Either way, we welcome you to join us in an … interesting… discussion with Nadia Shalaby and Andrew Gibson of Pakira on the origins, workings and future of their online marketplace.
